Lets do something fun for a change... Because apparently owning an agency means you can turn doing absolutely nothing productive into a full-day business activity. ☕ Made coffee instead of a plan? 📱 Checked email before breakfast? 🤖 Got distracted by AI? 🖕 Said “Fuck it, I’ll do it myself”? 🦄 Found another “perfect” niche? You know the drill. How many squares can you honestly check off? Drop your score below. And if you get 5 in a row, congratulations. You’ve officially earned your Agency Owner badge. Bonus points: Tell us which square you’re most embarrassed to admit you checked. There may or may not be a prize if you got BINGO!

It is playoff time in Major League baseball! In an effort to support our group I'm asking everyone to root for whomever the Brewers are playing... Just kidding @Paul Michel LETS Go Brewers!!!! Note: I'm a Reds fan (so by the third game of the season we are out of contention), then a Yankees fan (they forget how to hit & pitch in the second round)...

Let’s talk about the thing nobody puts on their “I’m building my agency” Instagram post… 𝗣𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘂𝗽 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗼𝗻𝗲. Do you make prospecting calls yourself? Do you have a VA, salesperson, or appointment setter doing them? Or does your phone mysteriously become invisible every time it’s time to dial? And more importantly… How do you actually feel about making cold calls? Bonus question: If you do make the calls, what’s the hardest part? Getting started? Getting past the gatekeeper? Hearing “no”? Knowing what to say? Or just forcing yourself to pick up the damn phone? Drop your answer below. No judgment. Well… maybe a little judgment.

There's a number hiding inside almost every proposal you send. The client never sees it. Most days, you don't either. Your hourly rate. Not the agency that bills off a timesheet. That one is at least honest about what it's doing. I'm talking about the quiet version. You hear the project, guess the hours in your head, multiply by a number that felt fair, round it off, and call it a price. You know how it sounds. You've said most of these: "It's about 20 hours, so call it $2,000." "I don't want to overcharge him." "The last guy quoted him $900." "It only took me a weekend. I can't charge $5,000 for that." "AI does half of it now, so I should probably drop my price." "Can you do it for $1,500?" "Yeah, I can make that work." "I'll make it up on the next one." Every one of those is a decision about your hours. Not one of them is about his business. 𝗥𝘂𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝗼𝗻 𝗮 𝘄𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 Say you quote a five-page site for a local service business at $2,500. You figured 25 hours. That's $100 an hour on paper. Feels good. Now count the real hours. Discovery call and proposal, say 3. Chasing the content and photos he swore he'd send by Friday, say 5. The build, say 20, because it's never the 15 you planned. Two rounds of revisions that turn into four, say 8. Launch, DNS, and the email that stopped working, say 4. The "quick questions" for the next 60 days, say 5. That's 45 hours. About $55 an hour. And if you read the scope creep Deep Dive, you already know how the worst version ends. Same $2,500 project, a few "while you're in there" requests, and you're sitting at $8 an hour. Here's where it gets ugly. Say you fix all of that. You tighten the scope, you build from templates, you let AI take the first pass at copy. The same site now takes you 12 hours. Hourly thinking says the price should drop. 12 hours at $100 is $1,200. You got faster, better, and more efficient, and your pricing model took $1,300 off the table as a reward. Read that again. Hourly pricing is the only system where getting good at your job is a pay cut.

Let’s be honest. Running a marketing agency sounds pretty damn simple until you actually have to run one. You need clients. You need to sell them something. You need to actually deliver the thing you sold. You need systems. You need money. And somehow you’re supposed to do all of that without becoming a caffeinated hostage to your own business. So let’s cut the bullshit. What do you actually want to learn more about? Vote for the ONE thing you need the most help with right now. Then tell me in the comments what specifically you’re struggling with. No guru bullshit. No theory from someone who has never actually run an agency. Let’s talk about the stuff that actually matters.