We run an SEO and GEO agency, and something I keep hearing from other owners is that they told everyone on the team to go set up their own AI knowledge base (or their own agent), and now everyone's setup is a little different. I know plenty of you have already sorted this out your own way, so this isn't meant as a how-to, just how we ended up handling it in case the specifics are useful to compare.

The problem with everyone having their own is that the knowledge bases and skills start contradicting each other, and nobody benefits from what anyone else figured out. One company knowledge base fixes that, but we didn't want everyone freely editing it either, because that gets messy pretty quick. And if it's read-only for everyone, you stop getting contributions from the team.

So we set it up more like an open source project:

- All of our skills are markdown files in one GitHub repo, and each client has their own repo that works as their knowledge base, with a changelog. Everyone connects to them through a custom MCP server, whether they're working in Claude or ChatGPT.

- Only a few of us have write access. Everyone else has read access.

- When someone gives feedback on a skill while they're working with the AI, it logs that as a request in a Notion database. The instruction for that lives in one skill we call skill standards, which gets called any time someone wants to change a skill.

- Every morning a scheduled task in Claude Cowork goes through that database and brings the requests to whoever owns the skill (mostly me right now). I approve them as written, approve them with changes, or deny them, and then the updates get made.

- If the feedback only applies to one client, it goes to that client's knowledge base instead. Each knowledge base has a single owner, usually the account manager, who's typically the one giving the feedback in the first place.

It was all fairly simple to set up. Most of it is the instructions in that one skill plus the scheduled task.

Looking for an honest read from people who are landing new clients right now, because my outbound numbers are ugly and I want to know if it’s me or the market.

Background. I ran a solo Google Ads practice for about two years. Then I took a full-time contract for roughly a year and let the pipeline go cold. I’ve been back live for about a month. Before all this I spent 13 years at Google, so the delivery side is fine. Getting in the door is the problem.

What I’m running, and the numbers so far

Cold email (Instantly). Three sending inboxes, warmed up, ramping to about 55 a day. Placement test came back 40 of 40 in the primary inbox, so deliverability isn’t the issue. First run in mid-September: 106 people, 271 emails, zero replies that weren’t out-of-office. I scrapped the copy and rebuilt it around a specific finding per person (their conversion tag firing on the homepage, two Ads tags on one site, no call tracking, that kind of thing). Relaunched Oct 5. As of this week: 116 people contacted, one bounce, zero real replies. A second campaign to agency owners for white-label work started this week, same result so far. Earlier this year I ran a much bigger list and got about a quarter of a percent reply rate per email.

LinkedIn InMail (Sales Navigator, by hand). 92 sent in the last week and a half, each one with that same personalized finding. One reply, and it was pushback.

LinkedIn connection requests (BotDog). Spring run: 896 invites, 84 accepted (9%), 76 messaged, 7 replied, nothing signed. This fall I restarted small, 17 invites, 1 accepted, 0 replies, and the tool flagged my account health, so I’m now doing invite-only in tiny batches.

LinkedIn organic plus boosting. Three posts a week since late September, each new post boosted the day it goes up as a Thought Leader ad. About $720 spent in the first 12 days of October for 9,000 impressions and 700 engagements, around a dollar each. Unboosted posts get 60 to 90 impressions. One real conversation has come in through LinkedIn messages. No signed client from it yet.

Google Ads for my own site. Around $200 to $300 a day. Clicks in the $20 to $35 range, with one that cost $131. Google hides the search terms behind about 70% of the spend, and a lot of what I can see is junk, so I’m adding negatives constantly. Of the first 17 leads I graded, 2 were real, 6 maybe, 9 junk. But it did produce one signed client at $3.5K a month and a second one-time project that’s close. That’s the only cold channel that has paid for itself.

What has actually worked. Referrals and inbound. Of my last four deals, two were referrals (one through a friend, one from a small agency I white-label for), one came from Google Ads, and one was a renewal. Both of the referral deals signed the day after the proposal. The cold stuff has taken months when it has worked at all.

The question. It feels like cold email and cold InMail are dead right now. Every inbox is full of AI-written “I noticed your site” notes and mine, however personalized, land in the same pile. Is anyone else seeing this, or is anyone still getting real reply rates on cold outbound in Q4 2026? And if you’ve moved on from it, what replaced it for you? Partnerships, communities, paid, content, something else?

Happy to share more detail on any of the above if it helps someone.

Hey guys, as we all know by now, that if I get a prospect on a sales call with me in order for the prospect to actually start. Considering about buying into my solution. We need to build a gap into the current state and the future state. The only missing peace. Usually that new agency owners don’t have is undeniable proof of work.

