Micro-Agency Launchpad

I recently went through an exercise that I think every business owner should try. It’s simple. It’s strategic. And it completely changed how I think about our customers at Paperboy. Here’s a little context: We’re about to start testing some paid funnels to drive leads for Paperboy. But before we touched a single ad… I knew we had to sharpen our customer segments. Because running cold traffic means one thing: You have to meet people exactly where they are. You have to speak directly to their...

We’re trying a new lead gen strategy at Paperboy right now, and I think more people should be experimenting with it. We’re creating short training modules—like, 10–15 minute videos—and embedding them directly inside other people’s courses. Think of it like a branch off the affiliate marketing tree, but more value-first. Here’s how it works: We find course creators who serve our ideal audience—people running or likely to run newsletters, creators building businesses around content, interested...

This week, I put together a new deck for Paperboy. It’s something we can send to potential clients or share with affiliate partners to pass along. But more importantly, it’s a real-time example of something I preach all the time in the Micro-Agency Launchpad course: Don’t just list your services. Sell a clear solution to a specific problem. Most agencies write decks that go like this: • “We do paid ads.” • “We build funnels.” • “We offer email marketing.” • “We’re creative!” Cool. So does...

This week, I finally did something that’s been on my list for months: I upgraded our agency scorecard from a primitive spreadsheet into a full-blown dashboard application — and it's awesome. But before I get into what we built, let me explain why this matters. If you’re running an agency and trying to step out of the day-to-day without the whole thing falling apart, you need a scorecard. Not a “vision board.”Not a goals doc.An actual, weekly-updated, trackable scorecard. A single source of...

After a full year of sales calls, I finally figured out the biggest thing holding people back from working with us. It wasn’t the price. It wasn’t the contract length. It wasn’t even the fear of running ads. It was this: They didn’t fully grasp the financial value of what we do. They saw the upfront investment—our fee plus their ad budget—but they weren’t seeing the return on that investment clearly enough. And if people don’t understand the ROI, they hesitate. They overthink. They say, “Let...

For the longest time, I knew I needed to get out of the daily grind of client work. I’d tell myself, “Yeah, yeah, I get it. Work on the business, not in the business.” I’d heard it a million times. I’d even said it a million times (as you all know). But here’s the thing... Knowing it and actually doing it are two very different things. I finally made the jump last September. I fully removed myself from the day-to-day operations of my agency. No more client Slack pings, no more diving deep...

Guys, I’ve been on a lot of sales calls. Probably 100 in the last year thanks to Paperboy. Some of them flowed effortlessly. And others that felt like pushing a boulder uphill. Over time, I realized something: It’s not just what you’re selling—it’s how you talk about it. One wrong phrase, and you can lose trust. One well-placed shift in wording, and suddenly, you’re in control of the conversation. I put together a list of what I believe are the most common phrases that might be killing your...