• 00:01 – Introduction: Marcel introduces Skye Waterson and frames the conversation around SOPs, documentation, and building operational “rails” that teams can actually use.
• 01:07 – Skye’s background and motivation: Skye shares her journey from academic burnout to discovering adult ADHD and building a business focused on helping founders work with their brains, not against them.
• 03:04 – Why ADHD frameworks help everyone: Skye explains how ADHD-friendly systems emphasize flexibility and challenge outdated assumptions about productivity and work structure.
• 05:05 – First principles for ADHD productivity: The discussion covers practical strategies like rewarding task initiation and reducing reliance on working memory through better capture systems.
• 06:56 – The core problem with traditional SOPs: Skye and Marcel outline why most SOPs go stale—delegated, filed away, and only referenced during onboarding or emergencies.
• 09:18 – SOP neglect as a hidden operational risk: The conversation highlights how disconnected SOPs undermine dashboards, metrics, and leadership visibility.
• 11:32 – Visualizing the business as a flow: Skye introduces her core framework: mapping the business end-to-end (acquisition through expansion) using a visual tool like Miro.
• 14:02 – Why digital visual tools matter: Skye explains why paper-based process mapping fails and why digital tools enable iteration, ownership, and follow-through.
• 15:52 – Assigning a single DRI per process: Each node in the business flow is assigned a Directly Responsible Individual to eliminate ambiguity and improve accountability.
• 16:40 – Red, orange, green process health: Processes are color-coded to show whether they are broken, manual and CEO-dependent, or documented and team-run.
• 18:09 – Tying SOPs to weekly cadence and metrics: Skye explains how reviewing SOP health alongside performance metrics turns documentation into an operational diagnostic tool.
• 24:41 – AI and living SOPs: The episode closes with best practices for using AI to bootstrap SOPs, delegate ownership, and treat documentation as a living draft rather than a finished artifact.

• Connect with Skye via LinkedIn
• Unconventional Organization
• Skye’s Podcast ADHD Skills Lab
• AI Chatbot: Message Skye on Instagram with the word “Marcel” and she’ll send you the chatbot
• Software as a Science Book
• Matt Verlaque

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• 00:00 – 01:31 – Introduction: Marcel and Kristen open with a relatable riff on Notion and AI features before framing the core issue of the episode: messy handoffs between sales, account management, and delivery in service businesses.
• 01:31 – 03:14 – Why Handoffs Are a Universal Agency Problem: Kristen explains why sales-to-delivery handoff issues show up in agencies of every size and maturity and highlights their downstream impact on profitability and operational sanity.
• 03:14 – 05:34 – Common Symptoms of Broken Handoffs: Kristen outlines key symptoms such as work starting in a vacuum after the contract is signed, deliverable-only briefs, and delivery teams missing the strategic goals and context from sales conversations.
• 05:34 – 07:28 – Client Game of Telephone and Disjointed Data: Marcel describes how clients end up repeating themselves to every new team member and how poor internal communication leads to scattered information, inconsistent naming, and misaligned expectations across tools.
• 07:28 – 10:34 – Incentive Misalignment Between Sales and Delivery: Kristen breaks down how quota driven sales teams and risk conscious project managers operate with different goals, creating tension when there is no shared understanding of scope, clarity, or repeatability.
• 10:34 – 13:35 – Consequences for Client Trust and Profitability: They explore how early missteps fuel buyer’s remorse, create invisible client scorecards on trust, and generate internal gaps between what was promised, what is being delivered, and how profitable work actually is.
• 13:35 – 17:29 – Ingredients of a Strong Handoff: Kristen shares practical tactics such as transferring rich context, sharing sales call recordings with the full delivery team, and having the future account lead sit in on the final sales call to align expectations before the handoff.
• 17:29 – 20:20 – Separating Scope From Price and Avoiding Bad Math: Marcel goes on a rant about the dangerous habit of turning project price into hours by dividing it by an arbitrary rate and explains why scope, time, cost, and margin must be defined separately from the client facing price.
• 20:20 – 24:40 – Structural Alignment Across CRM, PM, and Accounting: Marcel highlights the need for a consistent schema for how projects are represented across contracts, invoicing, project management, and time tracking so that reporting can tie expectations back to actual performance.
• 24:40 – 27:16 – Kickoffs, Assets, and Tools That Improve Handoffs: Kristen covers how internal kickoffs, sales call recordings, and structured client intake tools can give creative and delivery teams the context they need while keeping meetings focused and efficient.
• 27:16 – 31:18 – Using Reporting as a Forcing Function for Alignment: They introduce the idea of expectations versus actuals reporting and the agency profitability flywheel as a way to expose process gaps, bring sales and delivery into the same conversations, and drive better decision making.
• 31:18 – 36:24 – Q4 Planning, Cross Team Empathy, and Next Steps: Kristen and Marcel close with advice to use annual planning cycles to realign services, pricing, and scope and encourage leaders to create empathy between sales and delivery by having teams observe each other’s work and “watch game tape” together.