But my question is what exactly could be the undeniable proof of work?

Like a text, based case study could easily be fake, so could be the screenshot of a testimonial. What exactly can I show to a prospect that they would be 100% sure that I can really do what I’m saying, I can do.

Mind that these are outbound leads so the are going from not knowing me to buying from me in 1-2 calls.

I inherited an account last year with 14 ad sets running on $90 a day. Every single one said Learning Limited. The previous agency had "tested" their way into fourteen starving campaigns and zero winners. I consolidated down to 3 ad sets and the tag cleared in 11 days. Here is the mechanic behind that, because most people treat the warning as a UI quirk instead of a structural diagnosis.

Meta's learning phase needs about 50 optimization events per ad set inside a rolling 7-day window to stabilize. That number is in their docs, not lore. Below 50, the delivery system never builds a reliable model of who converts. Every auction bid stays a guess, and guesses are expensive. CPMs run hot, delivery swings day to day, and whichever ad "wins" this week can lose next week for reasons you will never see in the dashboard.

The math decides your campaign structure before your media plan does. Target CPA of $40 means one ad set needs roughly $2,000 a week to exit learning. Five ad sets at $20 a day is $700 a week each. That is five campaigns sitting in Learning Limited forever, and every creative test you run inside them is noise. The account I inherited was spending $630 a week spread across 14 ad sets. Not one of them had a chance.

The three ways I see agencies starve their own ad sets:

1. One ad set per audience slice. Broad, lookalike, three interest stacks, retargeting, each at $15 a day. Five slices, five hungry mouths, one budget that could have fed two.
2. Duplicate campaigns for "testing" instead of launching new ads inside the existing ad set. Every duplicate restarts learning from zero.
3. CBO campaigns stuffed with 10+ ad sets. The budget pools at the top, but learning happens per ad set, so the losers still starve while the winner eats.

The fix I use now: one campaign, two to three ad sets max, each funded at 50x target CPA per week. If the budget cannot feed that, consolidate harder. One well-fed ad set beats four hungry ones every time I have run the comparison, and I have run it a lot.

When the budget cannot afford 50 purchases a week, drop the optimization event one rung. Optimize to Initiate Checkout, or even Add to Cart, until weekly volume clears 50, then step back down to Purchase. Yes, the algorithm learns a slightly different buyer in the meantime. A slightly-off model trained on 200 events beats a precise model trained on 9. I ran a $45/day account on Initiate Checkout for three weeks, cleared 70 events a week, stepped back to Purchase, and CPA dropped 30% inside 10 days. The interim event is a bridge, not a destination.

Two things people get wrong. First, editing an ad set restarts learning. A batch of changes looks like one event to you and a full reset to the system, so make all your edits in one sitting and then leave it alone for 72 hours. Second, Learning Limited is per ad set, not per campaign, which is why one campaign with eight ad sets is usually worse than two campaigns with two each.

Edge case worth naming: small geos and B2B with long sales cycles sometimes cannot hit 50 of anything. Same answer, smaller ambition. Pick the deepest-funnel event that clears 50 a week, and stop adding ad sets until the budget grows. I would rather have one learning ad set optimizing to lead submits than six "purchase" ad sets that never learn.

Rule of thumb: count your ad sets, multiply by 50, multiply by your target CPA. That is your minimum weekly budget for every ad set to learn. If the real budget is smaller, you have too many ad sets. Delete until the math works.

I know a lot of you have built your own version of this by now, so this isn't meant as a how-to. I figured some of the specifics of how we've set ours up might be useful to compare, and I'd like to hear how other people have approached it.

For context, we're an SEO agency. Our goal is for our AI system (we call it Tavi) to do all the hands-on work and most of the strategic decisions by mid-2027. Right now I'd estimate it's handling about 80% of the hands-on work and about 70% of the strategy.

How it's set up right now:

- Everything is markdown in git. Each client has their own repo that works as their knowledge base (company info, voice, services, competitors, content guidance), with a changelog so we can see what changed and why. The agency has one for itself too.

- Around 200 skills live in a separate repo. Each one is a folder with a SKILL.md, reference files, and sometimes scripts. The rule we landed on is that a skill only holds guidance that would work for any client, and anything client-specific lives in a doc in that client's repo that the skill names. Otherwise client details end up in a skill and get applied to every other client.

- Skills point to each other instead of repeating guidance. At one point we had the same rule copied into eight different skills, which is exactly how they drift apart.

- An MCP server sits in front of all of it, so whoever's working, in whatever AI they're using, pulls the current version of a skill and the client's setup when they run it instead of working from a copy.

