You’re busy.
Clients are paying.
But every new hire somehow creates more drag, not less.
That’s not a people problem.
It’s a structural problem.
In this episode, I sat down with Mark Meyerson (Director at One Egg) to unpack what actually breaks agencies as they grow and why most founders misdiagnose it.
Most owners think the issue is capacity.
More clients → more people → problem solved.
What’s really happening:
You’re hiring into chaos, with no leverage and no focus.
3️⃣ You can’t train motivation or curiosity
Mark is blunt: skills are teachable. Drive isn’t. The best hires showed curiosity before they were hired, asking better questions, going beyond the brief, and treating test projects like real client work.
2️⃣ Hiring fast hides bad structure
Rushing hires usually means you’re avoiding harder work: defining standards, documenting “what good looks like,” and slowing the process down enough to see how someone really operates.
1️⃣ Agencies generate cash but not leverage
Agencies are cashflow positive but slow to scale. Mark explains how pairing an agency with a product business (in his case, Amazon brands) creates a flywheel: one funds growth, the other scales it.
The Fix:
• Slow your hiring process down on purpose (real work > interviews)
• Niche your services so “good work” is easier to define and repeat
• Build for leverage, not just monthly cashflow
Catch the full episode on Apple | LISTEN HERE | Spotify | LISTEN HERE |
I launched a free 5 day email course for agency owners: The 5 mistakes keeping your agency stuck, and the 5 Custom GPTs that solve them. Get it free at:
THE AGENCY LEVERAGE BLUEPRINT
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– Sean
P.S. Mark explains why the better your product business performs, the worse your cash problem gets and why that’s not a bug. That's the point.