• Connect with Kristen via LinkedIn
• Free Agency Toolkit
• Parakeeto Foundations Course
• Free access to our Model Platform

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• 00:00 – 01:38 – Introduction: Marcel welcomes agency legal specialist Sharon Toerek, highlighting her long track record in the industry and setting the stage with a discussion about how quickly the agency world is changing.
• 01:38 – 02:45 – Framing the AI Legal Conversation for Agencies: They position the core topic of the episode as the legal implications of AI adoption inside agencies, especially when serving enterprise clients with sensitive data and heightened risk concerns.
• 02:45 – 05:03 – The Two Biggest AI Risk Buckets: IP and Data Privacy: Sharon identifies intellectual property and data privacy as the top two legal risk areas agencies must consider when using generative AI in strategy, creation, and data manipulation.
• 05:03 – 08:11 – IP Infringement, Ownership, and Contract Clarity: She explains how generative AI can inadvertently infringe on others’ IP, complicate ownership of deliverables, and increase the need for explicit AI usage and ownership language in MSAs and SOWs.
• 08:11 – 10:23 – Agency-Created IP and Contractor Use of AI: Sharon explores the risks of building agency-owned IP with AI when ownership is uncertain, and stresses the importance of knowing how contractors use AI so their work aligns with promises made to clients.
• 10:23 – 15:11 – The State of Case Law and Fair Use Signals: They discuss how little case law exists around AI, what early decisions suggest about training data and fair use, and why we still do not know how much human contribution is needed to secure protectable IP.
• 15:11 – 18:26 – Blurring Lines Between Human and Machine-Created Work: Marcel and Sharon reflect on how modern creative tools embed AI in everyday workflows, making it harder to distinguish human-made from machine-generated content for legal and practical purposes.
• 18:26 – 22:40 – A Practical Playbook for Reducing AI Legal Risk: Sharon outlines concrete steps agencies can take now: have AI conversations with clients, update contracts, understand tool terms, set internal and external AI policies, and right-size risk based on audience scale.
• 22:40 – 26:05 – Where Insurance Fits in the AI Risk Equation: They examine how general liability, E&O, and cyber policies currently treat AI-related issues, and why insurers are likely to carve out or slowly add AI-specific coverage as risks and profits emerge.
• 26:05 – 30:31 – Market Volatility, AI Shock, and Rising Agency M&A: Sharon connects AI disruption, economic uncertainty, and geopolitical tension to a surge in small and mid-size agency deals, noting many founders are simply tired of reinventing their businesses again.
• 30:31 – 35:40 – IP as a Lever in Exits and Next Career Moves: She makes the case that agencies who develop and package their own IP create more options in M&A, whether selling IP separately, splitting the business, or using it to launch the next chapter of their careers.

