American entrepreneur and business investor, with 12 years+ of experience in starting, scaling, buying, and selling 7 and 8 figure Ecomm Brands and Agencies. 

According to my wife and daughter, I'm also "the best daddy."

I grew up with humble roots in Orlando, FL, and through a work ethic I am incredibly proud of, I've quickly grown to be one of the most respected names in the Digital Marketing Agency space.

I'm currently the Founder of Agency Operators: Level Up, which helps ecomm & digital marketing agency owners go from $1M/yr > $5M/yr without being the main bottleneck.

Previously, I was:

Founder of Family Gifts Co., a multi-8 figure DTC E-commerce brand.

Co-Founder of WKND Investments, a company dedicated to investing in the best $5-$30m/yr USA based DTC e-commerce brands.

Founder of Vatizam, a marketing consulting agency that scales Brands to 7 and 8 figures through funnel optimization & paid traffic.

Kyle Hunt

I've onboarded 500+ clients across multiple 8-figure agencies.

The difference between 4% churn and 40% churn?

Your first 14 days.

Most agency owners treat onboarding like paperwork.

Send a form. Schedule a call. Hope for the best.

Then wonder why clients are frustrated by month 2.

Here's what I see at agencies stuck under $150k/mo:

→ No clear handoff from sales to delivery
→ Clients asking the same questions repeatedly
→ Week 1 chaos that sets the wrong tone
→ Pod leads scrambling without context
→ Founders still CC'd on every email

I ran ops for an agency that onboarded clients in under 24 hours with zero founder involvement.

So I documented the exact checklist we used.

Inside the $1M Agency Client Onboarding Checklist:

→ Day-by-day timeline from signed contract to launch
→ The 5 questions your intake form must ask
→ Handoff template from sales to pod lead
→ Kick-off call agenda that aligns expectations
→ Week 1-4 communication cadence framework
→ Slack channel setup that eliminates noise

This is the same system that helped agencies:

✅ Cut revision requests by 50%
✅ Remove founders from delivery in 90 days
✅ Retain clients 3x longer than industry average

If your onboarding is costing you clients and sanity - this fixes it.

Want the complete checklist?

1. Connect with me
2. Comment "ONBOARD"

I'll send it directly to your DMs.

PS - Your onboarding sets the ceiling for everything else. Fix this first.

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Want me to install this in your agency? Let's talk: https://calendly.com/kyle-agencyoperators/45-min-demo

8-Figure Agency COO | Fractional COO | Helping Ecomm & Digital Marketing Agency Owners Build $5M/yr Self-Managing Profit Machines | Proud Girl Dad | 7-Figure Agency Exit

I'm an ex-8-figure agency COO.

STOP thinking client churn is a sales problem.

It's an onboarding problem.

Most agencies don't lose clients because results are bad.

They lose them because expectations were never set correctly in the first 30 days.

If onboarding is sloppy, everything downstream breaks.

The difference between being stuck at $100k/mo and scaling past $500k isn't more leads.

It's a bulletproof onboarding system.

I'm giving away my complete $500k/mo Agency Client Onboarding Playbook.

This is the exact system we used to turn new clients into long-term retainers:
→ Expectation-lock onboarding sequence (what you promise vs what you deliver)
→ Day 1-30 client roadmap that prevents early churn
→ Kickoff call agenda that eliminates "that's not what we expected"
→ Scope boundary rules clients actually respect
→ SLA & communication framework that protects your team
→ Early-warning signals that flag bad-fit clients fast

This isn't theory.

It's the same onboarding playbook I install when agencies want to scale without replacing clients every month.

Want the $500k/mo Agency Onboarding Playbook?
Connect with me
Comment ONBOARD

I'll send it directly.

PS - Early comments get priority access.

I've modeled agency team structures from $35k/mo to $350k/mo.

Most agency owners hire at the wrong time.

They either wait too long and burn out their team.

Or hire too early and watch their margins collapse.

The real issue? No one knows their actual capacity.

I built a financial model that shows exactly when to hire - down to the dollar.

It maps out:

→ What 60%, 80%, and 100% capacity looks like for your pod
→ The exact revenue threshold that justifies your next hire
→ How pod lead costs change your margins at each stage
→ Gross profit at different client loads (so you stop guessing)
→ The capacity multiplier effect when you add management

This isn't theory.

This is the same model I used to scale an agency to 8-figures while maintaining 40%+ margins.

Without it, you're flying blind on your biggest expense - people.

With it, you know:

✅ Exactly when your current team maxes out
✅ What revenue you need before the next hire
✅ How to grow without destroying profitability

Want the $1M Agency Capacity Calculator?

1. Connect with me
2. Comment "CAPACITY"

I'll send it directly.

PS - This is the model most agencies don't build until they're already bleeding cash.

89% of agencies lose clients because of BAD communication.

11% of agencies do this differently:

Clients say "just one quick thing" at 11 PM.

And your team scrambles to respond.

Here's the truth: Bad client communication kills profit margins.

When everything is "urgent," nothing gets done right.

I've worked with 50+ agencies that struggled with this exact problem.

Endless Slack pings. Scope creep disguised as "quick questions." 

Team burnout from constant firefighting.

So I built the Client Communication SLA Playbook.

