This dude is a video visionary. He has worked on amazing projects like bringing GoDaddy’s Made In America series to life. He is an artist, a story-teller and he’s restless.

He's looking at all of the ways that his depth of experience, breadth of vision, and deep understanding of his medium can contribute to a large or small organization. He probably doesn't want a job, and he probably doesn't want to start an agency. He could so easily be really good as a senior-level creative in a large company or by creating a video-first agency.

Neither of those really feed his soul, though. He wants real impact, real creativity & he wants to build something of unique value that sets his soul on fire.

In the space of a cold brew and a blueberry muffin. I don't know that we found the right spot for him, but we definitely found places that he should not explore. Maybe if I have 2 blueberry muffins during our next chat, we'll figure it out.

This conversation has been rattling around in my brain all day because what he is experiencing is similar to what I know a lot of agencies face every day.

You might be an amazing performance agency that doesn't have the right positioning or biz dev chops to land the kinds of clients that you are absolutely capable of servicing at an incredibly high level. Or your agency might be incredible at one or two tactical approaches, but those may not be broad enough to build a successful agency. Perhaps your agency needs to dive in incredibly deeply in order to do the magical work you are capable of, but that kind of depth doesn't necessarily allow for parallel work. Maybe you've found that your agency doesn't work and play well with others, so you need to own the whole widget and aren’t happy as part of a client agency roster.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with having limitations in the way that you want to work or in ways that bring out your best work, because there is a way for you to engage that can fit your agency incredibly well.

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Congrats - you are a prime candidate to be a CLIENT PARTNER!

Does this sound like you?

In order to do great work, you have to feel a sense of partnership with your clients. You aren’t gonna just phone it in. This is how most agencies WANT to work. This means that you need to have a Client Delivery Function, a committed Account Management Function, and crucially, an Agency Marketing Function that can signal your desire for and benefits of partnership, as well as an Agency Business Development Function that can close business with partner-minded clients and disqualify those who aren’t interested in a real relationship.

In short, you are looking for a relationship that is based on mutual respect and shared values. These typically are healthy, long lasting relationships.

Congrats! You seem like you could be a great Partner Agency!

Does this sound like you?

You want to be working with your clients closely, and you really want the connection to their internal goals and their strategies. You want to be able to execute to satisfy their strategic objectives. But, for for whatever reason, you don't have the commercial infrastructure to land the kind of clients you serve the best on your own. It’s possible that you are an experienced marketer but new to entrepreneurship, or you've got some tactical, strategic, or personal blockers around selling, or maybe it's just something that makes you really uncomfortable, but with the right client, your services and execution absolutely crush.

A great spot for you would be to partner with other agencies that are non-competitive and have the capacity to grow their business. They can bring you in as a partner agency where you are working directly with the client, under your own brand and your own commercial terms, but you are working hand in hand with the partner to provide a broader solution to the client than the original agency could. Here are some examples - an SEO agency partners with a paid media agency to give their shared client the very best in paid and earned media, or a great TikTok Shop agency connects with a retention agency to ensure that the agency is delivering the right message long-term to all of its clients, regardless of acquisition channel.

Besides helping you get more revenue. Your quality work and data sharing typically help the originating agency develop a more strategic posture with the client. It is almost always a great win-win-win (client wins, other agency wins, your agency wins).

Congratulations! You likely are a great Vendor Agency!

In service business vernacular, many people use "vendor" as a derogatory term. I'm not doing that in this case. Typically, a great vendor agency is somebody who delivers a nearly productized service. There might be small wrinkles in every individual engagement, but the work process is very much the same for every client. Usually the scope is narrow & the output discrete.

For many, many agency owners, this is the “Dream Agency” - where the work is process-driven, costs can be controlled, margins enhanced, and it doesn't require a marketer or a visionary to run. It can be run by an operator. These agencies, when running well, generate great cash flow, and you can be an agency owner with a lot of time freedom.

