r/AgencyGrowthHacks

Translated from Norwegian to English with ChatGPT, purely for structure. 😅

Hey everyone,

I really need some help here and hoping some of you can point me in the right direction.

Quick background on me. I'm a sales guy at heart. I've been in sales for 20+ years, everything from cold calling to warm leads, and I've also worked in the agency space for 15+ years.

I've been part of starting, building and scaling a couple agencies before, biggest one to around $2M/year. But back then we were usually 3-4 key people from pretty much the start. So I was never doing literally everything myself.

About 8 months ago I decided to start my own agency.

And looking back now, I've spent a stupid amount of time on stuff that probably doesnt matter.

I've overthought the concept, changed positioning, pivoted between niches, changed things again etc.

I probably should have just stuck with what I've always been good at, which is working with SMBs in general.

I'm based in Norway, and I've chosen not to niche down into one specific industry. Instead I'm focusing on service-based SMBs and helping them with the customer journey from lead generation to booked meetings.

Then comes the systems...

I've spent way too much time trying different sales CRMs, workflows, tools etc.

Eventually with AI getting better I decided to build my own simple sales CRM/front end using Claude Code, connected to GHL. GHL handles the workflows, automations, sequences etc and all leads end up there.

For lead gen I mainly use Meta ads at the moment.

Over the years I've also learned web design, marketing, copy/content and the last couple years I've gone pretty deep into AI.

One thing thats important here is that I'm also trying to build this as an AI-native agency.

I'm completely open to AI doing as much of the actual work as possible. In fact thats kind of the whole idea.

But right now I'm starting to realise that I'm still using AI manually for almost everything.

I open Claude or ChatGPT, explain the task, review the output, change things, move it somewhere else, connect another tool, fix something, repeat.

So even though AI is doing parts of the work, I'm still the person operating every single step.

And honestly it feels like its taking almost as much of my time as if AI didnt exist.

Maybe thats the biggest mistake I'm making.

I keep building shit.

Systems. Workflows. AI agents. Automations. Slack setups. Claude Code stuff. Processes for processes.

I've tried creating all these "AI employees" and agents living in Slack, Claude etc thinking it would make running solo easier.

Instead it feels like its become one big fucking mess lol.

I honestly think I'm the bottleneck now.

One minute I'm doing internal marketing for my own agency.

Then I'm doing sales.

Then a client signs and suddenly I'm the account manager.

Then I'm onboarding them.

Then I'm building/setting up whatever they bought.

Then I'm doing reporting and client communication.

Then I realise I havent done any sales for 4 days.

And repeat.

Thats basically killing the one thing I'm actually best at: selling.

The stupid part is that back in the day when I was focused almost entirely on sales, I could probably close 8-10 clients in a normal month.

Right now?

I have 2 clients.

Not because I've spent 8 months getting rejected every day. The opposite. I've barely given sales the consistent attention it needs because I've been busy building everything around the business.

I know the obvious answer is "hire people" or simply "do more sales."

And yes, hiring is obviously part of the plan when I have more clients and cash flow.

But my problem is that right now I dont feel like I have control of the business once the sale is made.

If I suddenly closed 5 clients next month, I honestly think I'd just create an even bigger operational mess for myself.

Thats the part I want to fix first, but without building another complicated system.

Hiring employees or throwing work at freelancers isnt really financially smart for me right now either. There's also a language issue since most freelancers I find are English speaking while my clients are Norwegian.

So for those of you who have actually gone through the solo agency stage:

**What am I doing wrong here?**

How would you structure the week if sales needs to be the #1 priority, while you still have to deliver for existing clients?

What would you systemize and what would you STOP trying to systemize?

How much time would you actually spend on internal marketing vs outbound sales vs client delivery?

And for anyone trying to build an AI-native agency, how are you actually using AI to remove work rather than just creating another layer that you still have to operate manually?

At what point does AI actually become leverage instead of just another tool I have to babysit?

I dont need another 14-agent AI system with a fancy dashboard 😂

I need something boring that actually works, gives me control of delivery and gets me back to spending most of my time selling.

Would really appreciate hearing from anyone who has been through this stage.

Who do you guys go to for graphic design help for your social media? We're a small business just starting out so budget is tight right now, that's a big factor for us. Also curious if there are other options besides going with a graphic design service, would love to hear what's worked for you.

Business: Nail Spa

Hey everyone,

8 months back I quit my job and started a small digital agency. Mainly working with fashion and wellness brands.

Thought it would be exciting. And it is.

But also 90% of the time it’s just me - client calls, invoices, fixing website at 2am, and overthinking 😂

The good part: I’ve worked with 15+ brands now. Learned a ton.

The hard part: Still don’t know if I’m doing things "right".

Anyone else here running something solo?

What was the weirdest thing you had to learn in year 1?

Would love to hear your stories. Feeling less alone helps 😅

Hi,

I am a newbie exploring automation (like n8n, Make, Zapier) as a potential side hustle.

So my question is for automation agency owners.

I want to start as a freelancer, then one day build up to an agency.

