Top Five Fears of Agency Leaders

I asked a bunch of agency owners: “What keeps you up at night?”

This isn’t science. It’s not some 100-page white paper. Just a finger-in-the-air, gut-check from those in the trenches. But the answers? Revealing.

1. “We’re Irrelevant... and Don’t Know It.”

“We keep delivering work, but is anyone actually paying attention?”

Many agencies are invisible. Great teams, decent clients, nice logos on the creds deck… but deep down, the work’s generic, the positioning’s vague, and no one can really explain what makes them different.

They say they’re experts, but act like generalists. They chase everyone. Try to please everyone. And in doing so, stand for… nothing.

Hard truth: Most agencies are forgettable. Not because they’re bad, but because they look, sound, and behave like everyone else.

You don’t lose to better agencies. You lose to ones that are clearer about what they do and who they do it for.

2. “If I Scale, Will I Still Want to Run This Thing?”

“Growth sounds great… until I realise what it costs.”

Growth gets sold as the golden ticket... bigger team, more revenue, swankier office (or maybe just more Zoom boxes). But with it comes process, structure, overheads, managers, meetings… and a growing sense of “this isn’t why I started an agency.”

The fear? You build the business you thought you should, not the one you actually want.

You don’t have a growth problem. You’ve got a direction problem.

The question isn’t, “Can we scale?”

It’s, “What are we scaling towards?”

3. “We’re Busy... But We’re Broke.”

“Revenue’s up, the team’s flat out… but where’s the profit?”

Every agency’s had this moment: you’re maxed out, proposals flying, leads flowing, but when you look at the P&L… not much to show for it.

Why? Because it’s not a pipeline issue. It’s a pricing, margin, and scope issue. Too much work, too little return.

You’ve built a hamster wheel. It spins faster, but it doesn’t go anywhere.

Revenue is vanity.

Profit is sanity.

And time… time is freedom.

4. “Am I the Bottleneck?”

“What if I’m the reason we’re stuck?”

This one hits hard. You’ve built the agency. You’ve got the scars. But now you’re holding it back.

Still signing every proposal. Still in every client meeting. Still making all the decisions. Your team’s capable, but you don’t trust them to run the show. Not really.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s because your identity is tied up in being indispensable.

You hired people and then didn’t let them do their jobs.

That’s not control. That’s fear.

5. “What Happens If We Lose a Big Client?”

“We’re just one email away from chaos.”

Even with retainers, many agencies live hand-to-mouth. A couple of quiet months, one big client walks, and suddenly it’s panic stations.

When one client accounts for 20%, 30%, 40% of revenue… it’s not a client. It’s a boss. And that makes you an employee.

You’re not running a business if one decision from someone else can shut it all down.

Final Word

Agencies don’t fall apart because of a lack of talent.

They fail because leaders avoid the tough stuff: the decisions, the focus, the strategy, the hard conversations.

Clarity is kindness. (I think I’ve said that once or twice before…)

If any of those fears felt uncomfortably familiar, you’re not alone. This is the stuff that never gets posted on LinkedIn, but shows up in the mastermind room. Every single agency leader deals with some version of it.

The question is: What are you going to do about it?