• Innovative Agency Podcast
• Website: legalandcreative.com
• LinkedIn - Sharon Toerek
• M&A Webinar Replay with Sharon

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• 00:02 – 01:49 – Introduction: Marcel welcomes Kristen back to the show and sets up another practical client case study focused on a real agency engagement.
• 01:50 – 04:00 – The flex-labor, video production agency profile: Kristen outlines the agency’s model: a small FTE core, 10–20 contractors, just under $2M in revenue, and constant cash flow stress tied to contractor payments.
• 04:01 – 06:21 – Why video production and events are so punishing for cash flow: Marcel explains how big production days and lumpy project work make earned revenue, contractor management, and cash flow especially tricky for this type of agency.
• 05:05 – 07:16 – Growth, service-line complexity, and early unprofitability signals: Kristen describes how larger clients, new service lines with tight price ceilings, shifting deadlines, and creeping unprofitability pushed the founders to hit pause and seek help.
• 06:22 – 07:25 – Becoming “exit curious” changes the stakes: Marcel notes that the owners had started thinking about selling, and viewing the business through an enterprise value lens made their efficiency and profitability issues feel more urgent.
• 07:26 – 11:05 – Spreadsheets, PM tools, and the stalled silver-bullet implementation: Kristen walks through the spreadsheets they built, the expensive all-in-one PM platform they bought, and how personnel changes left the implementation half-done and overwhelming.
• 09:06 – 13:58 – Why PM tools fail without a profitability framework: Marcel unpacks the gap between the tool’s promises and reality, highlighting how unclear definitions of cost rates, pass-through expenses, margins, and scope make it impossible to configure a PM system effectively.
• 14:52 – 18:52 – The client’s original thesis vs. the real problem: Kristen shares that the client blamed headcount, tools, and “project management issues,” while Marcel points out their weak time-tracking culture and the failure to treat producers as true delivery costs.
• 19:05 – 22:12 – Diagnosis: a business model and unit economics problem: Kristen explains how reviewing the cash-basis P&L, time data, spreadsheets, and contracts revealed that the core issue was delivery margin and pricing, not execution quality or PM discipline.
• 24:52 – 27:42 – Fixing the data: contractor classification and cash-basis adjustments: Kristen describes using Parakeeto’s decision tree to classify contractors as delivery expenses, annualizing their cost and hours, and reverse-engineering hours from invoices, while Marcel adds tips for reducing noise in cash-based books.
• 28:18 – 35:57 – Rebuilding the model: estimator tool, 70% margin, and hire-vs-contractor math: Kristen shows how the estimator tool exposed project-level unit economics and ABR targets, then explains how they improved time tracking, pricing strategy, contracts, and PM tool setup, plus modeled when it actually made sense to hire FTEs instead of using contractors.
• 36:43 – 39:01 – Key lessons and reassurance for nuanced agency models: Kristen closes by emphasizing that every agency has quirks, but a clear framework can still make it profitable, while Marcel underscores the value of external support in untangling model vs. execution problems.

