You do not have a capacity problem.
By Simon Ellicott · September 22, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
You do not have a capacity problem.
At least, not necessarily.
Many Amazon agency founders I speak to tell me their team is at capacity.
The capacity sheet agrees.
Everyone looks busy.
Client work is stacked up.
Hiring feels like the obvious answer, but a capability audit often reveals something different.
The team is not overloaded by the right work.
It is overloaded by a mixture of:
• Low-value legacy accounts that have long outgrown their commercial logic
• Vague scopes of work that turn “account management” into unlimited client requests
• Senior people doing work that should be systemised, delegated or stopped
• Reactive work created by poor handovers, unclear ownership or weak client expectations
• Reporting and admin that proves activity but does little to move a client forward
That is not a headcount problem, it is an allocation problem.
I have seen highly capable teams appear stretched, while simultaneously being prevented from giving the right level of care and strategic thought to the clients they actually want more of.
The uncomfortable bit is that leadership often owns part of this.
We retain the small account because it is recurring revenue.
We tell the team to minimise service on it to protect capacity.
Then we wonder why service feels inconsistent, people are firefighting and the numbers suggest we need another hire.
You cannot build a high value, strategy led agency by asking good people to under service one part of the client base while over-delivering for another.
The better question is not:
“Who do we need to hire?”
It is:
“Which clients, services and ways of working are consuming capacity without creating enough value?”
Sometimes the answer is a hire.
More often, it is sharper scopes, better account segmentation, clearer ownership
... and the confidence to retire, re-home or reprice work that no longer fits.
Capacity is not just about how much work the team can do.
It is about whether they have enough room to do the work that matters.
#AmazonAgency #AgencyGrowth #AgencyLeadership #CapacityPlanning #AmazonConsulting #ClientProfitability #AgencyStrategy #Ecommerce
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