The Agency Profit Podcast

The “Second Bite” Exit Strategy, With Todd Taskey

POINTS OF INTEREST * 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. SHOW NOTES Connect with Todd: * LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddtaskey/] * Tower Partners [https://www.linkedin.com/company/towerpartners/] * Email: todd@towerpartners.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Definitive Guide to Improving Your Agency's Cash Flow, With Carson Pierce

POINTS OF INTEREST * 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. SHOW NOTES Podcast Episode on Revenue Recognition with Marcel & Carson [https://parakeeto.com/blog/accrual-accounting-revenue-recognition-for-agencies-with-carson-pierce-ep-200/] Link to Notes File For Cash Flow Improvement [https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1mm-MxZrWWqx4543tNm825VNpeAAUTdpx] LOVE THE PODCAST Leave us a review here [https://lovethepodcast.com/agencyprofit]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How AI is Changing Web Design & Development, With Vito Peleg

POINTS OF INTEREST * 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. SHOW NOTES * Connect with Vito via LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/vito-peleg/?originalSubdomain=uk] * Website: Atarim.io [https://atarim.io/] LOVE THE PODCAST Leave us a review here [https://lovethepodcast.com/agencyprofit]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Productized Services vs. Custom Work: Which One is Better?, With Kristen Kelly

POINTS OF INTEREST * 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. SHOW NOTES * Pricing Model Quadrant [https://parakeeto.com/blog/pricing-scoping-for-agencies-ep-180/] * Chris Dubois [https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherrdubois] * Anthony Gindin [https://anthonygindin.com/] * Brian Kessman [https://www.linkedin.com/in/briankessman/] * Greg Hickman [https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregoryjhickman/] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How to Improve Your Co-Founder Relationships, With Dr. Matthew Jones

POINTS OF INTEREST * 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. SHOW NOTES * Book: The Cofounder Effect [https://www.amazon.com/Cofounder-Effect-Diagnose-Healthy-Communication/dp/B0FHDRDKWY] * Cofounder Satisfaction Index [https://4w0o5t35k5j.typeform.com/to/xZfKmY4N?typeform-source=www.google.com] * Website: Cofounder Clarity [https://cofounderclarity.com/] * Connect with Matt via LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-matthew-jones-7a832a37/] * Email: matt@cofounderclarity.com LOVE THE PODCAST Leave us a review here [https://lovethepodcast.com/agencyprofit]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.