• Agency Fee Calculator

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• 00:00 – 01:30 – Introduction: Marcel welcomes M&A advisor Todd Taskey, who specializes in investment banking transactions for digital marketing agencies doing $1–5M in EBITDA.
• 01:30 – 02:40 – What Investment Banking Actually Means for Agencies: Todd explains what “investment banking transactions” are in plain language, covering how his team guides owners from first conversations through closing and integration.
• 02:40 – 06:30 – The “Second Bite” Thesis and Evolutionary Transactions: Todd introduces his “second bite” concept using real client stories, showing how selling part of an agency can be a strategic leap forward rather than the end of an owner’s journey.
• 06:30 – 09:20 – Private Equity as Growth Partner, Not Villain: Marcel raises common fears about private equity, and Todd contrasts horror stories of big corporate deals with growth-focused PE in the $2M EBITDA range that needs more good people, not fewer.
• 09:20 – 12:30 – How Earn-Outs Go Right (or Wrong): Todd shares how unrealistic projections in a pitch deck can make earn-out targets impossible, and explains his playbook for setting conservative growth assumptions that founders can actually beat.
• 12:30 – 16:30 – Inside the Private Equity Business Model: Todd breaks down how PE funds are structured, how they earn management fees and returns, and why growing EBITDA and achieving multiple expansion is central to their strategy.
• 16:30 – 19:30 – Case Studies of PE-Backed Agency Growth: Using examples like Power Digital and other PE-backed platforms, Todd illustrates how tucking in specialized agencies (CRO, Amazon, etc.) can generate outsized returns for both founders and investors.
• 19:30 – 24:30 – Why Private Equity Wins: Data, Rigor, and Talent: Todd describes the level of analysis PE brings to the table—cohort analysis, retention metrics, financial rigor—and how this “art and science” combination helps them repeatedly grow and sell agencies.
• 24:30 – 28:40 – The Experience Imbalance and Need for a Real Process: Marcel highlights the experience gap between founders and professional acquirers, and Todd explains why running a structured process with multiple buyers is essential for true price discovery.
• 28:40 – 33:10 – Free Consulting: What the Market Really Values in Your Agency: Todd outlines how conversations with 20–30 serious buyers surface recurring themes—“this, that, and the other thing”—that tell you exactly what to fix to increase valuation, even if you do not sell.
• 33:10 – 38:30 – AI, Efficiency, and the Future of Agency Valuations: Todd shares his view that AI will most directly impact valuations through efficiency gains and margin expansion, allowing agencies to stack more clients on the same headcount and drive higher EBITDA.

Connect with Todd:

• LinkedIn
• Tower Partners
• Email: [email protected]

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• 00:01 – 01:28 – Introduction: Marcel and Carson set up the focus of the episode on why cash flow deserves as much attention as profitability in agency businesses.
• 01:28 – 03:31 – Two Extreme Cash Flow Scenarios: Carson shares real client examples of agencies with tight cash despite solid operations and others with healthy bank balances masking eroding profitability, highlighting why cash and profit are easy to confuse.
• 03:31 – 07:35 – Cash Flow vs Profitability and the Accrual Lens: Marcel explains that cash flow and profitability are correlated but distinct, outlining how agencies can be profitable with poor cash flow or unprofitable with strong cash, and introduces the importance of having both cash and accrual views.
• 07:35 – 11:01 – Debt, Leverage, and the Cost of Poor Cash Flow: The conversation turns to agency debt, debt service ratios, and how borrowing is often used to cover weak unit economics, with Marcel warning how costly debt and “poor person pricing” can wipe out thin margins.
• 11:17 – 18:03 – Lever One: Speeding Up Cash Collection: Marcel walks through practical ways to accelerate cash in the door, including stronger payment terms, bigger deposits, earlier invoicing, incentives for early payment, AR processes, auto-pay, and invoice factoring, while stressing how faster cash can create a dangerous illusion of higher profitability.
• 18:03 – 21:28 – Lever Two: Delaying or Spreading Expenditures: The discussion shifts to reducing or smoothing cash outflows via flexible labor, aligning contractor terms with client terms, shortening the “cash down payment” needed to serve large projects, and avoiding unprofitable work chosen only for easier cash flow.
• 21:28 – 26:34 – Variable Cost Models, Leasing, and Refinancing: Marcel outlines options like moving from upfront to usage-based models, leasing instead of buying, using tax planning, and refinancing expensive lines of credit into longer-term, lower-interest loans to ease monthly cash burden.
• 26:34 – 29:04 – The Trap of Short-Term Cash Fixes: They highlight how tactics that conserve cash now—high-interest credit, invoice factoring, short-term debt—often make the business more expensive to run later, and stress the importance of applying for credit while the business is still healthy.
• 29:04 – 33:12 – Lever Three: Building Cash Reserves and Planning for Seasonality: Marcel explains how to build three to six months of operating expenses plus two to four payrolls in cash, manage owner distributions, plan for slow periods like holidays, and use shareholder loans and credit strategically.
• 33:12 – 36:21 – When Big Cash Reserves Hide Problems: The hosts discuss how large cash balances can mask emerging profitability or cash flow issues, arguing for a disciplined cadence of reviewing both cash and accrual metrics so owners see problems before they become crises.
• 36:21 – 40:25 – Key Profitability Benchmarks Agencies Should Track: Marcel summarizes the core accrual benchmarks—delivery margin, direct delivery margin, overhead as a percentage of AGI, operating margin, average billable rate, utilization, and average cost per hour—as the foundation of sound unit economics.
• 40:25 – 43:11 – Cash Flow Metrics and Parakeeto’s Evolving Role: The episode closes with a rundown of cash-specific metrics—cash reserves, operating cash flow vs EBITDA, AR/AP days, CAC payback, debt service coverage, and line-of-credit usage—and a look at how Parakeeto is expanding its services to help agencies manage profitability and cash flow holistically.

