This Week's Agency Insights

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

What's Top of Mind

Profitable projects, unprofitable agency? – How to pull the 6 levers that impact margins, from staffing to scope management to AI.
"We're specializing"...but every deal is still bespoke. - David Hoos on why most agencies think they're growing vertically but their behavior says otherwise.

Margins and growth direction both start with the same foundation: knowing exactly who you serve. Join us for our free monthly Knowledge Share where we're diving deep into ICP. Bring yours and get real-time feedback from Peter. Feb 18th, 12:30 PM ET.

📌 Save your spot here.

What We're Talking About

You don't need more dashboards. You need better questions.

We break down five lenses for using the data you already have - engagements, clients, employees, new business, and team sentiment - to make clearer, faster decisions without overcomplicating your reporting.

Tune in to our latest episode: "How Agencies Should Actually Use Data."

👉 [Listen on Spotify] | [Listen on Apple]
💬 Liked it? Drop a review, it helps us reach more agency founders.

What We’ve Made

The Business Development Collection is a curation of real, winning proposals and SOWs from Barrel Holdings agencies along with our New Outreach Message Kit, Biz Intake Guide and Agency Lead Tracker. 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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The number that funds everything else

In this week's AgencyHabits Podcast, Peter and Sei-Wook do a deep dive on agency profit - specifically, why so many founders misunderstand what healthy numbers actually look like. The core insight: gross margin is the starting point for everything. It's not just a metric, it's the funding source for the rest of your business. Without strong gross margin, you don't have the dollars to invest in growth, build systems, or weather volatility. They break down: Gross margin vs. EBITDA The levers...

3 days ago • 1 min read

Two clients. Same budget. Very different outcomes.

In this week's AgencyHabits Podcast, Peter and Sei-Wook introduce the concept of engagement yield: the idea that every client engagement should generate returns far beyond the invoice. Revenue is obvious. You agree on scope, you deliver, you get paid. But the best agencies extract much more from every engagement, and that's what compounds over time. They break it down into four components: Proof: Case studies, testimonials, portfolio assets. The stuff that makes the next sale easier....

10 days ago • 1 min read

BEFORE You Invest in Marketing

This Week's Agency Insights Every week, we share content to help you run your agency business. What's Top of Mind Outbound didn't fail you. Your foundation did. – Why most agencies jump to marketing too early, and the two high-leverage areas to fix first. "Feedback loses value when it's delayed." - That's why Danny Gavin runs quarterly CSATs, not annual surveys. He shared the system behind his team's 100% score (and why process matters more than the number). Note: we'll be diving deeper into...

14 days ago • 1 min read