Why your last agency “fix” didn’t stick

^ You… except for the hair, goggles, and chain.. hopefully.

Change is constant. So why do we treat it like crisis?

Lately I’ve been thinking about how agencies often react to change as if they're reacting to an unexpected crisis.

Something breaks, so you rush to fix it.
Someone quits, and suddenly you're reorganizing the whole team.
You lose a big client or land a new one, and it feels like the whole business got yanked in a different direction overnight.

You’re being responsive, which sounds like a good thing. But responsiveness without rhythm still creates whiplash. It keeps your team on edge and your nervous system maxed. It turns every change into a sprint that has no warmup and no recovery. Most agency founders don't have a real method for how to roll out a change that actually sticks, instead of stalling in week three, fully eroding in month two, and leaving your team wondering if this is just another initiative that was a waste of time like the last one.

You’re trying to make it work, but it's a trap of false momentum when you’re doing it on instinct, adrenaline, and urgency alone.

And here’s the thing I really want to say to the founders who are wired like most entrepreneurs – the drivers, the visionaries, the ones who are used to making things happen and making them happen fast:

You are an excellent gas pedal.

But change management – healthy, sustainable change management – also requires a brake pedal.

It requires a willingness to slow down, steady the pace, think about communication before implementation, and build the systems that ensure this shift doesn’t fall apart the second the next fire flares up.

And that’s hard, because the agency world doesn’t slow down to give you space to get thoughtful. You have clients to serve, revenue targets to hit, a team that’s already stretched. So what ends up happening is this pattern: you introduce change when something’s broken or painful enough to force your hand… but you don’t have the infrastructure to support the change well. So even when the solution is good, even when it's right, it doesn’t take root.

It becomes a half-rolled-out system. A Google doc or Notion page no one checks. A “new way” that looks an awful lot like the old way after a month or two.

It's tough because most agencies don’t have a change manager like big corporations do. Nobody whose entire job is to plan, roll out, reinforce, and recalibrate how change happens. Instead you’ve got a Slack channel, a few systems that barely talk to each other, and a team that’s already adapted to a dozen pivots in the last quarter.

And yet... you’re still growing. Still evolving. Still making it work.

Why this matters (you already know but I'm still gonna say it)

All of this – the whiplash, the patchwork, the unfinished change – comes with a price.

To you:​
Mental load. Decision fatigue. Lingering guilt that you’re not doing enough even though you’re doing everything. Ultimately, a buildup of stress that affects your physical, mental, and emotional health.

To your team:​
Burnout. Cynicism. Confusion about who’s really responsible for what. And often, silence instead of feedback because “this too shall pass” is a coping strategy (for the record, not a healthy one). Ultimately, disengagement (bad) or churn (terrifying).

To your clients:​
Inconsistency. Delays. Varying quality depending on who’s working on what. Hate to tell ya, but even if they’re not complaining yet, they’re noticing. Ultimately, a slow goodbye (you see it coming and scrabble for any kind of traction to keep them longer) or sudden death (churn that throws your forecasting for a terrible loop).

And the thing that really sucks is that even when you do implement a change that’s needed… it doesn’t always land, not because it was a bad idea, but because it didn’t have the infrastructure or rhythm to set it up for success.

It doesn't have to be this way

What I want to offer is this: you don’t need a full change management department to lead change well. But you do need a rhythm.

That’s where our idea of Revolution comes in, not as a moment of radical upheaval, but as a sustainable pattern.

A repeatable cadence.

A framework that lets you move through change with decisive clarity instead of uncertain confusion.

We call the cycle a SHIFT Revolution. It has nothing to do with specific operating methods or trendy tools. It’s a way of anchoring change inside the business so that you’re not just building something better, you’re becoming someone more grounded as you build it.

The 5 forces that make change stick

The Revolution runs through five phases, each one addressing a tension you’re already feeling, even if you haven’t named it yet.

Synchronize is about the basics: roles, responsibilities, workflows. It’s the part where we zoom out and ask, what’s actually happening here, and what needs to shift so the agency isn’t just surviving, but aligned? This is what gets us out of “good intentions” and into the gritty truth of who’s actually doing what, how, when, and why. Understanding where tasks get handed off without clarity, or workflows rely on memory, or your systems or values say one thing, but your team’s behavior says something else entirely.

This way we stop assuming everyone’s on the same page, and actually check. Without this step, it’s easy to confuse effort with effectiveness. You’re working hard, your team is too, but things keep falling through the cracks, getting lost in translation, or delayed because... well... do you really know why?

This phase is about restoring alignment across your people, platforms, and processes. Now your strategy can have structure behind it which means decisions get easier and execution stops being a mystery.

