Surprises of Scaling: Building the Right Leadership Layer

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Is your agency growing fast but still running without the right structure or leadership team to sustain that growth? If too many people are reporting directly to you, it's a clear sign you've outgrown your current setup. But building that next layer of leadership isn't as simple as promoting your top performers. Without a clear strategy, those well-intentioned promotions can backfire, causing confusion, turnover, and setbacks that stall your agency's momentum.

Today's featured guest learned that lesson firsthand. After experiencing a year of costly turnover caused by the wrong management moves, he came away with a better understanding of what real leadership development looks like. In this episode, he'll share what it takes to scale beyond seven figures, the mistakes that nearly derailed his agency's growth, and the key shifts that helped him build a stronger, more sustainable business.

Brandon Rost is the founder and CEO of be Marketing, a Pennsylvania-based advertising agency that helps brands grow through creative, digital, and media strategies. Over the past decade and a half, Brandon has built his agency from a solo operation into a multi-million-dollar powerhouse by focusing on relationships, resourcefulness, and relentless problem-solving.

He's proof that you don't need to have all the answers when you start, just the willingness to figure it out along the way.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• How to reinvest profits strategically to scale your agency sustainably.

• Why promoting top performers doesn't already create effective leaders.

• The KPI's and systems that improved profit and cash flow.

• The mindset shift that turns fast growth into longterm success.

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Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

Why Being Resourceful Is the Key to Building an Agency

Brandon didn't plan on running an agency. At the time, he was managing social media for a corporate job and bartending on the side when a PR firm owner offered him a shot at managing her clients' social accounts. What started as ten small accounts quickly snowballed into a full-time business.

Like most early-stage entrepreneurs, he had no idea what he was doing at first. He sent invoices in Word documents, figured out HR and finance on the fly, and said "yes" to every opportunity—then learned how to deliver later. It wasn't glamorous, but it worked.

That resourcefulness became his superpower. As anyone who has grown a business can tell you, success comes from resourcefulness - not knowing everything. You don't have to know everything right now. Just figure it out and make it work.

Scaling Up: Investing Every Dollar Back In the Agency

For the first few years, Brandon kept bartending to cover his bills and put every dollar the agency made back into growth. That discipline gave him the runway to build a real company without debt or short-term panic.

He hired his first part-time employee within a year, went full-time around year two, and hit seven figures by year four in 2014. However, crossing the million-dollar mark didn't come with confetti and fireworks. It came with more responsibility, more moving parts, and a steeper learning curve.

"Everyone thinks hitting a million feels different," Brandon said. "It doesn't. It just brings on more work." Instead of waiting for that milestone to magically change things, focus on building the right foundation so the business can continue to grow without you doing everything. Make it a point to continue to delegate part of that workload every quarter, and after a couple of years, you'll find you've gotten your freedom back.

Learning to Lead and Let Go: Building a Leadership Team

Brandon learned the hard way that leading people requires a completely different skill set than landing clients. As the agency grew, he at one point had seventeen people reporting to him and eventually realized it just wasn't sustainable.

It was the right moment to create different positions that would oversee different departments. However, his strategy was flawed at first; "We elevated people just to elevate them," he said. "And it set us back a year." He never stopped to ask whether or not those employees were ready or even suited for management roles. As a result, they dealt with a year of turnover followed by slowly getting back on track.

The lesson for Brandon was: put the right people in the right seats, and don't assume your best technician wants to—or should—manage others. Leadership isn't a promotion; it's a whole new role.

Knowing Your Numbers and Turning Chaos Into Profitability

Once the business hit its stride, Brandon turned his focus to profitability. He shared how the agency once got caught in a dangerous cash flow loop of collecting Google ad payments for clients and effectively becoming a bank instead of a marketing firm.

After untangling that, his team started tracking key KPIs more closely:

• AGI (Agency Gross Income) in the 55–60% range

• Net profit around 10–12%

• Payroll around 33% of AGI

By simplifying operations and separating client media costs from agency revenue, they stabilized cash flow and built a healthier margin. Simply put, what you measure improves and, for Brandon, that meant finally treating the numbers as a steering wheel instead of a rearview mirror.

Sales: The Last Most Agency Owners Are Ready to Hang Up

Even after 15 years, Brandon still handles most of the sales himself. It's something he admits he should've delegated earlier, but building a sales team isn't as easy as hiring a "radio guy" and hoping they sell.

After two failed attempts, Brandon realized the problem wasn't the salespeople but rather the lack of systems. Now, the new plan is to support the team with brand marketing, create a "sales tackle box" full of proven client stories, and build repeatable processes for outreach, follow-up, and closing.

You'll always be the best salesperson until you document what's in your head. With the right structure and stories in place, a sales team can finally scale what made the founder successful in the first place.

What Scaling Fast Taught Him About Patience and Culture

Looking back, Brandon said the biggest surprise was how much patience real growth takes—and how easy it is to lose sight of culture while scaling fast. Whether it was figuring out HR policies, managing team dynamics, or setting boundaries for office events, every new level came with a new layer of learning.

He now focuses on balance: growing deliberately, empowering leaders, and making sure the culture that got them here doesn't get lost along the way. "We've learned to grow smarter, not faster," he said.

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