Agency Forward

Chris DuBois

Agency Forward explores the future of agencies as tech and AI drive down the cost of tactical deliverables. Topics include building competent teams, developing strategic offers, systemizing your business, and more. New episodes delivered every Tuesday.

  1. 3d ago

    125 Albert Banks: Run Your Agency Like You're Going to Sell It

    Hey everyone, today I'm joined by Albert Banks. Albert runs Apertus, an advisory firm that helps agency and professional services owners get their operations and finances ready for a sale, whether or not they ever actually sell. He built and sold two agencies himself, first Myjive in a partner-driven exit, then Union in a fully deliberate process he ran years in advance. I wanted him on because most agency owners never seriously prepare to sell, even though it's probably the biggest asset they'll ever own. Albert is blunt about what that takes: chasing profitability over vanity revenue, building a business that runs without you, and knowing exactly how a buyer will value your agency before you ever sit across from one. In this episode, we discuss: Why only about 1% of agencies ever reach a real exitThe real reason owners get stuck and can't get out of their own businessHow agencies are actually valued, and the biggest surprise owners get about their own payWhy more agencies are doing "bolt-on" acquisitions instead of waiting for a full exitAnd more...You can learn more about Albert Banks on LinkedIn, or check out Apertus if you want help running your agency like you're built to sell it. ----------- Lead Gen is the hardest part of running an agency. For most, it's unpredictable, it's slow, and it's usually expensive. Gia flips that. It's the all-in-one growth platform that turns your existing relationships and client work into a steady pipeline. Gia automates lead gen follow-up and content, and it's all from the work you're already doing. You can check it out and get some free bonuses at getgia.ai/dynamicagency ----------- No one was asking for another community. But I've made one anyway. So what's different? The Dynamic Agency Community is designed around access rather than content. Access to peers who've done it before. Access to experts who've designed solutions. Access to resources that have been battle-tested. And right now, the price for founding members is only $97/year. Join today so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow. You can join at dynamicagencyos.com/community. ----------- Subscribe to the Agency Forward blog on Substack. We have weekly blog content with practical advice to help you advance your agency. ----------- And if you're ready for 1-on-1 help to create some mind-blowing offers for your agency, visit DynamicAgencyOS.com to schedule a free consultation. Running an agency is tough, but you don't need to go it alone.

  2. Sep 8

    124 Three Ideas: Green Pen Strategy, the 10/80/10 Rule, and Finding the Room

    Three ideas today, no guest. School is back and the dog needs walking, so between drop-off, pick-up, and laps around the back porch I have time to talk through concepts I've been chewing on. This is the first of those. Green pen, red pen, blue pen. A strategy-making order I pulled from intelligence preparation of the battlefield in the Army, and it only works in that order. Green is the terrain: the market conditions everyone has to deal with, you and your competition alike. Red is the competition itself, their most likely course of action and their most deadly one. Blue is your plan, which you don't get to write until the other two are on the map. The 10/80/10 rule. Spend 10% of a task's hours prepping the person who's going to do it, hand off the 80%, keep the last 10% for your edits. Every correction you make in that final 10% gets documented and goes into the next brief, so the prep shrinks over time. Run the same split on AI instead of one-shotting a prompt and you'll stop wasting an hour arguing with an output you never gave context to. Platforms, channels, and rooms. LinkedIn is a platform. Organic posting, ads, DMs, commenting, your profile: those are channels. The room is the contained space where everyone in it is already your ICP. Most agencies pick a platform, post into their old contact list, and wonder why the algorithm buries them. In this episode, I cover: Why writing your plan before reading the market wastes bothHow to delegate a 10-hour task and only spend two hours on it, and why the same split fixes your AI outputWhy your LinkedIn contact list is the reason your posts don't reach anyoneAnd more...If you have a challenge you want a framework for, send me a message and I'll work it into a future episode. Also, check out our snapshot so you can see how the market sees you at DynamicAgencyOS.com/Snapshot ----------- Lead Gen is the hardest part of running an agency. For most, it's unpredictable, it's slow, and it's usually expensive. Gia flips that. It's the all-in-one growth platform that turns your existing relationships and client work into a steady pipeline. Gia automates lead gen follow-up and content, and it's all from the work you're already doing. You can check it out and get some free bonuses at getgia.ai/dynamicagency ----------- No one was asking for another community. But I've made one anyway. So what's different? The Dynamic Agency Community is designed around access rather than content. Access to peers who've done it before. Access to experts who've designed solutions. Access to resources that have been battle-tested. And right now, the price for founding members is only $97/year. Join today so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow. You can join at dynamicagencyos.com/community. ----------- Subscribe to the Agency Forward blog on Substack. We have weekly blog content with practical advice to help you advance your agency. ----------- And if you're ready for 1-on-1 help to create some mind-blowing offers for your agency, visit DynamicAgencyOS.com to schedule a free consultation. Running an agency is tough, but you don't need to go it alone.

