The Myth-Busting Guide to
Agency Growth and Scale
How to Succeed in Web Design
and Development
MythBusting
Guide
Introduction
If you want to grow your web firm, now is the time. There’s a 20 billion dollar market and
a rapidly-evolving arsenal of development tools and resources at your fingertips, and the
majority of websites have yet to adopt best practices. Take a look at the numbers:
89% of the top 100k sites are not responsive
86% contain at least one serious vulnerability
10m outages are detected monthly
That said, the bar for development talent has never been higher. Companies expect
the team they hire to produce impressive results within their budget and time frame,
often collaborating with other vendors and in-house team members throughout the
project. This can be overwhelming if you’re a smaller agency, or a mid-size team
wanting to take on the most competitive, coveted projects.
This guide is designed to help you overcome obstacles to growth. We bust seven
myths that can hold you back from scaling up without breaking the bank. No new hires,
no big investments, and definitely no holds barred.
2
MythBusting
Guide
Why Listen to Us?
Before starting Pantheon, our founders managed their own successful web
development agencies, helping to guide Chapter Three and Four Kitchens from small
shops into established, profitable firms that continue to thrive. Our daily conversations
with owners and partners at top firms frequently center on lessons they’ve learned as
their agencies have grown in size and revenue. Learn from them and other industry
experts in this guide.
The Myths
Jump around or take it from the top. We bust seven myths that can hold you back from
scaling your agency.
Myth #1
The client is always right.
Myth #2
You must define the perfect niche before you can grow.
Myth #3
You need to be big to attract big clients.
Myth #4
Support work is boring, distracting and unprofitable.
Myth #5
Only big agencies Benefit from Streamlined Processes.
Myth #6
You can’t grow unless your team gets bigger.
Myth #7
Great teams require extravagant benefits.
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Myth #1
THE CLIENT IS ALWAYS RIGHT
MythBusting
Guide
Your agency exists to do what clients tell you to do. If you do that,
success will naturally follow.
Heard this one before? That’s because it’s incredibly common for agencies hoping
to grow to take on whatever work will help them up their revenue. But it’s your
responsibility to be thoughtful about the clients you take on, and how you interact with
them. Acting on your strengths, your relationship with the client, and what they truly
need is better than being the “yes” team.
TRUTH: Making clients successful is your top priority.
Doing only what your clients ask for may not make either of you successful in the long
run. Consider these scenarios and how you might handle them:
1. Your client’s cousin built their custom, unintuitive, beast of a website. They ask
for a mobile app, convinced it will make them seem “cutting edge” and boost their
user base. You can spend weeks developing a killer
iOS app—but you know no one will download it.
They didn’t need an app at all. Their site was
confusing, clunky, and put mobile users through a
complicated series of zooming, scrolling, and clicks
to get the information they needed. What they really
should’ve asked for was a better user experience and
mobile-friendly site, but instead they might blame
you for their low adoption rate.
2. Your client has a tight budget, so they ask for
low-cost hosting. You know saying yes will mean
billing them more in the long run for administrative
tasks and fire drills that arise with unreliable, low-cost
server setups.
What they really needed was reassurance that
they were making smart investments. They weren’t
thinking of the long-term costs—just the monthly
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Myth #1
THE CLIENT IS ALWAYS RIGHT
MythBusting
Guide
bill they’d be getting for hosting. You could’ve helped them pick the best hosting and
website management options and become their long-term technology partner, but
now they’re coming to you when the servers crash.
There’s a fine line between authoritative and imposing. Striking the right tone with clients
when you know they’re not asking for what they need can be a challenge, but the payoff is
a lasting relationship with a client who knows you have their best interests in mind. These
clients can make a huge difference in your career, sending you new business through
referrals instead of chalking you up as “someone they tried but it didn’t work out”.
ANDY CRESTODINA, COFOUNDER, ORBIT MEDIA STUDIOS
Clients often request features that have negative return on investment. It happens all the
time. Here’s an example: A client called asking to add a rotating image area to their home
page. They wanted it to appear just under the slideshow, which is another area of the
home page with movement. But data and experience shows that it’s not effective to have
two areas of movement on a single page, since they will compete with each other, dividing
visitors’ attention. Their logic? “We’re a B2B company so we need to make the homepage
less boring.”
This is not a good idea, and the client isn’t right. They’re making decisions based on
opinion, rather than evidence and best practices. They aren’t seeing the site through the
perspective of visitors and data.
