Ep 164: Why Hiring More Creatives Can Actually Hurt Your Agency | with John Sampogna of Wondersauce

So tell us a bit about Wondersauce.

Well, the business was started in 2011.

I'm sure, you know, many similar parallels to the people out there listening who have started agencies.

You know, it was myself and a buddy who left the digital agency in New York City.

And, you know, we had some ideas for how we wanted to build something different.

So we launched the business back in 2011.

The focus was...

Back then on helping brands kind of like evolve into e-commerce, we were doing a lot of large platform builds for brands who were investing in enterprise websites and then also navigating kind of the early days of social media.

And obviously that's been like a constant navigating trend the last decade.

15 years.

So it was a cool journey.

I mean, there was two of us at the beginning and after the first year there was like 15 and we went from that to like 30 to a hundred and it was just, it got really big.

So kind of went through the whole kind of journey of growing an agency, scaling it, selling it and still being around after the fact.

So it getting really big, where is it at now?

We're still kind of around 100 people.

It's like a sweet spot for us.

We tried to go a little larger, but I just think for quality of work and culture and ultimately the structure we wanted to build, it's a really good number.

And I think it's ironic now that...

So many of us are finding efficiencies in the tools and workflows we're building to extend our best.

I think you can do a whole lot with 100 people.

You can almost 2x, 3x your revenue by simply targeting the right types of businesses to work with.

I mean, yeah, it's foundationally, it's always who you work with.

You pick the right clients with the right problem and then obviously scope it correctly and price it correctly.

And that is the game that so many agencies are not winning at right now.

It's a tricky one to do.