Most advice on how to start a creative agency assumes a runway: a plan, a website, a pipeline. Nick Stagge’s version took three days and no money at all. He posted on LinkedIn that he was going out on his own as a fractional CMO, and within a week he was running an agency he hadn’t registered yet, billing around $70,000 a month. Six years later The Grounded Company is one of three agencies he runs, still bootstrapped — no loan, no investors, not even his own savings. On the NoRobots Podcast, Vlad asks him how that happened and what he’d do differently starting today.

Sixty jobs before nineteen

Nick worked around sixty jobs before he turned nineteen, including talking his way into managing a store with no relevant experience. What he took from it wasn’t hustle mythology — it was a tolerance for discomfort. He got comfortable learning on the fly, and comfortable leaving when something wasn’t working.

The useful residue is a specific kind of calm: if this doesn’t work, something else will come along. That belief is what made starting an agency from zero feel survivable rather than reckless.

The post that accidentally started a company

After stints in-house at Skullcandy and GoPro — both through IPO and after — and a run as CEO of a video production house, Nick decided he didn’t want to work for anyone and didn’t particularly want anyone working for him. He’d be a fractional CMO. He posted exactly that on LinkedIn.

Two leads arrived within ten minutes. Both closed inside twenty-four hours: Dixxon Flannel, who brought him in to build their retail program and who he still works with six years later, and Breville. That was Monday.

Wednesday brought a call from another production group. They had brands they couldn’t serve at their prices and were parceling them out. Except the caller had the wrong idea about Nick — he thought Nick owned a creative agency. When Nick started to correct him, the man explained the actual situation: ten brands, already signed, waiting to be onboarded Monday, because the agency that was supposed to take them had just folded.

Nick said yes. He spent Thursday and Friday setting up a business license, a bank account, and an email address. Monday he started onboarding ten clients while simultaneously hiring designers. Those ten were $50,000 a month in retainers, on top of Dixxon and Breville.

Sell it before you build it

Asked what his first step would be starting from zero today, Nick doesn’t hesitate: sell it before you build it. If you can’t sell it, don’t build it.

His second agency is the clean example. Grounded clients kept asking whether he knew an ad buyer or an email marketing manager. He started referring people out, then white-labeling the work under Grounded contracts — learning the process, keeping the client relationship. Only when that white-labeled business hit roughly $35,000 a month did he spin up Adapted as its own agency and bring the freelancer in-house.

The thing that irritates him is the opposite pattern: founders with a logo, business cards, and a website who have never spoken to a single potential customer. The first conversation should be about what problems someone has, which of them you can solve, and what that’s worth to them. Deliver against that and you have a company.

What actually works in content now

Content has a shorter shelf life than ever, and platforms decide who sees it. So the job is to stop the scroll and start building trust. Expecting a first touchpoint to convert a sale happens occasionally, but as a strategy it doesn’t last.

Nick splits creative into two categories that behave differently. Foundational work — brand, website, packaging — is closer to compound interest: hard to attribute, slow to pay off, but everything else rests on it. Marketing content is the opposite: test constantly, let data decide.

His teams run this in two-week sprints, deliberately borrowed from how dev teams work. Ship something, give it two weeks, read the data, iterate, overlap the next sprint. When a formula starts working, put 70 to 80 percent of your effort into scaling it and keep the remaining 20 to 30 on new ideas — because every winning formula eventually expires.

Whose opinion wins

Clients arrive with strong views about how their brand should look. Nick’s rule for handling that is neat: on foundational work, the client’s opinion matters more than anyone’s. On marketing creative, the customer’s opinion matters more.

The job is bridging those two, not picking a side. Lean too far into marketing and the brand becomes soulless, a blip that disappears. Stay too rigid on brand and you’ve built something you love that nobody cares about.

Ten years of LinkedIn, one year of crickets

The post that started the company didn’t come from nowhere. Nick had been posting on LinkedIn regularly for about a decade. The first year produced nothing — no business, no traction. He was writing thought leadership, recapping articles from his own field, which he now describes as a sales pitch everybody could see through.

What changed was writing like a person: the trip to Iceland, the problems in the business, the difficulty of balancing work and life. It still didn’t produce leads immediately. It produced conversations, podcast invitations, and magazine columns — and those compounded into the moment when one post could land two clients in a day.