The greatest challenge of the web designer or digital marketer is to educate the client, but
do so in a firm yet empathetic way. The purpose of web design and digital marketing is to
guide the visitors through a series of pages during which they become more educated and
trusting. This is the key to lead generation best practices.
DO THIS NEXT
Pick one thing you know your client can improve on, and suggest it in your
next meeting. Gauge their reception—are they happy you caught something
that they didn’t? Are they open to change? If so, think about being more
opinionated with your clients. Chances are they’ll be happy to have your input.
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Myth #2
YOU NEED THE PERFECT NICHE
BEFORE YOU CAN GROW
MythBusting
Guide
If you don’t choose an angle and stick with it, you’ll never be able to
focus and get the right clients.
It’s important to define your target audience, but just like a business plan, that first
draft will likely get thrown out as soon as you find some traction. Web design and
development agencies work in a unique market—there’s a ton of crossover in talent,
and clients can’t always differentiate between what’s in and out of scope. Rather than
obsess over your exact positioning, you can pursue several avenues and work out
what’s most valuable over time.
TRUTH: Decide what your agency will excel at. But don’t
wait for the perfect answer.
Sometimes, a niche makes sense. Are you a highly-specialized
team that understands how to present complicated electrical
engineering concepts to B2B customers? Or a firm known for
their cheeky, offbeat interactive experiences? If you can answer
the question, “What are we the best at?” without skipping a
beat, then by all means don’t let anyone stop you. However, if
you’re waffling on whether to specialize or approach a general
market, there’s another option to consider.
Start with where your strengths are, but don’t add too many
constraints. Work with clients you can get on board with—
maybe you’re interested in the project, maybe you admire
what they do, maybe it’s worth the money—but don’t
ignore your values or promise things you can’t deliver. From
there, identify which projects are most successful in terms
of your relationship with the client, the impact on their
ROI, your profit margin, and whether it will lead to support
revenue or new projects. As you find your place in the
market, be flexible enough to shift your focus to the work
that allows your firm to prosper.
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Myth #2
YOU NEED THE PERFECT NICHE
BEFORE YOU CAN GROW
MythBusting
Guide
LESLIE BRADSHAW, MANAGING PARTNER AT MADE BY MANY
AND COFOUNDER OF JESS3
I believe it’s less about finding a niche, and more about building a reputation. You can talk
all day about what your specialty is, but you have to actually be known for doing exceptional
work in that area before people will actually believe you. As you’re growing, lead with your
strengths, and work hard to achieve a reputation. You’ll see a snowball effect—you might
start out as a freelancer or subcontractor, then win a project just outside of your reach in
terms of brand, prestige, and budget.
When I founded JESS3 in 2006, we partnered with other agencies. We would provide the
insight into what was new in digital and social, and we would get a chance to do the projects
they would win by having more people, more money, and stronger reputations. We’d do a
project with them and that would turn into another, then we’d start working directly with the
client. Eventually, we were on the radar of big companies. Around the fourth year, we got a
call from Google—we’d built a reputation, they’d seen our work, and they called us because
they thought we would be the best for their project.
It’s not always about pinning down your niche in terms of an exact technology or type of
project. You’ve got to be able pull back, look at your larger strategy, and decide what the
most productive approach is at the time. If you can win over the highly talented, skeptical
people who are are behind innovation on the web, then you’re doing something right.
DO THIS NEXT
Sit down and identify two things you know are holding you back. Go with your
gut on one (“We’re weak on frontend work”), and look at the numbers for another
(“Our lowest profit margins come from our hospitality clients”). How can you tackle
these issues? Commit to making at least one change—whether it’s training your
team, shifting your sales focus, or dropping an unrewarding project.
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Myth #3
YOU NEED TO BE BIG TO ATTRACT
BIG CLIENTS
MythBusting
Guide
Big firms get big jobs. Small firms get small jobs. If you want big jobs,
you have to get big first.
To an agency competing for projects against much larger firms, it might feel like a hopeless
battle. But those large competitors were once smaller, and they only got to where they are
by attracting clients seemingly out of their reach.
TRUTH: Big organizations find your other qualities highly
attractive.
If you don’t have the logos or name recognition to easily snag big contracts, there are
plenty of things you can do to close the deals you’ve been dreaming about:
Describe your work with confidence. Promote your projects in terms of solutions
instead of brands. Fill your portfolio with a killer project for each potential scenario you
might pitch to a prospect.

