If I Were Starting a Marketing Agency Today

Twenty five years ago, I was trying to build a successful marketing agency. If I had to start over tomorrow, I think I'd build a very different business.

Every so often someone asks me a question that sounds simple on the surface but becomes surprisingly difficult to answer.

"If you had to start over today, what would you do differently?"

It's an interesting thought experiment because the marketing industry looks almost nothing like it did when I started my career. The internet didn't exist in the way we know it today. Google hadn't transformed how people searched for information. Social media wasn't part of anyone's marketing strategy. Artificial intelligence certainly wasn't creating content or helping agencies develop campaigns.

In many ways, today's marketing landscape would feel completely unfamiliar to the younger version of myself.

And yet, the longer I think about that question, the more I realize my answer has very little to do with technology.

If I were starting another agency tomorrow, I don't think I'd build a business around websites, SEO, AI, branding, or any of the services we sell today.

I'd build it around helping businesses grow.

That probably sounds obvious, but it took me years to understand the difference.

I'd Start With the Problem, Not the Service

One of the biggest mistakes I see agencies make, especially new agencies, is deciding what they want to sell before they've decided what problem they want to solve.

It's understandable because that's how most agencies begin. Someone has expertise in web design, branding, SEO, advertising, video production, or content marketing, so they naturally build a business around that capability. The service becomes the company's identity.

Looking back, I think I'd reverse that thinking.

If I were starting today, I wouldn't spend much time worrying about which services belonged on my website. I'd spend far more time understanding the kinds of businesses I wanted to help and the challenges they faced every day. Every successful client relationship we've built over the past three decades started with a business problem, not a marketing request. The tactics always came later.

That's an important distinction because services inevitably change. Throughout my career, we've watched websites become essential, search engines reshape buying behavior, social media redefine communication, marketing automation improve customer engagement, and artificial intelligence transform how work gets done. Every one of those innovations changed the way agencies operate.

None of them changed why clients hired us.

Clients have always wanted the same thing.

They want to grow.

If I understood that on day one, I think I would have made better decisions much earlier in my career.

I'd Spend Less Time Selling and More Time Building Trust

Early in my career, I probably spent too much time thinking about winning the next client.

That's understandable because every young business survives one opportunity at a time. Every proposal matters. Every new relationship feels significant. Growth becomes the primary objective because without growth there isn't much of a future.

Over time, though, I realized that great agencies aren't built by continually replacing clients.

They're built by becoming increasingly valuable to the clients they already serve.

That realization changed the way I viewed almost every client relationship. Instead of asking how we could sell another project, we started asking how we could become a partner our clients wouldn't want to replace. That shift influenced the services we developed, the conversations we had, and the way we measured success.

Ironically, I think that's also where recurring revenue really comes from.

It isn't created because someone decides to sell monthly retainers.

It's created because clients continue seeing value in the relationship.

The revenue becomes the outcome.

Trust is what creates it.

If I were starting another agency tomorrow, I'd spend much more time earning trust than trying to perfect my sales process. Strong client relationships have always been one of the greatest competitive advantages an agency can build, and I suspect they'll become even more valuable as AI makes marketing execution increasingly accessible.

I'd Build Systems Before I Thought I Needed Them

One of the biggest lessons I've learned is that systems aren't something you build after you've grown.

They're what allow healthy growth to happen in the first place.

When agencies are small, it's easy to believe everything can live inside the founder's head. You know how proposals should be written. You know what great work looks like. You know how to solve client problems because you've solved most of them yourself.

That approach works remarkably well. Until it doesn't.

Eventually, every growing business reaches the point where success depends less on what the owner knows and more on what the organization knows. That's when documentation, processes, playbooks, and repeatable frameworks stop feeling like administrative work and start becoming strategic assets.

Looking back, I wish we had invested even earlier in capturing what we were learning.

Every client taught us something.
Every campaign improved our thinking.
Every mistake refined our processes.

Those lessons became some of the most valuable assets we ever built, but only because we made the effort to preserve them instead of allowing them to disappear when projects ended.

If I were starting over today, I'd begin documenting from day one, not because I enjoy writing procedures, but because I now understand that knowledge compounds just like capital does.

I'd Build a Business That Could Outgrow Me

Perhaps the biggest difference between the younger version of myself and the person writing this today is how I define success.

Thirty years ago, I probably measured progress by revenue, headcount, and the number of clients we served. Those metrics still matter, but they no longer tell the whole story.

Today, I find myself asking different questions.

Are we building something that becomes stronger every year?
Are we creating opportunities for talented people to grow?
Are we investing in assets that make the business more valuable tomorrow than it is today?
Are we solving bigger problems for our clients instead of simply producing more deliverables?

Those questions have gradually become more important than any single financial metric.

Looking back, I think every meaningful decision we've made over the past decade has been rooted in that philosophy. We stopped thinking about scaling people and started thinking about scaling knowledge. We invested in systems before we invested in more complexity. We embraced technology not because it was new, but because it helped talented people create more value.

That's also why building RogIQ felt like such a natural next step.

From the outside, it might look like we decided to become a software company.

That's not how I see it.

I think we simply continued following the same path we've been on for thirty years. Every lesson we documented, every framework we refined, every process we improved, and every insight we captured eventually pointed toward the same opportunity: helping marketers combine experience, strategy, and technology in ways that simply weren't possible before.

RogIQ wasn't a departure from our business.

It was the natural evolution of it.

Looking Back, I'd Still Build an Agency

People sometimes assume that if I could start over today, I'd build an AI company instead of a marketing agency.

I wouldn't.

I'd still choose to build an agency because I still believe agencies play an incredibly important role in helping businesses grow.

The difference is that I'd build it with a very different perspective.

I'd spend less time thinking about services and more time thinking about outcomes.

I'd spend less time chasing growth and more time building a healthier business.

I'd invest earlier in systems, knowledge, and relationships because I now understand those things continue creating value long after a project has been delivered.

Most importantly, I'd remind myself that the goal was never to build the biggest agency.

It was to build one that became a little better every single year.

Looking back, I don't think I'd change the journey.

I would simply get to a few of the lessons sooner.

Let’s Continue the Conversation

Writing these essays has reminded me that building an agency isn't really about marketing. It's about leadership, curiosity, relationships, and a willingness to continually evolve as your clients, your industry, and your business change.

If you've followed the Agency Evolution Series, I hope one idea stands out above all the others: the best agencies aren't defined by the services they sell or the technology they use. They're defined by the value they create and their commitment to never stop learning.

Looking back, I think that's the one lesson I'd want every new agency owner to hear.

Build a business that's designed to keep getting better.

Everything else tends to follow.