Retention, performance and B2B agencies all struggle big time. Almost every other client we work with needs help with hiring.

“There’s no good talent out there!”, agency founders say.

Let’s unpack this.

Btw, to date we’ve assisted 55+ agencies with:

I’m not a recruiter but I know a thing or two about building high-performance agency teams.

I’ll also give you our AI Hiring Analyst at the end of this article (if you ask politely).

The talent issue had been percolating since the early 2000s. The internet shattered the full-service model. Dozens of lower-margin specialist shops appeared, none of which could afford top-tier people.

Then three exit routes opened at once.

Route 1: In-house teams scaled.
Route 2: Tech companies started paying £40K more at entry level.
Route 3: The fractional market formed as a genuine career path for senior talent.

COVID accelerated every one of these trends.

Now agencies are losing:

All while cutting the entry-level pipeline (with AI) that used to feed the whole system.

When I say "high-quality talent" I mean something specific.

I mean people with commercial judgement, learning velocity, and the ability to improve your organisation after 6-12 months.

With that definition in mind, here's what my experience and deep Claude research consistently shows:

The single most-cited positive at high-rated agencies (4.0+ stars on employer review platforms) is autonomy in managing accounts and brands.

But agencies offering blanket autonomy to everyone (including underperformers) actually alienate their best people.

Progressive autonomy (more freedom as you prove yourself) is the model that retains commercially-minded people. Blanket autonomy repels them.

Small and boutique agencies where seniors are accessible create faster learning velocity. Nowhere to hide, more visibility, steeper development curve. This is one of the few structural advantages a $£1-5M agency has over a bigger shop.

But founders undermine it constantly.

As David C. Baker (an infamous agency consultant) puts it: "There's no Magna Carta equivalent where the king must follow his own rules in an agency."

Let me translate:

Employees are fine with founders being close and informal only if the founder holds themselves to the same standards.

Once the founder breaks the rules they enforce on others, that closeness turns into resentment, not trust.

People don’t mind access.
They mind hypocrisy.

Perks, culture language, employer branding. Free lunches, off-sites, and wellness days don't offset chronic overload or unclear leadership. Full stop.

92% of agency professionals say staying informed is essential, but only 47% feel their company invests in their development (Myers Report 2025). 68% believe their companies talk more about upskilling than actually funding it.

You’re not allowed to use pay, perks, or branding.

Now go figure what else can you do to make great people want to work with you?

Game is on.

Two things.

1. The founder's published point of view

Commercially-minded people are looking for environments where they'll get smarter faster. A founder who publishes original thinking creates a gravitational pull that no job ad can replicate.

2. Proximity to real decisions

High-quality talent is drawn to environments where they can see the consequences of their thinking play out.

At a $£1-5M agency, a mid-level hire can influence commercial outcomes within weeks, not quarters (if allowed).

In a 500-person agency?

They're three layers removed from any decision that matters.

In-house? They're executing someone else's strategy.

At a small agency with the right operating setup? They're learning by doing, at speed, with real stakes.

I've spent considerable time researching this, and I've landed on three levers that matter for agencies in the £1-5M range.

Two of them are probably obvious.

The third is going to annoy anyone who's invested in building a formal L&D programme.

Senior, commercially-minded talent is leaving agencies for fractional and consulting work at an accelerating rate (60K to 120K practitioners in two years in the US alone).

These people form loose networks, Slack groups, peer collectives, referral circles. They become the community.

Your founder content, your positioning, your client relationships, your alumni network. It’s almost like a unified talent system that produces 2-5 high-quality candidates per year without a single job ad.

Commercially-minded people don't apply to job ads. They get recruited.

That means the founder (not an HR person, not a recruiter) personally reaches out, explains why this specific person caught their attention, and describes what they'd work on.

The other half of intentional recruitment is saying no. To most candidates.

Just as positioning means saying no to wrong-fit clients, intentional recruitment means rejecting people who have the skills but lack the commercial instinct, learning velocity, or autonomy disposition.

Most $£1-5M agencies are so desperate to fill seats that they lower the bar. A big no-no.

Every lowered bar hire costs you 6-8 months and damages the team around them.

At £$1-5M, you have 11-35 people.

You cannot build an L&D function.

You cannot create structured training curricula.

You don't have the headcount, the budget, or the internal expertise to run a programme that competes with what a $10-20M agency or an in-house brand team can offer.

If you try, you'll produce something mediocre and your best people will see through it immediately.

So stop trying.

Instead, build development into how the agency operates.

This has been my long-winded way of saying that people you want exist.

They're just choosing to go somewhere else because most agencies give them no reason to stay, no reason to join, and no reason to care.

So fix how you recruit, who you recruit through, and how your agency develops people by default, and you won't need to compete for talent.

That’s it for today.

Btw, do you want our AI Hiring Analyst SOP and prompt?

It detects:

Behavioural patterns
Ownership signals
Problem orientation
Communication traits

So far it’s been accurate in 100% of cases with all of our clients we introduced it to.

Reply AI ANALYST and I’ll send it over.

– Romans