Podcast Episode on Revenue Recognition with Marcel & Carson

Link to Notes File For Cash Flow Improvement

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• 0:01 – 01:27 – Introduction: Marcel welcomes returning guest Vito Peleg, CEO of Atarim, and frames the conversation around how agencies can streamline creative collaboration and leverage AI to improve delivery efficiency and profitability.
• 01:28 – 03:27 – From Touring Musician to Collaboration Software Founder: Vito shares his backstory as a touring musician building websites from a van, then running a web agency, and how constant friction getting clients to give timely, clear feedback led to the first version of Atarim as a WordPress plugin.
• 03:27 – 06:46 – The True Cost of Collaboration on Delivery Timelines: Marcel highlights how reducing delivery time by 50–70% transforms profit and cash flow, and Vito reframes the issue by showing that collaboration with clients and stakeholders routinely increases project timelines by 500–700%.
• 06:46 – 10:06 – Why Text-Based Feedback Breaks Creative Work: Vito explains that human feedback is naturally three to five words and visual, but agencies force clients into long, text-heavy descriptions via email, docs, and tickets, creating procrastination, dead time, and constant misalignment.
• 08:39 – 10:06 – Vague Feedback and Week-Long Clarification Cycles: Citing Atarim’s data, Vito notes that 68% of creative comments written in text are too vague to action on first pass, leading to clarification cycles that typically add a full week to even simple tasks like updating a slide.
• 10:12 – 15:07 – Building Momentum and “Two Days and a Weekend”: In response to Marcel’s question about where agencies lose the most efficiency, Vito argues the biggest gap is at project start and introduces the “two days and a weekend” framing plus fast, simple deliverables (like a sitemap) to create momentum and urgency.
• 15:15 – 17:28 – Getting Imperfect Work in Front of Clients Early: Marcel and Vito discuss reframing early deliverables explicitly as rough first passes so clients expect to react rather than receive perfection, reducing sunk-cost risk and speeding up alignment on direction.
• 17:28 – 24:49 – How AI Is Compressing Build Time and Changing UI: Vito describes the evolution from hand-coded sites to drag-and-drop builders and now prompt-driven interfaces, arguing that AI will shrink creation time so dramatically that collaboration will become an even larger relative drag on projects.
• 22:29 – 25:56 – The Future of Figma, Builders, and Dynamic Interfaces: Vito predicts that the traditional Figma-to-dev pipeline will erode as tools let teams go from prompt to production UI, while Marcel adds a Google perspective on a future where AI dynamically renders interfaces tailored to each user.
• 30:37 – 37:42 – Agencies as Orchestrators of AI Agents, Not Just Humans: Vito outlines a future where agency owners orchestrate a team of AI agents instead of being the “talent,” potentially pricing work by tokens instead of dev hours, and using agents to automate follow-ups, support, and clarification cycles like Atarim’s Claro.
• 39:14 – 45:19 – Atarim’s Agentic Creative Team Vision and Next Steps: Vito explains how Atarim is building a multi-human, multi-agent collaboration environment where specialized AI teammates (design, accessibility, performance, PM) work together in threads, and invites listeners to explore the early-access experience at Atarim.io.

