The whole ladder, in twenty-seven chapters.
Five parts, from learning the craft to running the shop. Each chapter is written as an issue of The HOLD Letter and kept here.
The chapters still to come carry their working titles until they are written. Each published chapter is a five-minute read.
7 of 27 chapters published.
Start with Issue 01Read the latest
The Ladder
What each rung of an agency career actually is, and where it stalls.
- The map nobody gives you: what each rung of the agency ladder actually is
- Learning the craft: the years before anyone gives you a room
- Owning a room: from doing the work to carrying the relationship
- Being seen: why great work alone stalls a career
- The rung where careers stall: from running accounts to running the number
The Client Craft
The work wins the client. These are the four moves that keep them.
- Why agencies lose the clients they should keepThe work was good and the account left anyway. The post-mortem never finds why.
- Have the call before they ask for itThe silence before bad news costs more than the bad news does.
- The answer you never gaveA date given instead of a decision is the answer, and it means no.
- Own the bit that was never in scopeWhy “is this our job?” is the wrong question, and what to ask instead.
- Paying to fix their problemWhen you pay for a client's problem, the client never sees what it costs.
- Lead the handoff or lose the renewalHanding a healthy account to the team is where good relationships quietly break.
- Drop the credit and keep the clientBeing proved right takes something from the person who signs your renewal.
- The clients I did not keepEighty per cent retention has a second half. That is where the method came from.
The Number
The commercial discipline under the work: margin, pricing, scope and the book you already have.
- Billings are vanity, gross profit is the score: the three margin layersThe client you name first can be the one that leaves you nothing.
- Pricing: holding the number
- How agencies charge: the money model behind the number
- Scope: the margin that dies one favour at a time
- The client portfolio: goldmines, workhorses, money pits
- The cheapest growth: the book you already have
- Winning the work: how agency revenue actually grows
Running the Shop
Capacity, the shape of the team, and the second line of leaders below you.
- Utilisation and capacity: when the next hire pays for itself
- The shape of the team: the structure that protects margin
- Building the second line: the leaders below you
- The pitch P&L and the client you decline
- When the big account leaves: leading the shop through a bad year
The Owner's Chapters
What running the business teaches that being employed does not.
- What owning the agency taught me that employment never could
- The business that breaks when it grows
- Contract architecture: the redesign that kept clients and margin
- The exit rungs: where the ladder goes after the top