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Building A Successful Micro-Agency: A Guide to Starting Profitable & Sustainable Digital Marketing Agencies
Drawing from lessons learned during founding and running a successful paid search agency, Discosloth cofounders Gil & Anya Gildner describe the critical elements of success in starting an agency that works...and then keeps on working.
The Discosloth approach to successfully building a profitable and sustainable agency revolves around five factors: specialization, simplicity, branding, cashflow, and adjacency to revenue. By finding a niche, developing an inbound lead process, becoming an expert, leveraging the power of content creation, and above all making sure that your cashflow and margins can withstand unexpected downturns, this book explains both common pitfalls & hard lessons learnt by micro-agency founders across the world.
REVIEWS OF BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL MICRO-AGENCY:
“There is a longevity and stability to building a business the right way that is too often overlooked by the "SCALE IT TO THE MOON" crowd. In their latest book, Gil & Anya graciously open up their agency processes and philosophy to walk us through how they have managed and built their successful micro-agency. As a fellow "micro-agency" owner trying to do the same thing, this book is worth its weight in gold. The revolution of "stability over scaling" has begun, and Gil & Anya are leading the pack.”
— Kirk Williams, owner of ZATO, author of Stop the Scale: Building a Digital Agency You Actually Like
The Discosloth approach to successfully building a profitable and sustainable agency revolves around five factors: specialization, simplicity, branding, cashflow, and adjacency to revenue. By finding a niche, developing an inbound lead process, becoming an expert, leveraging the power of content creation, and above all making sure that your cashflow and margins can withstand unexpected downturns, this book explains both common pitfalls & hard lessons learnt by micro-agency founders across the world.
REVIEWS OF BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL MICRO-AGENCY:
“There is a longevity and stability to building a business the right way that is too often overlooked by the "SCALE IT TO THE MOON" crowd. In their latest book, Gil & Anya graciously open up their agency processes and philosophy to walk us through how they have managed and built their successful micro-agency. As a fellow "micro-agency" owner trying to do the same thing, this book is worth its weight in gold. The revolution of "stability over scaling" has begun, and Gil & Anya are leading the pack.”
— Kirk Williams, owner of ZATO, author of Stop the Scale: Building a Digital Agency You Actually Like
- GenresBusiness
153 pages, Paperback
Published May 9, 2022
4 people are currently reading
102 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 10, 2024
I feel like it's a little too focused on PPC and google ad agencies, but there was some solid advice that really helped. For example, the section about the 5-50 valley of failure really makes sense and that is where I've seen a lot of other agencies fail.
July 22, 2022
Biased, but I think it’s good.
June 5, 2025
Whoever did the Kindle formatting for this book was an idiot. It’s all plain text, but for some godforsaken reason, it’s not a flowable kindle file, so if you’re reading on a small screen, you have to scroll up and down each page before turning the page, as if you were reading a PDF. Totally shitty user experience. I really wish people hired people who knew what they were doing!
On to the content. I got this book because I wasn’t even sure what a micro-agency was, but it sounded intriguing and possibly relevant to the new line of work I’m starting to pursue.
In case, like me, you’re not sure what a micro-agency is, it’s just an agency that only has 2-4 employees. The author recommends specializing specifically enough that you’re the best in your field, doing great work, and ideally picking something that has to be done on an ongoing basis so you can get people on retainer. Charge them up front so you have good cashflow. Keep things simple so it’s not a lot to manage, and keep things lean and do a lot of content marketing so you can have nice, fat margins.
Also, pick a service that clearly makes your clients money so they don’t see you as an expense and want to cut you. Don’t rely on just one or two “whale” clients, diversify with 20-30 clients. Each time you get too busy, raise your rates. (He has never raised rates on existing clients; he just raises the rates for new ones, so over time, the clientele shifts more and more upscale and his revenue and profit go up while keeping the workload and staff the same.)
Overall, it didn’t get a whole lot more detailed than that. Not too exciting, but still useful to see these things spelled out explicitly. Now I’ll know what to watch for.
The one chapter that i found directly useful and actionable was the chapter on reporting. Apparently most agencies send their clients massive reports with the main goal of looking impressive. He sends them short reports on just the three numbers they care about the most, so they can actually understand what’s going on. With his analysis and explanations, the whole report is maybe 4 pages long. That seems really smart.
On to the content. I got this book because I wasn’t even sure what a micro-agency was, but it sounded intriguing and possibly relevant to the new line of work I’m starting to pursue.
In case, like me, you’re not sure what a micro-agency is, it’s just an agency that only has 2-4 employees. The author recommends specializing specifically enough that you’re the best in your field, doing great work, and ideally picking something that has to be done on an ongoing basis so you can get people on retainer. Charge them up front so you have good cashflow. Keep things simple so it’s not a lot to manage, and keep things lean and do a lot of content marketing so you can have nice, fat margins.
Also, pick a service that clearly makes your clients money so they don’t see you as an expense and want to cut you. Don’t rely on just one or two “whale” clients, diversify with 20-30 clients. Each time you get too busy, raise your rates. (He has never raised rates on existing clients; he just raises the rates for new ones, so over time, the clientele shifts more and more upscale and his revenue and profit go up while keeping the workload and staff the same.)
Overall, it didn’t get a whole lot more detailed than that. Not too exciting, but still useful to see these things spelled out explicitly. Now I’ll know what to watch for.
The one chapter that i found directly useful and actionable was the chapter on reporting. Apparently most agencies send their clients massive reports with the main goal of looking impressive. He sends them short reports on just the three numbers they care about the most, so they can actually understand what’s going on. With his analysis and explanations, the whole report is maybe 4 pages long. That seems really smart.
October 10, 2022
Eye Opening for All Agency Professionals
I've regularly recommended chunks of this book to my coworkers & directors - It is like getting the little cheat section from the back of a early 2000's kids magazine. If we have an issue, the answer is in this book (almost always).
There's times where I'm reading along and go "Oh yep, I definitely should not have done that." or "This needs to be stopped, immedately."
Even if you're not running an agency, this is an important read for juniors. It helps get some perspective on what it can be like out there - At agencies that don't have 80 clients per specialist, at agencies that are really good at one or two specific things.
Great read, 10/10.
I've regularly recommended chunks of this book to my coworkers & directors - It is like getting the little cheat section from the back of a early 2000's kids magazine. If we have an issue, the answer is in this book (almost always).
There's times where I'm reading along and go "Oh yep, I definitely should not have done that." or "This needs to be stopped, immedately."
Even if you're not running an agency, this is an important read for juniors. It helps get some perspective on what it can be like out there - At agencies that don't have 80 clients per specialist, at agencies that are really good at one or two specific things.
Great read, 10/10.
December 4, 2022
A fantastic birds-eye-view guide of building an agency and how to make it both profitable and enjoyable. Basically a companion to writing a business plan for your agency and how to keep it profitably structured.
January 15, 2025
Would have liked to hear more tangible examples but overall loved it!
May 9, 2025
This is a great, very simple intro to starting a micro-agency.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews