Mark Nichols

Back in 2008, I took a big jump and became employee #3 at Metalab. In 5 years, @awilkinson and I (plus many smart people) grew the company from a few thousand in revenue to $500k/mo. ▶️ Here's a look at the early days of building a world-renowned agency from the ground up.

Remember my short ebook You're On Your Own? The 10-chapter, 90-minutes-to-read roadmap to starting your own agency? youreonyourown.xyz No? Yes? Sort of? Well, two pieces of news about it. One — I just passed 1,500 copies sold. Truly amazing and beyond my expectations! Two — as of today, it's now available on audiobook thru Audible. Big thank you to the incredible @PhilSchoen for lending his voice to the project. So now, you can spend 90 minutes listening to the things I spent almost 20 years learning about those early days building an agency... in your car, at the gym, or anywhere else you listen to things. audible.ca/pd/Youre-on-Yo… I have a bunch of promo codes for the audiobook and I am eager to give 'em out. DM me if you'd like one :)

A lot of entrepreneurial thought leaders out there will try to convince you that to be successful, you have to be almost sociopathically devoted to the grind. That if you don't live and breathe it, and push day in and day out, you won't succeed. That you should give up if your dedication wavers. That maybe you are meant to just be an employee... a custodian of someone else's vision. Meanwhile, I'm a complete idiot with a dismal work ethic, and I started my own business that has allowed me to work 10 hours a week for the last 2 years. Don't let the gatekeepers get in your head. It's never been easier to chase what you want.

A friend asked me the other day if I ever regretted dropping out of university. My answer has changed a lot over the years, but now I've settled on "I don't regret dropping out, but going in the first place was the best decision I ever made." In even just my first year at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2004, I met so many people who changed how I view the world. And if you've read @awilkinson's book, you'll know that this is also where I found people who appreciated me and my moronic sense of humour. Beyond that, my time in their Journalism program unlocked a curiousity in me that I didn't even know I had. I will never, ever forget the News Reporting class every Wednesday, where we got an assignment and had 8 hours to go into Toronto, find subjects, and write a story by any means necessary. This usually meant going up to strangers, introducing yourself, and trying to get a quote or two. It was the ultimate comfort zone challenge for a shy kid who just liked to write. But today, it means I don't fear anyone or any conversation. I mean, nothing can be more intimidating than the day I had to find 10 subjects in the Toronto Reference Library and ask them about their reading habits. It's fashionable to rip on post-secondary, but I will treasure that time forever. So many lessons learned, so many personal boundaries pushed, so many nascent skills sharpened. And when my sons ask if they have to go, I tell them yes... even if it means taking the path that I did.

"But if I niche down, won't I lose potential clients?" This is the #1 objection I hear from new consultants. And I get it. A wide net catches more fish, right? Yes. Except... nobody knows who you are yet. So your net has some big holes in it. Going wide when you're unknown means you're competing on: ➡️ Process (which you haven't refined yet) ➡️ Experience (which established competitors have more of) ➡️ Price (which is a race to the bottom) Check, check, check. Bad news: you lose on all three. But when you go narrow and pick a niche, you become THE choice, not A choice. Where once you were just another consultant, now you're: ➡️ The marketing strategist with deep roots in B2B TikTok ➡️ The fractional CFO for scaling D2C businesses ➡️ The design team that supercharges enterprise software ➡️ The HR consultant who shapes org structure during growth You want to be the big fish in a small pond. Pick a small pond. And the best part: dominating a niche means easier marketing, because you know exactly: ➡️ Who your ideal clients are ➡️ Where to find them ➡️ What language resonates with them ➡️ What their specific pain points are Go narrow. Dominate. And go wide later.