• Connect with Vito via LinkedIn
• Website: Atarim.io

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• 00:01 – 02:30 – Introduction: Marcel and Kristen introduce the episode’s focus on productized services versus custom work and set the expectation for a nuanced, non-dogmatic discussion for agencies.
• 02:31 – 07:25 – Defining Productized Services & Common Misconceptions: Marcel defines productization as selling a clear outcome for a fixed price, explains that backend processes do not need to be identical every time, and debunks the idea that productized services must be rigid or factory-like.
• 07:26 – 11:31 – Benefits of Productized Services for Sales and Operations: The hosts outline how productized services can shorten sales cycles, simplify proposals and contracts, standardize onboarding and delivery, and support more scalable, profitable operations when paired with strong process and pricing.
• 11:32 – 15:43 – Hidden Costs and Rigidity of Productization: Marcel explains how process investments create product and operational debt that are expensive to maintain and slow to change, highlighting the risk of misfit productized offers in complex or iterative work like web and software development.
• 15:44 – 19:00 – Pricing Model Quadrant and Scope–Contract Alignment: The conversation explores the value–risk pricing quadrant and shows how flat-fee or fixed-scope productized offers can clash with agile, fluid scopes when every backlog change forces contract renegotiation and erodes margin.
• 19:01 – 22:33 – Abstracted Time & Materials as a “Productized” Offer: Marcel introduces abstracted time and materials models such as leasing a cross-functional team per sprint, arguing that agencies can sell clear “products” without fixed deliverables while using pricing structures that better share risk with clients.
• 22:34 – 27:10 – Strategic Upsides of Custom Work for Complex Problems: The hosts outline how custom work suits complex, high-value, or enterprise-level problems, enables larger deal sizes and higher absolute profit, and lets agencies operate in less crowded, harder-to-solve problem spaces.
• 27:11 – 29:40 – Staffing Strategy for Custom Agencies: Marcel describes a staffing model built around a small core of senior experts and a flexible bench of freelancers or contractors, enabling agencies to absorb project volume swings without constant hiring and layoffs.
• 29:41 – 33:44 – Pricing, Delivery Margin, and Contractor Economics: The discussion dives into calculating delivery margin targets for internal staff versus contractors, marking up units of time appropriately, and deciding when to treat outside experts as pass-through costs while still protecting project profitability.
• 35:07 – 37:48 – Debunking the Myth That Custom Work Cannot Scale: Marcel challenges the claim that custom work is inherently unscalable or unprofitable by pointing to large professional services firms, while acknowledging the real challenges around utilization, staffing, and pricing on time and materials.
• 37:49 – 42:32 – Market Context, Price Ceilings, and Competitive Pressure: The hosts explain how custom approaches can price agencies out of mid-market segments where clients do not value extensive process, and emphasize matching the business model to what the market needs and is willing to pay for.
• 42:33 – 48:53 – Choosing the Right Model and Recommended Resources: The episode closes with a call to map services against value and risk, design pricing and delivery models accordingly, avoid chasing productization as a silver bullet, and check out suggested experts and resources on productized services and pricing.

• Pricing Model Quadrant
• Chris Dubois
• Anthony Gindin
• Brian Kessman
• Greg Hickman

