This Week's Agency Insights

Every week, we share content to help you run your agency business.

What's Top of Mind

In 2025, the fastest agencies grew 34%. The slowest shrank 15%. That's a 49-point gap. - Nicholas Petroski and the Promethean Research team just published the 2026 Digital Agency Growth Guide. It's free, and built on 10+ years of research.
We're halfway through the year. Do you know where you're at, and where you're headed? - Our FREE Annual Goal Setting Checklist works just as well as a mid-year reset. Revisit it now before Q3 planning kicks in.

What We're Talking About

Everyone's chasing AI trends. Almost no one's asking what to keep betting on.

We walk through the six fundamentals that won't change in the next decade - trust, specialization, leadership, hospitality, results, and reputation - and why doubling down on them matters more than ever.

Tune in to our latest episode: "What Isn't Going to Change in the Next Ten Years."

Watch the full episode on YouTube.

What We’ve Made

The Business Development Collection is a curation of real, winning proposals and SOWs from Barrel Holdings agencies. This week, we also added our FULL Agency Growth Engine Playbook. Now available for purchase.

P.S.

If you found value here, The AgencyHabits Podcast takes it further. Give it a listen, and if it landed, leave a review. It’s fuel for this work.

Who are we?

Hi, we're Peter and Sei-Wook, co-founders of Barrel Holdings, a portfolio of agency businesses. We also run AgencyHabits, a resource for agency operators featuring lessons learned from our various agency businesses.

Thanks for being a subscriber. If you or anyone you know is interested in selling their agency business, please check out what types of agencies we're looking for and email hi@barrel-holdings.com.

Also: Peter posts a lot of agency content on LinkedIn, give him a follow!

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Why "AI-first" won't save you

This Week's Agency Insights Every week, we share content to help you run your agency business. What's Top of Mind "In 3 months, 'AI-powered' as a headline will look lazy." – Ethan Driskill on why everyone's advantage is also their competitor's. If AI isn't your real differentiator, dig deeper. So what should your positioning actually be? – The four-part framework we use across Barrel Holdings: category, wedge, provable differentiators, and the real "why now" (hint: it's probably not AI). What...

1 day ago • 1 min read

Write it while it's fresh

Six months after a great project, you're trying to cobble together a case study. You don't remember the details. The client contact has moved on. The metrics are buried somewhere. Sound familiar? Episode 37 covers the fix: three components of proof, when to capture them, and habits that make it easier - debriefs, QBRs, quarterly proof sprints, and who should own it. 👀 Watch on YouTube here. 🎧 Or listen here. Who are we? Hi, we're Peter and Sei-Wook, co-founders of Barrel Holdings, a portfolio...

5 days ago • 1 min read

The antidote to AI fatigue

Everyone's asking what's going to change because of AI. Peter and Sei-Wook asked a different question: What isn't going to change in the next 10 years? Episode 36 is about the things that stay stable, and why you can build a strategy around them. 👀 Watch on YouTube here. 🎧 Or listen here. Who are we? Hi, we're Peter and Sei-Wook, co-founders of Barrel Holdings, a portfolio of agency businesses. We also run AgencyHabits, a resource for agency operators featuring lessons learned from our...

12 days ago • 1 min read