Good morning. It is Matt here. In today’s newsletter, we are going over what the top agencies have in common.

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I’ve worked with over 550 agencies in the past 12 months and have more insight as to what works and what doesn’t than perhaps anyone else.

Every agency that works with me has to do at least $500k per year in revenue, so this sample size of 550 agencies becomes an even bigger indicator of what it takes to succeed.

So today, I am going to go over three main things that the most successful of these agencies have in common.

Before we get started, let’s set some parameters. These are all things that are universal and could apply to any business or agency.

They are high-level ideas, strategies, concepts and realities, some of these agencies due these intentionally, while others seem to do them intuitively without much conscious thought.

So, let’s go to point number one.

All of these agencies have at least three core, competent people. One doing lead generation, one doing sales and one doing fulfillment:

You can think of this as the CMO, CRO, and COO, and then one of them usually doubles as the CEO.

I don’t want to give you the chance to cope, so right here, right now, almost none of these agencies have three co-founders. That is not a requirement and I want to specifically talk about this so some of the weaklings who are consuming this right now can’t whine “but, but, but, I don’t have a co-founder.. arghhhh!!!!”

The majority of these have a single founder and as they grew, they hired A players to take care of different areas of their business that they either did not want to do, or were not good at.

The key takeaway? You will never get past the $1-3 million per year mark (depending on the service and niche) without help. You cannot do it all on your own, which is what so many people try to do.

The top 1% of agencies have a real management team. If you want to get to this level, you cannot do it alone.

We should try and be neutral and fair here. It is true that a large percentage of agencies could not afford the larger salaries to hire truly competent people. It’s not like a $500k per year agency could shell out $250k+ twice for two people. The math doesn’t math.

This is not in the cards for most people, as they are not big enough yet. They need to be patient and get there.

However, there is a sizeable percentage who could afford it but are either too greedy to share equity, pay a high salary or are too fearful or have too large of an ego to “give control to someone else.” I was in this group of people for the first 5.5 years of my business career, so I know how it is, but it is not the place or group to be in if you want to succeed.

So, the first piece of the puzzle is having a real team. Not exactly surprising, but true nonetheless. Let’s get to next one.

The next one is that the top agencies are continuously building. This is something that I’d say 90-95%+ of agencies do not do.

Most agencies get to a certain level and just either get lost in fulfillment or for whatever reason just don’t really keep growing.

The top 1% of agencies are building. Specifically, they are building assets, “digital real estate,” new funnels, more IP, more systems, more internal tools, more processes and so on.

A good test for you to do if you’re wanting to see if you do this yourself is one simple question:

“What did you do this week that ensures next week/next month will be better than this one?”

In my opinion, if the answer isn’t immediate and obvious, then the answer is “nothing” and you are not building.

What are some ways to make it better?

Anything that does one of the following:

The list could easily go on to 20 or 30 things.

Most agencies are stuck on the “agency treadmill” or “agency hamster wheel.”

They are actually usually working quite hard and doing “a lot” but they are not actually moving anywhere. It is like permanently running 10 miles per hour on a treadmill. You are running quite fast and usually for quite a long time, but you’re always in the same overall spot.

This point is inherently tied to point number one as unless you offload some of the work and thinking, you will have no time to build and work ON the business because you’ll be spending all of your time working IN the business. Now that I think about it, they are so connected that they could be point A and B instead of two separate points.

So, if those points are connected, what is the final point? Is it related as well?

No, it’s not, but by doing the final point, the first two points become easier overall. The final point is that they all have a specific niche.

In my opinion, the number one reason people fail is because they do not have a niche. I would say upwards of 80% of agencies and service businesses think they have a niche but actually don’t. This causes a tremendous amount of problems for them and they just cannot put their finger on it.

What do I mean by this?

Let’s talk about it specifically with examples.

A lot of people have e-commerce agencies because e-commerce is a niche, right?

No, I would not say so.

Ask yourself a question, what do e-commerce stores have in common other than the fact they are built on Shopify?

???

???????

?!

The answer is nothing.

A store selling furniture has nothing in common with a store selling supplements or a store selling makeup.

There is nothing that you can learn for one client that can automatically be applied to another, even if they are selling the same products a lot of the time.

You can have two stores selling collagen but due to the branding, target market and “claimed” unique benefit, the strategies and assets become very different very quickly.

There are tons of examples besides ecommerce.

“B2B”
Startups
SaaS
Local businesses
“Course sellers”

Even agencies to a large degree, but less so than the above.

Contrary to popular belief, you do not need to choose a niche for the marketing and sales part of the business, although those certainly benefit.

The real reason you need to choose a niche is for service delivery and client fulfillment.

What do I mean by that and what are some examples?

Let’s do some specific niches.

Let’s take roofing for example.

If you have a roofing client in Los Angeles, and you work really hard and do everything the right way, building funnels, running ads, nurturing with email flows and setting appointments for them, and it’s working and succeeding, you could do a 100%, absolutely identical system for a client in Miami, and Las Vegas, and New York City, and Boston, and Phoenix.

Absolutely no changes necessary. The system will work for everyone. The exact same funnel. The exact same ads. The exact same emails. The exact same setting system. All you’d have to do is change the details for the assets and location for the ads.

That is a niche. That is powerful. That is unlike ecommerce or startups or saas or many of these other niches that are not really niches at all.

If your roofing system works in one city, there is a 90%+ chance it works in another city. That allows you to work on and optimize the same thing, and the benefits and learnings benefit all clients.

Then, all of your hiring, all of your training, all of your SOPs and systems, all of your internal tools and workflows, all of your AI and all of your time, energy and attention is focused on building one thing that applies over and over again.

You can get a better result with higher margins, less churn, and a great quality of life.

When you tie this back to the first two points, you can see how this makes them easier. It’s a lot easier to get a team and continuously build your business when it’s focused around one thing and a repeatable result.

So, of all the clients I work with, the top 1% have these in common. I have not seen a top 1% agency in the past year who did not have all three of these things.

The actionable step here is to see how you compare and which of those three things you have. Id say most people have zero of the three which is fine. Now you know you need them and can act accordingly.

If you want me to help you with your lead generation in 2026, book a call at Lead Generation Academy and I’ll see if you qualify.

https://leadgenerationacademy.ai