John Suder and Bart Mroz challenge agency owners to audit their client roster by writing, in one sentence with a number, the measurable outcome each client is paying for; if it takes a paragraph, the agency is selling activity instead of results. 

They explain why agencies drift into activity-based retainers—activity feels safer than outcomes, scope creep (“death by yes”), and reporting that rewards task volume, leading to commodity pricing pressure. 

They argue outcome clarity creates pricing power, retention, and team focus, emphasizing that clients “don’t fire results, they fire ambiguity.” 

They offer a practical playbook: do a roster audit, sort clients into three buckets (clear outcome on track, clear outcome off track, no clear outcome), and protect, fix, or reset accordingly, using CFO-worthy metrics like pipeline, conversion rate, CAC, or retention, and adding the outcome question to the sales process.

00:00 One Sentence Outcome Test

00:48 Why Paragraphs Fail

02:21 How Agencies Drift

04:07 Commodity Trap Warning

04:53 Outcome Selling Upside

06:36 Accountable, Not Guaranteed

07:33 Roster Audit Playbook

07:58 Three Buckets Triage

09:06 Pick the Right Metric

09:51 Bake It Into Sales

10:56 Wrap Up and Next Steps

John Suder and co-host Bart Mroz discuss why agencies are calling the market “challenging,” arguing it’s more than a temporary downturn: structural shifts are reshaping the agency business. They explain how the past two decades of tailwinds—expanding internet budgets, new channels, and less-savvy clients—made generalist positioning, referral-driven growth, and hiring ahead of revenue work, but those conditions no longer apply. They point to three forces hitting at once: AI compressing the value of execution, a choppy economy that delays decisions and breaks pipeline math, and political/regulatory instability that makes clients conservative with discretionary spending.
They argue that agencies can survive by getting smaller and sharper on purpose, focusing on fewer, better clients, tightening positioning, evolving pricing and packaging, and selling judgment and strategy rather than commoditized execution.

00:00 Downturn Cold Open
00:32 Challenging Market Defined
02:13 Tailwinds Are Gone
04:18 Three Forces Collide
07:31 Old Model Survival
08:41 Broken Downturn Playbook
11:08 New Playbook Moves
14:33 Sell Judgment Not Output
17:48 AI Velocity Opportunity
19:48 Newsletter And Share
20:50 Market Feels Challenging
22:13 How We Got Here
23:46 Tailwinds Are Gone
24:35 Three Forces Collide
27:49 Old Model Can Survive
28:54 Downturn Playbook Fails
11:08 New Playbook Focus
34:51 Sell Judgment Not Output
38:06 Builders Plus Velocity
40:05 Final Takeaways

Links:
- The Playbook newsletter: https://playbook.agencyfocus.xyz
- Full article: "This Isn't a Downturn. Stop Treating It Like One."
https://playbook.agencyfocus.xyz/p/this-isn-t-a-downturn-stop-treating-it-like-one

John Suder and Bart Mroz of Agency Focus discuss why flat or slow-growing agencies often misdiagnose their problem as “needing more clients,” then outline Bart’s framework of three leaky revenue buckets: new money (net new logos), current money (growing existing accounts), and old money (re-engaging past clients and contacts). 

They argue that most agencies focus only on new money, even though relationship-based selling takes months, while current money requires proactive account growth through weekly client conversations, research, and solutioning rather than order-taking. 

For old money, they emphasize genuine, contextual outreach based on research and personal relationship details, avoiding generic “touch base” messages and logo swag. 

They attribute plateaus to founders wearing too many hats, complacency, and overreliance on referrals, and recommend starting with current money, then old money, then new money, with playbooks for each driven by research, care, and consistent outreach.

At the Agency Hackers Conference in Miami, Bart Mroz interviews Steve Guberman of Agency Outsight about the agency landscape heading into 2026.

Steve says Q1 showed renewed contract activity and more normal sales cycles, though uncertainty around wars, governments, and AI is creating anxiety.