Lead flow today is word of mouth, partner referrals, and organic social. Across all three of his agencies, he has never run an ad and never sent a cold email or DM.

Things that don’t scale

Nick writes handwritten letters to clients and seals them with wax. Not on a drugstore card — on something custom.

His argument is that this doesn’t just close deals, it keeps them for years, because clients start treating you like you’re in-house. He knows about their lives; he’s held their kids in the office. He credits his teenage son with reframing why any of it matters: behind every client is someone whose business feeds a family and a team.

Client red flags, in order

Nick has walked away from leads and terminated contracts. His filter runs in a strict sequence.

People first: smart, ambitious, communicative, respectful. If those four aren’t there, nothing else matters. Product second — early on he took on a product he privately didn’t believe would sell, and it didn’t; he eventually walked away because he couldn’t keep taking the money. Third is willingness to invest. Not big budgets, but not endless nickel-and-diming either. He recently ended a negotiation where concessions kept being met with fresh demands.

“We’re the carpenter and AI is the hammer”

Clients do arrive asking for AI-generated creative at a discount. Nick’s answer: they use AI as a tool, but they’re not replacing the carpenter with the hammer — and if that’s what a client wants, they’re not the right agency.

His objection is practical rather than romantic. Today AI hands you the average, the middle, assembled from what your competitors already did. He points at the identical templated flyers everyone’s neighbours produced last summer. If you’re Nike with an in-house AI team and unlimited budget, fine. If you’re doing $10 to $50 million a year and lean on AI for creative, you become interchangeable.

The template trap makes the point for him: clients come asking his team to make them templates because the ten thousand existing ones aren’t working. The problem isn’t which templates — it’s templates.

What’s next

The plan for the next 18 to 24 months is to double revenue and hire a GM or CEO to run Grounded. The hard part isn’t the revenue target, it’s that the growth has to come from somewhere other than Nick. He’s already pulling himself out of day-to-day client work, staying in quarterly reviews but out of deliverables.

His reasoning is honest about himself: he’s a builder, and the moment he’s only maintaining and optimizing, he’s both bad at it and bored — which would eventually cost the team and the clients. Notably, none of this is aimed at an acquisition. He wants someone else running it well, not a sale.

For a different take on saying no to clients and earning that right as you grow, see our episode with Josh Webber of Big Red Jelly.

Find Nick at thegroundedcompany.com or on LinkedIn, and watch the full episode on YouTube.

What does generative engine optimization actually change for a B2B company? Elad Hefetz has been building websites for enterprise tech since 2014, first as CodersClan, now as Airfleet, a 55-person team spread across a dozen countries. On the NoRobots Podcast, Vlad sits down with Elad to talk about GEO, why AI recommendations rarely come with a link, and the two pieces of advice he thinks marketers should ignore.

Finding the niche by accident

Airfleet started as CodersClan, a paid Q&A platform for developers helping developers. But the people signing up weren’t developers. They were marketers and founders who needed technical help their internal R&D teams were too busy to give.

Marketing teams wanted a landing page, a chatbot, a connection to their automation stack. Engineering was heads-down on the product. That gap turned into a business, and by now the focus is narrow: enterprise tech B2B, where a purchase involves a buying committee of six to ten people and the website has to serve every one of them.

Saying no to money

Narrowing down meant turning away work. Elad is direct about how that felt: the hard part was “saying no to people that are willing to pay you money,” especially when you technically could help them.

What made it easier was thinking in opportunity cost. Take an okay client and you may not be free when a great one shows up. It’s the same instinct Josh Webber described in his episode when he talked about earning the right to say no.

Why WordPress won for them

Airfleet tried plenty of platforms. Around 2020 they bet on Gatsby.js, built their own platform on top of it, and six months later admitted it wasn’t going to work. They migrated seven clients back to WordPress, some of them for free.

The reasoning now is less about technology and more about risk. WordPress is mature, extensible, and there’s no vendor holding the pricing lever. If a hosted builder doubles its price tomorrow, its customers have no move. Next.js with a headless CMS is a fine choice, Elad says, but switching would mean rebuilding years of accumulated capability for no client benefit.