The absolute fastest way to stand out after a sales call? Send a "What I Heard" email. Same day - ideally a few hours later. 5-10 bullets. Chronological order. Here's what you include: - The personal details they mentioned, including the background story of their business - The brass tacks business stuff they shared - look for specific quotes or numbers - Their goals and pain points - why are they talking to you? - And finally, end strong - what success looks like to them End with "Did I get all that right?", clearly lay out next steps, and you're good to go. This works, and for very authentic and non-manipulative reasons: 1) Shows you actually listened (most people don't) 2) Shows you care about the details 3) Shows you can process a lot of info rapidly 4) Gives them a chance to clarify or add on top of your summary - a meaningful invitation to collaborate Put it all together, and it makes you memorable. I've sent hundreds of these over the years. The response is always the same: appreciation and a little bit of shock that someone took the time. Your ability to move FAST is hugely underrated. I have even been known to send a full-on email proposal on the same day, just to really capture the moment. So don't wait a few days to follow up. Do it now. Momentum and enthusiasm are perishable.

My first business wasn't software or design. It was stir sticks. You know what I'm talking about? Those little plastic things you use to stir coffee. As it turns out, they have the power to change lives. It started in 2003. I was obsessed with foosball, and our high school cafeteria had a great table. The problem? It was 4 quarters per game, and none of us ever had money. On one fateful afternoon, we discovered that your standard coffee stir stick was about the same width as a quarter. So we taped 4 of them together, bent them an appropriate length apart to match the coin slots, shoved them in, and held our breath. The coin slot slid back out, and 9 balls were released. It worked. Paradise lasted two months until the maintenance guy showed up and opened a nearly empty cash box. "Aren't you guys playing all the time?" We looked him dead in the eye: "No, never." He shrugged and left. We burst out laughing. A year later, I went to live in the dorm at Toronto Metropolitan University. The day I moved in, a small group of us were getting a tour of the floor, and we came to the laundry room. They told us the cost to use the washer and dryer - four quarters per load. More importantly, I noticed they used the exact same coin mechanism as the foosball table. I grabbed some stir sticks and some tape, and made myself a free laundry device. At first, I kept this trick to myself. I thought it was best to be discreet. But as the year went on... a few friends were let in. Then friends of friends. Soon people were knocking on my dorm door asking for the "tool." Everyone hated paying for laundry. But, a problem: I was taking all the risk for zero reward. And a solution: Sell them. Cash only. We never met. Pure drug dealer energy. I made a couple dozen and anytime someone asked to use the tool, I offered to sell them one for $10. And people bought them. The day I knew I had truly made it was when someone I had never met knocked on my door. They were from the 4th floor (I was on the 8th). One day, I was forced into early retirement when someone jammed their stir sticks too far into a machine. They got stuck and rendered the washing machine useless. My perfectly engineered stir stick device had one flaw - they sometimes got stuck, and you had to know how to free them. There was a floor meeting. RAs threatened "serious consequences." My heart was pounding. A couple dozen products and a couple hundred bucks later, it was time to hang up my hat. For a couple beautiful months, those free laundry devices got me beer money. Years later, I saw Interac Flash on a foosball table and realized the era was officially over. My technology was dead. I just hope there are enterprising kids out there still beating the system, improvising their way into free laundry and foosball. Or solving more important problems.

I once worked with a sales leader who seemed to have the magic touch. He could close deals on command, and seemed to do it with an levity that was the opposite of what I had become used to with sales and accounts people. When I asked him what his secret was, he said: “Honestly, it’s pretty simple. All I do is ask people for their business." I thought he was being coy… holding something back. Or maybe he just honestly had no idea. "He's so good at what he does that he doesn't even know why he's good at it," I thought. As it turns out, he was dead serious — in fact, this appetite for directness was his secret weapon. It was a purposeful strategy he led with every day. I started observing salespeople in my orbit, and realized that there's a distinct lack of directness in sales. People seemed to be doing everything *except* clearly asking for business. We're all so afraid of being "that pushy person" or (worse) “that annoying sales guy” that we've overcorrected into being passive. So here's your reminder: → Ask for testimonials  → Ask for referrals  → Ask if there's anyone else in their company who could use your help  → Ask for their business The worst they can say is no. And you know what? They usually say yes. People want to help. Just give them permission.

