There's an established concept called the barbell method, and I think every agen
By Johnghiorso · September 25, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
There's an established concept called the barbell method, and I think every agency founder should use it when figuring out their positioning.
It works like this:
Start broad. Take on different kinds of work. You need enough reps with enough clients to figure out what you're actually really good at, what clients value most, and what you can repeat across more than one account.
Once you see the same type of work succeed with multiple clients, go narrow.
Build your offer and positioning around that service, get really good at delivering it, and become known for solving that specific problem.
Then, once you have enough scale and a strong client base, start widening.
Build adjacent services that you can cross-sell into your existing clients, but that still broadly fit your niche and ICP. You're not arbitrarily branching out. You're expanding from a position of strength.
Stay broad forever and nobody really knows what you do. Go narrow too early and you might build the entire company around the wrong service.