When the package doesn’t fit

Fixed packages work for defined projects: a website, a visual identity, an SEO or GEO engagement. But scope creeps, and some work has no knowable scope at the start.

Their answer is to change the shape of the deal rather than argue about it. Ad hoc projects, hourly work, or an hourly subscription with a flat monthly fee that gives the client access to everything the agency does. Different problems, different contracts.

GEO starts with prompts, not rankings

This is the part most teams get wrong. Everyone wants to appear in ChatGPT. Elad’s reframe: “It’s about appearing for the right audience for the right intent.”

Which means the first task isn’t optimization at all. It’s working out what your buyers actually type into these tools. Airfleet built its own AI visibility platform to track unlimited prompts per client, because off-the-shelf tools cap you at a package. Once you know the prompts, you can see which sources the models lean on, and those sources vary by industry. In cybersecurity it might be a handful of publications, specific Reddit threads, or YouTube.

Mentions are the new backlinks

The structure of GEO mirrors SEO more than people expect. Technical setup, content, third parties. The difference is in the third bucket: “instead of backlinks, it’s about mentions.”

And GEO is influenced more by what’s written about you elsewhere than by your own site, though your site still shapes the sentiment of the answer. The two disciplines aren’t alternatives. As Elad puts it, “You can’t do just SEO or just GEO. It doesn’t exist.”

The shortcut, if there is one: with backlinks, any solid authority site helps. With GEO, the same specific sites keep showing up as sources. Get mentioned there and a citation is close to guaranteed.

AI recommends you. Nobody clicks.

Here’s the measurement trap. Ask an AI for the best agencies in a category and it names three. It usually doesn’t link any of them. So the buyer copies the name, pastes it into Google, and arrives as a branded search.

Which means a working GEO strategy shows up as rising brand searches, more direct traffic, and more LinkedIn activity, not as a traffic spike from chatgpt.com. Judge it by referral traffic alone and you’ll conclude it isn’t working.

On lead quality, Elad hasn’t seen a durable difference. Early on, AI-sourced buyers seemed more educated, but that’s evening out. What has clearly increased is bot traffic and automated spam submissions, which are hard to filter precisely because they look like real browsers.

Two pieces of advice to ignore

First, the AI content pendulum. It swung from “AI content can’t rank” to “automate everything,” and Elad thinks both are wrong: “The truth is somewhere in the middle.” Automate the production work, but publish an actual point of view. Fully automated content sites do show climbing impressions in Search Console, then fall off a cliff.

Second, Wikipedia. Getting listed there is roughly ten times harder than landing on a listicle, and it mostly feeds top-of-funnel prompts where the AI answers the question without naming your brand. His verdict: “it’s not a good use of your time and money.” An ordinary industry listicle does more.

Tel Aviv hours, US clients

Most of Airfleet’s clients are in the US, so Elad runs “two shifts” — one before the kids go to bed and one after. The team is global: 55 people, only nine in Israel, hired wherever the talent is, and almost always full-time rather than per project.

The cultural gap took adjusting to. “We say what we think, we’re very direct” doesn’t always land with US buyers, and he had to learn to frame the same point differently. The upside is that American clients tend to value good service and pay for it, which raises the standard for everything the agency does.

Find Elad at airfleet.co or on LinkedIn, and watch the full episode on YouTube.

How do you grow a marketing agency past the feast-or-famine stage — and keep it growing for almost a decade? Josh Webber has an unusual answer: do it with your brothers. He co-founded Big Red Jelly in 2017 after selling his first company, and has since built it into an Inc. 5000 agency with 33 in-house employees. On the NoRobots Podcast, Vlad — co-founder of NoRobots and Digital Octane — sits down with Josh to unpack the decisions behind that growth: pricing, hiring, AI, and the clients he now turns away. Watch the full conversation above, or read the highlights below.

Working with family: swim lanes and “professional mode”

Running an agency with two brothers sounds like a recipe for conflict, and Josh doesn’t sugarcoat it: “there’s probably more cons than pros.” What fixed the early bumps was treating the company like a company — clear areas of responsibility, or “swim lanes,” with real job titles, descriptions, and KPIs for each co-founder.

Debates still happen. The rule that keeps them productive: “when we come to work, it’s professional mode, nothing’s personal.” One brother even left for a few years to do business development elsewhere — and rejoined six months ago, reuniting all three.