Head + Heart is the part most people skip... But it’s the part that actually changes things. This is when we slow down long enough to tell the truth. It’s the invisible layer under every system, task, and conversation. This is where we ask: What are you actually holding on to? What beliefs are shaping your decisions? What kind of pressure are you performing under that no one else sees?

Without this layer, you end up building something that looks good on paper but doesn't fit the way you think, feel, and lead. You install tools that made sense for someone else’s agency… then beat yourself up when they don’t work in yours. You try to delegate but you’re still watching everything. You can’t truly let go of the work because you haven’t let go of the belief that it will fall apart without you. You want to slow down but can't because you’re afraid of what might happen if you do.

This phase is about getting honest with yourself about your energy. About the emotional cost of growth, and taking an opportunity to do it differently. Your systems won’t work if they don’t reflect the real you. And your team can’t show up the way you really want them to if they’re managing around your unspoken stories.

Innovation isn’t, strictly speaking, about AI advancement or shiny tool selection. We aren't about adopting AI just for the sake of it. We are ALL about reimagining how work flows. This is the time to take a look at what you’re doing because you always have, and ask: Is this the best way to do it now? Are the right people doing the right tasks, at the right level of complexity? What could be automated, templatized, or clarified?

We don't want the weight of delivery propped up by heroic efforts or late-night catch-ups, because it should be smoothly powered by clean systems and the right people doing the right work. Innovation is when we ideate and pinpoint where systems need tightening, where automation or AI can streamline, how to build capacity without adding complexity, and determine what resources will make it hard for the team to fail.

Without this lens, you end up scaling the chaos. You hire faster, onboard more clients, and move faster and break things, except now, those broken "things" are a lot more expensive and harder to replace.

This phase is the machine that develops change that's scalable, adaptable, and worthy of your ambition.

Fortune gets into the financial side, yes, but it's deeper than that. Your margins, your pricing model, your cost structure - those are important. But if you’re scaling without a clear time, attention, focus, and energy strategy, all that $$$ is going to feel hollow. You can build a bigger agency, but if your time is maxed, your energy is depleted, your focus is distracted, and you’re making decisions from scarcity instead of strategy… is that really wealth?

Without this step, you risk working harder, but feeling further from freedom. That's when your success starts to feel like a burden. The way to avoid it is to take it all into account up front. No more pushing it to the back burner or "doing whatever it takes." This phase is where we ask: what’s your business really paying you? Not just in dollars, but in time, peace, options. Are you building something that feeds your goals or something that keeps you tethered?

This thought exercise empowers you to build something that's aligned with your financial targets, your energy limits, and your long-term vision, because real wealth isn’t only based on what you earn. At the end of the day (ahem, your life), real wealth is how you experience what you’ve built.

Trust is the phase where your agency starts to feel like a shared endeavor again. This is where we stop asking: “Why can’t they just do it the way I would?” and start building a system where people are equipped to own things their way without sacrificing quality.

It’s the time to integrate clear feedback loops, strong client experiences, reliable internal training and communication, and a culture where accountability doesn't have to be enforced, because it’s embodied.

This phase is hyper-critical, because without it, you become the filter, the fixer, the fallback. Over time, even the best team members start to lean on you more than they should when things are unclear, not because they’re incapable, but because they weren't set up to win. See, trust should be a verb first, then a noun. If you don’t build in supportive training, real feedback systems, or clear standards and role ownership, your team will default to safety (aka you). They won't feel secure acting without a checkpoint, a result of learned caution taking priority over initiative.

Instead, you can shift the culture from approval-seeking to aligned ownership. No more founder-reliance... now your agency is team-activated. The team trusts you and the systems you've built, the clients trust your team to deliver excellence, and you trust your team to work within the structure you've established.

Your next step

When we walk founders through a Revolution, we don’t start by overhauling everything. We start by asking questions, peeling back the layers on the issue at hand, whether it’s a delivery breakdown, a financial plateau, or a team dynamic that’s eroding morale.

We want you to build the muscle for change so you don’t keep bleeding time, trust, and money every time the business shifts. Because it will shift. The question is, will you have a rhythm for it, or just more fires to put out?

Truth bombs

You tell yourself: “This is just a rough patch.”
→ Nope. It’s a pattern. Until you name it, it’ll keep repeating.

You tell yourself: “Change is hard.”
→ Nope. Change is constant. Unstructured change is what’s hard.

You tell yourself: “Once we get through this shift, things will settle.”
→ Nope. Things don’t settle — they evolve. With or without your leadership.

Shower thoughts

If change is constant, what’s your method for moving through it?

What have you been rebuilding over and over because you never built it to evolve?

Are you leading a revolution? Or reacting to one?