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• 00:00 – Introduction: Marcel introduces Dr. Matthew Jones and frames the co-founder relationship as a critical driver of business health and day-to-day well-being.
• 01:14 – Origin Story: Matt explains how mediating friends’ founder conflict revealed a gap between business coaching and psychological expertise for co-founders.
• 02:20 – Why It’s Hard: The relationship requires a dual lens—operational structure and psychological dynamics—or teams get shortchanged.
• 05:40 – Red Flag to Watch: Recurring disagreements usually mask unspoken emotional issues around power, recognition, or closeness that stall decisions.
• 08:19 – Two Kinds of Trust: Matt distinguishes operational trust (competence) from personal trust (availability and attunement) as separate failure points.
• 09:34 – Tools & Frameworks: Introduction to the Co-Founder Satisfaction Index and the three-phase Conflict Navigation System (prep, conversation, accountability).
• 10:33 – Cadence That Works: “Syncs” for operations and “dates” for meta-communication humanize partners and prevent ad hoc, disruptive alignment.
• 13:51 – Containment in Practice: Schedule conflict conversations instead of reacting in the moment; example reframes an all-hands interruption into a debrief.
• 15:49 – Written Feedback Protocol: Parakeeto’s situation–behavior–impact flow with consent sets clear context and reduces emotional reactivity.
• 18:54 – Running the Conversation: Use “I-messages” for low-intensity talks; switch to reflective dialogue (speaker/receiver, paraphrase, validate) when emotions run high.
• 22:08 – Commitments & Follow-ups: Translate insights into concrete commitments with a timeline to “close open loops” and reinforce accountability.
• 25:34 – When Splits Happen: Matt’s “Stabilizer Split” month helps decide path; negotiate together before lawyers, expect grief and manage emotional debt.

• Book: The Cofounder Effect
• Cofounder Satisfaction Index
• Website: Cofounder Clarity
• Connect with Matt via LinkedIn
• Email: [email protected]

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• 00:00 – Introduction: Marcel welcomes recurring guest Carson Pierce to the Agency Profit Podcast and introduces a new format—walking through a real, anonymized client assessment to show how Parakeeto diagnoses and solves profitability challenges.
• 02:00 – Every Agency’s Problems Are Unique but Familiar: Carson explains that while every agency’s situation feels unique, most share a few core underlying problems that manifest differently based on team structure, services, and culture.
• 03:40 – Client Background: The featured firm had around 12 staff, close to $1M in revenue, but was losing roughly $80K per year. Despite solid demand, they couldn’t pinpoint the source of their declining profit.
• 05:00 – Early Misdiagnoses and Attempts: The leadership team suspected overhead costs like health insurance and software were to blame and tried tightening internal processes, but those adjustments didn’t solve the deeper financial issues.
• 06:30 – Leadership Misalignment: With multiple co-founders holding different perspectives, the agency struggled to align on the root cause of its issues, each assuming the problem lay outside their area of expertise.
• 10:00 – Starting the Assessment: Carson outlines Parakeeto’s assessment process—benchmarking against a healthy “agency model,” ingesting financial and time data, and identifying gaps between planned and actual performance.
• 11:50 – Payroll Red Flag: Analysis revealed that 98% of all revenue was going directly to payroll, leaving no margin for overhead or profit—a clear signal of structural imbalance.
• 13:30 – Data Gaps and Adjustments: The team had poor time-tracking compliance and a prepaid revenue entry on the P&L that skewed results. Parakeeto corrected these to reveal a more accurate financial picture.
• 16:30 – Root Causes Identified: The agency was top-heavy with overhead roles, under-utilized due to a bottlenecked design team, and priced below the level their delivery costs required.
• 20:30 – Building the Roadmap: Quick wins included improving time-tracking compliance and reclassifying project management and account management as billable delivery hours. Longer-term actions included hiring a designer, raising prices 10–15%, and training PMs in scope management.
• 25:50 – Strategic Choice: Grow, Don’t Cut: Instead of downsizing, the founders chose to grow out of the constraint—adding delivery capacity to balance the team and improve utilization since demand existed.
• 28:40 – Coaching and Next Steps: Carson explains the ongoing coaching plan—educating on data hygiene, improving utilization, then progressing to deeper ABR and project-level analysis—focusing first on leading indicators before tracking lagging outcomes.

• Connect with Carson via LinkedIn
• Free Agency Toolkit
• Parakeeto Foundations Course
• Free access to our Model Platform

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