I read contract developer communities, and a lot of them say Get a job; clients run out; I did something else.

So I want to know if running an agency is any different?

Will I end up running out of clients cuz the market is terrible?

I basically want to know how sustainable this model is, from experienced agency owners: if they had to shut down the agency, why?

Obviously, nothing is future-proof, as any entrepreneur would know (never put your eggs in one basket). I do plan to build multiple Saas, try to invest in a diverse portfolio.

I think there’s a weird stage with agencies where you’ve already proved somebody will pay you, but you still don’t really have a system.

One month referrals are good. Next month nothing happens. You sign a client, lose another one, try cold outreach for a week, post content, maybe run ads, then go back to referrals lol.

And sometimes the problem isn’t even getting more clients. It’s that the clients are worth $800 when they could probably be worth $2k–$3k if the offer was packaged differently, or you’re selling one service when there are obvious things you could upsell around it.

So I want to try something.

If your agency is doing at least ~$1k/mo already, drop this below:

- what your agency actually does

- roughly what you make per month (a range is fine)

- what an average client pays you

- where most of your clients come from right now

- what feels stuck: leads, closing, pricing, retention, upsells, delivery, whatever

I’ll go through them and tell you what I’d do if it was my agency.

Not just “post more content” or “do cold email.”

I mean who I’d target first, what would make those companies worth contacting right now, how I’d package the offer, what I’d change about the sales process, where I think you could increase contract value, and what I’d spend the next 30 days doing.

If there’s enough info, I’ll map the actual system too.

Full disclosure: I’m building Sumora and we’ve been working on an Agency OS around this exact problem, so obviously I have a horse in the race.

Drop yours. I’ll do as many as I can.

For agency owners what do you think is the most important factor in keeping a client long term

Good results clear communication strong strategy or something else

I think consistent communication and setting clear expectations can make a big difference

If you have a growth marketing agency or worked at one before, I need your help.

Here are some bullet points about my experience:

- I led growth projects at many unicorns and a big company that specializes in helping SMBs grow.
- I worked on multiple different channels and results are consistently impressive.
- Grew my own channels to half million followers.
- I build AI tools for marketing teams, have a CS degree, and have excellent technical skills.
- I truly enjoy growth marketing for impactful products and can achieve rapid growth for startups.

I decided to start my own growth experimentation firm and I got some startups interested already. One of the founders is very excited to move forward as fast as possible and I still haven’t locked in scope.

The parts I like:

- full funnel auditing
- growth hacks translated into experiments
- customer, competitor, and market research
- designing experiments and providing experiment briefs that are ready to execute
- implementing AI workflows and systems for experiments that need that
- data and results analysis

The part I don’t like:

- managing daily ad spend, writing blog posts, basically implementing the experiment myself

Would you advise me to do implementation myself or ask the startups for someone on their team to execute (mainly the daily work not the strategy or setup)? Do you know any other successful models I can adopt?

Thank you for your help!

**I'm currently trying to figure out whether our client acquisition process is fundamentally wrong.

For context, we operate a few faceless media pages with 800K+ combined followers, and we're currently focusing mainly on AI companies.

We've had AI brands pay us for sponsored posts before, but those were mostly brands approaching us as media/creator pages. We weren't really running proper creator marketing campaigns for them.

To be completely honest, some of that sponsored content wasn't great either. We didn't have a proper full-time editor at the time, so I don't think we left the strongest impression.

That's changed now. We have a full-time motion designer/editor, so the quality of what we can actually produce is much higher.

The problem I'm trying to solve now is getting brands to actually work with us on creator marketing.

So far, my main process has basically been:

Find brands → research them → cold email → book meetings → try to close.

That's pretty much the only acquisition channel I've seriously tested.

I've also deliberately avoided building a massive creator roster.

Right now I have relationships with roughly 5 creators.

I've considered spending a lot of time recruiting dozens or hundreds more, but I don't see much point in doing that before there's a campaign.

If I have a real brand, budget, niche and campaign requirements, I can find the relevant creators at that point and ask if they're interested and what their rates are.

So I'd rather build the creator side around actual demand than collect creators just to say we have 100+ creators.

I also made a mistake with pricing that I'm still thinking about.

A couple of months ago, a medium-sized brand was genuinely interested in working with us. We built a custom campaign and quoted around $1,200.

That price was already low because roughly $800 would have gone toward production, leaving only around $400 on top.

They asked if we could lower it, and instead of asking what their actual budget was, I lowered the price.

Eventually they told us they couldn't move forward because of budget.

Looking back, I probably handled that badly. I was trying to solve the price objection before understanding the actual buying situation.

I've also had a meeting with a larger brand that was interested enough to speak with us, but they were already heavily focused on affiliate marketing and weren't looking to change direction.

So now I'm questioning whether I'm putting too much weight on cold outreach when there might be much better ways to get those first few proper campaigns.

If you were starting a creator marketing agency from scratch today, how would you get your first 3–5 clients?

I'd genuinely appreciate any advice or experience you can share. Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to answer 🙂**