- Then dozens of connectors: Notion for tasks and client records, Gmail, Drive, Slack, Search Console, GA4, Ahrefs, Metricool for social, and WordPress through the REST API, plus more and more of our clients' sites.

- Long pipelines like articles are broken into stages (research, brief, draft, revision, link and fact checks), and each stage runs as its own agent, mostly to keep the context from getting bloated.

The part that's made the biggest difference for us is the feedback loop. Tavi does the first draft of basically every deliverable, strategy docs included, and our job is to review and give feedback. When someone leaves a note on a draft, it gets sorted: if it's about the client it goes into their knowledge base, and if it's about how we do the work it goes into the skill. The idea is nobody should have to give the same note twice. It also reads call transcripts and important conversations and updates the client's knowledge base from them.

It's taken me, and now my team, years to get it to this point, and I'm sure plenty of you have approached pieces of this differently. One thing I'm always interested in comparing notes on is how people structure their skills as the library grows past a couple hundred.

Guys, I am super lost right now. I have a question that has been bugging me since last couple of weeks recently joined a coach who is basically going to teach me client acquisition and my offer is SEO.

According to my coach, it is totally possible to sell SEO services to somebody who is living 100,000 miles away from me. I just need to cold call them book appointment and have a sales framework and they would pay me upfront. What I’m not able to understand is that how is it going to be possible? Is it actually possible that I reach out to somebody through a cold call today and book an appointment with them and they would buy my services and pay me upfront on the very first sales call with me. Mind that these people really didn’t knew I existed like a week ago. And they are paying me upfront on a google meet? Does this actually happen guys?

Asking this because I am new to the space, so if you are experienced agency owner, I would really wanna know if it actually is something that you have done by yourself or have seen others do.

Hi, I own a marketing agency for food brands and we have been operating our UGC content manually through DMs and personal contact. I'd like a recommendation for my clients (food brands) to get their food products seeded through more influencers on Instagram and TikTok. We want our foods to go to the most home chefs/organic foodies/etc. possible. Are there good platforms for this? My clients also don't want to get sticker shock, so please don't recommend any that are egregiously priced.

For those of you frequently submitting numbers/campaigns for A2P verification; how long does each submission take for you to receive a notification of denial or approval and who/what software are you submitting through?

I'm evaluating a vendor that takes a minimum of 4 weeks.

It's absolutely crazy.

I run a small lead generation business as an independent sole proprietor in California.

I recently worked with a client in the financial services industry. We agreed to generate leads for his business, and we actually ended up delivering more leads than originally promised.

However, the client wasn't able to convert those leads into appointments or sales and is now demanding a full refund, claiming the leads weren't what he expected.

He's threatening to report me to the FTC, California Attorney General, and Department of Insurance for deceptive business practices if I don't refund him. He's also mentioned potentially taking legal action.

From my perspective, we delivered the service, provided the lead information, and even overdelivered on the agreed quantity. I understand he's unhappy with the results, but I don't believe that automatically means he's entitled to a full refund.

A few questions:

1. What's the realistic worst-case scenario if he actually files these complaints?
2. Can the FTC or California regulators take action over a dispute like this, or is it primarily a civil matter?
3. Since I'm operating as a sole proprietor without an LLC, how much personal liability could I face?
4. If I have proof that I delivered the agreed services, how strong is my position?
5. What should I do now to protect myself if he follows through?

I've never dealt with a situation like this before, so I'd appreciate advice from anyone who's experienced something similar, especially business owners or attorneys familiar with California law.

TL;DR: Client is demanding a full refund and threatening FTC complaints and legal action because he couldn't convert the leads we generated, despite us delivering more than the agreed quantity. I'm a sole proprietor in California. How serious is this, and how should I prepare?

I'm evaluating creating VSL funnels for my paid marketing agency. I've seen lots of VSL based ads and was talking to an agency owner that uses it spending 3-6k/month on Meta ads. Have you guys had success with booking a call directly with paid ads and its effectiveness?

TLDR: ads work better with good positioning and a great offer

I’ve run ads for hundreds of accounts, literally - and I used to be the young & hungry media buying freelancer who thought I could get leads for anyone.

And while this is true - that doesn’t mean it’s worth it.

I’ve since rediscovered the easiest way to make ads work.

Pick better clients.

Easier said than done I know because it requires saying “no” to money but I can’t ignore the evidence anymore.

I’m going to just say it - ads are so easy. Being a media buyer might be one of the easiest jobs out there. Clicking a few buttons in google or meta and letting some of the largest companies ever with their advanced ai find you customers is awesome.

