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AgencyHabits

AgencyHabits provides learnings, ideas, and templates for agency operators drawn from Barrel Holdings companies. Barrel Holdings incubates, acquires, and grows agency businesses.

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If your clients are asking for “more”

In this week’s AgencyHabits Podcast, Peter and Sei-Wook talk about the moment agencies move from single projects to multi-workstream accounts, and how easily that transition gets underestimated. What they describe shows up as: PMs constantly context-switching Account leads stretched too thin Clients feeling friction even when work quality is high Teams burning out without a clear reason why If your agency is adding services, deepening retainers, or feeling stretched in ways that are hard to...

This Week's Agency Insights Every week, we share content to help you run your agency business. What's Top of Mind How Agencies Should Think About and Manage Risk - This piece breaks down the 9 risks we see inside agencies before things go sideways, and how to get ahead of them while you still can. Start your year right - On Jan 14, we’re bringing together agency founders, builders, and operators for a FREE Knowledge Share. It is a 60-minute live session of honest insights and shared...

Most agency profitability problems don’t come from bad clients. They come from small, compounding decisions inside otherwise “good” engagements. In this week’s AgencyHabits Podcast, Peter and Sei-Wook break down the six levers that determine whether client work is profitable or quietly bleeding margin, across fixed-fee projects, retainers, and hybrid models. This episode is about fundamentals. The mechanics that decide outcomes long before finance ever looks at the numbers. Here’s what’s...

This Week's Agency Insights Every week, we share content to help you run your agency business. What's Top of Mind 50 reasons your agency isn’t growing. - Most aren’t about clients or the market. They’re about you. This read will sting...in a good way. Read to start the year right. A small holiday gift from our team - We’re hosting the next AgencyHabits Knowledge Share on January 14th and bringing together agency founders, builders, and operators. If you want access to value-packed, curated...

As the New Year approaches, a lot of agency founders focus on what they’re going to change. New goals. New strategies. New initiatives. But before any of that, there’s a more foundational question worth asking:Who are you learning from? In this week’s AgencyHabits Podcast, Peter and Sei-Wook talk about why learning from other agency owners has been one of the biggest accelerators in their journey, and why perspective often matters more than playbooks. Here’s what’s inside: Why early isolation...

We’re pausing our usual format this week to do something simpler. To wish you a truly wonderful holiday season - one with space to reflect, rest, and reset. And as a small way of giving back, we’re announcing the next edition of the AgencyHabits Knowledge Share. 📌 January 14th, 2026 ⏰ 12:30PM - 1:30PM ET 👉 RSVP HERE 👈 It’s a space for honest conversations and actionable insights as we look ahead. We hope we get to see you there. Who We’re Partnering With Most agencies don’t hire too late....

As the year winds down, a lot of agency founders start thinking about dashboards. New tools. New KPIs. New goals. The instinct is understandable, but it’s also where many agencies go wrong. In one of our most listened to The AgencyHabits Podcast episodes, we talk about how to head into the New Year with clarity, not complexity: what to track, what to ignore, and how the right metrics actually improve decision-making. Here’s what we cover: Why fewer metrics lead to better leadership How...

This Week's Agency Insights Every week, we share content to help you run your agency business. What's Top of Mind Planning for growth in 2026.? Start here. - Before you set that 30% revenue goal, read this. In this article, Peter Kang breaks down exactly how to work backward from your topline target to the deals, leads, and actions it actually takes to get there. 9 leadership mistakes that cost time, money, and trust. - From missing milestones to mismanaging teams, this post from a former...

Risk is one of those topics agency founders rarely sit down to think about. In this week’s AgencyHabits Podcast, Peter and Sei-Wook slow the conversation down and walk through what risk actually means in an agency context: exposure to uncertainty that can materially impact the business. They organize risk into clear categories - people, clients, finances, operations, and strategy - and focus on the ones that can genuinely put an agency at risk of shutting down. Some of the most important...

This Week's Agency Insights Every week, we share content to help you run your agency business. What's Top of Mind Profit isn’t luck. - It’s not just pricing. From timeline to templates, these are the overlooked levers that drive profitability (or kill it). The real opportunity? Deliver what you sell. - This post by Annabelle Cochrane calls out the real reason clients churn, and the massive opportunity for agencies who actually deliver what they promise. What We're Talking About This week’s...