He predicts major agency consolidation after a COVID-era surge of new agencies that largely didn’t survive. Steve explains his work coaching agency owners (roughly $1M–$10M+) on balance, leadership, operations, and M&A readiness, emphasizing goals tailored to founders rather than “copycat goals.”

Steve outlines what strong agencies look like—low client concentration, tight vertical niches, strong SOPs, and owners out of day-to-day operations—and describes four stages of AI adoption, urging agencies to progress from internal efficiency to selling AI solutions.

They also discuss international expansion into the U.S. and outsourcing/nearshoring trends in Eastern Europe, India, and South America.

00:00 Intro/Ad

00:59 Meet Steve Guberman

01:25 Agency Hackers Event Banter 

02:11 Agency Outlook 2026

03:43 Post-Covid Agency Shakeout

05:45 Lifestyle Business Debate

07:27 Early Hustles and Lessons

08:19 Agency Outside Consulting Focus

09:39 What Great Agencies Do

10:34 AI Adoption Stages

11:09 AI Adoption Levels

11:31 Selling AI Solutions

12:35 Why Niche Agencies Win

14:02 Saying No Strategically

14:48 Advising Without Forcing

16:10 Cross-Border Agency Work

18:48 Outsourcing Regions' Trends

20:17 Culture Management Offshore

20:58 Miami Wrap-Up

At a Bureau event in Austin, Bart Mroz (Agency Focus) interviews Carl Smith (The Bureau) about where the agency industry is headed in 2026. 

Carl argues agencies are stuck chasing past “easy mode” and have become noisy generalists, while clients increasingly tune out synthetic content and plan more agency reviews. He says agencies must shift from professional services vendors to “intelligence agencies” that bring unique insights, deep domain knowledge, and the confidence to challenge clients, building trust through real relationships and strong points of view. 

The conversation covers reducing agency size, hyper-niching, human-to-human business development, and the need to give teams space to think rather than optimize only for utilization and headcount growth. 

They also discuss shifting pricing models from hourly to blended, accountability-based retainers with performance components, and packaging unique institutional knowledge as a defensible advantage.

00:00 Meet Carl Smith

00:52 Bureau Community Growth

01:36 Agency Industry Stuck

03:31 From Service to Intelligence

04:26 Scared Money Projects

05:07 Partnership Over Vendor

08:27 Methodology and Hyper Niches

09:51 Human Connection Advantage

10:36 Relationships Beat Pipeline

11:27 AI Needs Real Relationships

12:04 Pipeline Reality Check

12:40 Unsticking Deals Fast

14:01 Face to Face Wins

15:20 Taste Judgment and Trust

16:43 Saying No to Survive

17:27 Smaller Shops Longer Retainers

19:20 Accountability Pricing Model

22:20 Packaging Unique Advantage

23:23 Final Takeaways and Goodbye

Marty Ringlein, CEO and co-founder of Agree.com and a longtime designer/engineer and agency owner, discusses his agency, which launched in 2005–06 and was acquired by Twitter in 2012 to help Twitter go mobile-first; then a year at Twitter; working as a Presidential Innovation Fellow in the Obama administration; and founding an Eventbrite competitor that was sold to Eventbrite in 2016. 

He reflects on how technological shifts (now AI) create both optimism and fear, arguing that humans still win on inventiveness, ingenuity, intuition, and empathy, while agencies should use AI to automate mundane back-office workflows and focus on relationships and creative judgment. 

He notes juniors must build real projects, clients, and portfolios early. Marty explains Agree.com as a contract-to-cash platform that consolidates contracts, e-signatures, invoicing, and payments to automate billing, reduce delays, and shorten the time from signed agreement to payment (median 36 hours).

Agency Focus is the podcast for agency owners who are done winging it.

Every week, host Bart Mroz sits down with operators, founders, and growth experts to talk about what actually moves the needle — client acquisition, business development, and building an agency that scales without burning you out.

Bart knows the game firsthand. He spent 13 years building SUMO Heavy Industries from scratch before it was acquired in 2023 and now works as a fractional growth partner for agencies doing $1M–$10M. He's made the mistakes, figured out what works, and brings co-hosts and guests who have, too.