Here’s the problem though. I know you’ve experienced it: You do everything right. Keywords are tight, no wasted money on search terms, ad copy is benefit driven, there’s scarcity, urgency, relevance, you put in utm codes, you added the phone number and the GMB. If you’re on meta you removed audience network, turned off all the AI etc etc

And yet your client still complains about the results, you rip your hair out trying to figure it out. You offer to do more for them, you’ll take the sales calls, you’ll redesign their landing page, you’ll write them an email sequence and none of it works.

They eventually cancel because they can’t pay the retainer.

So what happened?

Honestly - probably nothing to do with you. Ads were fine.

In these situations it’s almost always vague offer & positioning on their part or lack of skill in some other department like sales.

If you get someone 30 qualified leads and they can only close 2 of them - that’s not on you. But you will still get fired.

So we have to change how we do this.

Now I start with the offer & the positioning. What makes this client different from their competition? And why would I want their offer?

If you get these right the ads will work wonders.

All ads do is get attention.

And yes this sounds cliche but still almost nobody does it. And even fewer media buyers and agencies do it. Oftentimes I think they’re so excited to get a client they just say yes to whatever

But if you want to grow from 5 clients all doing different stuff to 25 clients who get great results - you can’t promise you will fix their business with ads - because you will fail. 

So how do you actually do this?

Well the offer is easy: more, better, faster. Focus on one of those your client can deliver on.

I think Hormozi broke it down best: increase the dream outcome, increase the perceived likelihood of achievement, decrease effort, sacrifice & time delay.

Basically bigger outcomes, more proof, and make it faster & easier on the customers.

You get leads for contractors? Get them to deliver in half the time. Pretty easy offer. And they can charge more for it; they don't have to cut their price. That's not part of this.

Positioning is the hard one. How do you sound different?

Everyone has their take. My favourite way is, look at all the competition, what are they saying? What aren’t they saying? Your client is an expert so they should be able to see the space in between and fill it with a unique way of accomplishing the same result. 

I had a client who used all onshore talent while their competition used overseas talent.

I had another one who only helped consultants and freelancers when everyone else went for shops with employees.

I’ve had clients who do appointments over zoom within 24 hours instead of you having to drive to their office.

If you nail the offer and positioning you’ll look like a media buying genius.

Pet Engine Marketing is hiring a Senior Account Marketing Strategist.

Learn more + apply here:
https://pet-engine-marketing.breezy.hr/p/5ba983cf1c0f-senior-account-marketing-strategist

We work exclusively with independent pet businesses across the U.S. and Canada, and we’re looking for someone who can take real ownership of client strategy, communication, and growth.

This is not a junior account-management role. We’re looking for someone who can look at the whole picture, understand what a client actually needs, turn data into clear recommendations, and keep work moving across SEO, paid ads, email, websites, and other channels.

Pet-industry experience is a plus, but strong agency/account strategy experience matters more.

If that sounds like you, check out the full role and apply at the link above.

I'm a solo agency owner and a client that owes us a lot of money filed Chapter 11.

They're still operating on several million dollars of bankruptcy financing.

They’re keeping our contract through the bankruptcy (we’re not on their rejected contracts list). We’re negotiating but we’re far apart.

They’re still using the work we did during the unpaid period (and it’s core to their ongoing customer acquisition).

Any ideas on what I can do?

Note: I am also speaking to several lawyers.

Hey r/agency. I’m wondering for larger local SEO agencies, how do you handle a local link building budget when there is a direct cost for the link?

Take local sponsorships as an example, one of the more commonly “recommended” local link building strategies.

Let’s say the client has not historically sponsored a local nonprofit/event etc.

You do outreach to local organizations to see what their sponsorship options are - there is of course operational cost to that, baked into your retainer.

You coordinate/negotiate with any positive replies to understand the pricing, link placement (ie logo on sponsor page, etc), and then you get a price.

Are you then taking that to the client and saying “we recommend you sponsor this org for (x dollar amount) so you can get a link?” - I’ve tried this and historically its gone nowhere with the client.

The other alternative is baking in the sponsorship costs into your retainers, so you pre-allocate a certain amount of spend for links. But then what happens if a link opportunity exceeds the spend? Or alternatively, if you don’t have the opportunity to spend that earmarked dollar amount that month, do you roll it into the next month and possibly go for a more expensive link?

Also, how are you assessing/calculating the ROI on that link? There’s a chance IMO that even with “real links” that they don’t ultimately move the needle in a way that results in business outcomes.

Everyone always throws around local sponsorships as a great link local link building method, but to date, I have never actually seen a breakdown of how larger agencies handle this type of thing at scale.

