Mid-year update.

Leanings from growing a content agency (so far).

Author

Tommy Clark
July 17, 2024

I’ve been meaning to write for my ‘personal’ newsletter for a long time. For some reason, I’ve procrastinated. Don’t have time. Won’t attract customers for Compound. Name the excuse.

Anyway. Thought it would be a good time to share some of what I’ve picked up being “in the trenches” (in an air-conditioned office typing on my laptop) over the first 7 months of 2024 while growing an agency.

Hold the standard.

I used to be terrified of giving someone negative feedback. I developed the skill of confrontation out of necessity—the business wasn’t going to grow if I didn’t.

Early on, I’d try to sugarcoat negative feedback as much as possible. I’d say things like “This is great! There’s just this one little thing that needs adjusting. But great job!”

Problem was…that “one little thing” was not a “little thing.” That ‘one little thing’ could be the difference between a client onboarding going well, and starting with a poor first impression. Not ‘little’ at all.

As CEO, my job is to hold the standard. I often come back to this Frank Slootman quote that makes the rounds on Twitter every 2-3 months:

[Side note: read Amp It Up by Frank Slootman if you haven’t already]

Standards are a filter. A filter for the work you let through to clients. They’re a filter for the people you let onto your team. A filter for the behavior you allow to exist in your company.

It’s worth the hassle to make sure your filter is working right.

Content is our most powerful asset.

Thankfully, Compound has never had a demand problem. We’ve had other problems, but never demand problems.

I credit that to my consistent content output over the past 6-7 years. I haven’t missed a day of publishing content in 1500+ days. The topics have evolved. The cringe has subsided. But the idea is the same.

The more content I post, the more wins I attract in my life. Prospects end up on my waitlist. Relevant intros end up in my inbox. It can’t be a coincidence.

Not to turn this into a plug, but I see the same thing with our agency clients.

Content has allowed me to run sales at scale. By the time I talk to prospects, they know how I think. They’ve spent hours ‘listening’ to me before I’ve even hopped into the Google Meet. They understand my ideology on marketing.

Content makes the sale easier. It also makes the client relationship more fun.

War of attrition.

I remember I was on a run with Marcus Milione (founder of Minted NY) back in August 2023 when I was staying in New York for the month. After the run was over—he gassed me in a brutal track workout—we were chatting for a bit and he said that business is a ‘war of attrition.’

I forget the exact quote, but the short of it is that if your business is alive, you're winning.

I’ve leaned on that idea a lot this year. There have been more days in the past year where I haven’t wanted to sit down and do the work than at any other point in my career thus far.

Client services can be a hard business. Dealing with client demands. Dealing with hiring and team performance. Dealing with my own standards for myself and how fast we should be growing.

The motivation comes and goes. What doesn’t is the discipline to sit down in front of my computer every morning and get something done that moves us forward.

I want to be clear as I conclude this part of the essay—this isn’t meant to be a ‘woe is me’ section.

Compound is growing. Shit’s fun. It’s also just really damn hard. Some days that ‘hard’ is fun. Some days that ‘hard’ makes you want to burn everything down and start from scratch. Any founder can relate.

It’s kinda like training for a sport at a high level. Sometimes you show up for a training session and everything’s clicking. You’re in the zone. Sometimes you show up and reconsider your entire athletic pursuit.

Either way, you show up.

Working on the right thing.

When I started Compound, the ‘business’ was just me. I was pretty much a freelancer. I was ideating, drafting, and editing every piece of content. Across ~12 clients. Not scalable, at all.

Since Q2 of 2023, I’ve had to hire (the team is currently 8 members strong).

Hiring is hard. It drove me insane at first.

The quantity of applicants was too low. And looking at the Chat GPT-filled responses from LinkedIn-source applicants made me lose brain cells. Why wasn’t hiring working?

To be honest, I spent way too much time on content—both clients’ and my own. Content is my true area of expertise. I didn’t know anything about hiring. So whenever I had a free block on my Google Calendar, I’d fill it with writing or ‘research’ over reaching out to potential candidates.

Recruiting still isn’t my favorite thing. I’d rather be writing and in the weeds on client content. But it’s what’s required to reach the next stage of the business.

It’s helped me to think of hiring as a skill—just like content & writing. When I first started publishing content, I wasn’t good at it (throwback to my days as a fitness coach trying to grow on Instagram). But with reps, I got better and better. And as I got better, the work got more fun.

I guess the lesson here is that you probably know what you need to be working on. Be careful getting distracted by your comfort zone.

What’s next?

Right now, my focus at Compound is building and training our team. How can we get the right people in the right seats to help us grow this thing right?

We’re bringing in writing and editing talent. If you know anyone who wants to grow in an agency setting, shoot them our Jobs page here.

This focus on recruiting is why I’ll be sharing more about how I think about company building on my personal blog.

I know I’m still early. I have plenty to figure out. But I also know we’re on the right path. I want this content to be a magnet to the right people—whether it be team members, other founders, maybe even clients.

Reading list 📚

Here’s a quick update of what I’ve been reading and watching over the past couple of weeks.

Anyway. Hope this was helpful. I’ll share more here as we continue to build the company. No set cadence, just when I have something somewhat valuable to say.

Keep compounding,

Tommy Clark

PS: If you want more content and marketing strategy material, Social Files is where I talk about that stuff.