Reflections on Agency Entrepreneurship: Things I Learned Along the Journey

With Co-Founder of Barrel Holdings, Peter Kang

If you could give your younger self one piece of advice about building an agency, what would it be—and what advice would you ignore?

If I could give my younger self advice about building an agency, I’d emphasize the importance of building a great team. This is a combination of continuously recruiting for talent and also being very deliberate in performance management, quickly transitioning out those who underperform or aren’t a good fit. By having the right people around, everything else becomes a lot easier.

A piece of advice I’d ignore is anything too prescriptive in how agency operations are run. There are many ways to be profitable as an agency. You don’t need to be dogmatic about billing models, utilization rates, time tracking, etcetera. There are core principles like understanding the clients’ needs, ensuring you’re delivering value, and knowing how the client values the results you’re producing. If you understand these, you can be quite flexible in how you implement your operations.

What was a particularly tough lesson from your marketing career that you’re glad is behind you?

A tough lesson for me was this belief that I could just figure marketing out on my own if I spent enough time on it. I learned a great deal, but I don’t think I ever went beyond surface level. What’s worse, I didn’t bring in people soon enough to really teach and lead our marketing efforts for clients. I was too stubborn thinking that I could somehow learn quickly on my own and then lead a team of inexperienced employees.

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You’re often candid in your LinkedIn posts. Have you gotten any responses that have surprised you?

I’m always surprised when I meet people in passing and they mention having come across my LinkedIn posts. These are people who’ve never “liked” or commented on my posts, but they tell me they’ve enjoyed or gotten value from reading the posts.

How has your thinking about “transparency” in agency-client relationships evolved over the years?

I think my understanding of “transparency” has become more nuanced over the years. Early on, transparency was about sharing hours logged each week along with some notes. But over time, I realized the right kind of transparency for an agency was more about proactively managing expectations by sharing information when appropriate.

An example of this is if your team flags that something is going off-rails with an engagement. Transparency in such a situation would be to reach out to the client and to give them a heads up on what’s happening along with assurances on how your team is already addressing the issues. These convos are never easy, but, if you can stay ahead and not let bad news hide in the dark for too long, you can build trust with clients even through rough patches.

I think the explosion of content options has raised the bar on what grabs and keeps people’s attention. Personalization, depth, and specificity are more important than ever.

What’s a marketing “rule” you think is outdated or overrated, and why?

The idea that people have short attention spans and that things need to be short and snappy and click-baity is a marketing rule that I think has largely been disproven.

I think the explosion of content options has raised the bar on what grabs and keeps people’s attention. Personalization, depth, and specificity are more important than ever. I think long-form content, whether in text, audio, or video formats, can be very engaging and successful if done well and tailored to a very specific audience.

How do you balance data-driven decision-making with intuition and creativity in your agencies?

We work closely with clients, and the degree of collaboration really informs the balance. Some clients may lean very heavily towards data, and that’s where we can balance things out with creativity. Or a client might come in with some really out-there creative ideas, and we can bring some data-based approaches to refine their ideas.

What’s a small, everyday habit that’s had an outsized impact on your marketing leadership?

Conscious content consumption is key. The things I listen to, watch, and read daily are going to shape my opinions and thoughts, and be the raw materials from which I can synthesize insights and new ideas. I try to reserve chunks of my day for reading things I’ve pre-selected versus just being fed by an algorithm.

If someone is thinking about becoming a marketing entrepreneur, what are some pros and cons you’d encourage them to consider?

Pros: Building a business, a team, a roster of clients, and a reputation beyond yourself as an individual is really rewarding. It’s a really fun and exciting learning journey.

Cons: There’s great volatility in the journey, the highest of highs and lowest of lows, and the inherent unpredictability of dealing with many other human beings in intense situations (clients and employees alike). It’s not for everyone, and the stress can really get to some people.

Careerwise, is there anything you’ve achieved that you didn’t expect to? 

I never thought I’d be overseeing multiple businesses and building my second act on this portfolio/holding company concept. It’s early days, but it’s one that I’m incredibly excited to have stumbled into. I wasn’t even aware of things like capital allocation and M&A early in my career, so it’s definitely been unexpected.

What are some milestones you initially aimed for, but ended up choosing a different path?

I think I assumed that at some point we’d sell our agency business and join the club of agency founders who scaled their business and had a successful exit. In a sense, I did “exit” the business, but I’m still an owner and instead have taken a completely different path by building a holding company around it.

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About Peter Kang