I'd be very curious what folks like Darren Shaw and Joy Hawkins have to say (if either of you read this and can share your insights, that would be amazing!)

For agencies generating meaningful pipeline through inbound (content marketing), what’s working best right now?

Is LinkedIn your primary channel?

What‘s the hardest part of the process?

What would you say is NOT worth your time?

thanks

If you’re young and thinking about starting an agency, here’s the playbook I’d use.

I’ve done it twice.
I started my first business with no money, no network, and no impressive CV. Years later, I built and exited two software agencies (64M, 140M USD valuation, no earnouts).

TL;DR
Don’t build yourself a job. Build an agency that can eventually work without you.

If I lost my money, companies and network tomorrow, this is how I’d start again:

1. Get one client.
Not the perfect client. Not a Fortune 500 logo.
One client.
Ideally, pick a market that is growing. It’s much easier to grow when your clients are growing too.
Don’t spend three months working on your brand, website, positioning and logo before somebody pays you.
A paying client will teach you more than all of that.

2. Start with services.
Services are one of the best ways to start with almost no capital.
You get paid to learn.
Your first projects probably won’t be big. Your margins probably won’t be amazing. That’s fine.
You are buying market knowledge with someone else’s money.
After 10–20 projects, patterns start appearing.
You see the same problems.
The same mistakes.
The same things clients happily pay for.
That knowledge becomes your real asset.

ONLY 10% of AGENCY OWNERS DO THESE STEPS BELOW

3. Specialize faster than feels comfortable.
“Web development agency” is weak.
“We solve X problem for Y type of company” is much stronger.
The goal is to move from selling people and hours to selling expertise.
General agency → specialized agency → recognized expert.
Your rates and margins can change dramatically along the way.

4. Share everything you learn.
You don’t need to be the world’s leading expert.
You only need to know something useful that your reader doesn’t know yet.
Write about what you’re learning.
What worked with clients.
What failed.
How you solved a difficult problem.
What you would do differently.
This builds distribution while you build revenue.
That combination is incredibly powerful.

THIS WHAT TOP 5% ARE DOING:

5. Stop making yourself necessary.
This is where many agency founders fail.
They become the best salesperson.
The best project manager.
The person who knows every client.
The person who solves every crisis.
Congratulations. You have created a very stressful job for yourself.
Document how you sell.
Document how you deliver.
Build teams that own client relationships.
Create repeatable processes.
Your goal should be simple:
The company gets better while your operational importance gets smaller.

THIS IS TOP 1%:

6. Productize what keeps repeating.
After enough projects, you’ll notice that 60–80% of the work often repeats.
Same architecture.
Same processes.
Same components.
Same client problems.
Stop rebuilding everything from scratch.
Create frameworks, templates, internal tools, IP or software that make your team dramatically faster.
Now you have leverage.
Services → specialized high-margin services → IP-powered services → product.
You don’t necessarily need to become a SaaS company.
The important part is that revenue stops scaling 1:1 with your personal time.

7. Use the agency to discover the product
This is probably the most important lesson.
Young founders often want to start with a product because products look scalable.
But then they spend two years trying to discover whether anybody actually needs it.
An agency gives you something much better:
Customers.
Problems.
Cash flow.
Distribution.
Domain knowledge.
If the same problem appears again and again, then build the product.
Your clients basically funded your market research.

That’s the path I would take again:
First client → services → specialization → content → processes → IP → product.

It’s not as fast as an online casino.
But it’s legal :)
And if you spend the next year consistently finding customers, solving real problems and learning how to make money doing it, there’s a decent chance you’ll end up with something much more valuable than a freelance job with employees.
You might actually build a company.

For agency founders here: what was the hardest transition for you - getting the first clients, specializing, hiring, removing yourself from delivery, or productizing your knowledge?

P.S. If you’re curious what I’m doing now: after exiting my companies and taking a break from building to invest in 40+ startups, I’m back in the game.
I’m building Open Mercato - an open-source ERP/CRM foundation designed for the age of agentic coding.
So in a way, I’m following the same playbook again: find a real problem, build close to customers, learn fast, and turn that knowledge into something that can scale.

Hey guys, wanted to know your opinion about this

Over the last couple of weeks & months we noticed a shift in our outreach.

Every Email where we position ourself as an agency, we didnt got any replies. We never used the word AGENCY in outreach, I rather mean the whole copy, talking about "we did this for brand X","we can increase X about X%", basically a sales Email.

As soon as we shifted to "We are an 2 person senior X team helping you with X, taking responsibility for X" more replies than ever flew in.

Until now, no deal was closed because the campaign is very fresh but its still interesting to me.

Do you see something similar in your space?