Cutting the fluff and working from the client’s P&L

Josh started Big Red Jelly partly out of frustration with big-agency inefficiency — vague line items like “strategy” and “creative” that clients pay for without seeing a practical benefit. His fix is to reverse-engineer every engagement from the client’s P&L: even a rebrand has to connect to conversion rates, the sales cycle, and revenue.

He’s candid that world-class freelancers are often the cheaper, more efficient option, which means an agency has to justify itself with outcomes: “everything that we do has got to impact the top and bottom line.” As performance marketing normalized paying for results rather than deliverables, that bar only got higher.

AI, GEO, and the rising value of human connection

Big Red Jelly now works with GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) — visibility in ChatGPT and Claude — alongside classic SEO. Josh’s framing, borrowed from Good to Great: technology is an accelerant. “It’s rocket fuel as opposed to gasoline” — AI amplifies whatever strategy, processes, and people you already have, good or bad.

Prospects increasingly show up with AI-built websites that get roughly “eighty percent of the way there.” The agency’s job is the last stretch: industry expertise, the right inputs, and turning a generic build into something that actually converts. In Josh’s view, the more AI does, the more clients crave a human who understands their business and simplifies a complicated landscape.

Agency pricing: bronze, silver, gold — then the shift to retainers

When COVID hit, about a third of Big Red Jelly’s recurring clients paused within a week. The team responded by niching down to one-time brand and build projects, priced in bronze/silver/gold tiers — guardrails for the sales team, with a deposit (ideally full payment) up front. Positioned correctly, more clients accept upfront payment than most founders expect.

Recently the agency pivoted again, leading with its ongoing “grow” service: two months up front, then a monthly retainer on a six- or twelve-month contract. “Recurring revenue is just such a nice thing” — easier to plan, staff, and schedule around.

Client red flags: earning the right to say no

As you grow, “you start to earn the right to say no more.” Josh’s number-one red flag: clients who hire experts and then dictate every move. His analogy — you don’t stand over a plumber’s shoulder telling him which screw to use. Holding that line, ironically, often closes more deals by establishing expert status.

Red flag number two: payment terms. Net-60 requests, no deposit, or “pay when it’s delivered” are dealbreakers now, even though they were tempting to accept in the early hustle years. For more on picking the right clients in the first place, see the client acquisition strategies agencies swear by.

Hiring when one role gets 800 applications

Both Vlad and Josh have watched job postings balloon from ~50 applicants to 700–800, with the same three or four genuinely suitable candidates. Josh’s filters: a walkthrough video inside the job description that answers all the usual first-call questions, then a simple ask — email your resume, portfolio, and a short video on why you’re a fit. Half never reply, filtering themselves out.

Big Red Jelly is also relaunching its paid internship program: three months is enough to see the intangibles — hard-working, smart, curious — and it doubles as a recruiting pipeline from Utah Valley’s talent pool.

Utah’s Silicon Slopes: edge or constraint?

Being in Utah rather than New York or LA is, on balance, an advantage: East and West Coast companies hire Big Red Jelly because it’s more affordable yet still US-based, and Silicon Slopes supplies talent and an entrepreneurial ecosystem. The trade-off is proximity to deal flow — Josh admits a year in NYC or LA would mean closing “deals like crazy.” His investor-style workaround: watch the next up-and-coming hubs, like Nashville, Charlotte, and Tampa Bay.

Advice for new founders

Starting over today, Josh would niche down faster, build strategic partnerships early, and spend his time on exactly two things: sales and marketing, and recruiting A-players. On the operational side of that, see when agencies should stop, restart, or hold the line and what running a digital agency actually teaches you.

For individuals entering the field, his bar is simple: technical skills get you the job, but “soft skills will get you promoted.” And the Big Red Jelly tagline that applies to any career: “be the best at everything that requires zero talent” — punctual, proactive, communicative, curious. Do that consistently, and you outpace most of your peers.

Find Josh at bigredjelly.com or on LinkedIn, and watch the full episode on YouTube.

We’ve covered decision-making in agency project management before – in our first piece on the topic, two agency leaders shared how they navigate project pivots and high-stakes calls. The responses were pointed enough that we decided to keep asking. This time, we brought the same questions to two very different teams: Brut Marketing, a boutique strategy and marketing agency operating between Bali and LA, and Superbase, an independent brand design and strategy firm based in Boise, Idaho.