This is the exact system that helps agencies: 

→ Set crystal-clear expectations from day 1 
→ Protect team time without losing clients 
→ Define what "urgent" actually means 
→ Handle escalations without founder involvement

Inside you'll get:

SLA Menu by client tier (what you promise vs what you deliver)
Slack rules that actually work (channels, tagging, office hours)
Escalation ladder (pod lead → specialist → founder)
Response templates for setting boundaries professionally
Onboarding language that "locks expectations" immediately
1-page "How to Work With Us" template for clients

Copy/paste ready. Plug it into your onboarding tomorrow.

One agency used this and cut after-hours requests by 70% in 30 days.

Another doubled their team's billable hours because they stopped chasing "quick questions."
Want the full playbook?

Connect with me
Comment "SLA"

I'll send it over.

I've helped 100+ agencies rebuild their operations from scratch.

Most owners at $50-150k/mo are trapped in the same cycle:

→ Every new client means more of YOUR time
→ Onboarding takes 2-3 weeks instead of 2-3 days
→ Deliverables slip because kickoffs aren't standardized
→ You're still the one answering every setup question

The problem isn't your team. It's your onboarding system.

When I was COO of an 8-figure agency, we cut onboarding time by 80% and removed founders from delivery completely.

I've now documented the exact 30-day reset I use with agencies stuck in this trap.

Inside The 30 Day Agency Reset:

→ Day-by-day implementation timeline (what to fix in what order)
→ Client kickoff template that eliminates back-and-forth
→ Handoff system from sales to delivery (no more dropped balls)
→ The 5 onboarding metrics that predict client success
→ Team accountability structure so you're not the backup

This same system has helped agencies:

✅ Onboard clients in under 24 hours
✅ Free up 15+ founder hours per week
✅ Cut first-60-day churn by half

If you're doing $50-150k/mo and still stuck in every client kickoff, this is your way out.

Want the complete 30 Day Agency Reset?

1. Connect with me
2. Comment "ONBOARD"

I'll send it directly to you.

PS - This is the same framework I install during my 16-week programs. Yours free.

I've worked with 40+ agencies doing $100k/month.

The ones stuck between $1-2M all have one thing in common:

They're running on a treadmill.

15% monthly churn means you're replacing your entire client base every 7 months.

That's not growth - that's survival mode.

Most agency owners are bleeding clients because:

→ No early warning system for at-risk accounts
→ Clients churning in months 4-12 (the mid-lifecycle death zone)
→ Zero visibility into satisfaction until the cancellation email hits
→ Onboarding that sets wrong expectations from day one

I ran ops for an 8-figure agency. We cut churn from 15% to under 3%.

Now I've documented the exact system in The 0 Churn Client Operations System.

Inside you'll find:

→ The 4 KPIs that predict churn 30 days before it happens
→ Mid-lifecycle rescue framework for months 4-12
→ Client health scoring template (know who's at risk today)
→ Onboarding sequence that sets expectations correctly
→ Monthly check-in cadence that catches problems early
→ The exact benchmarks

This system has helped agencies:

✅ Cut churn from 18% to 4% in two quarters
✅ Maintain 3-4 year average client retention
✅ Stop the revenue treadmill permanently

If you're tired of replacing clients faster than you can grow...

This is your fix.

Want The 0 Churn Client Operations System?

1. Connect with me
2. Comment "CHURN"

I'll send it directly.

PS - comment first for Priority Access.

I helped 3 Video Creative Agencies scale from $40k/mo to $100k-200k months in 12 months.

Here's what most creative video agencies get wrong:

They think more clients equals more revenue.

But without the right operations, more clients just means:

→ More revisions eating your margins
→ More editors you can't properly manage
→ More chaos you're personally putting out fires for
→ Revenue growing while profit stays flat

I've worked with 100+ agencies stuck in this exact trap.

The problem isn't your creative work.

It's your backend.

I just documented the exact operations system I've used to help creative video agencies hit $500k/mo while maintaining 40%+ margins.

Inside this Creative Video Agency Operations Blueprint:

→ Editor comp structure that scaled to 100+ edits per month profitably
→ The revision reduction framework that cut rework from 10% to under 3%
→ Fulfillment system that dropped lead time from 24 days to under 10
→ How to price UGC + media buying retainers at $5k+ minimum
→ Capacity framework so you know exactly when to hire your next editor

This isn't theory. This exact system has:

✅ Taken creative agencies from $40k to $200k/mo in 12 months
✅ Maintained 60%+ gross margins at scale
✅ Removed founders from day-to-day editing oversight

If you're a creative video agency doing $30k-200k/mo and want the operations to hit $500k/mo...

This is your shortcut.

1. Connect with me
2. Comment "CREATIVE"

I'll send you the full blueprint.

PS - Repost this for priority access

Bogdan grew 400% in 1 year. $40k/mo to $200k/mo.

Agency owners hit a wall when they try to scale.

They're crushing it with clients. Revenue is growing. Everything looks great from the outside.

But behind the scenes? It's chaos.

You're firefighting every day. Your team can't replicate your results. You're stuck doing everything yourself because "no one else can do it right.

I just sat down with Bogdan, co-founder of GrowthHub, to break down exactly how he went from overwhelmed founder to running a lean, profitable agency.

In this case study interview, we cover:

→ The bottleneck that was slowing his growth (hint: it wasn't what he thought) 
→ How he moved from doer to leader without burning out 
→ The exact operational shifts that 4'xed revenue in 12 months 
→ Why small tweaks in client acquisition created explosive growth 
→ How weekly reporting reduced stress and increased clarity 
→ The one thing he wishes he'd done sooner

This isn't some theoretical masterclass.

It's a real conversation with a real agency owner who fixed the mess behind the growth.

