#51: Why Client Communication Beats Killer ROAS | with Colby Flood of Brighter Click
Growing a digital agency sounds simple on paper: get clients, deliver results, hire people, repeat.
In reality, agency scaling is where good operators get exposed.
Client churn spikes right when results are strong.
Margins erode even as revenue grows.
Hiring feels urgent but every bad hire sets you back months.In this conversation, I sat down with Colby Flood, founder of Brighter Click, to unpack what actually breaks agencies as they scale and what to do instead. Colby has spent nearly seven years building an agency that survived platform shifts, DTC volatility, and hiring mistakes most founders only realize after the damage is done.
This isn't a theory. It's a lived experience.
Below is a practical breakdown of the agency scaling lessons that matter most right now, especially if you’re navigating growth, operations, and profitability in an increasingly competitive market.
The Hidden Agency Killer: When Results Aren’t Enough
One of the most counterintuitive truths about agency growth is this:
Strong results alone do not protect you from losing clients.
Early in my agency journey, we landed a client where performance was absurdly good, north of 30x ROAS for six straight months. On paper, we were crushing it.
We still got fired.
Why? Because we failed at the relationship.
Colby echoed this pattern from his own experience. Agencies often assume poor performance is the main reason clients leave. In reality, lack of communication and proactivity is just as dangerous, sometimes more so.
When results are good but communication is weak, clients start thinking:
“This must be easy.”
“Why are we paying so much for this?”
“We could probably do this in-house.”
When results dip and communication is weak, the agency looks careless even when the cause is algorithmic, platform related, or completely outside your control.
The takeaway:
Results are table stakes.
Trust is the retention lever.
If you’re scaling an agency, obsess over how often, how clearly, and how proactively you communicate, especially when things are going well.
Why Media Buying Became Less Valuable and What Replaced It
A major theme of this conversation was how the role of media buying has changed.
There was a time when agencies differentiated themselves through:
Technical ad account expertise
Platform-specific hacks
Tactical optimization skills
That era is fading.
As algorithms improve, platforms do more of the targeting automatically. Media buying hasn’t become irrelevant but it has become less impactful as a standalone skill.
What replaced it?
Creative strategy.
Colby explained how Brighter Click shifted its focus toward:
Creative direction
Creative production
Influencer and UGC sourcing
Messaging frameworks that live outside the ad account
The agencies winning today understand that performance is driven upstream by the offer, the message, and the creative angle, not by button pushing inside Ads Manager.
Agency scaling implication:
If your value proposition is still “we manage ads,” your margins will keep shrinking.
Agencies that scale profitably are repositioning around:
Creative systems
Funnel thinking
Business context, not just channels
Hiring for Scale: Why Interviews Lie and Trial Projects Don’t
Hiring is where most agencies stall or implode.
Colby walked through how his hiring process evolved over time, and one insight stood out:
An interview is the best version of someone you will ever see.
That’s dangerous.
Early stage agencies often rely too heavily on:
Resume signals
Interview charisma
“Culture fit” conversations
Instead, Brighter Click places heavy emphasis on trial projects that simulate real work.
What makes their approach effective:
Trial projects last 1–3 days
Candidates are given real tasks they’d actually perform
Information is intentionally left out
Why leave information out?
To test:
Who asks clarifying questions
Who notices missing context
Who blindly makes assumptions
This mirrors real agency life. Clients rarely give perfect briefs. The ability to spot gaps and communicate proactively is more valuable than raw technical skill.
Agency scaling lesson:
Bad hires cost more than slow hires.
If you want to scale without chaos:
Slow down the hiring process
Validate behavior, not just answers
Test for judgment, not compliance
The 20% Rule: One Client Should Never Control Your Agency
One of the hardest lessons Colby shared was about revenue concentration.
Any time one client represents more than 20% of your revenue, your agency is fragile no matter how good the relationship feels.
Brighter Click experienced this firsthand when a single client made up roughly 30% of revenue and left. The result:
Immediate financial pressure
2–3 months of recovery time
Forced recalibration of growth strategy
Contracts don’t protect you from this risk. Relationships don’t either.
Scaling safely requires:
Revenue spread across multiple clients
Proactive pipeline management
Awareness of concentration before it becomes a problem
If you’re growing fast, this is easy to ignore until it isn’t.
Why DTC Is Getting Harder (and What Agencies Are Doing About It)
DTC used to be the golden path for agencies:
Fast-moving brands
Big ad budgets
Clear performance metrics
Today, it’s different.
Margins are thinner.
Competition is brutal.
Client expectations keep rising.
At the same time, the cost to deliver keeps increasing:
More creative volume
More testing
More reporting
More AI-driven output expectations
Many agencies are feeling the squeeze.
Brighter Click’s response has been vertical expansion:
Contract research organizations (CROs)
Chain businesses
Drug rehabs and regulated industries
These verticals often:
Spend heavily on ads
Want less hands-on involvement
Value partnerships over tactics
Key insight:
“Boring” industries often make better agency clients.
They’re less trend-driven, less reactive, and more focused on long term outcomes.
Scaling Operations Without Slowing Growth
One of the most practical sections of the conversation focused on operations.
Colby admitted something most founders won’t:
He over optimized operations too early and it slowed growth.
But later, when the agency reached a certain size, strong operations became a growth multiplier.
A standout example was how Brighter Click uses ClickUp:
Time tracking across all team members
Historical data to forecast workload
Templated project structures by service
Hour-level expectations by task and role
It took 3–5 months to fully implement.
Most founders quit after 2–3 weeks.
The real lesson:
Agency scaling requires patience with systems.
If you abandon every process that doesn’t work immediately, you’ll stay stuck rebuilding forever.
The “Slow Down to Speed Up” Principle
If there’s one theme that ties everything together, it’s this:
Slow down to speed up.
Slow down hiring → fewer fires later
Slow down operations → predictable delivery
Slow down positioning → stronger margins
Slow down decisions → fewer reversals
Agencies that scale well don’t move slower overall—they remove friction before accelerating.
A useful metaphor from the conversation:
Riding a bike with flat tires.
You can keep pedaling harder, or you can stop and pump the tires.
Most agencies keep pedaling.
Final Thoughts: What Actually Scales an Agency
Agency scaling isn’t about:
More tools
More hacks
More AI
More tactics
It’s about alignment.
When your:
Positioning matches your market
Operations support delivery
Hiring reinforces culture
Communication builds trust
Growth becomes sustainable instead of stressful.
That’s the difference between an agency that survives and one that compounds.
If you want to go deeper, you can run the full version at agencyuplift.co/mini.
Even if you never book a call, the clarity alone is worth it.