Most agencies don’t start with a strategy.
Or a niche.
Or a vision deck.
This one started in a train station in Croatia.
Ryan Burch didn’t plan to build an agency.
He didn’t even plan to leave his job with massive, household name clients.
He just said yes to one freelance project.
Then another.
Then suddenly, he was an “accidental agency owner.”
But here’s the part I couldn’t stop thinking about:
He intentionally refused to name the agency after himself.
Not ego.
Not branding.
Not trendiness.
Something much deeper.
In this episode, Ryan and I talk about the stuff agency owners usually only admit off record:
Why niching down actually scared him more after COVID
How referral only growth quietly caps your next stage
The hidden danger of clients who outgrow you (or never grow at all)
And the moment he realized his agency needed to exist without him
At one point, he tells a story about a stranger he met while traveling
A single sentence she said still shapes how he thinks about time, money, and growth today.
Honestly, I didn’t expect it to hit as hard as it did.
If you’re somewhere between:
“This agency still needs me”
and “I don’t want to do this forever”
This conversation will feel uncomfortably familiar.
Catch the full episode on The Agency Uplift Podcast
Get the Client Call Analyzer and 4 more powerful tools for free at:
THE AGENCY LEVERAGE BLUEPRINT
- Sean
P.S. Near the end, Ryan explains why COVID actually pushed his agency away from niching down and how he’s still untangling that decision six years later. If you’ve ever felt paralyzed about picking a lane, don’t skip that part.