I am not dramatic enough to claim that all agencies within this profession are evil. Far from it. However, most agencies are crippled by scalability issues, and consequently 90% of them adopt a model where lower-tier and mid-tier employees perform the vast majority of work for all clients. Meanwhile, the most experienced, most skilled, and most articulate senior-level employees focus on sales and on-boarding, only occasionally stepping in to solve the most complex problems and to prevent clients from cancelling.

This is clearly a flawed model – it emphasizes and lubricates the sales process (cha-ching!), but inevitably it causes frustration for clients once the torch is passed from the skilled employees to the junior ones. Unsurprisingly, retention is a persistent problem for most large agencies.

It’s important to know who you’re working with. When we work together, I will be the strategist, the project manager, and the executor of all work. Always.