Which constraint do you actually have?
A growth constraint is the specific bottleneck keeping your agency from scaling past its current plateau. Most agencies have one primary constraint. The harder problem is naming it correctly.
The misdiagnosis pattern is consistent: founders look at the symptom closest to revenue and assume that's the constraint. Referrals slowed, so they think they need more pipeline. They bring in a BD resource. The pipeline doesn't move because the real problem is positioning. Nobody can remember what the agency does specifically, so referrals that do come in are weak and poorly matched.
Four shapes this takes:
Positioning leak. You lose deals you should win. Prospects describe your agency in the same terms they'd use for three other shops. When someone refers you, they say "they do good work" and nothing more specific than that. You don't have a category you own.
Pricing leak. Every client negotiates. You've dropped your rate to close more times than you can count. Margins are thin even when you're fully staffed. You build hours into proposals as a buffer because you know scope will expand.
Pipeline leak. Revenue has come almost entirely from referrals and the referrals have slowed. You don't have an outreach system. When a client leaves, replacing them is a scramble that takes longer than it should.
AI capacity leak. Clients are asking what your agency can do with AI in their marketing, content, or operations. Your team can't answer with confidence. Agencies that can answer this question credibly are winning work that agencies without a clear answer are losing.
These four aren't always distinct. Agencies in real trouble often have two running simultaneously. A positioning leak can look like a pipeline leak. A pricing leak can look like a capacity problem. But there's almost always one that's primary, and the right kind of outside help depends on naming it correctly.
The four hiring options compared
Once you've named the constraint, you have four realistic options for getting outside help. They're not interchangeable.
Consultant. A consultant works on a specific problem for a defined period, either a project or a retainer. Right when the constraint is strategic: positioning, pricing architecture, BD system design, or AI capability planning. Right when the founder needs someone who can think alongside them and build something they can hand off internally. A consultant's work ends when the engagement ends, so it's the wrong fit when the team needs ongoing skill transfer or channel management.
Typical cost: $2,000-$15,000/month on retainer, or $10,000-$30,000 for a defined project scope.
Coach. A coach works on the founder. Right when the founder is the constraint: decision-making speed, mindset, accountability, hiring instincts. A coach won't rebuild your pricing model. A coach helps you get honest about why rebuilding it has stalled. Wrong when the problem is operational rather than personal.
Typical cost: $1,000-$5,000/month.
Fractional CMO. A fractional CMO holds a part-time leadership role inside the agency, attending team meetings, managing the marketing function, building and running the content engine. Right when the agency needs someone running marketing from the inside. In most cases, the wrong fit under $800K-$1M in annual gross income, where the minimum viable engagement costs more than the revenue can support.
Typical cost: $5,000-$20,000/month depending on hours and scope.
In-house marketing hire. Typically the right move when the agency is past $2M in revenue and needs ongoing execution capacity. Wrong before the strategy is set. You'll spend 90 days onboarding someone into a system that hasn't been figured out yet. A capable marketing manager hired before the positioning is clear will optimize a broken message.
Typical cost: $80,000-$150,000+ fully loaded (base salary, payroll taxes, benefits, tools, recruiting cost).
None of these is inherently better. The right one depends on what the agency actually needs right now.
The agency consultant landscape
Five practitioners come up regularly when agency founders ask for referrals in this space. Each starts from a different place and is suited for a different kind of problem.
Karl Sakas is an operations and scale specialist. His work centers on delegation frameworks, agency org design, and helping founders step back from delivery so the business can run without them. If the constraint is how the agency runs, founder in every project, no clear accountability structure, team decisions routing back to the top, Sakas is likely the better fit.
Jason Swenk built his practice around sales process and productization. He works on shortening sales cycles, systematizing BD, and packaging agency services so they're easier to sell repeatedly. His Productized Service model is itself a positioning methodology. If you already know who you serve and your pipeline is the main constraint, Swenk is worth a look.
AMI (Drew McLellan) runs The Thriving Agency community and publishes benchmarking data on agency operations: owner compensation, profit margins, utilization rates. AMI's model is peer accountability and industry comparison. You learn by seeing how your numbers stack up against other agency owners and by working through problems with peers in a structured setting. If the gap is leadership development, financial benchmarking, or structured peer accountability, AMI fits.
Haus Advisors takes a diagnostic-first approach. They map your agency's strategic position before recommending any action. That thoroughness is genuinely valuable when a founder isn't sure where the agency stands or wants a full picture before committing to a direction. If you want a rigorous assessment of your situation before moving, Haus is built for that.
SCG (Kurt Schmidt). The work starts with whichever constraint is most acute, and the engagement option is matched to it. Kurt was President and partner at Foundry (Minneapolis), a custom software development and digital product agency that made the Inc. 5000 in 2020 and 2021. The four-leaks diagnostic came from watching the same failure patterns repeat across multiple agencies and building a framework that named them clearly enough to act on. SCG fits when the founder wants to start with diagnosis and work through to implementation with the same person.
Each of these is a legitimate practice. The decision is about which starting point matches the agency's actual problem.
What a growth engagement should produce in 90 days
A 90-day consulting engagement should produce a working artifact the agency can use. What that looks like depends on which constraint is primary.
Positioning artifact. A written document stating who the agency serves, the specific problem it solves, and the language that makes qualified prospects self-identify. This is the foundation for every piece of sales and marketing copy the agency produces afterward. Addresses the positioning leak.