If you're scaling but feeling the operational pain, this is for you.

Want the full case study interview?
Connect with me
Comment "CASE"

I'll send you the video and a complete breakdown.

PS - This is the same playbook I've used across multiple agencies. Works every time.

I'm an ex-8-figure agency COO.

Your weekly leadership meeting is either your biggest leverage point or your biggest time waste.

Most agencies run meetings that go nowhere.

→ Hour-long status updates nobody needed
→ Same problems surface week after week
→ Leaders leave confused about priorities
→ Zero accountability between meetings
→ Decisions made but never executed

I've sat through hundreds of these meetings. Most are broken.

The fix isn't meeting less. It's meeting with structure.

After running leadership huddles across 100+ agencies, I documented the exact agenda that keeps meetings under 30 minutes and actually drives results.

Inside the Weekly Leadership Meeting Agenda:

→ The quick wins opener that puts leaders in decision-making mode
→ Who-what-when checklist that kills accountability gaps
→ Yesterday's targets review framework - learn why you missed, not just that you missed
→ The 1-minute rule for handling issues without derailing the meeting
→ Time tracking check-in that eliminates end-of-month surprises
→ Roadmap review structure that keeps priorities visible

This is the same meeting framework that helped agencies:

✅ Cut leadership meeting time by 50%
✅ Surface problems 30 days before they explode
✅ Get teams executing without constant follow-up

If your leadership meetings feel like a waste of time - they probably are.

Want the complete Weekly Leadership Meeting Agenda?

1. Connect with me
2. Comment "HUDDLE"

I'll send it directly to your DMs.

PS - This works whether you have 2 leaders or 20

Early in my Agency Owner days, I made the classic mistake. Client loved working with me, so when I handed them to a new strategist, I just... introduced them on a call.

"Hey, meet John. He's great. He'll be taking over your account."

The client smiled, said nice things, then slowly disengaged over the next 6 weeks.

The problem wasn't John. It was that John was a stranger who hadn't earned anything yet.

So I changed the process.

Now the new person works on the account for 2-3 weeks before the client knows they exist. They're running strategy, making optimizations, doing the actual work while I provide oversight.

The goal is simple: create a win. Increased spend, better ROAS, faster delivery. Something measurable.

Then the transition call sounds completely different:

"Hey, I want to introduce you to John. He's actually been the strategist on your account the last two weeks. You've seen the increase in spend and revenue during that time? That was John. I was just oversight, making sure he followed our process. As you can see, he did an excellent job."

Now John isn't a stranger. He's the person behind their recent results.

I also position the change as an upgrade. "We're moving you to a dedicated team structure. Same people working on your account every day. Faster delivery, deeper understanding of your business, one main point of contact."

People really respond to the word "dedicated."

I also tell them there might be some turbulence during the transition, but once it's set up, results will be better. I don't promise perfection. I promise improvement.

Pricing stays the same. Contract stays the same. Current work continues. The only thing changing is they're getting a more focused team.

That's the install. Takes about 3 weeks to do it right.

I've helped scale 3 agencies past $3M ARR.

Multi-year clients.

Stable MRR.

No churn panic.

STOP thinking retention is about "getting better results."

Most agencies don't lose clients because performance drops.

They lose them because nobody manages the relationship after onboarding.

The danger zone isn't month one.

It's months 4-12.

That's when:
Momentum fades
Expectations drift
Clients stop feeling progress
Churn emails come out of nowhere

I acquired and scaled an agency to 8-figures.

The difference between constantly replacing clients and compounding revenue wasn't more sales.

It was installing a retention system.

I'm giving away my complete $500k/mo Agency Client Retention Playbook.

This is the exact system we used to keep clients for years:
→ Client health scoring system (spot churn before it happens)
→ Monthly check-in cadence that prevents silent dissatisfaction
→ Mid-lifecycle reset call agenda (months 3-6)
→ "At-risk" save call framework that actually works
→ Expectation recalibration scripts when things drift
→ Rules for identifying bad-fit clients early

This isn't theory.

It's the same retention playbook I install when agencies say:

"We're signing clients... but we can't seem to keep them."

Want the $500k/mo Agency Client Retention Playbook?

Connect with me
Comment RETENTION

I'll send it directly.

PS - Early comments get priority access.

I've audited 100+ agencies between $1-3M.

90% have the same problem:

They're not broken. They're just unaudited.

Most agency owners at this level are drowning in operational chaos:

→ Chasing fires instead of building systems
→ No idea which metrics actually matter
→ Team accountability is a guessing game
→ Processes exist in your head, not on paper

The fix isn't working harder. It's knowing exactly where to look.

After 5 years as an 8-figure agency COO, I built a 90-day audit framework that identifies the gaps killing your profit and sanity.

Inside The 90-Day Ops Audit Checklist:

→ The 5 leading metrics that predict problems 30 days ahead
→ Team structure audit to find hidden capacity leaks
→ Client delivery scorecard (are you actually hitting targets?)
→ Weekly reporting cadence template - plug and play
→ The accountability framework that removes you from firefighting
→ Quick wins checklist to get 10+ hours back immediately

This exact process has helped agencies:

✅ Cut audit time from 15 hours to under 3
✅ Identify the same 5 problems hiding in plain sight
✅ Double EBITDA in 90 days by fixing what actually matters

If you're stuck between $1-3M and feel like you're working IN the business instead of ON it - this is your starting point.

Want the complete 90-Day Ops Audit Checklist?

