The Take Timeline

Agencies & Vendors

How the cowboys’ take on Agencies & Vendors has evolved.

1. 2026-01-06moderate 60%

   Agency value is highest when they discover and implement emerging advertising channels that significantly outperform established platforms.

   as an agency owner, if you're in the know and you're plugged into this and you bring this to your client and you're like 'your CPA's dropped in half,' how do you look to that client now? You're a genius.

2. 2026-01-07high confidence 88%

   Agencies struggle with profitability, but success requires prioritizing client communication and expectation management as a top operational priority.

   it is not a fun business model... you have to have some management stuff in place to really manage client expectations and make client comms almost the number one priority

3. 2026-01-30high confidence 82%

   Revenue-share pricing models only make sense when the vendor directly influences conversion across multiple touchpoints; otherwise fixed retainers are more appropriate.

   Fixed retainer versus percentage of revenue has a lot to do with where the revenue generation comes from... when attribution is involved, how much of a farce it is, it's actually astounding.

4. 2026-02-04high confidence 88%

   Agencies should provide non-billable strategic services beyond core offerings—creative consulting, hiring advice, landing page review—to build stronger relationships and add ongoing value.

   instead of just like provide ads to someone, be a like creative consigliary... provide value where you're not paid for it, but you're finding other ways to provide value

5. 2026-02-04high confidence 90%

   Successful agencies need dedicated account managers focused solely on client communication and needs-anticipation, separate from media buyers and creatives.

   we have a dedicated account person in that role and they are not a media buyer... Their whole job is to anticipate the client's needs... translate what the client is saying into actionable things

6. 2026-02-18moderate 62%

   Founders can use AI tools to accomplish in 10 hours what agencies charge $15k+ to deliver.

   10 hours of work, $200 in tools. will return 50K plus in revenue and would have cost 15,000 plus from an agency.

7. 2026-03-06high confidence 88%

   Only 16% of agencies report perceived lack of performance, which is surprisingly low given the frequent complaints from brands about agencies failing to deliver.

   Only 16% perceived lack of performance. That's pretty wild. I mean, especially what we hear directly within our industry.

8. 2026-03-13moderate 65%

   Andrew argues that for agency owners, lead flow is overwhelmingly driven by a single well-placed referral connection, such as a tie into a PE firm or holding company, rather than broad marketing effort.

   Predominantly, it's that there's some sort of lead connection... a connection into some holding company or private equity that has... their person that likes funnels everything towards them.

9. 2026-04-03moderate 60%

   A thorough multi-area performance audit (creative, media buying, landing pages, pixels/reporting) followed by a focused 90-day sprint reliably drives large, guaranteeable growth for clients.

   we then will put that into this 90-day sprint where we try to solve for that as quickly and as aggressively as possible... increasing new customers by about 25%. Like we've just doubled revenue for clients like within 30 days.

10. 2026-04-18moderate 62%

    A freelance marketer's longest and most successful relationships come from picking brands with genuinely strong ideas and good teams, not just chasing volume of clients.

    my longest client relationships are typically the brands where I think, this is a really good idea that has legs, and I like working with the team

11. 2026-04-25moderate 62%

    Colin and Torii argue that pivoting a media-buying agency into a software company requires raising very large amounts of capital and elite engineering talent, not just service-business know-how.

    you're going to have to raise a gazillion dollars, you know? ... transition from service business to software business

12. 2026-05-01moderate 60%

    Outer Signal stands out among service providers because brands spontaneously praise it organically on social media, an unusually rare signal of vendor quality.

    rarely do you find brands posting organic social um accolades about their service providers, about their vendors... Outer Signal, holy [ __ ] this is so cool

13. 2026-05-02moderate 60%

    Founders should outsource low-leverage finance work like journal entries and AP rather than doing it themselves, so they can focus on their highest-value contribution.

    what is your highest contribution value to your business? Is it doing journal entries? Is it you know doing AP?

14. 2026-05-12moderate 63%

    Jon Blair advises that scaling brands must get agency partners and internal stakeholders in the same room communicating directly, since relying on relayed communication between multiple external parties causes coordination to break down.

    You can't just play a game of telephone all the time, or things break down.

15. 2026-05-20high confidence 80%

    Kasra argues the agency model makes you feel like a 'rented employee,' which is why he stepped back from agency work to build brands he fully controls.

    the agency model for me, like I don't know how to say it. It's just like you're a rented employee almost. And like for me, I really love building brands... making an impact in something that I can control 100%

16. 2026-05-28moderate 75%

    A one-off placement fee (20% of annual salary) is fairer to both candidates and clients than a recurring revenue-share model that obscures how much the candidate actually receives.

    what is going to be the long-term best solution for us... a one-off fee that is a percentage of the annual salary, which is 20%

17. 2026-05-30moderate 75%

    A boutique agency serving only premium, non-seven-figure brands with low strategist-to-account ratios delivers meaningfully better service than agencies stretching strategists across many accounts.

    at other agencies who manage seven to 12 accounts per strategist, our strategist manage like three to six, maybe.

18. 2026-06-03moderate 55%

    Many SaaS vendors give advice on demo calls without actually understanding what's happening in a founder's business, and the guest has deliberately avoided being that kind of vendor.

    you guys have been on like SaaS demos and you're talking to somebody and they're giving you advice and you're like this guy has no idea what's actually happening and I vowed to not be that SaaS guy.

19. 2026-06-05moderate 70%

    Whether an agency is already complying with AI-labeling rules is a real litmus test of agency quality, and brands shouldn't have to absorb the cost of an agency's compliance mistakes.

    it's a great way to find out if your agency is actually good or not, is if they know and are executing on this. And if they're not and you get a fine, that should be immediately passed to them. You as the brand should not be in charge of covering for their mistakes

20. 2026-06-13moderate 60%

    Legacy holding-company agencies underperform because clients get bogged down fighting procurement instead of running unified acquisition/retention/creative strategy.

    you're fighting procurement conversations more than you are strategy

21. 2026-06-19moderate 60%

    Meghan Markle's stalled jam collab isn't a founder-empathy issue, it's just a case of needing to hire an agency to execute properly.

    Or just hire an agency. Like what what are we what are we talking about here?

22. 2026-07-28moderate 65%

    An all-in-one competitive intelligence tool beats piecing together point solutions because it consolidates hooks, landing pages, email, and channel strategy into one platform.

    the fact that we have allin-one is that you get to understand everything absolutely everything from the landing pages from the hook to the email to the Google strategy to the Tik Tok to the meta... that's really what makes Trent track different

23. 2026-08-01moderate 68%

    Most agencies vet prospective clients only on whether they can afford to pay, whereas Flat Circle integrates deeper at the client's P&L level.

    A lot of times, like the evaluation is like, do you have enough dollars to pay? You do? Okay, great. We will work together.

24. 2026-08-05moderate 70%

    Sub-$100k/month brands can't afford the agency support needed to succeed on TikTok Shop or Amazon, and even massive Meta spend gets no dedicated account rep.

    I give more than $300,000 a month to Mark Zuckerberg and I get no rep. That's insane.

25. 2026-08-14Predictionmoderate 70%

    Oliver Bracado predicts that human-plus-AI hybrid enforcement services like Bustm will shift almost entirely to machine-driven delivery within about two years.

    we're going to blink in two years and it's going to be all machine, right?

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