  3. Sep 1

    123 Chris Bolton: Cancel Your SaaS Stack and Build Your Own

    Hey everyone, today I'm joined by Chris Bolton. Chris runs Diviner, an SEO and marketing consultancy. Before that he spent about twenty years building Murmur Creative with his brother, and leaving it was hard enough that the two of them ended up in therapy over it. Since going out on his own he has done the thing most agency owners only talk about. He canceled nearly every software subscription he was paying for and spent a year building his own replacements. That became Diviner One, the CRM and review platform his clients now run on, and Crystl, a tool for managing AI agents that about a thousand people have downloaded. I wanted him on because build-versus-buy has changed. One person can now replace a stack that used to cost an agency thousands a month. Chris did it, and he is straight about both halves: the credibility it added to his consulting, and the year he spent building software that was never tested against anything besides his own imagination. In this episode, we discuss: Where the money goes when an agency stops renting its softwareWhy AI only burns you in the areas where you are not already the expertWhat it costs to leave an agency you built with your brotherAnd more...You can learn more about Chris Bolton on LinkedIn. Also, check out Chris' Grow Your Agency community. And if you want marketing help, check out Diviner.  ----------- Lead Gen is the hardest part of running an agency. For most, it's unpredictable, it's slow, and it's usually expensive. Gia flips that. It's the all-in-one growth platform that turns your existing relationships and client work into a steady pipeline. Gia automates lead gen follow-up and content, and it's all from the work you're already doing. You can check it out and get some free bonuses at getgia.ai/dynamicagency ----------- No one was asking for another community. But I've made one anyway. So what's different? The Dynamic Agency Community is designed around access rather than content. Access to peers who've done it before. Access to experts who've designed solutions. Access to resources that have been battle-tested. And right now, the price for founding members is only $97/year. Join today so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow. You can join at dynamicagencyos.com/community. ----------- Subscribe to the Agency Forward blog on Substack. We have weekly blog content with practical advice to help you advance your agency. ----------- And if you're ready for 1-on-1 help to create some mind-blowing offers for your agency, visit DynamicAgencyOS.com to schedule a free consultation. Running an agency is tough, but you don't need to go it alone.

  4. Aug 25

    122 Dave Plunkett: Why You Don't Need More Partners

    Hey everyone, today I'm joined by Dave Plunkett. Dave is the founder of Collaboration Junkie, where he helps agencies turn referrals and partnerships into a deliberate system instead of something that just happens to them. He calls himself a referral evangelist, and he built DANCE, a five-part framework covering discovery, assembly, nurturing, connection and engagement. The partnerships half of that framework is now a book, currently with his editor and launching in January. I wanted him on the show because most agencies grow to a certain size on founder-led referrals and then treat that channel as something to graduate out of. Dave's argument is that it's the cheapest, most compounding channel they will ever have, and the work is building a culture that keeps it producing after the founder stops being the one asking. In this episode, we discuss: Why more partners is the wrong fix for weak partner referralsWhy your partner pitch needs its own value proposition, separate from your client oneSituational niching: teaching referrers the trigger words a buyer actually usesAnd more...You can learn more about Dave on LinkedIn. And don't forget to check out Collaboration Junkie. ----------- Lead Gen is the hardest part of running an agency. For most, it's unpredictable, it's slow, and it's usually expensive. Gia flips that. It's the all-in-one growth platform that turns your existing relationships and client work into a steady pipeline. Gia automates lead gen follow-up and content, and it's all from the work you're already doing. You can check it out and get some free bonuses at getgia.ai/dynamicagency ----------- No one was asking for another community. But I've made one anyway. So what's different? The Dynamic Agency Community is designed around access rather than content. Access to peers who've done it before. Access to experts who've designed solutions. Access to resources that have been battle-tested. And right now, the price for founding members is only $97/year. Join today so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow. You can join at dynamicagencyos.com/community. ----------- Subscribe to the Agency Forward blog on Substack. We have weekly blog content with practical advice to help you advance your agency. ----------- And if you're ready for 1-on-1 help to create some mind-blowing offers for your agency, visit DynamicAgencyOS.com to schedule a free consultation. Running an agency is tough, but you don't need to go it alone.