1. Connect with me
2. Comment "AUDIT"

I'll send it directly to you.

PS - The problems at your stage are predictable. This checklist shows you exactly where to look first.

Worked with an agency doing $2M. The founder's Slack looked like a 911 dispatch center.

47 unread messages before 9am. Clients texting his personal cell. Team members DMing him questions their pod lead should've answered.

He thought he was being responsive. He was actually training everyone to never solve anything themselves.

When anyone can ping you directly, your org chart is just a suggestion.

So we changed three things.

His pod lead started owning Slack. Client questions go there first. Specialists only get tagged when it's actually technical.

He set response times and told clients what to expect. Top tier gets 2 hours. Everyone else gets 4. No response time means your real policy is "respond instantly to everything." 

His specialists stopped living in Slack. They check it twice a day. The rest of the time they do the work he actually sells.

Questions dropped. Fires stopped landing on his desk. His team started solving problems without asking permission.

Your pod lead should own client communication. Your specialists should stay focused. You should only see real emergencies.

3 words that destroy agency margins: 'Let me check.'

I talked to an agency owner last week who was frustrated his team couldn't answer client questions without looping him in.

Turns out his AMs were great communicators. Smooth on calls. Clients liked them.

But none of them actually understood the service.

So every technical question became a relay. Client asks. AM says "let me get back to you." AM pings the strategist. Strategist explains. AM translates it back. Something gets lost. Client follows up. Repeat.

He was paying for account managers but getting expensive messengers.

We restructured. Put a senior lead in the client-facing seat instead. Someone who could actually answer questions on the call.

Within two months, client calls got shorter. Follow-up threads dropped. And his team stopped pinging him for every scope clarification.

The agencies I work with that charge premium prices almost always have experts running client relationships. Not translators.

If you're hiring AMs, look for people who already understand the work. You can teach project management. Teaching deep expertise takes years.

Communicator-only AMs can work as a stopgap on small accounts. But once that pattern hits your core clients, you're quietly trading margin for convenience.

A $3,500/month hire just cost one agency $100,000.

I was on a call last week with a performance agency doing about $1.2M. They wanted to add GoHighLevel CRM integrations to pre-qualify leads before sending them to clients.

The math looked great on paper. $3,500/month for a specialist, margins still at 67%. Easy yes.

Then I started asking questions.

Every single client would need custom integrations into their existing CRM. Salesforce, HubSpot, whatever they're running. Data quality depends on sales reps correctly tagging leads. Training required. QA process needed. And if anything breaks, they're relying on outside experts to fix it.

"What happens if this automation breaks on your biggest client?"

That client was worth $100,000 a year. One failed automation. One screwed up lead flow. One frustrated client who decides they've had enough.

The spreadsheet modeled labor costs. It didn't model losing a flagship account.

I work with an agency that does CRM integrations and HubSpot work. Everything is custom. Everything. Per client. The productized agency they're trying to build doesn't exist with that service in the mix.

They can absolutely get to multiple 7-figures without this. Fewer things, done exceptionally well.

If you want to test something like this, do it the simplest way possible. A Typeform for lead scoring. One willing client. Prove the value before you build infrastructure.

You don't need more services to charge more. You need more value from what you already do.

Your strategist is on every client call. That's why your agency is stuck.

I see this constantly with agencies doing $1M-$3M.

The strategist is brilliant at strategy. So you put them on client calls "because they know the work best." Then they're in Slack answering questions. Then they're managing the team because "they understand what needs to happen."

Six months later, your $120K strategist is spending 60% of their time on work that doesn't require their expertise.

They're context-switching all day. Doing shallow work. Burning out. And you're overpaying for tasks that don't need their skill level.

I want my strategists doing strategy. Not sitting in Slack. Not on client calls. Not managing people.

That's what a pod lead is for.

The pod lead owns client communication, team management, delivery targets, and capacity. They run the pod like it's their own little business.

The strategist? They own briefs and overarching strategy. Period.

Here's the thing most agencies miss though...

This split only makes sense when strategy is a full-time job. In a creative agency where you're producing concepts, campaigns, and content constantly? Absolutely separate these roles.

But in a lead gen or LinkedIn agency where strategy might be 5-8 hours a week? Combining strategist and pod lead into one role is actually the right call.

The decision isn't about titles or what sounds right on an org chart. It's about actual hours and workload.

So before you restructure anything, audit this:

How many hours per week does your strategist actually spend on true strategy work?

If it's under 10 hours, maybe you combine roles. If it's 25+ hours, you need to protect that time and get someone else handling everything else.

Role clarity isn't an HR exercise. It's how you stop paying senior rates for junior work.

What percentage of your strategist's time is actually spent on strategy?

The highest-margin agency I've seen this year has a terrible secret:

3 pods. No team leader.

I was talking to a creative agency owner last week who just crossed six figures monthly for the first time.

When he showed me his numbers, I asked the obvious question: "How are your margins this high?"

His answer was honest.

"Because I'm the lead for all three pods."

The ideal structure is dead simple.

Each pod has three roles: creative strategist, editor, creative coordinator.

One graphic designer serves all three pods. One media buyer serves all three pods.

No middle management. No senior layers. No bloat.

Every new client plugged into the same structure. That's how you 7X without chaos.

But he also told me something else.

"The exchange for high margins is stress."

He's in every client call. He's the bottleneck on every decision. His team is capable, but they're structured to need him for everything.

This is the part nobody talks about when they brag about margins.

