After scaling my last agency well into eight figures and advising dozens of agen
By Johnghiorso · October 3, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
After scaling my last agency well into eight figures and advising dozens of agency founders since, the same three things decide whether an agency keeps growing or hits a ceiling.
People.
Process.
Positioning.
1/ PEOPLE
Founders hire too fast and fire too slow.
A bad executive hire costs $200-300K and sets the business back 6-12 months.
I use a matrix of about 30 criteria for every leadership hire. If someone checks 29 of the 30, I still won't hire them.
You can train domain expertise. You can't train tenacity, self-awareness, or the ability to see the business in the third person.
2/ PROCESS
Most agencies operationalize delivery or growth. The ones that scale do both.
Without a repeatable growth system, new business stops keeping pace with churn. Without repeatable delivery, churn becomes the problem.
That's why so many agencies stall around $3-5M.
Referrals and founder-led sales get you there. Getting past it takes a growth system and a delivery team that don't depend on the founder.
3/ POSITIONING
If you feel like you're competing with a thousand agencies, you aren't niche enough.
The niche you want is narrow enough to dominate and wide enough to warrant outside expertise.
Too broad and you can't be credible. Too narrow and no one is hiring a separate agency for it.
Get all three right and the ceiling moves. Miss one and it doesn't matter how good you are at the other two.