  5. Aug 18

    121 Bryan McAnulty: Run AI Agents Like an RTS, Not a Chatbot

    Hey everyone, today I'm joined by Bryan McAnulty. Bryan is the founder of LatchLoop, where he and his team run AI agents at serious scale, something like 3 billion tokens a month, to get more done without burning out the humans running them. I wanted him on the show because most agency owners are still treating AI agents like a chatbot: you sit there, you watch it work, you prompt it again. Bryan's take is that the mental model is wrong, and once you start running agents like a real-time strategy game instead, everything about how much leverage you get out of AI changes. In this episode, we discuss: The three types of agent workflows: background loops, massive-scope tasks, and tight feedback-loop workHow agents went from handling 20-30 minute tasks a year ago to running for hours or days nowHow to avoid the AI burnout he saw hit developers earlier this yearAnd more...You can learn more about Bryan on LinkedIn. And don't forget to check out LatchLoop. ----------- Lead Gen is the hardest part of running an agency. For most, it's unpredictable, it's slow, and it's usually expensive. Gia flips that. It's the all-in-one growth platform that turns your existing relationships and client work into a steady pipeline. Gia automates lead gen follow-up and content, and it's all from the work you're already doing. You can check it out and get some free bonuses at getgia.ai/dynamicagency ----------- No one was asking for another community. But I've made one anyway. So what's different? The Dynamic Agency Community is designed around access rather than content. Access to peers who've done it before. Access to experts who've designed solutions. Access to resources that have been battle-tested. And right now, the price for founding members is only $97/year. Join today so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow. You can join at DynamicAgency.Community. ----------- Subscribe to the Agency Forward blog on Substack. We have weekly blog content with practical advice to help you advance your agency. ----------- And if you're ready for 1-on-1 help to create some mind-blowing offers for your agency, visit DynamicAgencyOS.com to schedule a free consultation. Running an agency is tough, but you don't need to go it alone.

  6. Aug 11

    120 Park Howell: Why AI Makes Storytelling a Bigger Moat

    Hey everyone, today I'm joined by Park Howell. Park is a storytelling coach and consultant who helps brands turn their story into a measurable growth engine, using frameworks like And-But-Therefore to make an often-dismissed "soft skill" produce hard, provable ROI. I wanted him on the show because agencies are about to get hit with a wave of AI-generated content that all sounds the same, and Park's argument is that storytelling isn't the thing AI commoditizes, it's the thing that becomes your biggest moat once everyone else is producing generic copy. In this episode, we discuss: Why AI turns storytelling into a bigger competitive advantage, not a smaller oneThe difference between an intuitive storyteller and an intentional oneThe And-But-Therefore framework and how it plays to the brain's pattern-seeking, decision-making wiringAnd more...You can learn more about Park Howell on LinkedIn. And check out StoryCycle Genie for yourself.  ----------- Lead Gen is the hardest part of running an agency. For most, it's unpredictable, it's slow, and it's usually expensive. Gia flips that. It's the all-in-one growth platform that turns your existing relationships and client work into a steady pipeline. Gia automates lead gen follow-up and content, and it's all from the work you're already doing. You can check it out and get some free bonuses at getgia.ai/dynamicagency ----------- No one was asking for another community. But I've made one anyway. So what's different? The Dynamic Agency Community is designed around access rather than content. Access to peers who've done it before. Access to experts who've designed solutions. Access to resources that have been battle-tested. And right now, the price for founding members is only $97/year. Join today so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow. You can join at DynamicAgency.Community. ----------- Subscribe to the Agency Forward blog on Substack. We have weekly blog content with practical advice to help you advance your agency. ----------- And if you're ready for 1-on-1 help to create some mind-blowing offers for your agency, visit DynamicAgencyOS.com to schedule a free consultation. Running an agency is tough, but you don't need to go it alone.