The downside of being a vendor agency is that your services are generally replaceable by another agency without much pain. Your churn tends to be higher simply because of the discreet, clear nature of the work, and you are not spreading relationship tendrils into the client organization outside of what you do. Your pricing power is lower, likely you can’t expand the relationship too much & you absolutely need to have an efficient and clear customer acquisition function, because your business is largely transactional, not relationship & understanding based.

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Congratulations! You might be amazingly satisfied as a fractional marketing agency.

Does this sound familiar? You find a brand you think you can help in whatever way…and the more you look, the bigger the opportunity gets. You see potential across all of their marketing surfaces…and you can see that they don't have a strong marketing function in their business.

You can be a fractional marketing agency. Typically, a fractional executive is a solo consultant who comes in and assumes a FT leadership role inside of the client organization for a short period of time, or they work a few hours a week in the business, sharpening up a particular function.

There is an agency approach here, too. If you are comfortable as a strong strategic lead, you can assume a high-touch engagement with a brand where your agency team comes in and works primarily on this client. You might have some other work your team does, but you are bringing a broad swath of strategy & a team that can execute in tow. This might feel more like “consulting”, but you are still bringing broad perspective, experience and executional tools to the game.

A variation on this is a senior level strategy consultant who has a roster of contractors or agencies that they bring in as the job requires. This is like the “supergroup” kind of agency where the client is buying fractional talents that they couldn’t possibly afford full time. (And, BTW, I think this is where my coffee buddy is going to end up.)

This can be a really rewarding kind of engagement…but it has limitations:

This can be a really great set up for the right person, though. You often have tons of pricing power, have real control over what you choose to work on, and typically the gigs are lucrative enough that you don’t have to stress too hard between the end of one engagement and the start of another.

Congratulations! You might be a perfect ghost or white label agency.

TBH, this isn’t my favorite business model, but there are some amazing white-label agencies in the world. What I don’t like about it is the fact that the end client is usually in the dark about the fact that the people servicing their account aren't actually part of the agency they've contracted with… Some brands care about that, and some don't, but it always made me feel uncomfortable…

Does this sound cool to you?

Another agency lands the business and decides the strategy. Then tell you what they want the outcomes of your work to be… All you have to do is know how to hit the results and follow the agency's guidance.

You don’t have to worry about buying committees or end-buyer marketing. You just have to be able to convince other agency owners that you can do the execution side of things better and cheaper than they can.

I know a few white-label agency leaders that love this model so much because they can focus on execution and operations to maximize their efficiency, efficacy, and profitability without worrying about broad-based marketing. Typically, a white-label agency has a small biz dev team that targets agencies that don't offer services that the white label agency are good at…and can work at a rate where the originating agency can still make a reasonable margin.

For the “leave me alone, I gonna get it done better than you could” kind of agency leader and team, a ghost agency can be a huge win, especially if you find partners who are terrific at client acquisition or expanding the services that they offer to their clients.

Beside the whole end-client-not-knowing concern. My other critique of this model is that, at some point, the originating agency might want to keep all of the revenue for themselves. They might believe that building a team internally, based on all of the things that they've learned from you, might be the best way to maximize their opportunity. I don't know that that is a widespread phenomenon, but it always occurred to me that that is a significant warning sign in this business model.

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When my kids were young, one of them always put their shoes on the wrong feet. We tried to correct him, but he said, "I like it like this. It feels comfortable." That’s a serious win, IMHO, where you find something that just feels comfortable.

But so many agency leaders believe that there's only one way to create a successful agency, which is the client-partner model, where you are providing specialized services to a client. They are adapted functionally for that client's business requirements that, as I pointed out earlier, requires a full assortment of operating agency business functions.

If because of experience or temperament or lack of knowledge, you don't have a full assortment of agency business functions. There are other models. You don't have to walk around with shoes on the wrong feet if you don't want to. You can choose a different business model, a different engagement paradigm, and create a marvelously successful business. Remember, this is your agency. You can build it the way that is right for you