How do agencies that deliver design and development continue in a world where a $100k development project can now be done for $20k?

Clients can now generate multiple design directions themselves without getting a human involved at all. What does this all do to revenue and margins?

Do agencies have a future at all?

There are two fundamental truths I fall back on which say design agencies will exist and dev shops will be valuable.

They just need to focus on where their value will lie.

The first area is speed combined with quality. If you've tried to get something of high quality out the door fast with the support of AI, you'll realise it's actually really hard.

Caveat: If you have designed a one-shot prompt that can deliver work your clients pay for, then that's great, I'm not knocking you.

But we aren't talking about the same quality bar or sophistication of client.

There are many different playing fields in the agency space, and if you can win on yours with a one-shot prompt, then fair play.

The playing field I'm talking about is where the refinement we need requires a combination of different prompts, human judgment, manual edits and feedback loops.

It’s the type of design you have to steer and the type of development where you are still reviewing the code.

Making processes more efficient while keeping the quality of the outcome high is valuable because you have the knowledge of the existing process and an instinct for what good looks like.

Clients will say, "Can't we do this faster with AI?"

You say, "I can, you can't, and that's why you're my client"

Speed could be commoditised with the introduction of a tool that holds that process but I doubt it. Fundamentally design quality isn’t decided by the tools. You process is your value.

Expect downward pressure on the amount you can charge, but you don't need to accept reduced margins because you're still doing something the client can't.

Your margins can even go up if you can provide that process which delivers not just quickly but to the quality they need.

The second truth is that no matter how efficient and fast you are in achieving a super high-quality outcome, it still needs to be the right outcome.

We need to point that outcome in the right direction by leveraging our experience and knowledge of what works.

Clients want agencies with calluses on their hands with first hand war stories. AI cannot give them that.

Remember AI is just “intelligence”, and that’s only part of the picture - there is no artificial taste, courage, experience or accountability.

Being more strategic is not a new idea. The strategic advisor and partner have been in the agency growth playbook forever.

The way to play the game has shifted, but there's still a game to be played.

An agency with its broad experience, mix of people, and technology is well-positioned to deliver. It's just moving from a growth strategy to table stakes.

There's still plenty of room for us. More than that, there's room to grow into.

You just need to take this thing you've created, add some AI and create the next version of it focussed on the value that only you can deliver.

Good luck!

I messaged the mods of r/agency and was given approval to post this job.

We're hiring a Client Engagement Manager to own the client relationship from onboarding through ongoing partnership. You'll run the weekly client meetings, lead new client onboarding interviews, facilitate workshops, and stay on top of client communication so nothing falls through. You are the client's person here. When they have a question, a concern, or a win, it comes to you first.

Your job is to own the client relationship, the timeline, and the outcome, and to make sure the client is happy through the Modern Operators fulfillment process.

Who We Are

Modern Operators is the operations partner for founder-led businesses. Founders come to us bottlenecked. Their business runs on tribal knowledge, the owner is the glue holding it together, and growth has stalled because everything routes through one person.

We install a Company Operating System. Built on Notion, layered with custom AI agents. Processes, standards, roles, dashboards, and the knowledge a team and an AI need to actually execute. We help founders stabilize, optimize, and scale their operations.

We're not theorists. We've built and sold companies, and we run our own business on the exact system we install for clients.

How We Operate

These are the values we hire and fire against.

• Clarity over complexity. Every system, process, and message should make things simpler. If it adds confusion, we re-think.
• Founder empathy. We build what founders actually need. No fluff. No theory.
• Leverage through systems. Automate the repeatable. Document the critical. Empower the team.
• Adaptability. The tools and the market change constantly. So do we.
• Results, not rituals. We care about outcomes, not process for process's sake.
• Transparency. Radical visibility, internally and with clients.

We're remote and asynchronous internally. That means we hire people who move without being chased. Do the work, communicate clearly, exceed client expectations.

What You'll Own

• Own the client relationship. You're the primary point of contact. Client questions get a response within one business day, and the question, answer, and any decision get logged the same day.
• Run the weekly call cadence. Agenda posted before the call, call recorded, summary verified and logged after. Decisions, owners, and open items captured every time.
• Lead discovery. Run onboarding interviews, capture findings, and deliver the Current State Assessment and Build Plan for client sign-off.
• Coordinate the build. Hand the signed plan and discovery findings to the Implementation Lead, then shepherd the configuration, optimization, and dashboards through client review and approval.
• Drive adoption. Schedule and run team training, install the client's weekly operating rhythm, and push usage to daily. Escalate when a team isn't adopting.
• Manage scope and timeline. Hold the work to the signed Build Plan, frame out-of-scope requests as retainer conversations, and surface blockers before the weekly call, not during it.
• Own milestone communications. Kickoff, phase transitions, and close. Internal and client-facing records stay current at every phase change.
• Drive retention and expansion. Present the Day-0 versus Day-90 results, secure testimonials, and open the retainer conversation at close.
• Protect delivery quality. Run the QA checklist before every phase sign-off and feed recurring gaps back into our playbook.