You delay the leader hire because the math looks better without it. And it does... on paper. But you're not accounting for the hidden cost of your own time and sanity.

Most owners look at a pod lead at $10K/month and think it's a margin killer. But when that pod lead removes 90% of client comms from your strategists and editors, capacity goes up. You can add 2-3 more clients at the same price point.

Suddenly the hire becomes profit-positive.

The other thing he nailed: one creative coordinator per pod.

He told me sharing creative coordinators across pods "becomes a constraint very quickly and increases lead time... things delay and billing gets messed up."

When a creative coordinator owns multiple pods, compensation gets blurry too. Performance-based pay stops making sense when nobody knows which pod drove results.

One creative coordinator per one pod = clean accountability.

If you're running pods without dedicated pod leads right now, you're not wrong. Just be honest about the tradeoff.

Your margins are high because you're cheap labor, not because your org chart is smart.

"I don't do meetings" is the fastest way to get cut from my hiring pipeline.

Last week I'm on a call with an agency owner evaluating a 37-year-old creative strategist. His ads were absolutely smashing it. His copy would blow most candidates out of the water.

Then the owner asks about daily syncs.

"That would be a dealbreaker for me."

His reasoning: Flow state disruption. Claims he loses 30-45 minutes after every meeting. "I'm a grown adult, I don't need check-ins." Prefers Slack-only. Says this is why senior talent leaves agencies.

Honestly, in most agencies he's probably right.

Most agency meetings are 30-45 minute founder monologues where you get told what to do and have zero ability to impact change. That's micromanagement. That's worth hating.

But a 5-15 minute daily huddle is completely different.

It's for surfacing problems early. Collaborating on solutions as a team. Redirecting resources before a small issue turns into a week-long fire. Process improvement that comes from the team, not dictated from the top.

Slack can check if tasks are done. It can't facilitate live problem-solving. It can't help junior team members get unstuck before they struggle alone for three days.

When someone refuses that... They're telling you they only want to do the craft part of the role. On their terms.

That makes them an excellent freelancer. It makes them a terrible team hire.

The owner's decision? "I don't think I'm going to carry on. I don't see him changing."

My response: "It seems like you really like the job as a freelancer. Maybe not being part of a team is what's for you."

Your best performer on paper can be your worst hire for culture. Skill doesn't override fit.

I've helped 40+ agencies transition to pods. The advice that works for most of them almost sank one last month.

$1.8M creative agency, solid team, ready for pods. My standard playbook says put your biggest problem clients in the first pod. Fix the chaos there, prove the model works, roll it out everywhere else.

I've given that advice dozens of times. It usually works.

But when I looked at their client roster, I stopped.

Two clients made up 55% of their revenue. Both were in the "problem client" bucket.

The framework I normally use, Fire-first, assumes your revenue is reasonably distributed. Lose one client during the transition is painful, but survivable. When your largest clients are dramatically larger than everyone else... it's def a big gamble.

There are really a few ways I've seen agencies approach this:

1. Fire First... biggest problem clients in the pod first. High impact, high risk.
2. Strongest Clients First... pilot with clients who already love you. Lower risk, slower relief.
3. Service Line Split... pods around services instead of client groups. Rarely works due to client crossover.
4. Single Pod + Flex... one creative pod plus a flex team for one-off projects. Short-term patch only.

For this agency, we went hybrid. Wait until a real pod lead is hired and validated. Start acting like pods internally without announcing anything to clients. Then launch with their strongest relationships first.

Their best clients already trust them. If there are bumps during transition, those clients give them grace. The enterprise accounts stay in the legacy structure until the model is bulletproof.

If your top two or three clients make up more than 40% of revenue, fire-first is probably the wrong call. Start with the clients who'll forgive you while you figure it out.

The first thing I do in every agency's ClickUp: delete the priority flags.

You'd think that makes prioritization harder. It does the opposite.

Week one, the system works. High priority means high priority.

Week three, everyone's marking their stuff as high priority because they want it done faster.

Week six, you have 47 "high priority" tasks and your team is back to Slacking you: "Hey, what should I actually work on first?"

The flag became meaningless. You're back to guessing.

I've seen this in agency after agency. The problem isn't that your team uses priority flags wrong. The problem is that priority flags exist.

What I do instead:

Pick ONE sorting rule. The entire team agrees to it. Everyone sorts their tasks the same way. No guessing, no flags.

Three rules that actually work:

1. Oldest first. Sort by created date, oldest to newest. Come in, work on whatever's been waiting longest. Simplest rule.

2. Biggest client first. Tag clients by tier. Work on Tier 1 clients first, then Tier 2, then Tier 3. Use this when you have high-revenue clients who genuinely need priority.

3. Send date first. For email or creative with hard deadlines. Sort by when it needs to go out, work on soonest sends first.

Then build views that auto-sort by your chosen rule. Each team member gets a custom view filtered to their assigned tasks, already sorted correctly.

They open ClickUp, the list is ordered, they work top to bottom. No meetings about what's priority. No Slack messages asking what to do next.

Your PM tool should sort the work. Not a random flag.

After running AdTribe for six years and managing over $100M in ad spend, I learned how hard it is to build and keep a world-class media buying team.

Finding great talent takes months.
Training takes even longer.
And the wrong hire can cost you clients and profit fast.

So I built the service I wish existed back then — Haven.

Haven is a white-label media buying partner that helps marketing agencies scale without hiring.

For $799 per account, you get a complete senior-level growth team:

✅ Media buyer
✅ Creative designer
✅ Video editor
✅ Developer
✅ Performance strategist

No hiring. No overhead. No training headaches.

