White label or in-house? A white-label founder on when to build your own team

Austin says some agencies use Search Prestige as a bridge and graduate to their own team. Others never want to build a particular service in-house and keep adding to what they buy from him. Both are reasonable.

The deciding question, in his view, is your core competency and the kind of leader you are. Plenty of successful owners want a full-time team they collaborate with every day, and the HR that comes with it. Others want a simpler structure with a predictable cost, and someone who already knows the work.

Most agencies end up in between. They white-label some services while building a team for others. When a partner decides it's time to bring SEO in-house, Austin says his team understands and will help.

Asked what separates agencies that grow with him from the ones that stall, Austin pointed at the owner. Many small agencies sell, then fulfill, then sell again, with no system for their own sales and marketing. They cap themselves at however many clients they can personally handle, because they're doing work a CEO shouldn't be doing.

The second red flag is how they sell. Austin has seen partners start fast by promising clients huge results in 30 days of SEO, then lose those clients a month later. He would rather walk away from that work than let it wear down his team.

The agencies that do well with white label tend to be more established. They have steady sales and marketing, whether that's new business or upselling existing clients. And they have an account management layer: a project manager, an account manager, or both.

Brad asked which hire would let an owner step away, for a new baby or a vacation, while delivery keeps running. Austin's answer wasn't a fulfillment role. It was account management.

Many owners have people doing the SEO, the content and the websites, but they are still every client's main point of contact. Austin calls account management the seat owners sleep on most, and says that seat is often where an agency adds more value than the results themselves.

His reasoning: you can get great results and still be fired if you're bad at communicating them, while an agency with average results that keeps clients informed tends to last longer. He'd rather have that problem than the other one. For him personally, an account manager was the most helpful hire, because it freed him for sales, marketing and building the team.

Austin's last piece of advice: don't line up provider quotes and pick the cheapest. Look at lifetime value. A client who stays 24 months is worth far more than one who stays six, and owners often give that too little weight because it feels out of their control.

Start with your retention numbers, work backwards from there, and then decide how to deliver. He also says his team would rather tell an agency it isn't ready for SEO, or for white label, than take the work.