Same questions. Different contexts. Genuinely different answers.

When Rebuilding Is The Smarter Move

Not every project can be salvaged by iteration. Sometimes the most efficient path forward is back to zero – and recognizing that early is its own skill.

Have you ever had to rebuild or redo a project from scratch? What led to that situation?

Dian Andrusary, Partner at Brut Marketing:

Yes – more than once. Usually, it happens when a project moves into design or promotion too quickly, before the foundation is really defined. A brand may already have a logo, a website, or some market activity, but the positioning is still blurry, the audience is too broad, or the product story is not sharp enough. In those cases, trying to “fix” things layer by layer often wastes more time than starting over with strategy and building properly from there.

Changing Course Mid-Project – and Knowing When It’s Necessary

Stopping a project mid-process is a harder call than it sounds. The work is already underway, time and money are in, and changing direction means admitting the original path wasn’t right.

Have you ever stopped a project mid-process because you believed the direction was wrong?

Dian: Yes – especially in product or service launches where the first goal is not to scale immediately, but to test viability. In those cases, we often go to market with an MVP version, a focused offer, and a set of working hypotheses around audience, positioning, and value proposition. Sometimes the market response shows that the initial assumption is simply not strong enough. When that happens, we would rather pause, step back, and rethink the core proposition than keep pushing a direction that is not being validated. For us, that is not failure – it is part of a strategic process.

Kelly Williams, Founder and Creative Director of Superbase:

Mid-project pivots aren’t uncommon, and can happen in varying degrees and for various reasons. For example, we’ve had projects that required drastic changes in the direction due to client name changes, trademark issues, or leadership changes on the client side. Of course, those are all external factors. As far as changing directions during a project because of some sort of evolution with the creative internally – yes, this has happened too. If, throughout the course of the project, we notice that something isn’t working or we receive new information that impacts the direction, we must adapt to this. Although it’s very rare, this can certainly happen, and we’re not too stubborn to admit if something isn’t working. We want to be proud of the work. So, if it becomes clear that we would not be proud of the work, we pause, re-evaluate, and adjust.

The Decisions That Shape Everything Else

Every project involves dozens of small calls, but a few carry disproportionate consequences – the ones that set the direction everything else follows.

What type of decision in your work carries the most responsibility or risk?

Dian: The most high-stakes decisions are always the early strategic ones: positioning, audience prioritisation, offer logic, and go-to-market direction. A visual mistake can usually be corrected. But a wrong strategic decision affects everything that comes after it – website structure, messaging, content, campaign mechanics, media budget, and ultimately how the market understands the brand. That is why we treat early-stage thinking with the same seriousness as final execution.

Kelly: I believe that our branding work requires the most planning, research, and insight. It can be a risky endeavor to start a new brand or undergo a rebrand. There can be a lot of resources invested into it. So, we try to help our clients understand that it is worthwhile to take the time necessary to do it right. Much of the responsibility is in the form of expectation management, and being able to navigate subjective topics in order to keep the work moving forward.

Owning Mistakes: How Agencies Handle Accountability

Things go wrong in every long-term client relationship. What distinguishes good agencies isn’t a perfect track record – it’s how they respond when something breaks.

How do you handle responsibility when a decision made by your team causes problems for the client?

Dian: First, we take responsibility quickly and directly. No hiding behind the process, no trying to soften the issue. Then we break the situation down very clearly: what happened, what impact it created, what can be fixed immediately, and what needs to change internally so it does not happen again. In our experience, clients can forgive mistakes much faster than they can forgive defensiveness or a vague response.

Kelly: As the founder and director of the studio, the responsibility always ultimately falls on my shoulders. So even if my team or a member of my team makes a call that causes a problem for the client, the client doesn’t view that as a one-on-one issue. It’s something that affects the entire business. I try to always stand by my teams’ decisions and support them, but if there is clearly a bad judgement call, Superbase owns up to it, and we adjust internally. If there is good chemistry with the client, we all understand that we are working together toward a common goal. Problems aren’t usually the result of only one decision. There is almost always a pattern or some underlying issues that can be discovered and resolved in order to avoid an impasse.

