Your agency doesn't have a sales problem. It has a people problem. I spent 15+ years building teams, from scrappy startups, to scaling tech companies, to huge agencies like GroupM and WPP. Now, I give small agency owners the SOPs, frameworks, and hard truths they need to build high-performance cultures that run without them.
Learn to Scale is turning 6. Here’s the most expensive lesson I’ve learned so far.
|
Hey Reader, For six years, I’ve been a founder. The journey has been a winding road of trial, error, and a whole lot of learning. I’ve sold to HR departments, consulted for startups, and chased opportunities across different industries, always feeling like I was just one step away from "figuring it out." I was a generalist trying to solve everyone's problems. And it was exhausting. But looking back, a clear pattern emerged. Every time I did my best work, every time a client had a true breakthrough, it wasn't because I'd fixed their marketing funnel or their sales process. It was because we'd fixed something deeper. Something human. It was in my work with marketing agencies over the past few years that this pattern became undeniable. I saw how:
These are the real, expensive problems. And I realized they are the only problems I am truly built to solve. That's why, for Learn to Scale's 6th birthday, I'm making a big change. I'm retiring the "generalist" hat to go all-in on the niche that needs this work the most. I'm now focusing exclusively on acting as a fractional Agency People Officer to help founders solve these messy, profitable problems. To celebrate and kick off this new direction, I'm not asking for anything. I'm giving something away. I built a simple, fun tool to help you start diagnosing these issues yourself. It’s called The Agency Problem-Finder 3000. It's an interactive "game" that serves up the same "dangerous questions" I use to uncover the real challenges holding an agency back. It's free, it's fun, and it might just give you the "aha!" moment you've been looking for.
This is the new, hard-won direction for Learn to Scale. I'm excited to finally be solving the right problems for the right people. Thanks for sticking with me, =Dan Newman |
Dan Newman
Your agency doesn't have a sales problem. It has a people problem. I spent 15+ years building teams, from scrappy startups, to scaling tech companies, to huge agencies like GroupM and WPP. Now, I give small agency owners the SOPs, frameworks, and hard truths they need to build high-performance cultures that run without them.
A bi-weekly roundup of metrics that makes your CFO go brrrrr January 10 - January 23 Numbers, Glorious Numbers I've been working on an app that helps agency owners answer the existential question: is my business doing ok? As I was vibe-coding my way through Cursor to build this cozy business visualization app, I realized that I needed to provide users with more concrete guidance to help them with the very-confusing parts of setting revenue goals, sales goals, and calculating how efficient...
A bi-weekly roundup of how to fit your business on a single sheet of paper December 27, 2025 - January 9, 2026 Nine Boxes Closer To Nirvana Skip the New Years Resolution, To-Don't List, and Accountabilibuddy Pact. Do a Lean Canvas instead. The Lean Canvas is a one-page business modeling worksheet that should take about 15 minutes for you to fill out if you know your business model and a couple years if you don't. Think of it less like a business plan and more like an annual physical for your...
A bi-weekly roundup of everything TL;DR from the past year December 13 - December 26 A Brief Year In Review Don't forget to enter my end-of-year holiday Cliftonstrengths & 1-1 Giveaway! Contest ends on Monday the 29th. Enter now! The end of the year always puts me into a reflective mood, and out of all my content channels, this newsletter has always been the place I feel most present. The ritual of waking up early on a Friday, putting on vibe-y instrumental music, and setting the lights to...