Pricing model rebuild. A rate card audit, a shift toward value-based framing where appropriate, and proposal language that holds the number under client pressure. Includes at least one worked example showing how to present and defend the new pricing. Addresses the pricing leak.
BD system. A referral reactivation sequence, an outreach rhythm the team can maintain without the founder running it, and a response protocol for inbound. The system exists on paper and has been tested at least once before the engagement ends. Addresses the pipeline leak.
Content engine plan. Topic authority mapping, publication cadence, and channel selection based on where the agency's buyers actually spend attention. Addresses pipeline and positioning leaks simultaneously, which is why this one often comes after the positioning artifact.
AI capability plan. A specific roadmap for which AI tools the agency should build proficiency in, how to incorporate them into service delivery, and how to talk about that capability with current and prospective clients. Specific tools, specific use cases, specific talking points. Addresses the AI capacity leak.
A good 90-day engagement will diagnose which of these the agency actually needs and build the highest-priority one out. A consultant who promises all five in 90 days is oversimplifying.
When you don't need a consultant
Three situations where hiring a growth consultant is probably the wrong move.
Revenue under $500K and the primary constraint is volume. At this stage, most agencies need more work coming in the door. A BD resource, a referral reactivation push, or a part-time outreach effort will move faster than strategic advice. The exception: if you're already getting work but it's all bespoke, under-priced, and hard to replicate, the constraint may already be positioning or pricing rather than pure volume.
The team has marketing capacity that's sitting idle. If you have a marketing manager who can publish, run campaigns, access sales data, influence the website, and meet with you weekly, but isn't being given the authority or budget to do those things, adding another outside voice doesn't fix the real problem. The constraint is internal, and the fix is internal.
The strategy is clear and the gap is execution. If you can write your positioning statement without looking it up, your team can repeat it the same way you would, and your pricing holds under client pressure, you probably don't need a strategist. You need someone who can execute. A useful self-test: can you hand a new employee a one-pager on who you serve and what you charge before their first day, and would it still be accurate six months later?
The agencies that get the most from a consulting engagement are the ones who can answer those self-tests clearly before they hire anyone.
Common reasons engagements fail
Getting the right consultant for the right constraint doesn't guarantee a good outcome. Four failure patterns from direct observation:
Misdiagnosed constraint. The consultant was hired to fix pipeline. The real problem is positioning. More outreach activity doesn't help if the agency can't be remembered for anything specific. It just generates more weak conversations with poorly matched prospects. The diagnosis step is where this gets set wrong, and it's hard to correct mid-engagement.
Founder not ready to change. The founder hired the consultant to confirm what they already believe. When the diagnosis points at the founder's own decisions, pricing structure, client selection, the kind of work the agency takes on, the engagement hits a wall. Good consultants surface this early and name it directly. The ones who don't tend to produce frameworks that never get implemented.
No internal champion. The consultant does good work. The founder approves the direction. Then nobody implements it because there's no one inside the agency whose job is to carry it forward. This is a setup problem. The outcome is the same either way. Before hiring, identify who inside the agency will own implementation and make sure they have the time and authority to do it.
Work that stays offsite. Good diagnosis, solid frameworks, a document that sits in a shared drive. The consultants who produce the most durable results get into the actual work: writing the first draft of the positioning document, sitting in on the sales call, reviewing the proposal before it goes out. If the engagement is entirely offsite and asynchronous, implementation risk goes up significantly.
What to look for in a consultant
Four things worth checking before you commit to an engagement:
They've worked inside an agency. The operational reality of a founder-led agency, utilization pressure, client concentration risk, the tension between billable and non-billable work, is different from anything outside it. Ask them to describe the last time they had to make a staffing decision under revenue pressure. The answer tells you quickly whether they understand the actual constraints or just the strategic ones.
They can describe their diagnostic process in specific terms. Ask them to walk you through exactly what they look at in the first 30 days and what evidence they use to prioritize one constraint over another. A consultant who has solved this problem enough times has a repeatable approach. One who hasn't will describe a generic discovery process.
They have references from agencies at a similar stage. A consultant who has scaled a $20M agency has useful insight but may misread the constraints of a $1.5M shop. Ask specifically for two or three clients at comparable revenue and team size. If they can't name them, ask why.
They work alongside the team. Ask how they typically interface with the agency team during an engagement. Do they sit in on calls? Review work in progress? Give feedback on actual output? Or do they schedule bi-weekly check-ins and send updates? The answer predicts whether you'll get a plan or an implementation.
How SCG approaches agency growth
Before starting SCG, I was President and partner at Foundry in Minneapolis, a custom software development and digital product agency. Foundry made the Inc. 5000 in 2020 and 2021. Before that I led strategy at The Nerdery during a period when it grew from roughly 50 to 500 people. The four-leaks diagnostic came from watching the same failure patterns repeat across multiple agencies over about a decade and building a framework that named them clearly enough to use as a starting point for every engagement.
SCG offers three engagement options matched to constraint type. Next90 is a 90-day sprint suited for agencies with one acute constraint and a founder who wants defined deliverables on a fixed timeline. Growth Accelerator is a 6-12 month strategic retainer for agencies with multiple overlapping constraints or a constraint that requires sustained work to resolve. Fractional CMO for Agencies is an embedded leadership role for founders who need someone running the marketing function with full accountability.
The strategy call is free and runs about an hour. The intake covers revenue range, team size, primary services, and where you feel most stuck. From that conversation, we can usually identify the likely starting point, and whether SCG is the right fit. If we're not, I'll point you toward who probably is.