Build the street cred of your individual team members by speaking at events,
hosting meetups, writing articles for online publications, and flaunting your expertise
on whatever platforms are most useful for finding business.

Write in-depth case studies and tutorials about specific technical problems that
will actually help people and be found in searches. When you pitch a big client, speak
passionately and authoritatively about those projects and their outcomes.

Be generous with your community. Share what you know with other professionals
and don’t ask for favors in return. You’ll develop a reputation as a helpful and
knowledgeable expert, which can come back around when a big project arises.

Team up with other creatives for out-of-scope work. There’s a difference
between taking on work you know nothing about and accepting a project that calls for
a little hired expertise. Know your weaknesses and fill them with an extra designer or
developer on contract.

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Myth #3
YOU NEED TO BE BIG TO ATTRACT
BIG CLIENTS
MythBusting
Guide
Use tools that can automate repetitive tasks and reduce overhead. With a small
team, you can move faster by not starting from scratch on every project. There are
plenty of tools to automate sysadmin work, create custom codebases, build templates
for project phases, and set up workflows for better project management.

There are a couple of advantages smaller firms can typically flaunt over large agencies.
One is your nimbleness. Tell your prospects why you can get to market faster: your
close-knit team, your lack of bureaucracy, your agile workflow.
The other is your dedication to each client. When you’re not spread thin and your
leadership team is accessible, clients get better service. Companies know this, and
they’ll choose a smaller firm if they feel confident they can execute well. Confidence
and authority go a long way in getting the deals you want.
BRIAN WEBSTER AND JORDAN JENNINGS, COFOUNDERS, DELICIOUS SIMPLICITY
We almost passed on the opportunity to build a big media project a while back. Developing
a high-profile website on a compressed timeline with a launch date less than one month
away? We’re a two-person agency with a small team of contractors. Without a clear,
streamlined development workflow in place, it wouldn’t have been feasible to create and
maintain an environment capable of withstanding the inevitable traffic spikes and hack
attempts. We ended up automating a lot of the sysadmin work that would’ve been our
downfall, and that’s the reason we not only accepted the project, but also hit our launch
target, building the new site start-to-finish in one month.
DO THIS NEXT
Start building your database of creatives to collaborate with when needed.
Be ready to serve future clients by adopting modern workflows and project
management tools now, so you know you can follow through on big promises
before a big prospect comes to you.
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Myth #4
SUPPORT WORK IS BORING,
DISTRACTING, AND UNPROFITABLE
MythBusting
Guide
Once a site has launched, it’s time to move on. The budget is spent
and support work is drudgery.
Back when website launches meant one big overhaul every few years, this may have
been true. Support work meant basic DevOps tasks and fixing broken things. Now,
websites require iteration—pushing many small improvements and frequently adding
new features. There’s opportunity for more collaborative, ongoing, and profitable
relationships in the form of support agreements.
TRUTH: Offering support can keep everyone happy while
opening up new revenue streams.
Support work is valuable, important to your clients, and an excellent source of reliable
income. But there are a few things to attend to before it can be profitable. Ask yourself
these three questions before you ramp up your support revenue strategy:
1
Have you built streamlined, repeatable processes for sysadmin work, security updates,
commonly-asked-for features, and project management tactics?
2
Have you automated as many non-billable or time-consuming tasks as possible?
3
Are you confident in your ability to iterate and test new features quickly and safely?
If you can say yes to all three, your potential for a profitable support operation is
looking good. Here are some things you can offer your clients after their website goes
live (or, after you inherit an existing site).
Security updates and rapid response to announced security breaches. Use a
website management platform with easy-to-deploy updates to keep client sites secure
without any configuration or use of senior developer time.