The Strangest Brief They’ve Ever Worked Around

Agency project management rarely stays within the lines of the original brief. Occasionally it goes somewhere nobody planned for.

What was the strangest or most unusual requirement you had to design or build around?

Dian: One of the more unusual challenges was working on a tennis platform that had to serve very different needs inside one ecosystem. It was not just about making a nice interface – the product had to combine booking, CRM functionality, web and app experiences, and features for both players and tennis businesses. The real challenge was making something quite complex feel intuitive and coherent for very different users. Projects like that force you to think beyond pages or screens and design around an entire system.

Kelly: This isn’t necessarily a design requirement, but as far as strange moments in my career – one that comes to mind was self-inflicted, actually. Working as the Creative Director for a footwear company at the time, I had this idea for a product photoshoot that would require some snakes slithering around the product. A reptile rental business in Southern California turned out to be the solution. The budget didn’t stretch to the optional snake handler, so I signed a waiver and opted to handle them myself. Snakes aren’t really my thing – but people in Hollywood do this kind of stuff all the time, so how hard could it be? Picking up a bunch of snakes and trying to bring out the supermodel in them was a pretty new experience, to say the least. They crawled all over me, but the project got done with no bites. Honestly, I’m convinced the snakes shared my sense of humor about the whole thing.

Final Thoughts

What stands out across both conversations is that strong agency leadership is rarely about always getting it right the first time. It’s about knowing when to pause, when to rebuild, when to defend a direction, and when to admit it no longer works. Whether it’s a boutique strategy team or an independent design studio, the common thread is a willingness to stay flexible without losing conviction. The best decisions in agency project management often happen long before launch day – in the uncomfortable moments where teams choose clarity over momentum, honesty over ego, and long-term outcomes over short-term convenience.

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Client acquisition is one of the most talked-about – and often misunderstood – aspects of running a creative business. While there’s no shortage of advice online, the reality is that the most effective client acquisition strategies tend to be highly personal, shaped by experience, relationships, and lessons learned the hard way.

We’ve gathered insights from three creative agency leaders who share what’s working, what hasn’t, and how they think about attracting the right kind of work.

High-Performing Channels and Where Quality Comes From

Not all acquisition channels are created equal. Some bring volume, others bring alignment – and the difference matters.

What are your top two client acquisition channels right now, and which one brings the highest-quality projects?

Courtney Todd, fractional CMO, creative director and founder of Umlaut Agency:

Referrals and past clients, hands down. Most of the work coming in is through people I’ve already worked with or people they’ve introduced me to. Those projects are almost always the best fit. There’s already trust, they understand the value of strategic work, and we can skip the back-and-forth and get straight into solving real problems. I also often have people who find me through LinkedIn or my website.

Josh Denberg, creative director and founder of Division of Labor:

We are pretty well known within the Series B startup community due to our past projects, so word of mouth continues to be our strongest client acquisition channel. The founder community in San Francisco is quite tight-knit and we really value when happy clients pass our name along. In addition, SEO/GEO – particularly with third-party references – play a major role. Many clients often find us by searching online or asking tools like ChatGPT or Claude for top ad agencies for Series B startups and B2B tech companies. Because of that, we make an effort to stay current, even as things evolve quickly in that space.

Vincent Romeo, creative director and owner of Romeo + Co:

My current acquisition channels include reaching out to my existing contact list, sending email blasts, referrals, and social media. Out of all of these, referrals tend to bring in the highest-quality projects, as they come with a level of trust and familiarity that makes the working relationship much smoother from the start.

What Client Acquisition Strategies Didn’t Work – and Why It Matters

Failure is an underrated teacher in client acquisition. Often, what doesn’t work tells you more about your business than what does.

What have you tried for client acquisition that didn’t work, and what did you learn from it?

Courtney: Cold email never really clicked for me. I know it works for some people, but it’s never felt aligned with how I build relationships or how my clients make decisions. The work I do usually starts with trust and context, and cold outreach just doesn’t create that in a meaningful way

Josh: We tried direct cold calling, and it ended up being a big failure for us. We hired someone dedicated to it and were doing 10 or more intro calls a month with potential clients for almost a year, but it ultimately led to nothing. It was a valuable lesson in understanding that not every traditional outreach method fits every business, and that our efforts are better spent on channels that align more naturally with how our clients prefer to engage.

