At a networking event in Chicago, an agency owner showed me his real numbers

I went to a small SEO meetup in Chicago last month, and this guy from a local agency pulled up his laptop. He showed me his client portfolio, and I noticed he only takes on 5 clients at a time. He said he used to take 20 but kept losing clients because his team couldn't keep up. Now he charges $4,000 a month per client and has a 90% retention rate over 2 years. It made me think about how many agencies burn out trying to scale too fast. Has anyone else seen better results from keeping a smaller client roster?

2 comments

2 Comments

xena_kim12d ago

Figured the same thing at first, but after watching a few agencies try this model I have some doubts. He's making $20k a month gross and has to pay for his own salary, team, tools, and overhead. One of my friends runs a similar setup with 15 clients at $3k each and nets way more because his team is built to handle volume. That 90% retention number sounds great, but if he loses one client he loses 20% of his income overnight. The small roster model makes him way too dependent on a handful of accounts liking him personally.

drew_patel5712d ago

Nah, I've seen that play out different though. My buddy had a client who was paying him $8k a month and they seemed solid for like two years. Then the client's wife got into his ear about some random marketing podcast and suddenly he was "questioning the value." Lost that account and it took him six months to replace that revenue. Meanwhile I know a guy who does $2k clients with a team of VA's and even if he loses three in a month it barely stings cause he's got 40 of them. The high end low volume thing only works if you're okay with that constant stress hanging over your head.