Your agency's first hire: what 8 agency owners did, and what they'd change
On the Agency Advantage podcast, Brad Starnes asks agency owners how they built their teams. Their first hires didn't follow one script. One started with a developer, one with a single employee who is now his COO, and one says your first hire should be software. Here is what eight of them did, and what they would do differently.
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Three patterns across all eight
Know what the hire takes off your plate
The hires that didn't work were made out of overwhelm or hope, with no clear job. Write down the work you want gone before you write a job post.
Give each hire one clear lane
The hires that worked owned something specific: site builds, client calls, booked appointments. People did their best work when they weren't covering two jobs at once.
Waiting costs money too
Two owners said they should have hired sooner or hired more. One lost sales practice and clients, the other had a team working late nights and weekends.
What they hired, and what they learned
- 01
Will Hanke: a web developer in the Philippines
Founder, Window Treatment Marketing Pros
When Will niched down and clients started coming in, he realized quickly that he couldn't juggle everything for long. His first hire was a web developer in the Philippines, so he didn't have to build the sites himself anymore.
Next he brought on an operations manager and a paid ads specialist, also from the Philippines. That was eight years ago, and all three are still with him.
His biggest regret is an appointment setter. He hired one in March of this year, with the agency at about $1.6 million, and says he wishes he had done it at $30K. More sales conversations would have sharpened his sales process sooner and brought in clients earlier.
Hire for the work that keeps you from selling, then hire someone to fill your calendar sooner than feels comfortable.
Listen to Will's episode · Web Developers · PPC Specialists & Media Buyers
- 02
Luke Eggebraaten: one full-time employee, with white label doing the fulfillment
Founder, Phaser Marketing
Luke's plan was to reach seven figures before bringing delivery in-house. Until then, two white-label partners did the heavy lifting, about nine part-time contractors helped each month, and he had one full-time employee, Josie, who is now his COO.
He hit $83K a month in March 2024, at about 40% gross margin and 15% net, and then started moving the work in-house. Over 14 months he moved clients from white label in batches of four or five, each onto a new specialist working from a tight SOP. Each specialist could take on more than ten clients.
By the end, SEO, paid ads and websites were all in-house. He now has 31 team members, about 60% gross margin and 25% to 30% net. He says he couldn't have made that move at $40K a month, because building systems is his weak spot, and white label let him focus on selling until then.
White label can carry you to seven figures. When you bring the work in-house, move clients in small batches with a written process.
Listen to Luke's episode · SEO Specialists · PPC Specialists & Media Buyers
- 03
Nick Hoard: a high performer with no direction
Founder, Patient Care Marketing Pros
Nick says the first thing that broke was his first hire. He was overwhelmed and knew he needed help, but hadn't worked out what kind. He brought on a high performer, gave them no direction, and they were gone.
It took a coach asking the right questions for him to see what he actually needed to hire for. Owners often think they need an ads manager or an SEO, he says, when what they really need is someone to sell so they can keep doing the work they enjoy.
He first hired locally, to give back to his community, but kept losing people to bigger paychecks. The more turnover he saw, the more open he became to anyone who could deliver the work, wherever they lived. Today his team is global and serves more than 250 urgent care clinics.
Decide what the job is before you decide who does it.
- 04
Pam Mashburn: more people, sooner
Founder, exploreMedia and exploreHVAC & Home Services
Asked what she would do differently in her first year of niching down, Pam said she would have hired more people at the start. Her team got run ragged, working a lot of late nights and weekends while they figured things out.
She runs the business conservatively, with no debt, because she never wanted anyone to worry about their paycheck. She was also slow to separate account management from sales. Her salespeople had always looked after the accounts they sold, and she learned that works better with someone who works alongside the delivery team.
Her team has grown from six to 25. The last thing she let go of was payroll, which she handed off when she recently hired a CFO.
Hiring too few people has a cost, and your team pays it in late nights.
- 05
Jono Long: account managers, so specialists could do the work
CEO, Leads Near Me
Jono and his partners bought Leads Near Me, which markets more than 800 independent auto shops. He walked in as CEO of a team he didn't hire, and found the fulfillment team was also doing account management. If a client wanted to talk about their account, they talked to their Google Ads or SEO specialist.