Incremental improvements to the site. Now is the time for all of the “phase
two” ideas to come into play. Suggest and decide on regular feature-adds or site
improvements with your client and become their long-term partner.

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Myth #4
SUPPORT WORK IS BORING,
DISTRACTING, AND UNPROFITABLE
MythBusting
Guide
User testing and feedback. The more you can test a site, the more likely you can
call it a success. Help your clients do user testing and optimization to uncover new
insights into what motivates their target audience.

Performance tuning. Give your clients the fastest speeds and highest uptime
possible by using a reliable website platform and tools that automate performance
checks. Run regular tests and share them in weekly or monthly reports to give clients
peace of mind that their site is in good hands.

Support work can be a reliable source of recurring income. If you can automate the
tedious tasks and focus on valuable client deliverables, you’ll stay on with clients longer
and be top-of-mind for new projects.
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Myth #4
SUPPORT WORK IS BORING,
DISTRACTING, AND UNPROFITABLE
MythBusting
Guide
MASON JAMES, CTO, WP VALET
It often seems like a line is drawn between consulting and support. The latter is seen as
being reactive, painful, and often existing without much thought to scope or budget.
Consulting, which typically happens before the project is finished, is seen as highly
profitable, engaging, and rewarding. But the reality is that both require the same problemsolving and thorough understanding of the requirements for success—we consider support
to be inclusive of both proactive, strategic activity and rapid response to unexpected issues
that may arise. It’s also critical to the success of any business.
To make support a successful and enjoyable source of revenue, you’ll need to focus on
communicating well and providing consistent service to your clients. By understanding their
needs, ensuring they stick to best practices, and bringing innovative ideas to the table,
you can build a stronger relationship. You’ll be positioned for more upsells, referrals, and
testimonials. And as you spot common support issues among clients, you can use them to
create helpful documentation and procedures for the rest of your client base. Support, for
us, is one of our most valuable lines of business.
DO THIS NEXT
Go back to the three questions on page 10. Did you answer “no” to any of them?
If so, see what our free agency product can do to help.
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Myth #5
ONLY BIG AGENCIES BENEFIT
FROM STREAMLINED PROCESSES
MythBusting
Guide
Small teams can handle everything on the fly.
Startups and small agencies often make the same mistakes when it comes to efficiency.
The excitement of diving right in makes it feel like there’s no time for rethinking
process. Then, when a few demanding projects happen concurrently, the whole team is
scrambling to find the resources they need.
TRUTH: The best time to get streamlined is before you’re
in a crunch.
Success as a growing agency relies in part on smart distribution of resources, so take
the time early on to become efficient and scalable. When the pressure is on, you’ll be
equipped to handle any high-profile client that comes your way.
You’ll want to start with the most impactful areas. These are good things to focus on
because, left unattended, they can add up to a great deal of unbillable hours and
overhead that eat into your profit margin.
Custom codebases. Creating custom installs or
distributions can make starting a new project easier,
especially if your focus is on a specific vertical. A retail
site, for example, will need the same commercerelated modules or plugins as many others have already
implemented. If you can spin up a site with the basics
included, you’ll get to market faster.

Workflow. Stay true to continuous integration best
practices. Using version control and identical dev, test,
and live environments will let you produce work faster,
keep bugs out of production, and always know what your
team is working on.

