50 Things I Know About Agencies
The agency owner's confession: 50 truths about building something you'll never want to build again but can't imagine having lived without.
This edition is inspired by “50 Things I Know” by my partner Vlad. His list is very thoughtful and wise, which I hope to match below, just focusing on professional services and agencies.
2025 has been a transformational year for Belkins. We went upmarket, changed our ICP, pricing, business model, rebuilt almost all departments, and tried to adapt to the ever-rising competition from other agencies, AI, and the market in general, including news from the White House that always creates turbulence and anxiety in the market that we feel very much.
The list goes like this:
Starting a professional service firm and doing it for 5 years is the best alternative to college, MBA, or working in big corporate. You’ll learn business in its essence.
Which also makes agencies one of the most difficult businesses to build: too many moving parts, lack of differentiation, huge competition, and low margins.
Running an agency sucks.
An agency is the most assured way to gain financial freedom. Higher success rate than a startup, higher return than stocks, real estate, corporate ladder, crypto, or any other way of getting yourself to middle class.
There are two types of agencies. Type one: Boutique—you hustle on the team, work with clients, have bigger margins, probably higher pay, but it’s a lifestyle business. Type two: Scaled—you rarely work with clients, you build systems and people, margins are lower, personal income as well, but business works without you. You rarely can do both. Choose.
If your agency does $5M in revenue, you can earn $1M in profit, only on paper. In reality, it never happens.
Don’t run an agency and use profits to build a tech startup. Sell the agency first, take the money, then build a startup.
You cannot build an agency without building your personal brand.
The real traction starts after 5 years. Years 1 to 5, you’re just trying to establish yourself.
If you’re in your 20s, build an agency for SMB. If you’re in your 30s, for mid-market. If you’re in your 40s, work with enterprise. Do you understand why?
First you sell to everyone, then you sell to some, finally you sell to few. It’s on you to decide when to make this transition.
Providing service to people is the oldest profession. =) This occupation is a smart choice in any economy crisis or recession, it just doesn’t mean you need to provide the same service in good times as in tough times. It’s okay to pivot. If you know what I mean. =)
You’re not building agencies for money in the first place, but to get experience, build your personal brand, and network. Money is a byproduct of successfully gaining experience, brand, and network.
An agency is considered a business only if marketing, sales, and client delivery are done without a founder. If your company is dependent on you in any of these, it’s not a business yet.
Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be loud from day one. Your success early on is as much as you can talk about it on LinkedIn.
You will let go all your early teammates in 1 to 2 years after starting an agency. The sooner you do it, the better for your business; it also shows your business is evolving better and healthier. People who keep their original team longer tend to grow slower.
Growth is change. The faster the change, the bigger the growth. Don’t be afraid of change, embrace it.
Change also creates the biggest opposition in your team. They will hate it, which means you’re on the right track.
It takes time for people to learn how to embrace change. Some never learn, some learn later.
Your team is your most valuable asset, your biggest pride, and your greatest disappointment at the same time. You’ll always balance between the feeling of success and personal failure. It’s a normal feeling, building agencies is what life and humanity is all about. Finding balance between two extremes.
No one will acknowledge you for kickstarting their career. They’ll go on LinkedIn sharing how they made it, although the huge part was spending time in the professional environment that cultivated their skills. Your job is to create such an environment.
The best sign you made something special is when your former teammates create competing agencies.
Great agencies make the world a better place. It’s a fact, not just a bullshit slide in the pitch deck.
Every agency owner is a marketer and a seller. Being the best seller in the company will make your company successful. Being the best seller in the industry will make your company the leader in the entire space. It’s on you to decide, do you want to build a successful company or become the frontrunner in the niche?
You’re also the best copywriter in your company, period.
Your agency is always half as successful as your narrative. Meaning you should always be louder than your actual results, no one knows the truth.
Your services cost as much as people are willing to pay for your narrative. Which means you can pretty much charge what you want, but you won’t be able to scale it. Decide what you want: a few clients who fell for it or a scalable machine?
It’s fine to increase prices 20% YoY if you can match it with increase in outcomes for clients.
The future of agencies is outcome-based work. Actually, it’s the future of software and AI. Soon people will want to pay only if you put outcome first.
Subscriptions have been invented by SaaS as in software but are now used best in SaaS as in service.
Make sure 30% of your revenue comes from technology (selling licenses, partner software, any other means), which will put you in the tech-adjacent agencies.
Lifetime and lifetime value of customers are the biggest health indicators in your company. New revenue always comes second.
Most agencies aren’t healthy most of the time, which means new revenue is often the most important focus. But the end goal should always be LT and LTV.
Every problem has a solution. It doesn’t take much time to find a solution, you can always use AI. Most early solutions are garbage, so the key is making more decisions.
Experience is what creates the biggest difference between great and okay solutions. You won’t get experience without getting a few scars.
Allow people in your company to get their own scars. Which also sucks because you’ll see your company fail many times and you can’t do anything about it.
Post actively on LinkedIn. Write a newsletter. Do your own podcast. You won’t be able to build a successful agency without them. It’s never too late to start.
Go read your website, your case studies, your blog, your white paper. Are you sure this is the best you can come up with? What about Belkins’? Mine are the best I can do at this point.
Choosing between higher personal income in years 1 to 5 and marketing investment, I’d always choose spending more on marketing. However, years 5 to 10, maximize your own income. If you choose marketing again, your personal earning might never come.
Marketing is the single most important and rewarding investment you can make in your agency.
Your energy level directly impacts the longevity of your agency and your team. Always work on restoring your energy levels, it’s part of the job.
Become friends with your partner/s. This might be friendship for life.
If your spouse, friends, or relatives want to work with you or are successfully working with you, that means you have healthy company culture and built a great environment.
It’s difficult to build a successful agency if you’re not pro-people and pro-friends. If this is not you, find a different trade.
In tough times, it’s better to cut to the bone. Don’t make half-decisions. I’ve been there, it sucks. Take the damn risk.
Always try to sell your agency and do something else. Don’t get comfortable in your seat or you’ll become irrelevant.
You should build an agency as if you’ll eventually write a book about it. Make it epic.
Being afraid to fail, to let someone down, is always stronger than the desire to succeed, which puts you on the right track to success.
If somehow I’d deleted this list while writing, I’d never write it again. So thank god I saved it. I’d never build Belkins again, thank god I did it. Like with this newsletter and Belkins, one time is enough.
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Starting an agency is the best thing that has happened to me.
It completely shaped my life from being a young ambitious guy to actually making something one can be proud of and living the life in between.
I can’t say it was easy or difficult, as life is. What I know for sure is I enjoyed every bit of it, even in tough times.
Thanks for spending your holiday time with me and this edition.