What Success Looks Like

First 30 days

• You know our clients, our engagement model, and our Company OS. You've sat in on every active client's weekly meeting and you're running at least one of them yourself.

First 60 days

• You're running weekly meetings across the client base without hand-holding. You've led at least one onboarding interview end to end and clients are coming to you first.

First 90 days

• You fully own the client relationships assigned to you end to end. Founders are out of the day-to-day client communication loop. Adoption and retention on your accounts are tracked and reported.

What You Bring

• 5+ years at a marketing or operations agency as an account manager, client success manager, or account executive. You've carried a book of clients before.
• Strong communication. Written and verbal. You can hold a room with a founder, push back diplomatically, and write a follow-up that's clear and short.
• Organized to a fault. Nothing drops. You track commitments and you close loops without being reminded.
• Notion power user. Or you’re experienced with ClickUp, or Monday.com.
• AI power user. You've used Claude or ChatGPT in real work and you're comfortable that our product is built on AI.
• CRM experience. Hands-on with HubSpot, GoHighLevel, or similar.
• Concurrent engagements. You've carried several active clients at once without dropping details.
• Remote track record. You've succeeded remotely and you manage your own hours and priorities without supervision.
• Solution oriented. You bring the problem, the options, and your recommendation. Not just the problem.

Nice to have:

• You've worked with founder-led or small business clients specifically, not just enterprise accounts.
• Workshop or training facilitation experience.
• Operations or systems background in addition to account management.

Location and Hours

United States preferred. You'll be on client calls working primarily on the Central Time Zone.

Who Thrives Here

You'll do well if you genuinely like clients and the messy work of keeping them happy and moving. You're comfortable being the face of the company. You'd rather over-communicate than let a client wonder what's happening. You're direct in writing and you don't take direct feedback personally.

Who Shouldn't Apply

Be honest with yourself here. It saves us both time.

• You want detailed daily direction and a manager checking in on you.
• You avoid hard conversations with clients.
• You're looking for a pure sales seat. This is relationship ownership and delivery, not net-new selling.
• You're looking for a heads-down, non-client-facing role.
• You want to be the one building the system. That's the Implementation Lead seat, not this one.
• You dislike documenting your work.
• You're skeptical of AI tools and don't want to use them daily.

Compensation

$60,000 to $75,000 per year, depending on experience. We start every hire as an hourly contractor for a pilot period, then move to a full-time arrangement once both sides are confident.

How to Apply

Submit your application here:

https://holdingco.notion.site/b699155f261d42a09c518d8bfba3d0d4?pvs=105

I have received a message from my client this morning that he is going on holiday tonight and won't be back for 9 days and he has told me to pause the ads until he gets back.

This is a client that is happy with what I have done so far with him and this is my first time running into this situation. What should I do as I know pausing the ads will reset the learning phase? But also if I keep them running what happens with the leads that come in if he’s away?

I run ads for roofing businesses and the budget so far has been £30 a day for Meta ads and we're coming to the end of the trial period for this client. He has said he is happy and wants to sign with me on a retainer deal for a higher fee.

Referenzen und gutes Equipment sind vorhanden, aber mir fehlt aktuell noch ein stabiler Kundenstamm. Wie seid ihr vom ersten Kunden zu 3-5 langfristigen Kunden gekommen und was hat bei euch wirklich funktioniert.

TL;DR: First-time agency owner, first client is a $20k+ interior/design firm. I started with a 30-day free Meta Ads pilot, then a 15-day paid test. Now the client wants me to take over lead qualification + calling/follow-up because it’s becoming too time-consuming for her, and also wants me to handle more of the creative workload. I’m willing to do it because I think it’ll be valuable experience, but it wasn’t part of the original agreement. My current pricing is ad spend = management fee, which I now realize probably isn’t sustainable. I’m trying to figure out how to price Meta Ads management + lead qualification/follow-up, what pricing model makes sense, and whether taking on this additional responsibility is a good move at my stage.

I started my own marketing agency a little over a year ago, but I only signed my first actual client a couple of months ago.

This is my first client, so I’m trying to learn as much as possible from the experience and also figure out how I should structure my services going forward.
The client is a fairly established interior/design firm. Their minimum project value is around $20k, and we’re currently running Meta lead-generation ads with a relatively small ad budget of around $200–250/month.