Project management tools. Eventually, you’ll forget a
deadline or lose track of that email thread. When you’re
still on the smaller side, invest the time or money into a

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Myth #5
ONLY BIG AGENCIES BENEFIT
FROM STREAMLINED PROCESSES
MythBusting
Guide
good project management system. Make sure you can collaborate with clients, track
milestones, assign tasks, and receive alerts when a deadline is in danger.
A website management platform. If you’re managing more than one site, you’ll
save time and money managing them in one place. Using a platform like Pantheon,
where hosting and website management tools are all included, can cut down most of
the error and repetition associated with managing multiple projects.

The best thing about streamlining and standardizing is that they let you do more with
the same resources. When an opportunity comes along, like a slew of new clients
or a huge project, you’ll be able to handle it like a pro without hiring, stressing, or
neglecting your existing business.
JOHN STUDDARD, COFOUNDER, BIG COUCH MEDIA
We did six big launches in three weeks at one point. The fact that we were able to pull it
off was a huge win for us. There is no way we would have been able to do that in our old
environment—we would get into this mode of constantly moving sites around, having
multiple instances of them cloned, then having to do manual merges of code. Now we’re
using identical dev, test, and prod environments on one platform. The ability to do quick
updates, to push code quickly, to determine what’s changed—this allowed our team to scale
more than I thought we ever could.
DO THIS NEXT
Consider creating a custom upstream so you don’t need to reinvent the wheel
for each new web project. See how ASU does it.
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Myth #6
YOU CAN’T GROW UNLESS
YOUR TEAM GETS BIGGER
MythBusting
Guide
If you want to take on bigger projects or more clients, you’ll have to
hire more designers and developers.
Hiring is an investment, and can help you grow steadily over time. But often you’ll want to
scale up without putting thousands into a new hire, whether they’re a contract or full-time
employee. Don’t get caught up in thinking that more people=more productive. Rather,
think about how to do more with what you have.
TRUTH: You can do a lot more with the team
you already have.
Growth isn’t all about new hires. You can improve your profit margins and productivity in
other ways. The first thing to consider is your price. Is your agency charging what you’re
worth? Don’t be afraid to raise prices on clients whose work isn’t profitable—or at least
opening big doors. You might consider trying a different pricing structure, too.
You should also take a close look at your design and development activities. Are you an
agile operation? Is each team member actively working at honing their expertise in their
craft? Spend time figuring out your best workflow, stop or outsource what doesn’t yield
good results, and team up with other professionals when you need a new skillset for a
particular project.
If you’ve already made your current process as efficient as possible, you can automate
certain processes and free up your team for revenue-generating work. What can you
automate or simplify without giving up flexibility and control over important client projects?
Sysadmin work. Sysadmin tasks take time and often aren’t billable. And most of
the time, developers would rather be doing actual development work. Urge your
clients to choose a website platform that doesn’t leave the DevOps work to your team
members—and one that allows them to scale without completely overhauling their
infrastructure.

Security measures. Installing updates and responding to security announcements
take time if you’re manually implementing changes for each client site. Find a platform
with security features built in and handle security-related tasks in minutes.

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Myth #6
YOU CAN’T GROW UNLESS
YOUR TEAM GETS BIGGER
MythBusting
Guide
Website management. Managing a portfolio of websites without an easy-to-use,
centralized location to do so can lead to hours of searching, emailing, and fixing mistakes.
Simplify your process with a tool that gives you a control center for your entire portfolio—a
single developer can manage more sites without an added workload.

