Eight days. $18k of MRR. Gone. It wasn't a bad month. It was a bad model. > Earl
By George Barnett Reid 👀 · October 5, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Eight days. $18k of MRR. Gone.
It wasn't a bad month. It was a bad model.
> Early 2025, US tariffs land
> Clients rerun their margins
> The retainer is the easiest line on the sheet to cut
> Three conversations, three cancellations
> Eight days later I'm down $18k MRR
The work hadn't got worse. It just stopped being affordable at agency pricing, and nothing I said about performance changed that.
Months later a $50M/yr brand asked what a retainer would cost. I could have quoted $6k a month.
Instead I put one person into their business full-time at $3.2k.
Same person, still there 18 months on.
Worse for my invoice. Better for literally everything else.
Turns out the f*cked part of the agency model was never the delivery. It was that my revenue depended on the client never getting their own senior hire.