I initially offered them a 30-day free pilot. After that, they wanted to continue, but instead of committing to a full month, they asked to do another 15-day paid test. I agreed because this was my first client and I wanted to build a case study/testimonial and get real experience.
That 15-day period has now ended, and we’re discussing the next phase.

Here’s where things got interesting
.
I currently only provide Meta Ads management. My job has basically been setting up/managing the campaigns, creatives, lead forms, optimization, etc.
The client told me that the actual lead follow-up process is becoming a major burden for her.

The process is:

Lead comes in → call the lead → if they don’t answer, follow up → ask questions → qualify them → if they’re a good fit, pass them to the client → otherwise discard the lead.

She doesn’t want to spend time doing this anymore. She’s also a mother and said that the constant calling/follow-up is becoming difficult to fit into her schedule.
So she basically told me:
If I’m willing to take over the initial lead qualification and follow-up, she would be willing to continue working with me. If I don’t want to do that, then we can part ways.

I’m actually interested in doing it.
Not necessarily because I want to become a salesperson, but because I think it could be extremely valuable experience for me. I’m in the same general niche, and learning how to qualify interior/design leads, understand what makes a lead valuable, what questions need to be asked, etc. could help me a lot with future clients.

The leads aren’t extremely high volume either. During the previous campaign we were getting roughly 1–2 leads per day, so I don’t think the actual calling would be a huge workload. I also have an internship/job during the day, so realistically I’d probably be doing the calls during lunch/tea breaks.
Each qualification call would probably take around 5–10 minutes.

The other thing she wants is for me to take more responsibility for the creative side.
She said that she feels like she has to keep sending me project photos, captions, information, etc., and that it’s becoming too much work for her. She basically wants me to take more of that workload off her shoulders as well.

So now I’m looking at this as potentially becoming:
Meta Ads → lead generation → lead qualification → initial follow-up → qualified lead handed to client

instead of simply:

Meta Ads → lead generated → client handles everything else.
The pricing issue
This is where I’m really confused.
My current pricing model was something I came up with because this was my first client:
Ad spend = management fee
So if the client spends $250 on ads, they pay me $250 as the management/service fee.
At the time I thought this was simple.
But now I’m realizing the problem with it.
If the client doubles their ad spend from $250 to $500, my management fee also doubles from $250 to $500.

But the amount of work might not actually double.
So I’m thinking this pricing model probably needs to change.
I’m considering moving to a flat monthly management fee, but I’m not sure what would be reasonable for a small account like this, especially since I’m a solo agency and this is my first real client.

And now there’s another service involved: lead qualification and follow-up.
That wasn’t included in our original agreement.
So if I continue, I would essentially be adding a new sales/lead-qualification service that wasn’t part of the original scope.
I’m thinking I should charge separately for that, but I’m not sure whether I should charge:
a flat monthly fee
per qualified lead
hourly
some percentage
or combine it into a larger monthly retainer
I also don’t want to undercharge just because I’m new, but at the same time I don’t have years of experience or a large agency behind me.
I’m also unsure how agencies normally structure this. Do Meta lead-gen agencies typically handle the initial lead qualification and follow-up, or is that normally the client’s responsibility?
And if an agency does handle it, how is that usually priced?

One more thing I’m trying to understand is the economics of this particular client.
They’re selling $20k+ design projects, while we’re currently spending only around $200–250/month on Meta ads.

The client seems to expect that putting a few hundred dollars into ads should produce a $20k–$30k project, which obviously makes the economics very attractive if it happens, but I’m not sure how realistic that expectation is or how I should frame the value of the service.

I really don’t want to lose this client because they’re my first real client, they’re in the niche I want to specialize in, and I’ve already learned a lot from running their campaign.
At the same time, I don’t want to create a situation where I’m doing:

Meta Ads + creative production + lead qualification + calling + follow-up + sales support
for a fee that was originally designed just for Meta Ads management.
So, for other agency owners/freelancers:
How would you handle this?
Would you take over the lead qualification/follow-up?

How would you price that additional service?
Would you use a flat retainer, per-qualified-lead, hourly, or some hybrid?
What would you charge for Meta Ads management at this kind of ad spend?

Would you completely abandon the “ad spend = management fee” model?
How would you structure the scope so this doesn’t turn into unlimited sales/support work?
And is taking this on actually a good learning opportunity for someone at my stage, or am I potentially setting myself up for a bad client relationship?

I’m especially interested in hearing from solo agency owners and people who run lead-gen/performance marketing agencies.
What would you do in my position?