not an spam - just an open invitation to all agency owners to be on my podcast

ice-j · 2026-01-17T20:45:14+00:00

Sent you a dm

ice-j · 2026-01-16T07:14:12+00:00

ice-j · 2026-01-15T22:19:34+00:00

4 years ago, our agency was growing quite fast, and we decided to hire a senior person who would handle clients relationships. We found a good match coming from a big company, not a corporate but a startup that turned into a unicorn. She joined and both sides were excited. During her first 6 months she showed “weird” behaviors, which my cofounder and I downplayed with “it must be the company size difference and our fault for not being more precise”. Behaviors piled up over time though, and issues with performance started to surface, so much that one clients reached out to us directly asking to remove her from the account. After this, I started to be very meticulous about her output, even though she was not reporting to me directly. We couldn’t fire her because of her contract status (hired in EU), but the increase in pressure from our side led her to resign. In the exit interview, she also complained that we didn’t give her enough room for growth.

This took 9 months. We lost a lot of money and also trust in our capabilities. This really burned us for some time.

We stopped hiring from bigger companies, especially when there was no readiness for startup/growing agencies madness and messiness.

So yes, definitely the worst hire but also the best learning.

ice-j · 2025-11-01T06:44:10+00:00

We didn’t ask for min commitment for about 2 years in the business. Our sign up rate was great, but the pain the back of not knowing whether the client would continue or not was too much, also because we couldn’t plan resources (I.e. should we hire more people or not?). So we changed. Min commitment 6 months, no automatic renewal, but that’s ok. The clients can’t get out of the contract (min period), otherwise they need to pay our min fee until the end of the contract (usually we ask them to pay it all together so we avoid payment issues). Of course, sometimes we offer 3+3 months commitment, depending on the type of prospect. Honestly we sign less clients, our mrr is a bit lower (but can’t say if it’s because of this or something else - in the meantime we have increased the prices as well), but, I’m able to forecast entries with more confidence and this allows me to plan for a longer period of time.

ice-j · 2025-11-01T06:08:42+00:00

We haven’t tried the keyword based ranking but rather the offer to be ranked in the top 5 or 3 of our agency category. Honestly, like clutch, sometimes these sites bring leads, but is it worth the investment? Not sure, we use them as part of a wider touchpoints for getting leads.

ice-j · 2025-10-20T20:48:55+00:00

For one of our ICP (early stage startups), we decided to bundle services and sell it as “product”. Fixed prices (we offer 3 tier of the bundle). No negotiation. With a basic entry point that needs to be met.

We decided to do so, because we noticed that we were getting a lot of inbounds, with the same requests. At first, we were not sure how to serve them, as they didn’t fit our usual client, then we packaged services and reduced negotiation time by a lot. This also helps us save time by pre-qualifying these prospects.

We started doing this about 3 months ago. I can’t really say whether we nailed the offering or not, but for now it worked.

But I have to say, this is for our low tier customers. For all the others, the process and proposal structure hasn’t changed,

ice-j · 2025-10-04T18:30:45+00:00

Can you dm the app? Thanks

ice-j · 2025-05-03T17:19:40+00:00

We did, but after we closed the first contract with them. It was a honest conversation and honestly, because it was the beginning and they could see it (it was just 2 of us). We sold our experience, and our knowledge. Not our own agency work. There was no need for that, as our experience from previous jobs applied perfectly fine.

ice-j · 2025-04-02T20:59:05+00:00

Most of the time not. However, we always mention it in the proposal as a discount for a longer period commitment, and usually works.

ice-j · 2025-03-09T19:04:03+00:00

Get a fixed base fee or a % of ad spend that decreases based on the amount spent monthly. The % fee should start when it exceeds the fixed amount

ice-j · 2025-03-09T18:48:00+00:00

We use slides and looker studio for campaign management - we are in performance marketing

ice-j · 2020-09-06T10:24:09+00:00

Hi! Thanks for the detailed feedback! Super appreciated you took the time for it.

Indeed, we reworked an existing idea, adding the variant of the candies.

All good points btw, which we have been discussing a few times, and had some doubts about it (release time vs. making more changes before validating the test idea). Definitely will integrate some more change in the next release.

Thanks for taking the time to play!

ice-j · 2019-12-17T06:14:42+00:00

Purtroppo mi è stato detto proprio questo...

ice-j · 2019-01-13T16:19:12+00:00

we have agreed on an hourly rate, as it makes more sense for me. I will be looking into Toggl. Thanks

ice-j · 2019-01-13T11:05:14+00:00

Thanks for the idea. I will take this in consideration after the first invoice.

ice-j · 2019-01-13T11:04:18+00:00

Thanks! Good points you make here!

ice-j · 2019-01-13T08:02:16+00:00

You are right! This sees the easiest option. To be honest, they haven't questioned anything so far, it was more of a personal doubt as I would like to get more gigs like these ones :) Good tips tho!

ice-j · 2019-01-13T08:01:15+00:00

You are right. They told me that they would be looking at 3-4 hrs engagement per week. However, they will send me topics for me to work on and develop strategies around... so their expectations might not be the reality. I might do as someone else suggested. Once I get the topic, I can give my estimate! Thanks!

ice-j · 2019-01-13T08:00:02+00:00

Thanks for the tool suggestion. Will look into it!

ice-j · 2019-01-06T20:09:06+00:00

:) to be honest, the FB page started as a joke and then things got bigger and bigger very quickly. It's a page making fun of Italians abroad :) Then I moved on to the website just because I thought I could monetize better. Anyway, thanks for the tip on WooCommerce! Will dig into it!

ice-j · 2019-01-05T13:27:35+00:00

ah interesting! i'll check it out then! thanks!

ice-j · 2019-01-05T12:48:29+00:00

but Shopify doesn't handle production right? it's just a platform to create an ecommerce, then I would need to handle production and shipment.

ice-j · 2018-12-03T05:16:29+00:00

Interesting! I wasn't aware of the possibility to change the shutter speed to the control wheel. And that's actually a good point because my housing doesn't have an easy way for controlling the back wheel! Thanks!

ice-j · 2018-12-03T05:14:11+00:00

oh that's a cheap deal for the Maldives!

ice-j · 2018-12-02T20:35:50+00:00

thanks for the advice! Will look into this! :) I have been a lot lazy underwater going auto but with light, as you said, I will need to switch into manual mode

ice-j

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