Vincent: I once tried to reposition my approach by introducing a completely new system, but it failed pretty badly. It was a useful learning experience, though – it showed me that not every change or new strategy will resonate, and that it’s important to test ideas carefully and stay grounded in what already works.

The Clients Worth Saying No To

Client acquisition isn’t just about getting more work – it’s about getting the right work. Knowing what to avoid is just as important as knowing what to pursue.

What type of projects or clients do you actively avoid today?

Courtney: I tend to avoid companies that don’t align with my values, as that usually creates friction over time. I’m also cautious with clients who want pure execution without taking a step back to think strategically, because that often leads to short-term fixes rather than meaningful results. Similarly, teams where everything is reactive and no one truly owns decisions can be challenging to work with. I’ve learned the hard way that even strong work tends to fall apart in those kinds of environments, no matter how good the initial output is.

Josh: Our work in the Series B tech space is our bread and butter, so we rarely turn down projects in that area. That said, we do actively avoid working with clients who aren’t respectful or enjoyable to collaborate with. No matter the industry, we believe it’s important to work with people we genuinely respect – life’s too short to spend time on difficult or negative working relationships.

Vincent: I’ve had strong success in areas like retail packaging and sports branding, and I know where my strengths lie. Right now, I see a lot of opportunity in toys, games, and outdoor products, but accessing the right contacts in that space has been a challenge. Rather than avoiding specific types outright, I’m more focused on finding better entry points into the industries where I know there’s demand.

Time vs. Impact: What Wasn’t Worth It

Some efforts feel productive but don’t actually move the business forward. Recognizing these early can save months – or years – of wasted energy.

What marketing effort took the most time but produced the least real business impact?

Courtney: Probably organic social when it’s treated as the main ROI driver. It’s great for staying visible, building credibility, and keeping your brand top of mind, but on its own, it hasn’t consistently translated into high-quality leads. I’ve found it works much better as a supporting channel that reinforces other efforts, rather than being relied on as the primary growth engine.

Josh: Organized, formal pitches and RFPs are actually the least productive and the biggest waste of time. Tons of work and often even if we “win” the budgets are rarely worth it. That said, we still consider pitches selectively and are open to paid pitch opportunities, which feel much more balanced and worthwhile. At this point, we’ve moved away from unpaid pitches unless the opportunity is truly exceptional and aligns strongly with our goals.

Vincent: Promotional mailings and online advertising have taken a significant amount of time and effort, but haven’t delivered meaningful business results for me. While they can have some visibility benefits, they haven’t translated into the kind of high-quality leads or projects that justify the investment.

When Reputation Matters More Than Budget

Sometimes, the right project isn’t the highest-paying one. Strategic trade-offs can play a role in long-term growth – if approached carefully.

Have you ever taken a project for its reputational value despite a low budget?

Courtney: Yes, but it’s usually because I believe in the person or what they’re building. Some of those projects have turned into long-term relationships or opened doors I wouldn’t have expected. It’s never about exposure for the sake of it. There has to be real potential or alignment behind the decision.

Josh: Of course. We look at reputational value in terms of both the creative potential of the campaign and the growth trajectory of the brand. If a project has a smaller budget but offers strong creative opportunities, or if we see significant upside in the company’s future, we’re open to it. We tend to evaluate startups a bit like investors – considering the product, the team, and the long-term potential – so we’re sometimes willing to accept less in the short term if we believe the long-term payoff could be meaningful.

Vincent: Earlier in my career, I did take on projects primarily for their reputational value, even if the budget was low. At that stage, it made sense as a way to build a portfolio and credibility. More recently, though, I’ve moved away from that approach and focus more on projects that are both creatively and financially worthwhile.

Final Thoughts

If there’s one consistent thread across these perspectives, it’s this: the best client acquisition strategies are built on trust, alignment, and clarity – not just activity.

Referrals outperform cold outreach. Fit matters more than volume. And not every “growth tactic” is worth your time.

Instead of chasing every possible lead, the smarter approach is to double down on relationships, stay visible in the right places, be selective about who you work with, and continuously refine based on what actually leads to great work.

Because at the end of the day, the goal isn’t just more clients – it’s better ones.

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