Today, more than 20 agencies partner with us to handle their paid media.

A few of them said it best:

Olivia Kean, CEO at Fusion Hub
👉 “It’s allowed me to focus on the things I love, knowing they’re crushing it on their end.”

Kory Baraba, CEO at Grow Fast
👉 “We’ve worked with 4–5 different media buyers from Haven, and they’ve all been amazing.”

See more client stories here: https://www.hirewithhaven.com/clients

If you run a marketing agency and want to scale fulfillment without adding headcount,
connect with me or reach out at dmitry@hirewithhaven.com

Dmitry Fesenko

Looking for a TikTok Shop agency.

I just had a call with a $15M CPG brand. They need help with:

→ TikTok Shop setup
→ Affiliate management
→ Magento integration

Anyone in my network have an agency they'd recommend? I will make an intro

Drop a name in the comments or DM me.

UPDATE: Got hundreds of responses. Going through every comment and DM. Will respond to everyone. Thank you all.

CEO at Haven | Hire world-class media buyers for 65% less than in the US | $100M+ in managed ad spend

Took a few weeks off. First break in months.

No Slack. No LinkedIn. No client calls.

Just rest.

Honestly? It felt weird. Almost guilty.

But I came back to our busiest January ever.

→ onboarding 2 new agency partners for white-label offer
→ signed 3 new clients for media buyer placement offer

Not bad for week one.

Looking back, 2025 was really about laying the groundwork.

Building the team. Launching a new offer that's more profitable and easier to sell.

2026 is when we scale.

The break gave me some clarity too. I've been running at 100% for years. Two agencies. Teams across time zones. Always on.  

Turns out stepping away for a bit doesn't break everything. Who knew 😅

Anyway, here's what we're going after this year:

→ Scale placements to 3-4/month
→ Add 10 agency partners
→ Build creative department from scratch
→ Launch AI copilot for media buyers

Feeling good about this one.

What's your biggest goal for 2026?

Our Head of Paid Media just left to serve in the Ukrainian Army.

Andrii was my first hire. I trained him personally. Over the years, he became the backbone of our delivery.

When I heard the news, my first reaction was panic.

We're screwed.

But after the emotions settled, I realized something:

If a business can't operate without one person, it's not a business. 

That moment forced me to rethink how we build Haven going forward:  

→ who we hire next 
→ how we structure leadership 
→ how knowledge is distributed instead of living in one person’s head

The good news: Andrii helped raise incredibly strong team leads. I trust them to maintain the quality standards we care so much about.

Will the next few months be uncomfortable? Absolutely.

I'll need to step back into fulfillment more than I'd like.

But I'm confident we'll come out of this with a stronger, more resilient company than before.

Building an agency that lasts means building one that doesn't depend on any single person. 

Including me.

What's the most underrated skill in media buyers?

It's not platform knowledge.
It's not creative strategy.
It's not attention to detail.

It's enthusiasm.

We recently hired a junior media buyer.

Every call, he's smiling. Every monthly recap, he shows up with a full presentation, pumped to share results. Last week he built a dashboard no one asked for, just because he wanted to understand the data better.

He makes it incredibly easy to work with him. And because of that, everyone wants to help him get better.

Skills can be taught. Platforms change every year anyway.

But energy and curiosity compound.

A highly enthusiastic junior will often outperform a grumpy expert over time.

Not because they know more. But because people actually want to work with them.

Next time you're hiring, don't just check the resume.

Check the energy.

5 years ago, we got hacked.  

Over $20k of client money was stolen (fkn casino affiliates).

At the time, our agency was doing $20k/month in revenue. So, needless to say, this was devastating.

It took 6 months to get the money back from Meta.  

Luckily, none of our clients left. We worked for free for 3 months to make it right.

But here's what came out of it:

We wrote two documents that we still use today.

1. "When FB account got hacked" protocol

→ How to identify which profile was compromised 
→ How to lock it down immediately 
→ How to contact Meta support 
→ How to protect the ad accounts 
→ Red flags to watch for before it happens

2. "How to keep your Business Manager safe" checklist

→ 2FA for everyone with access 
→ Regular audits of who has access 
→ Security checkup for all personal FB accounts 
→ Alerts for unrecognized logins 
→ Review apps and browser plugins regularly

We've used these internally ever since. Never got hacked again.  

Mistakes are unavoidable, but making the same mistake twice is a choice.

If you're running ads for clients, you need this.  

Comment "protocol" and I will send these two docs your way.

Slack is killing your media buyers' output.

Not the workload. The constant interruption.

I had a call with an 8-figure agency owner last week. He shared a simple system that changed how I think about client communication.

His media buyers used to be glued to Slack all day. Context switching between campaigns and client requests. It was destroying their focus.

So he implemented time blocks.

Here's how it works:

→ 9 AM: First communication window (30 min)
→ 12 PM: Second window (30 min)
→ 5 PM: Final window (30 min)

During those blocks, they clear every Slack channel. Outside those windows? Deep work only.

But here's what makes it actually work.

Clients know about it from day one.

During onboarding: "This is Ali. He's running your ads. Here are his response times: 9 AM, 12 PM, and 5 PM EST. If you message outside these times, he'll respond at the next block."

They frame it as a benefit: "We do this so Ali can focus on actually working on your campaigns, instead of multitasking all day."

Most clients are fine with a 2-3 hour response time. The problem is never the wait. It's the uncertainty about if or when they'll hear back.