The team was understaffed, and as he puts it, the SEO team could either talk to clients about SEO or do SEO, but not both. So they started hiring account managers, now called marketing coaches, and split the agency into five pods. Each pod has about a hundred clients and its own account manager, SEO specialist, Google Ads specialist and designer.
Some long-time clients were never going to give up talking to their ads specialist. Instead of fighting it, he kept that for them as a premium service.
Your specialists do their best work when someone else owns the client conversation.
Listen to Jono's episode · Account Managers · Google Ads Specialists
- 06
Frankie Fihn: salespeople, over and over
Founder, Beyond Agency Profits
Frankie says he never set out to be a leader or build a team. The team grew until there was more work than he could manage, and after nine or ten years he burned out on his first agency.
He kept trying to get himself out of sales by hiring salespeople. He says he would try ten to find one good one. Even good ones have bad weeks, need time off, and need someone to keep them motivated after a run of calls that don't close.
What finally worked wasn't a better hire. He rebuilt how he sells so a short video does what the sales call used to. He went from 100 to 200 booked calls a month down to about six, and usually closes four or five of them.
Before you hire someone to run a process, make sure the process works without you in the room.
- 07
Matt Coffy: a team that couldn't keep up with sales
Founder, ProfitEngines
Matt grew a medical marketing agency to about 30 people and $200K to $250K a month, then stepped out of day-to-day operations so it could run without him before he sold it.
At its peak, the agency was bringing on 30 new clients a month. He says he didn't know the team couldn't handle that, because he wasn't the one doing the management. Clients were hard to keep, and he was afraid to open his email in the morning. His lesson: keeping clients matters more than winning new ones.
He now uses what he calls the boat rule for every client, employee and vendor: be careful who you let on board. He has had people who were good one day and gone the next.
Sales can only grow as fast as your team can deliver. Hire ahead of the clients, and hire carefully.
- 08
Bryce DeCora: software for after-hours leads
Co-founder and CEO, CloseBot
CloseBot has booked more than 1.2 million appointments, so Bryce's answer is a different one. If it's your first hire, he says, AI makes more sense. About half of the appointments CloseBot books happen after hours.
His suggestion for a solo founder: take the daytime conversations yourself, since a founder converts best, and let AI book the evening ones for the next day. Once that brings in the revenue, hire a closer, because getting out of the closer role is a founder's first goal.
He also says appointment setters are still needed. Teams usually bring in CloseBot when their people can't keep up, and the AI sorts out the real opportunities so the humans spend their time on people who actually want the service.
Automate the coverage you can't staff, and hire people for the conversations that need judgment.
Start with the work, not the job title
The pattern behind the hires that worked is simple: the owner knew exactly which work was moving off their plate. List what you did last week, mark what only you can do, and the rest is the job description.
That is the first step of every TalentFuze hire. Our Delegation Blueprint maps what to hand off first, then we recruit for it in the Philippines or Latin America. See how it works, or read which region fits each role.
Questions we hear all the time
What should a marketing agency's first hire be?
The role that takes the most work off you, on something someone else can do to your standard. Will Hanke started with a web developer so he could stop building sites. Luke Eggebraaten had one full-time employee, now his COO, while white label handled fulfillment. Bryce DeCora says AI can be the first hire for after-hours leads.
When should an agency owner make their first hire?
When you can write down the work you want to hand off and how you'll know it's done well. Waiting has a cost too: Will Hanke says he should have hired an appointment setter at $30K instead of $1.6 million, and Pam Mashburn says she should have hired more people at the start.
Should my first hire be offshore?
It can be. Will Hanke's first three hires were in the Philippines, and all three are still with him eight years later. Offshore works well when the role has clear deliverables. Our Philippines vs Latin America guide shows which region fits each role.
Should I hire in-house or keep using white label?
White label is a reasonable way to start. Luke Eggebraaten used it to reach seven figures, then moved in-house over 14 months, and his gross margin went from about 40% to 60%. He moved clients in batches of four or five, each onto a specialist with a written SOP.
Stories come from interviews on the Agency Advantage podcast, as each guest described them. Figures are the guests' own. Published October 24, 2026.
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