Think Like an Agency Shareholder

I recently started working with a new agency client.

Small team. Early stage.

And a complete anomaly.

They’ve landed a massive cash-cow client—the kind that most agencies spend years hoping to find. A client that isn’t going anywhere for at least five years. One that will pay them more money than they’ve ever seen.

Because of that one extraordinary stroke of luck, this founder can do something most agency owners never get the chance to do.

He can think.

Not react.
Not firefight.
Not lie awake at three in the morning calculating whether payroll clears.

He can actually build a business.

Proper positioning.The right team.
Clear values.
Thoughtful hiring.
A brand that means something.
A proper onboarding process.
Marketing investment that isn’t driven by panic.

In other words, he can plan.

He can say something that most agency founders struggle to say without laughing:

“I’ve got cash in the bank. This is how we’re going to grow.”

Most Agencies Don’t Get That Luxury

For most agency founders, the journey looks different.

The business grows… until it doesn’t.

Momentum slows.
Revenue plateaus.
Suddenly, the strategy conversation stops being about the future and becomes a reckoning with the past.

You start noticing things you’ve tolerated for too long:

• Unprofitable clients

• Services that shouldn’t exist anymore

• Team members who have been underperforming for years

• A website that should have been rebuilt two years ago

• Delivery that’s fine, but only fine

And to move forward, something has to change.

Profit has to be freed up.

Real decisions have to be made - the kind that actually cost something.

Why Founders Get Stuck

This is where many agency leaders stall.

Because the business you built is now deeply personal.

Every difficult decision has a face attached to it.

Every change affects someone you know. Someone you hired. Someone who helped you build the company in the early days.

So instead of making the hard call, many founders do something else.

They work harder.

Another ten hours a week.
Another client that doesn’t quite fit.
Another year of being “nearly there.”

The problem isn’t a lack of answers… It’s a reluctance to act on them.

The Shareholder Perspective

There’s a simple exercise I ask agency owners to do.

You are a shareholder in your business. Technically, that’s already true.

But most founders don’t behave like shareholders.

So imagine you’re walking into a board meeting with one key difference:

You have no emotional attachment to implementation.

You’re not worried about awkward conversations.
You’re not thinking about short-term discomfort.
You’re not concerned about how the business got into its current position.
You’re just looking at the numbers and the strategy.

Now ask yourself a few questions.

• Which clients would you fire?

• Which services would you shut down?

• How much would you raise your prices?

• Who on the team would you let go?

• What activities would you stop doing immediately?

Shareholders rarely hesitate with these answers.

They don’t keep an unprofitable client because “they’ve been with us since the beginning.”

They don’t maintain a service line just because someone on the team enjoys working on it.

They look at the data. They make the decision.

Clarity Is the Rare Advantage

My new client currently has something most founders lack.

Distance.

Because of the financial security provided by that one client, he can look at the business objectively. He can make decisions based on what the company should become, rather than what it has historically been.

Distance creates clarity.

And clarity might be the rarest advantage a founder can have.

Most agency owners will never be handed that luxury.

They have to manufacture it themselves.

The Exercise Every Founder Should Do

So here’s the challenge.

Take a blank piece of paper.

Imagine you’re the shareholder walking into that board meeting.

No politics.
No sentimentality.
No attachment to how things ended up this way.

Just one question:

What needs to change?

Write it down.

All of it.

You probably already know what’s on that list. Most founders do.

The real question isn’t whether the answers exist.

It’s whether you’re willing to act on them.

Because at some point, you have to choose.

Will you remain the person who built the problem?

Or become the person who fixes it?

Want to chat about it? Email me on Janusz@gyda.co