PART 1: The Dirty Secret the Digital Marketing Industry Doesn’t Want You To Know  

“My business is about to crash and burn… and so am I...” she said.  

I was on my first call of the day with a prospect who runs a successful digital marketing agency.  

She had just booked $56,000+ in new client projects, which is definitely a cool milestone to celebrate…  

Except for the fact that she was experiencing heart palpitations looking at her Asana to do list and all the work that had to be done for these clients in the next couple of months.  

To say she was freaking out was an understatement.  

She had followed the typical advice given by many online marketers and business coaches…  

“HUSTLE!! Get more clients and make more money. THEN all of your problems will be solved and you’ll be living the dream”  

FML 🙃 

GIF by my production manager, Andrew Deitsch.  

Compare THAT with what one of our clients said recently…  

And if you’re reading this right now, that means you’ve probably followed that “hustle & grind” advice and quickly realized that “living the dream” doesn’t come as easily as the gurus say.  

And how do you get to that point?? How do you get to where our client is??  

Spoiler alert... it’s not from just “getting more clients.”  

More clients just means more work, if you really think about it.  

If you don’t have the right “pieces” in place for your business… exhaustion, overwhelm, and burnout become your best friends. :( (And what those “pieces” are, we’ll talk about in a bit. Read on.)  

It’s no longer “fine” to stay stuck at this place in your business. 

And THAT is why I’ve taken the time to write this manifesto.  

It’s for people like you, that experience BS on a day-to-day basis like…

• Revenue increasing from new client projects, but profit dipping because of the extra contractors needed to actually deliver the service
• Shitty communication with your contractors and needing to spoon feed every answer to your team 
• Mistakes are being made, balls are being dropped, details are being missed - and this may or may not have caused you to lose or be fired by a client or two
• Slack PTSD because something is always on fire and your attention is constantly required
  
• Being held back in your own marketing because if you turn on that funnel, you know prospects will come flooding in
• And speaking of being at capacity... You’re turning away an irresponsibly large amount of money from the leads you are getting right now
• But there’s nothing you can do because you’re maxed out with your time and bandwidth, and so is your team (Insert screams of frustration + all the expletives.)  

I know it might feel like there’s no way out right now.

Or if there is a way out, you don’t really know what the process is or what that looks like.  

You’re constantly asking yourself…  

 “How do I get more clients or make more money without overworking and putting out fires constantly?”  

SERIOUSLY THOUGH.  

How do you move past not having enough time to train people, not having enough in your profit margins to hire better talent, not having enough energy to live your life AND run your business because you barely have time to pee and feed yourself, let alone take a break without something else breaking or another client complaint coming through to your inbox…?  

*deep breath*  

How do you get off the hamster wheel, once and for all?

That’s exactly what we’re going to talk about in the next few pages.  

I’m going to tell you a few stories about 3 types of entrepreneurs I’ve met over the past 7+ years of doing this work and after helping hundreds of digital marketing agencies scale up.  

All 3 entrepreneurs were agency owners that wanted to hit 7-figures in revenue with high profit and little to no workload…  

• One of them made choices that caused them to fail & burn out…  
• Another made choices that caused them to stay stuck & stagnant…  
• And the last made choices that caused them to grow exponentially.