Clear expectations beat fast responses.

We'll be rolling this out soon at Haven across all 90+ accounts. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

What systems do you use to protect deep work time?

What's the fastest way to have $1M in your bank account?  

I'm not talking about equity or paper gains. I mean cash you can actually spend.

Start an agency.

You don't need investors, a 7-year exit plan, or to pray for an acquisition.

Just clients paying you every month.

Now look, if you're the Elon Musk type who wants to build life-changing technology and is willing to suffer for 10-20 years without seeing real money, by all means do it. The world needs people working on groundbreaking stuff.

This post isn't for you.

This is for people who want to make good money, play golf on Fridays, pick up their kids from school, and actually enjoy the life they're building.

Most agencies never get to $1M, though. Here's why:  

→ Wrong clients (needy, low budget, bad fit) 
→ Wrong partners (or trying to do it all solo) 
→ Burnout from chasing every dollar

But if you pick your clients wisely and surround yourself with the right partners (like Haven ), agency life is beautiful.

Think about it.

What other model pays you to learn new skills and apply them to real companies with real budgets?

We get to do the sexiest parts of business:

→ Build strategies 
→ Run ads (spending other people's money) 
→ Be creative

Tech founders grind for years hoping for an exit.

Ecom founders are equity rich but always cash poor. Inventory eats everything.

Agency owners deposit cash every month. Cash they can actually spend on upgrading their life.

I will choose agency every time.  

Prove me wrong.

A few years ago I was visiting Vancouver for a few days.

One of our agency partners was organizing a small dinner for agency owners.

I joined without any expectations.

That dinner became one of the highest ROI decisions I've ever made.

First

One of the agency owners there, Gabby, became one of my closest friends. Later, she became a client.

Second

Another owner introduced me to a few friends who were way ahead of me in business.

Every time I meet them, my thinking expands. Problems feel smaller. Possibilities feel bigger.

Third

An agency owner I didn't even talk to that night just booked a call to hire media buyers from us.

Three outcomes from one dinner I almost skipped.

We spend so much time optimizing funnels, running ads, and writing content.  

All of that matters.  

But the best opportunities I've ever had didn't come from impressions or clicks.  

They came from showing up in person and shaking hands.  

The more rooms you walk into, the more doors open later.

Brent started his agency a few months ago.

He signed his first medspa client and asked us to run their ads.

One month later, here’s what he said:

👉 "Amazing work team. I'm seriously so proud of the results we're already getting, and it's only going to get better."

This is why we do what we do.

The best media buyers don't want to work for you.

Here's what most agency owners get wrong:

They try to hire great talent before they're ready for it.

Top media buyers want to work on interesting accounts. They want variety, challenge, and growth.

If you only have 3 clients and they're all low-budget headaches, you're not going to attract A-players. You'll get whoever says yes.

So what do you do before you have 10+ solid accounts?

→ Do the work yourself
→ Use contractors
→ Partner with a white-label team like Haven

Don't force a full-time hire when you don't have the client base to support it.

Once you have:

→ 10+ decent-sized clients
→ A pipeline strong enough that losing 5 won't break you

Then start thinking about bringing someone in-house.

Because the worst position to be in? Paying a six-figure salary while your media buyer sits at 50% capacity because you lost a few accounts.

Build the business great talent wants to join first.

The right people will follow.

Agency owners don't need more promises.

They need proof.

Here's what our partners said this week 👇

Ask 5 agencies what a "media buyer" does.  

You'll get 5 different answers.

At some agencies, media buyers manage millions in ad spend without touching a single creative.

At others, they're basically creative strategists — spending 90% of their time on new ads (like ours).

At others, they're client-facing growth strategists who own the entire funnel.

Same title. Completely different jobs.

After placing dozens of media buyers, here's what I've noticed:

The bigger the client, the more specialized the role needs to be.

Enterprise brands want someone who does one thing extremely well. Smaller brands want someone who can do it all — not just run ads, but actually grow the business.

Neither is wrong. 

But if you're unclear on which one you need, you'll hire the wrong person. 

And that's an expensive mistake.

At Haven, before we even sign a contract for placement, we run an extensive intake form to get 100% clear on who we're looking for.

Some of the questions we ask:

→ Does the media buyer need to be on client calls? 
→ What platforms do they need to be expert in? 
→ What industries or niches? 
→ Do they touch creatives or not?
→ How much ad spend will they manage monthly?

The clearer we get upfront, the better the match.

P.S. If you're hiring media buyers in Q1, we have a few spots left.

🚀 December 2025 results at Haven (our biggest month ever)

Ad spend: $1.7M
Revenue: $4.2M
Leads generated: 85,692

Top-performing niches:
→ Apparel & Accessories ($1.9M in rev)
→ Home & Lifestyle ($680K in rev)
→ Food & Beverage ($520K in rev)

Platform breakdown:
→ Meta: 54%
→ Google: 44%
→ Pinterest, LinkedIn, Taboola: 2%

December highlights:
✅ 83% of accounts hit or exceeded targets
✅ Closed 3 media buyer placement contracts
✅ Built a first version of our AI media buying copilot
✅ Hired a new pod leader 
✅ Wrapped up the year with 87 active accounts

But the biggest win? We've assembled a killer team of media buyers.

Took 7 years to build this crew for Haven and Adtribe.  

Now we do it for other agencies too.  

P.S. If you need media buyers who actually deliver, DM me.

The most boring client we ever had made us the most money.

