This episode marks 5 years since I started this series. In 2020, I was looking for a way to write something monthly so I wouldn’t have to keep coming up with new topics. “Why not just write about stuff happening within the agency,” I wondered. And that’s what I did (see Episode 1). Little did I know that the monthly ritual of setting aside a handful of hours to reflect and write would open so […]
We’ve been using a tool for the past month that we developed internally. It’s called Relationship Digest and it sends an email every weekday morning highlighting 3 contacts from my past that I may want to reach out to. The data comes from my inbox, calendar, and LinkedIn and the combination provides useful context. I found myself reaching out to 4-5 contacts of the 15 I get each week, including some people I would’ve never thought […]
We’re officially coming up on 1 year since I moved out of the CEO role at Barrel and handed over the reins to Lucas. Since then, Sei-Wook and I have been focused on building Barrel Holdings. Under Lucas’s leadership, Barrel has had a strong past 12 months, posting high levels of profit and on track to post meaningful revenue growth for the first time in a few years. More than anything, I appreciate the way […]
A professional email inbox that’s been in use for a very long time is an underrated asset. I’ve had my @barrelny.com email for 19+ years. It contains thousands of contacts with people at various points in their careers, some who’ve gone on to found companies or rise up the ranks and become executives. Much like with the thousands of connections I have on LinkedIn, I engage with only a fraction of the people and have […]
We’re starting to see companies using more and more AI tools to do some of the heavier lifting that agencies like ours would traditionally handle. For example, we noticed that for Catalog, some clients were leveraging Lovable to create their marketing websites using AI prompts. This was work that we used to do, but instead, we were asked to focus only on some app UI work (which, too, could be done using AI for the […]
I’m writing this from a family hotel resort in Fort Myers, Florida. I’ve been here the past few days with my wife, our three boys, my parents, and my sister. We’ve shared meals, watched the kids splash endlessly in the pool, gone on short excursions, and enjoyed each other’s company in between sunscreen reapplications and snack runs. At one point while watching my kids play in the water, I had this thought: The family vacation […]
We’re slowly working through a rebranding for Barrel Holdings. Bolster is helping us with our new look. Currently, it’s just a simple Google font with black text on white background. My presentation decks are made using an out-of-the-box minimalist template. We figured that since we’re always talking to a lot of creative/design-focused agency owners and also have some very design-forward agencies in our portfolio, we ought to represent ourselves with a more put-together look. Here’s […]
Exactly a year ago, I wrote about our work around Barrel’s CPG positioning: This past month was filled with various activities that we believe will pay off in the long run. One angle we are pursuing is to position Barrel as an expert firm that helps CPG food and beverage brands get the most out of their website, not only via their direct-to-consumer e-commerce, but by generating greater brand awareness, building direct relationships with customers, […]
I’ve told a few people that these days, working on Barrel Holdings feels a lot like the early years of Barrel (circa 2006 – 19 years ago!), especially the first 2-3 years when it was just myself and Sei-Wook. We were figuring things out and continually excited and drawn to different possibilities. One thing I realize in hindsight is that many of our early explorations and side projects (non-client work) planted the seeds for what […]
This marks my fourth annual review in this format. Check out 2023, 2022, and 2021. I spend hours each month reflecting on my work, usually through the writing of my Agency Journey series. 2024 marked a big change in my career as I, along with my Barrel co-founder Sei-Wook, moved from being day-to-day operators of an agency business to becoming portfolio managers – we now oversee six agency businesses under Barrel Holdings and are working […]
What a year it’s been. Last December, I was still very much in the weeds of Barrel’s day-to-day, fretting about our various client accounts, the agency’s positioning, and how we were going to ramp up our sales and marketing efforts. Mid-year, Barrel’s new CEO Lucas Ballasy took the helm and he’s been fully in control of the agency that Sei-Wook and I founded 18.5 years ago. Lucas has been doing a wonderful job (more on […]
At Barrel Holdings, we’ve been spending time building out a CEO Scorecard to help evaluate and develop our agency leaders. Our scorecard hits on predictable qualities like communication, holding the team accountable to results, and financial savvy. As we refine the scorecard, I’ve found it helpful to look in other areas for inspiration. Professional football, with its high stakes environment and advanced performance measurement, is fertile ground to mine for inspiration. In the NFL, teams […]
This year, I’m grateful for the opportunity to evolve my role in a significant way and take on new and interesting challenges. It’s been about six months since Sei-Wook and I made the shift from agency operators to holding company partners. I’ve enjoyed learning new things, meeting new people, and exploring new ways to create value for the holdco and our agencies. I’m grateful for Sei-Wook–we’ve worked closely together for over twenty years, dating back […]
In my update last November, with our family’s move out of Brooklyn to the Hudson Valley and welcoming child #3 out of the way, I thought the next 12 months would be far less eventful. For the most part, it has been. But it also hasn’t been without some twists. You can see all my past personal finance updates right here. Note: All content here is for informational purposes only and do not constitute any investment […]
I used to downplay my introductions when meeting new people. “Oh, I make websites,” I would say. People would assume I was a freelancer working with local small businesses. Nothing wrong with it, but also not memorable. Over time, I got comfortable sharing more details – that I ran my own business I co-founded with a friend, that we worked with X, Y, Z brands, and produced this and that kind of work. More people […]
In early October, we relaunched AgencyDocs as AgencyHabits, a resource for agency operators drawing from the learnings at across our businesses at Barrel Holdings. The reception has been positive and we’ve managed to grow the email list since going live. We’ve posted over a dozen articles and began sending out a weekly email. The goal is to replace the downloadable templates and SOPs currently on AgencyDocs with a tighter and more updated version by the […]
My co-founder Sei-Wook gave a talk this month on digital marketing trends to a private equity group and executives from their portfolio companies. The talk was very well received and may lead to some opportunities for our agencies. Sei-Wook worked tirelessly to create a deeply-researched and engaging presentation, filled with memorable visuals, data, and examples. The presentation opportunity came about as we started representing ourselves as Barrel Holdings, not just focused on e-commerce websites, but […]
In a healthy agency culture, feedback is always flowing and driving continuous improvement. It’s vital to build a system that drives new feedback. Rather than one-off attempts to gather feedback, set up recurring and repeatable processes. Here are some feedback collection mechanisms that we’ve used across our Barrel Holdings agencies: Client Satisfaction Survey: after a project or periodically (e.g. monthly, quarterly), send a short survey asking for scores on communication, work quality, project management, value […]
When a lead comes in directly to me these days, I usually just loop in the appropriate agency by email and let them take it from there. Still, for a select few calls each week, I end up taking a call on my own first. These are usually opportunities where it’s not totally clear which agency would be the best fit. I enjoy these calls because I can take the time to learn about the […]
I remember the earliest days of doing new business sales at Barrel – we cobbled together screenshots of some random freelance work as our portfolio and had nicely printed business cards. The only reason we won was because our prices were unbelievably low. In many cases, we would’ve just done the work for free. It took time for us to build up our standards for handling new business. We had to get the basics in […]