The more of your current resources you free up, the more work you can take on without
adding team members. When the time to hire does come, you’ll know that new hires
will be using their time in the most efficient, valuable way.
RICK WEBB, COFOUNDER OF BARBARIAN GROUP
AND AUTHOR OF AGENCY: STARTING A CREATIVE FIRM
The number of people in your shop is only one factor affecting revenue and margins. The
ecosystem of marketing, design, and communications is varied, and there are many job roles and
skillsets a firm can offer. If you’re looking to grow your firm without significantly increasing your
headcount, consider the changing the breakdown of the type of work you’re doing. You could
potentially own a larger scope of a project rather than a smaller piece of several.
For example, instead of having an agency composed 100% of designers, consider one
that is comprised of designers, engineers, UX practitioners and strategists, and product
managers. Each of these roles has different competitive rates and different economics—
some of them are significantly more profitable than others. When a client project arises,
you can capture the “whole budget”. Often, handing the budget to a single vendor is more
cost-effective for the client. You can decrease ramp-up time, minimize overhead, and do a
more efficient job managing the project, giving the client better results and bringing in more
revenue for your agency.
DO THIS NEXT
Add up the amount of hours per month you spend on DevOps work. How
could you better use that time? What could you offer your clients in place of it?
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Myth #7
GREAT TEAMS REQUIRE
EXTRAVAGANT BENEFITS
MythBusting
Guide
Successful agencies have foosball tables. And free lunches. And
puppies. If you want great people, you need better toys.
While the ping pong table was becoming synonymous with being a fun, successful
startup, you were busy hustling to get your first few clients. Now that you’re thinking
about how to scale, you’re wondering if you can afford to entertain the highly soughtafter developer talent you’re hoping to bring on board.
TRUTH: Keep your team happy by giving them
opportunities to do creative, high-value work.
Giving employees the benefits they deserve
is an important part of building a successful
business. But overcompensating with frills
won’t keep your team happy if they don’t
have a place to showcase their talent.
Web design and development is full of
creatives who are motivated by meaningful
and challenging work. Find and retain top
talent by letting them focus on high-value
projects. If you’ve automated and streamlined
what you can, you’ve gotten rid of a lot of the
drudgery already.
You can further empower your team members
by giving them the tools they need to
do their jobs properly, spending time on
training and professional development, and
mentoring junior developers as you give
them increasingly autonomous roles. Project
lifecycles have different opportunities to
engage your team. Senior people can focus
on strategy and complex tasks, while junior
people can learn something new on each
project. Bringing a mix of both to a project
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Myth #7
GREAT TEAMS REQUIRE
EXTRAVAGANT BENEFITS
MythBusting
Guide
can be great for all, providing training for your junior people, validation for your senior
people, and exposure to different ways of thinking for everyone.
Your people are your product, and clients hire your agency because of what you can deliver
together, as a team. Every investment you make in that team—in things that make people
happier and more productive—is an investment in the quality of your product. They’re worth it.
MICHAEL HOFFMAN, COFOUNDER OF SEE3
At See3, we’ve learned that employee motivation extends far beyond salary. While salary is
important—people do need to pay their rent—many of our employees came to See3 because
the mission of working for social good appeals to them. Our entire team shares a value that our
work matters, not just to us for our own benefit, but for the world. We work for organizations like
the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Foundation Fighting Blindness, and produce campaigns
that fight for privacy rights, the environment, and children’s health. It’s easy to get motivated to
go above and beyond for our clients, and it’s been a big part of our success.
Our mission extends to how we treat our employees. We are getting B Corp certification
to enshrine the idea that the company exists not only for shareholder value, but for the
benefit of the employees, the client, the community and the environment. In our benefits,
we treat our team like grown-ups who are self-motivated. We trust them to be responsible
and empower them to grow personally and professionally. None of this costs a lot of money,
but it’s an approach that says, “we’re a team and we’re all in this together on a mission to
change the world.
DO THIS NEXT
Ask your senior team members what they need to be more productive. Ask
your junior members what new challenge they’d like to take on. If it’s not costprohibitive, give it to them.
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MythBusting
Guide
Your Personal Path to Enlightenment
Is your mind blown yet? We hope so. As a growing agency, there’s always a way to look
at things differently. Before you head down any path, consider your other options and
how they’ll impact your team’s productivity, happiness, and bottom line.
Your developers want to love their jobs. Your clients want to love your work. Give that
to them by turning old advice on its head and taking your agency to the next level.
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