  7. Aug 4

    119 Rich Matukaitis: The Agencies Winning With AI Aren't Cutting Corners

    Hey everyone, today I'm joined by Rich Matukaitis. Rich is a partnerships lead at Rebuy, the ecommerce personalization platform for Shopify brands. He spent four years at Shopify before joining Rebuy, and got his start as a business owner himself, building an online booking system as a hairdresser.  I wanted Rich on because he works with hundreds of agencies and thousands of brands through Rebuy's partner program, which gives him a front-row seat to which agencies are actually pulling ahead with AI and which ones are getting left behind chasing shortcuts. In this episode, we discuss: Why the agencies winning with AI are using it to add capacity, not cut headcountHow to stay human and keep your critical thinking sharp when everyone has access to the same toolsWhy trust, not claims of being "the best," is becoming the real currency for agenciesAnd more... You can learn more about Rich Matukaitis on LinkedIn. Also, talk to Rich about Rebuy's Partner Program.  ----------- Lead Gen is the hardest part of running an agency. For most, it's unpredictable, it's slow, and it's usually expensive. Gia flips that. It's the all-in-one growth platform that turns your existing relationships and client work into a steady pipeline. Gia automates lead gen follow-up and content, and it's all from the work you're already doing. You can check it out and get some free bonuses at getgia.ai/dynamicagency ----------- No one was asking for another community. But I've made one anyway. So what's different? The Dynamic Agency Community is designed around access rather than content. Access to peers who've done it before. Access to experts who've designed solutions. Access to resources that have been battle-tested. And right now, the price for founding members is only $97/year. Join today so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow. You can join at DynamicAgencyOS.com/Community. ----------- Subscribe to the Agency Forward blog on Substack. We have weekly blog content with practical advice to help you advance your agency. ----------- And if you're ready for 1-on-1 help to create some mind-blowing offers for your agency, visit DynamicAgencyOS.com to schedule a free consultation. Running an agency is tough, but you don't need to go it alone.

  8. Jul 28

    118 Nicholas Petroski: The Real Reason Digital Agencies Don't Scale

    Hey everyone, today I'm joined by Nicholas Petroski. Nicholas is the founder of Promethean Research and has been researching the agency industry since 2015. He's surveyed and consulted with thousands of agency leaders and built benchmarking reports on margins, operating models, and specialization trends. Where most of us are working from anecdote — our own client base, our own network — Nicholas has the actual industry-wide data. I wanted Nicholas on because he can back up (or challenge) a lot of the advice floating around the agency space with real numbers, not just what sounds right on LinkedIn. Plus, his studies are legitimately great and surface a lot of awesome insights.  In this episode, we discuss: Why "scale" and "growth" are different things, and why confusing them sets agencies up for a rough timeWhy roughly 86% of agencies now identify as specialistsWhy contractor-heavy staffing has protected agency margins over the past few years despite falling revenueAnd more... You can learn more about Nicholas Petroski on LinkedIn. ----------- Lead Gen is the hardest part of running an agency. For most, it's unpredictable, it's slow, and it's usually expensive. Gia flips that. It's the all-in-one growth platform that turns your existing relationships and client work into a steady pipeline. Gia automates lead gen follow-up and content, and it's all from the work you're already doing. You can check it out and get some free bonuses at getgia.ai/dynamicagency ----------- No one was asking for another community. But I've made one anyway. So what's different? The Dynamic Agency Community is designed around access rather than content. Access to peers who've done it before. Access to experts who've designed solutions. Access to resources that have been battle-tested. And right now, the price for founding members is only $97/year. Join today so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow. You can join at DynamicAgencyOS.com/Community. ----------- Subscribe to the Agency Forward blog on Substack. We have weekly blog content with practical advice to help you advance your agency. ----------- And if you're ready for 1-on-1 help to create some mind-blowing offers for your agency, visit DynamicAgencyOS.com to schedule a free consultation. Running an agency is tough, but you don't need to go it alone.

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Agency Forward explores the future of agencies as tech and AI drive down the cost of tactical deliverables. Topics include building competent teams, developing strategic offers, systemizing your business, and more. New episodes delivered every Tuesday.

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