Oct 9, 2026 · 15 min · 8 segments
Drawing on lessons shared by more than 1,000 seven- and eight-figure store owners inside the eCommerceFuel community, this episode explores why smaller brands may want to think twice before…
The number one thing I learned from a thousand store owners, top thing that I, I learned this month.
I, I feel like every relationship family has their one or two topics that are always spicy, right? Like, you bring them up and it, it, it just, it's gonna be interesting.
It's gonna get a little heated, and I think maybe one of those in our community is agencies, marketing agencies.
Do they work? Are they worth it? You know, a lot of people have bad experiences.
I would say the majority of people posting in our forums have had some challenging experiences.
But, but what's interesting, it got rekindled again this month with a bit more clarity, I thought, just based on the number.
And, and I think the big takeaway was that if you are a small to medium sized brand, let's go, let's say if you're spending under, you'll see why here in a minute, but under five hundred, half a million in ads per year, an agency probably is not gonna pay off for you.
There was one owner who ran the math on the agency who he was working with, and when he added in the agency's fees, when he added in the time that he was spending for the meetings and all these other things, he looked at Amazon, where they were doing a lot of the work, at least for that channel, and was barely profitable.
So he let the agency go, and a year later, Amazon rev was u- up about forty percent.
Someone else had mentioned as well, you know, they looked at their Amazon channel as well, and when they really dug into it, the vast majority of their ads were breaking even or losing money.
And so they dropped the agency and brought it in-house, and spend went from a hund- you know, over a hundred thousand dollars per year dramatically down.
Revenue fell probably seventy percent, but their profit went up significantly.
And as I was looking into this and kinda doing some research and kinda just thinking through it contextually, Andrew Ferris over at AGF Growth, friend of the community, friend of mine, he's got something.
The number one thing I learned from a thousand store owners, top thing that I, I learned this month.
I, I feel like every relationship family has their one or two topics that are always spicy, right? Like, you bring them up and it, it, it just, it's gonna be interesting.
It's gonna get a little heated, and I think maybe one of those in our community is agencies, marketing agencies.
Do they work? Are they worth it? You know, a lot of people have bad experiences.
I would say the majority of people posting in our forums have had some challenging experiences.
But, but what's interesting, it got rekindled again this month with a bit more clarity, I thought, just based on the number.
And, and I think the big takeaway was that if you are a small to medium sized brand, let's go, let's say if you're spending under, you'll see why here in a minute, but under five hundred, half a million in ads per year, an agency probably is not gonna pay off for you.
There was one owner who ran the math on the agency who he was working with, and when he added in the agency's fees, when he added in the time that he was spending for the meetings and all these other things, he looked at Amazon, where they were doing a lot of the work, at least for that channel, and was barely profitable.
So he let the agency go, and a year later, Amazon rev was u- up about forty percent.
Someone else had mentioned as well, you know, they looked at their Amazon channel as well, and when they really dug into it, the vast majority of their ads were breaking even or losing money.
And so they dropped the agency and brought it in-house, and spend went from a hund- you know, over a hundred thousand dollars per year dramatically down.
Revenue fell probably seventy percent, but their profit went up significantly.
And as I was looking into this and kinda doing some research and kinda just thinking through it contextually, Andrew Ferris over at AGF Growth, friend of the community, friend of mine, he's got something.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