Today I’m launching a new service at Tamaribuchi called SESSIONS. They're two-hour seminars for agencies (one hour presentation, followed by one hour Q&A), where you bring your whole team to level up on a topic of your choosing. You can book right now through the link on my profile. In case you're wondering why: a whole lot of my work over the last year with dozens of agencies has been working directly with either a CEO, or a small group of people at the very top of the pyramid. Cut to a few weeks back when I had the chance to present to an entire team about exceptional service principles. It was an absolute blast… one person said it was “the most inspiring meeting of the year”. Wow. Thank you. It was also an aha moment for me. Why focus on just levelling up individual leaders, when I could come in and help the whole team? Most leaders I talk to are overworked and trying to do right by their people—seeking out quick opportunities to upgrade their skills and learn new things. I hope these Sessions help teams like this from top to bottom. If I could make a snappy one-liner, I'd say that Sessions are meant to help your agency grow as one. I’ve got a few “preset” Sessions: - SERVICE PRINCIPLES FOR GROWING AGENCIES, where I share the most important guiding principles for running an exceptional client services business. - NAVIGATING YOUR FIRST SCALE-UP, where I discuss the all-important first major growth moment, and how to best introduce structure where that might not be any. - THE METALAB STORY, where I talk through the ups and downs and general insanity of growing Metalab nearly from scratch… including my biggest mistakes, and how you can avoid them on your way. Head to my bio to book one now. Or, DM me to talk about a custom Session. Thanks for reading. Would love to meet your team.

Any time I have to do anything even remotely creative, I follow this advice from The Simpsons writer/genius John Swartzwelder. Getting something "done" is almost always unenjoyable for me, but making it perfect is where all the fun lives.

I wish more people knew how easy it is to start a business in 2025. Today, I talked to a Dad at school dropoff. I hadn't showered or had breakfast yet (unnecessary details, just painting a picture for you). We were chatting, waiting for the bell, and he asked what I did for work. When I told him what I do and how it's all designed to help me work less and spend more time with the kids, he nodded and stared off into the distance. He said for years he’s wanted to leave his corporate accounting job and do exactly what I do — flexible consulting work that allowed him to spend more time with his kids. I asked him, “What’s the biggest thing standing in your way?”, expecting him to say getting clients, running projects, or having employees. But he didn’t. He hasn’t even thought that far. He told me he didn’t know how to incorporate. Maybe I knew a lawyer? Oh, and he’s looked into business banking, but couldn’t get an appointment. So he lost momentum. Oh! And making a website… he’s convinced himself he doesn’t have the technical abilities, but doesn’t want to pay for some kid to do it. This guy is stuck at the starting gate, because nobody has told him how easy it all is. Once upon a time, this was how I felt too. I was desperate to do my own thing, but the initial ramp-up made my aspirations die on the vine… more than once. But things are different now. What if I told you that if you wanted to spin up a business in Canada, you could… - Incorporate a business without ever talking to a lawyer? (Thank you @OwnrCo ) - Open a business banking account without ever going to a branch? (Thank you @venncanada) - Keep perfect books by just connecting banking accounts and forwarding receipts and invoices via email? (Thank you @CeedarHQ ) - Make a perfect, professional website for a couple hundred bucks, requiring no technical ability? (Thank you @webflow) Guess what else? You could set all that up in a day. Living the dream: it's closer than you think!

I often tell my clients who are at small agencies (say, 10 employees or less) to focus on vision… but when I say the word ‘vision’, most people get the wrong idea. Too many entrepreneurs have become entrapped by the idea that they will plateau unless they spend months working on a lofty capital-V Vision. You probably know what I mean. The thing that strategists make good money doing, and is often coupled and tripled and quaded with a purpose, mission statement, core values, all forming a robust plan for how it will all come together over the years. Respectfully, those are for mature organizations with time and money to burn. And maybe more to the point, an impossible amount of things that you thought were sure bets will change about your business in the next little while… so don’t set anything in stone yet. Honestly, it’s kind of funny to think about this stuff when you have a small business battling to still be around in a month or two. Instead, what a good founder should be doing at this stage is creating a vision not at the company level, but on a personal level. Ask yourself questions about your personal vision for the company and the people at your side today. Because for the next little while, it’s all about you and how you handle growth, whether you want that or not. Your answers to questions like this will make growth very easy or very hard: - Do you want to get out of project work someday, or do you always envision yourself in the tools? - How many projects can you handle at once? - Do you like being a manager? - Can you stomach big corporate work, or do you prefer smaller, scrappier groups? - Does thinking about money give you a tummy ache? - Who are the clients you can uniquely serve today? The answers to questions like this will give you a much clearer, more tactical vision for the company you will build. It’ll also cost zero dollars and take a couple of hours.