I'm talking about a network of men's health clinics.

→ One offer
→ Same creatives
→ Just different locations

One media buyer managed 30-40 accounts by copy-pasting campaigns.

Boring as hell, but we were printing cash. Both the agency and the media buyer (we pay a % of revenue generated).

Now compare that to a 7-figure DTC brand.

→ New creatives every week
→ Constant testing 
→ Strategy calls
→ Slack messages at all hours

You give it ten times the effort, and results still aren't guaranteed.

Is it more interesting to work on a challenging DTC account than running Meta lead forms for a local business? Absolutely.

But here's the thing. Every exciting project comes with a hidden cost: your time.

You overinvest. You obsess over details. You give it way more than the retainer covers. And it kills your margins.

Agencies making real money aren't chasing the coolest brands. They're running the same boring playbook over and over again.

So ask yourself: 

Are you building a fun business or a profitable one?

Because in my experience, it's really hard to do both.

We just moved every account we’ve ever worked with into Airtable.

All of them.

621 accounts over 7 years. 

That's 621 onboardings.
621 founders. 
621 different business models and niches.

Some stayed for months. Some for years. Some came back twice.

Every single one taught us something.  

What works. What doesn't. What kills accounts. What scales them.  

You can't fake 7 years of reps.

P.S. If you're an agency owner looking for media buyers who've seen it all, DM me.

Marketing is just the game of impressions.

Businesses that serve the most impressions to the right people win the market.

That's it.

Every tactic, every hack, every "secret strategy" is just a way to get more eyeballs on your offer and make more of them buy.

SEO? Impressions.
Paid ads? Impressions.
LinkedIn content? Impressions.
Email/SMS? Impressions.
Influencer marketing? Impressions.

The channel doesn't matter. The math is the same.

More people see your offer → more people buy.

Shopify recently released 150+ updates.

One of them will change how people shop online.

It's called Agentic Storefronts.

This feature allows brands to sell products directly inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Copilot.

Think about what this means.

People are already asking ChatGPT "what's the best running shoe for flat feet" instead of Googling it.  

Now they can buy right there in the conversation without leaving the chat.

No ads. No landing pages.

For the last 20 years, ecommerce worked like this:

Search → click → website → convince → buy.

Now it’s becoming:

Ask → decide → buy.

Your storefront is no longer just a website.

My prediction: websites will become almost like a business card. Most commerce will happen directly in chats or on social.

Two things brands can do right now:  

→ optimize your product catalog mapping so AI agents know how to present your products in searches 

→ use the Knowledge Base app to add answers to your most frequent questions

The new era of commerce is already here.  

Brands that adapt fast win. The rest get left behind.

I started a newsletter with zero strategy.

No content calendar. No lead magnet. No "10x your agency" promises.

Just me every week sharing what's actually happening in my life: agency stuff, travel stories, random thoughts.

Last week I wrote about my trip to Vietnam and how we're rebuilding our internal systems to run Haven more like an ecom platform than a traditional agency.

I treat it more like writing updates to my friends. 

And agency owners are liking it 👇

→ "I just opened your latest email and it blew my mind"
→ "It's very informative, please keep them coming"
→ "I'm really inspired by your recent newsletter"

My last newsletter had 46.2% open rate.

Not bad for something with "zero strategy."

If you want to hear what's going on behind the scenes at Haven, the good and the ugly of running an agency, subscribe.

Link in comments.

One change saved our team 10 hours a week.

The last few months at Haven have been busy. We signed a few new partners, and our team is now doing 3–5 account audits every week.

Great problem to have. But it created a new one.

Our team leads were spending hours on Slack every day. Partner requests, audit coordination, invoicing follow-ups. The back-and-forth was eating into actual work time.

That's not sustainable.

So we're making a shift.

My long-term vision for Haven is to operate more like a platform than a traditional agency. Less Slack chaos, more deep work that actually moves the needle.

First process we're fixing: audits.

Before:

→ Partner messages us on Slack
→ We gather context and access
→ Team leads coordinate the work
→ Someone has to remember to send an invoice

It worked, but coordination was taking longer than the audits themselves.

So we automated the entire intake process.

Here's how it works now: 

→ Partner submits a simple form 
→ Chooses platform, adds context, pays upfront 
→ System auto-notifies the team on Slack 
→ Task gets created in Asana automatically

I estimate this one change alone will save our team leads 10 hours per week, which is huge.

That's time they can spend on strategy and results instead of chasing invoices.

Audits are just the start. Onboarding new accounts is next 💪

Which tequila shot got you drunk?

My client asked me why attribution is so hard. Since she's not technical, I gave her this analogy (not my idea):

Imagine you're at a bar with friends doing tequila shots.

You get wasted.

So the question is: which shot got you drunk?

→ The last one? That's last-click attribution.
→ The decision to do shots in the first place? That's first-click.
→ Every shot contributed equally? That's linear attribution.

Same thing with marketing.

There are tools that claim to solve this, but here's my honest take:

Consumer behavior is too complex. Knowing exactly which ad made someone buy is almost impossible.

Someone sees your Meta ad Monday. Googles you Wednesday. Clicks an email Friday. Buys Saturday after a friend mentions your brand.

Which one gets credit?

The real answer: stop chasing perfect attribution.

Instead, use a combination of:

→ Blended ROAS (MER) across all channels
→ Post-purchase surveys
→ Multi-touch attribution tools (Triple Whale, Northbeam)

Even then, data won’t give you the full answer.

Experience and judgment still make the final call.

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