Agency Management

In this third article of our series, following “How Attention Shifts Before Replacement” and “Agency Denial,” we examine the underlying question clients rarely voice directly: What is the true quality of this partnership? The answer lies in the phrase they put at the end of every evaluation rubric: “overall partnership quality.” It is not a soft metric — it’s the […]

In the first installment of this series, “How Attention Shifts Before Replacement,” I showed that clients don’t begin exploring alternatives because something broke. They begin exploring because something else became possible, typically another narrative, another perspective, another way of connecting the future to their strategy. What tends to follow, internally and externally, is a moment

The Moment Clients Become Open to Something Else Most agency relationships don’t unravel because something breaks. They begin to shift because something new catches the client’s attention. Performance is stable. Communication is functional. Trust hasn’t collapsed. Reports are delivered. The relationship, by all visible measures, still works. And yet something subtle changes. The client listens

And Why You Must Build CYA Into Everything You Do Selling search software directly to brands is one thing. Selling it through agencies is something entirely different. I wrote this from a series of emails I sent to industry fronds that were trying to get large agency groups and holding companies to offer their software

Why Contribution Value Beats Contract Value — Every Time Most organizations make decisions based on contract value — price, scope, deliverables, and outputs — but I argue that a focus on “Contribution Value” will increase your client win and retention rates. I introduced the concept of contribution value in Epiphany 23, “Contribution Value vs. Contract Value.”

Most agencies think clients cancel because “performance dipped” or “a competitor undercut price.”That’s rarely the truth. After decades of seeing why relationships fall apart—from enterprise retainers to fast-moving SaaS accounts—I’ve learned this: clients don’t cancel because they want a new vendor. They cancel because something stopped making sense. There are four core reasons, and if

Why SaaS Software Needs Extra Layers of CYA Hreflang implementation is notoriously fragile. It touches multiple systems, depends on various teams, and spans dozens of moving parts across markets. When it fails, the default assumption is simple: blame the vendor. That’s why we had to engineer CYA (Cover Your Assets) protections directly into Hreflang Builder.

Most software founders focus on features, velocity, and go-to-market. But beneath the hood, your product must be legally ownable, compliantly built, and risk-contained—or you’ll face deal-breaking issues later. It is this second part of the job that many developers overlook. In this first article, I’ll walk through the essential steps every agency or product builder