Effective Strategies for Scaling an Agency in a Project-Based Environment

Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training

Are you stuck chasing new clients while ignoring the goldmine in your past customer list? Does your agency feast on projects but starve for predictable revenue? Today’s featured guest knows what it’s like to hit a growth ceiling and being tired of the one-and-done client hamster wheel.

He shares how he pivoted his agency after becoming a HubSpot partner, why he turned to project-based work after customer habits changed following the pandemic, and how he got out of the dreaded “no man’s land”.

Eric Baum is the CEO and founder of Bluleadz, a HubSpot Onboarding and Implementation Agency dedicated to transforming the way companies market, sell, and service their customers through the power of the HubSpot platform. He’ll discuss his cash flow challenges, pricing mistakes that almost tanked the business, and how EOS helped him escape “no man’s land.”

If you're stuck in the fulfillment hamster wheel or scaling past $5M feels like pushing a boulder uphill... listen up.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• Reinventing his agency as a HubSpot partner.

• The real scaling struggle: cash flow.

• Why project-based doesn’t mean profitless.

• Strategic partnerships are the future.

Subscribe

Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio

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.

Accidental Founder, Intentional CEO

Back in the Yellow Pages era, Eric was running two service-based franchises and needed a better way to market them. He brought marketing in-house for PPC, SEO, web dev, and that hire didn’t just turn things around. It turned into a new business.

Fast-forward a few months, and other franchise owners across the country started asking for help. Eric spun that in-house team into an agency, and had 50 clients out of the gate.

As many owners before have admitted to, Eric started out charging way too low—$250 to $500/month.

“I don’t know how I didn’t go broke right out of the gate,” he laughs. And if you’ve ever undercharged in the early days, you’ll feel that one deep in your soul.

Reinventing the Agency (and Himself) Around HubSpot

The turning point came when Eric discovered HubSpot and pivoted Bluleadz to become a certified partner. That’s when the “real” agency began, as he started to study the industry and figure out what he had to do to be profitable, take care of his team, and do it without necessarily doing all the sales work all the time.

From there, Eric leaned into strategy, profitability, and systems. He stopped trying to be the everything guy and started building an agency that didn’t need him in the trenches every day.

Fifteen years later, his agency isn’t just thriving. It’s structured, profitable, and on track to hit 8 figures.

Life in “No Man’s Land” – The $1M to $5M Plateau

After fifteen years in the industry and getting closer to the eight-figure mark, one of the things that most surprised Eric was getting stuck in the ugly middle: the zone between $1M and $5M where a lot of agency dreams go to die. Many call it “no man’s land,” and if you’ve been there, you know the pain.

“It was up, down, up, down,” he says. “I’d grow, then lose key employees. Revenue would spike, then tank. I kept asking, ‘What am I doing wrong?’”

The answer: a lack of structure.

So about nine years ago, Eric implemented EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System). That gave his agency the foundation it needed—vision, accountability, and a cadence to scale. It didn’t fix everything overnight, but it got the business out of reaction mode and into growth mode.

The Real Scaling Struggle: Cash Flow

Even with all that success, Eric’s biggest constraint today isn’t clients or talent. It’s cash.

In the agency world, sometimes you can grow so fast that you can actually outpace your ability to fund it. As Eric explains, “Receivables stack up. You can’t hire, build, or invest without the cash reserves in place to hit the down terms.”

For instance, just this year his agency was down 20% compared to last year because of all the uncertainty for businesses.

Sound familiar?

So far, Eric's solution has been airtight payment terms. They moved away from waiting on client deliverables and toward milestone-based billing. They typically charge:

• 50% upfront

• 25% after month one

• 25% at month two or fixed date

Not based on deliverables. Based on time. Why? Because waiting on clients kills momentum (and your margin). “We used to wait months to get that final 50%. Now we’re often 100% paid before a project is even done.” Moral of the story? Set clear terms and stop letting clients hold your agency hostage.

Project-Based Doesn’t Mean Profitless If You Structure It Right

Five years ago, 85% of Bluleadz’s revenue came from retainers.

Then COVID hit.

Buying behavior shifted fast. Clients wanted results without long-term commitments. So Eric pivoted hard into project work—today, 80–85% of their revenue comes from one-off HubSpot onboarding and implementation projects.

That means 50–75 new customers per month, each on 30 to 90-day timelines.

The lesson: project-based doesn't have to mean chaos - if you systemize delivery and payment.

However, Eric does admit he and his team had been failing to recapture clients for a second or third project. “We were just focused on getting new clients through the door.”

Instead of nurturing clients post-delivery, they handed off the project and moved on. Meanwhile, past clients drifted—only to come back a year or two later in total chaos saying, “We lost our HubSpot guy. Can you help?”

The opportunity cost was massive.

They are currently working on recapturing these relationships. By reselling past clients, his agency could double or triple revenue in a year.

The Triple-Team Model: Sales, CSM, Implementation

In their efforts to start creating more lifetime value for customers, Eric’s agency introduced Customer Success Managers (CSMs)—not just to check in, but to hunt for value.

CSMs dig into each client’s needs post-project, surface upsell or cross-sell opportunities, and feed them back to the sales team. Now they’re farming the base, increasing LTV, and stacking wins without chasing cold leads.

This third new role adds a new layer to his team’s structure, which he now breaks down as:

• Salespeople close net-new deals and join key milestone calls.          

• Implementation Specialists own delivery and are the client’s main point of contact.

• CSMs sit above delivery, watching for success gaps, retention issues, and upsell opportunities.

“Salespeople are hunters, not farmers. Trying to make them farm didn't work. So we changed the model.”

This layered structure gives clients clarity, keeps teams focused, and ensures no growth opportunity slips through the cracks.

Strategic Partnerships Are the Future

Another key reason Bluleadz is scaling so quickly is partnerships.

They're one of HubSpot’s top onboarding partners, and at one point this partnership drove most of his agency’s net new leads. More recently, however, as they start to expand their efforts to engage past clients, only 40% of their leads come from HubSpot, while 30% comes from existing customers, and another 30% from their inbound marketing efforts, other strategic partners, and referrals.

This makes for a more balanced pipeline: “Inbound, outbound, and strategic partnerships”. Those are the three pillars in the Playbook. You’ve got ‘em dialed in.

As for Eric, he’s all in on strategic partnerships, which he considers to be the way of the future.

The One Thing Eric Would Do Differently

If he could go back and give his younger self advice on agency ownership, Eric would say “Let go faster.”

He held on too long to sales, finance, client services… all of it. And every time he finally let go, the agency grew again.

Today, Eric has zero departmental responsibilities. His job is vision, strategy, and leadership—and it’s paying off.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

Looking to dig deeper into your agency's potential? Check out our Agency Blueprint. Designed for agency owners like you, our Agency Blueprint helps you uncover growth opportunities, tackle obstacles, and craft a customized blueprint for your agency's success.