5. Leadership teams need to be frequently revisited… and it’s hard. It is not a set and forget practice to have a leadership team. If you're a client of mine, you've heard me talk about how as your company grows, the pressures put upon your leaders change. In the early scaling days, you have a new company almost every month. You grow, you take on bigger clients, you work in new verticals, you change strategies on a dime. Whatever the case, it means your team has to be responsive to a lot of change. And as such, the person in charge of one of your teams might be in a spot they aren’t suited for anymore… or, in many cases, a spot they don’t even want as much as they thought they did. I know because that was me. At Metalab, I loved running a 10, 15, 20 person company. But when it got to around 25… suddenly, not so much. For a long time I thought this was a failure on my part, but it wasn’t. Things changed exponentially over time. I could talk about that all day, but suffice to say that you shouldn’t feel bad if you’re faced with someone on your leadership team who isn’t thriving like they once were. It happens to almost every company. And the people who got you from 2 to 10 might not be the people who get you from 10 to 20. Nobody’s failing. It’s just the reality. And it’s worth having honest conversations about.

4. In the pursuit of net new client acquisition, most people forget to grow existing accounts. Marketing for agencies can be an extremely overwhelming task. And as I’ve said earlier, most people don’t have the time for it. The CEO is in the work, and there isn’t enough free cash to bring on a dedicated marketing person. Where most people turn to see rapid growth? Taking on new client after new client. And then once a new client or project is won, it's a mad, all-hands-on-deck dash to do the work. In that dash, account management and growth can often fall by the wayside. While keeping the net new business engine going is very important, equal footing should be given to taking care of existing customers — in both account growth, but also leveraging them as referrers. In simple terms… Winning brand new clients = time intensive and full of uncertainty Growing existing accounts + referrals = retain customers you know are great, and referred clients usually have a much shorter sales cycle. The question is: who on your delivery team is making sure this is happening?

Happy 1st birthday to Tamaribuchi, incorporated 1 year ago today 🎂 In that time, I've worked with 41 small and growing agencies from all over the world — some for an hour, and some since day one. Here are the 5 most significant recurring themes I've observed:

In my time at Metalab, we went from 2 people to 40. It's easy to remember that growth as one straight up-and-to-the-right line over 5 years. Team members were added, clients got bigger, project budgets increased... and things ramped up on a slight grade over time. But... no. That's not the reality. If you zoom in on that straight line, there were quick periods of rapid growth, and then subsequent periods where things dove off a cliff. Metalab wasn't one agency over those 5 years... it was several. 2 to 5 employees, 5 to 10, 10 to 20, 20 to 40... these were all different Metalabs. Each phase required a new perspective on the business—usually centered around how much money we needed, and how to earn that money. And each brought new clients that forced us to change, sometimes uncomfortably. Every time you got to that next level and adjusted to that new perspective, you'd lose a few key people who felt the place wasn't what it once was. That felt like a huge blow, but in hindsight, you realize that this is just the agency shedding its old skin to prepare for the new one. We always ended up with new people who were energetic and enthusiastic, and more appropriate for the new size and goals of the agency. In hindsight, I've realized that being ok with these near-constant changes are the key to scaling an agency.

@madebycontrast @adriankuleszo @unfant 👋👋

@adriankuleszo @unfant maybe could help. Also I'm sure @menichols (managed Metalab in early days) can get you unstuck.

Any $3-5M+ ARR agency owners in my network? Would love to pay for an hour of your time. Please DM me or tag someone you guys know who's at that level. Would really appreciate it! 🙏🏼

Simple, beautiful answer from a client when I asked about their competitive edge in the market: "We sell our value, even after we get paid."