From Agency to Community: A Pandemic Pivot

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What if scaling your agency wasn’t about adding clients—but building a community that fuels growth from within? During Covid lockdowns, today’s featured guest felt the need to turn his clients into a community, hosting events where they could get to know each other and build relationships. To this day, it remains one of the best changes he’s introduced at his agency.

With a dedicated community, a focused niche, and a cap on the amount of clients the agency takes, he created a sense of exclusivity that turned his agency into a “category of one” business that continues to thrive. Join us as he unpacks how his agency journey began, how he accidentally ran into his exclusive niche, and the ways he found to turn clients into members.

Oli Luke is the founder of Orange & Gray, a hearing healthcare marketing agency that’s not just thriving—it’s become a “category of one.” He shares how going ultra-niche, building a true community, and capping client growth actually led to bigger success. His story offers agency owners a powerful blueprint for growth by focusing less on volume and more on depth.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• The power of creating scarcity.

• Choosing community over clients.

• Why client selection will save you headaches.

• Using AI to have a bigger impact with clients. 

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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.

Creating Category Leadership with Your Agency

Oli started in the marketing world as early as fifteen years old, running a “questionably illegal” business that relied on marketing savvy more than morals. That spirit of experimentation, however, continued to evolve into something far more focused and in 2017 he launched a niche agency focused solely on hearing healthcare.

Like many agency owners, Oli knows the pain of being a generalist—serving anyone and everyone just to keep the lights on. But once he committed to a hyper-niche model, everything changed.

“We help a very specific type of business,” he explained. “There’s only about 2,000 potential clients in the world for us. So we’re not looking for quantity—we’re looking for quality.” According to Oli, once you’re playing in such a specific arena, you’re playing against maybe three competitors, which helps you become very good at that sweet spot.

By focusing on a tight, underserved market, Oli’s agency was able to create a “category of one” positioning. It wasn’t just another agency—they were the agency for hearing healthcare and that kind of positioning is gold.

The Power of Capping Growth and Creating Scarcity

Here’s something you don’t hear every day: Oli has no plans to scale his agency to the moon. In fact, he’s capping it at 100 clients. “We don’t want more. We want depth of relationship,” he said.

This kind of intentional limitation creates natural scarcity and urgency and real, earned exclusivity. Prospects know there’s a limit, so they know if they leave coming back will mean paying significantly more.

It’s a model Seth Godin once praised: deep focus, selective intake, and high trust. Oli’s clients know they’re one of the few, which raises the bar for everyone—team, clients, and prospects.

Community Over Clients: How COVID Changed Everything

Oli’s most unexpected move—and perhaps his most impactful—came during COVID when, like many agency owners, he had to rethink everything. Prior to that, he ran a very traditional agency, with one-to-one relationships with clients that mostly didn’t know each other. This all changed during COVID, when amid the shutdowns and uncertainty, Oli’s team started hosting weekly “campfire chats” to bring them together. That simple shift sparked a powerful transformation.

“We almost pivoted from being just a marketing agency and to being a communications company,” he said. By bringing clients together, the bonds formed turned into something more powerful than any campaign.

That organic community—born out of crisis—evolved into something deeper. Today, Oli’s agency doesn’t just have clients; they have members. And the community has only grown since the days of the campfire chats.

For him, there’s nothing more powerful than getting people together, especially in this new AI era where human connection will become increasingly rarer and more important.

There are monthly calls, print newsletters, annual events, and even an Austin Powers-themed meetup in London for their U.S. clients.

The community is more than a retention tool—it’s a moat. Members feel like they’re part of something elite, something valuable. It’s not just about services; it’s about belonging.

Why Client Selection Matters

As established, if you’re running an agency and not building a community of your clients, you’re missing one of the biggest strategic advantages available today. Yet, it may lead to competition – some of those clients won’t want to be in the same room as their competitor.

That’s why your client selection matters. You can’t afford to bring in clients who don’t align with your values, even when you’re in startup mode and tempted to say yes to everyone.

Learning this will take some time, but it’ll always be worth it because, more than just executing for them, you’re making them part of something bigger—giving them access to relationships, tools, and strategies that help them grow. And that, right there, is what makes the difference.

Finding a Niche... by Accident

Like many agency owners, Oli didn’t start with a clear niche. In fact, his entrance into the hearing care industry in the U.S. was totally accidental—through a client speaking engagement in Houston.

Back then, he had a small marketing company in the UK and a client who was doing work as a speaker in the US hearing care industry and invited him to one of his events. There, Oli shared some ideas with the audience. Just tips that seemed obvious to him in the marketing industry but were eye-opening to his listeners in the hearing care industry. He was asked to help some in that audience implement these ideas and, before he knew it, he had found a niche.

When the Market Shifts, Community Wins

It’s easy to panic when markets get weird. And let’s face it—we’re in a weird season right now. But the truth is, these “down” times are often where the biggest opportunities lie.

Remember 2008? 2000? COVID? Each one of those eras had agency owners panicking—and also created massive opportunities for those willing to adapt. When your competitors pull back, you lean in.

And it’s not just theory. Community-first strategies during downturns can redefine your agency. They create stickiness, loyalty, and value beyond deliverables. People remember who helped them weather the storm—and they stick around.

This is especially true for agencies that have found their ideal niche and have therefore found a way to be of significantly more value than just the doing. These agencies are in a position to lead their clients through these changes and provided much needed leadership.

The AI Evolution: Smaller Teams, Bigger Impact

There’s a lot of noise about AI replacing agencies. But let’s get real: Agencies aren’t going away. They’re just changing.

At the end of the day, agencies are the middle man between someone having a problem and arriving at the solution. People will still need help, they’ll just be able to do more with less people. What used to take 100 employees might now take 30—or even 10. The work doesn’t vanish—it evolves. It becomes smarter, faster, and more strategic. You still need strategy. You still need people making decisions. But with AI, your execution becomes more powerful.

And your clients know this. They’re not oblivious. Bigger brands are already coming to agencies saying, “We want the same output with fewer people—powered by AI.” If you’re not ready to answer that call, you’ll get left behind.

That’s why understanding AI—and being able to communicate your expertise in it—is going to be a game-changer.

Supercharged Workflows with AI Agents

One of the ways agencies should start leveraging AI is by creating their own internal AI agent using ChatGPT. For instance, you can use it to train that agent with:

• Case studies

• Client challenges

• CRM data

• Brand voice

Once you do that, share it with your team so they can start using it to write a blog post, a LinkedIn update, or any kind of content—and it generates something better than most humans would.

This is where the future’s headed. Not to replace humans—but to empower your team with incredible leverage. You’re not building a bot to do your job—you’re building a smarter team that gets more done.

One More Tip: Start a Podcast

Even with all his experience and success in choosing a niche, creating community, and using AI, Oli maintains that starting a weekly podcast was the best move he ever made for the business. It drove client attraction, retention, education, and brand recognition. And with AI, it’s never been easier to create high-quality content consistently.

If you’re not creating content—especially in podcast form—it’s time to rethink your strategy.

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