Scaling an Agency Without Breaking It

Diogo Dantas (00:01.11)
All right, Jacob, we are recording. So Jacob, first of all, thank you for joining us to have this kind of open conversation about operating an agency and growing and all the fun stuff around it. So why don't we start by talking about your origin story? Who is BX Studio? How did it happen? Who is Jacob and why starting an agency?

Jacob Sussman (00:30.129)
No, I appreciate that. It's great to be here. origin story, I started out more in the film world than design and technology. studied film in school. But I think, you know.

Film is really the intersection of creativity and technology too. yeah, in the course of college, I kind of became aware of digital agencies, web design, and, you know, yeah, there's a period where I was like very focused on that. After school, kind of like coincidentally ended up getting that, finding my way into the agency world. I'd interned at a production company and that production company had worked with a lot of agencies. And then someone had given me advice that it's better to be agency side. So, know, apply for agency internships. That led to a full

time role at an agency. was project management role. think before I applied, didn't even really know what project management was, but it was similar to film producing that I was doing a lot of. that ended up, you know, it was a very corporate environment. I was on the American Express account, you know, large international agency, Digitas. you know, at the time it was a bit stifling for, you know, my young creative disposition. But, you know, it was a really incredible learning opportunity. And I, you know, learned how, you know, work is

like structured and delivered and scoped and how budgets are managed. And a lot of those systems, know, know, BX Studio, like, wouldn't have been possible without, what I learned. And, you know, even under two years there, it was around 18 months.

But I also always had a kind of inclination towards entrepreneurship. You know, when I was in high school, a friend and I founded like a production, you small local production company and did client work directly. after a couple of years at Digitas, I was introduced to these, these guys who had a boutique agency. but you know, they weren't having a lot of traction with it. And, know, I think truth be told, they didn't really like the day to day work of, of running it in many ways. And, you know, and so they brought me in as like a partner, you know, with an equity stake.

Jacob Sussman (02:25.299)
And that was incredibly exciting because, know, I did you toss.

it was so corporate that i didn't even realize that this world of the texas that were in a relatively normal people had their own agencies you know in some cases work with the big major clients and i thought it all was just kind of locked up at the corporate level and i think that these companies have been around for decades and you if you want to ask a corporation instead of chance and then you know i can completely inverted and i know it's headed the reins to the small company and uh... you know it was uh... yeah uh... you know also didn't have to be like that though you know

Lowest level of the totem pole in the corporate environment, you know I had a discretion to you know pitch and sell clients and deliver work and you know If I didn't know how to do it, we just had to figure it out Rebrands and Shopify sites and you know, that's where I learned about web flow to that agency became pretty focused on web flow coincidentally, but a lot of Shopify too and Yeah, we did a good run, you know when I joined we had almost no clients and you know, it scaled up to like, know, that was small but you know, like a business with like some momentum and

Um, you know, yeah, we did some work. Yeah. Uh, I'll have it. What that was pitching and winning the Swatty Potty Lee brand, which is still like one of my favorite, just like, you know, uh, kind of career experiences is that we did like a photo shoot and video shoots for them too. Um, but then I, during that time I'd been following the writing of Peter King, you know, who's an older, yeah, he's a founded the agency barrel 20 years ago and has like a wonderful blog about agencies now has a holding company. Um, and it was funny, I ended up, uh, reaching out to Peter, um,

And almost the exact time that he started to transition to a focus on his holding company rather than a focus on Beryl the agency. And when we connected, had just spun out some of like, basically Beryl had a book of like long-term retainer accounts that weren't really aligned with like where they were trying to take Beryl as a business. So they had just carved out those accounts and turned it into a new agency called Vaulted Oak. And I think I got really lucky. I guess he looked at my resume and the work I'd done and probably to a certain extent.

Jacob Sussman (04:30.643)
to like my age, you know, I was a, you know, 25 or 26 at the time. So, you know, I was still ready to take a big risk, you know, on a best adventure. And, you know, he suggested we go into business together and, know, almost of the same magnitude of like, know, what had happened when I was like, you know, in corporate and then, you know, they offered me the partnership at Diamond took, you know, the, idea of working with Peter felt like a similar kind of like, wow, this is so exciting. I can't believe, you know, that this, you know, cause number one, I would move from creative director and partner to CEO.

It was a larger stake in the business. And then it was also the opportunity to, know.

not, you know, as very much, I was very much figuring it out, you know, uh, as I went at Diamond Hook and, you know, and my partners were too, so, know, like working alongside and learning from someone who, you know, was the, the sky viewed as like, you know, the, uh, you know, kind of epitome of like, know, what I'd want to grow into an industry, like barrel had become like a North star for my own work. So, you know, the opportunity to work with someone who had grown an agency, you know, of that caliber. Um, and, uh, yeah, January, almost exactly four years ago, cause it's the, you it's just the date, this is January, it's 2020.

And on January 1st, 2022, we put up our shingle for BX Studio. We'd spent a few months brainstorming different ideas and eventually met it out on Webflow as a good focus. And that ended up being, again, a lot of luck. I think it was kind of like the perfect time to found a Webflow agency. And that platform was starting to pick up serious momentum. And I think the enterprise...

wing of the Webflow had been founded relatively recently and started to solidify. But still early enough that there's something that was really great in our first year was Wanna, partner manager at Webflow, noticed that we were working with some bigger brands because of our relationship with them and kind of identified BX Studio as like an agency to support and that got us on Webflow's radar. between the holding company had some great relationships.

Jacob Sussman (06:31.781)
I'd actually built up a better network than I'd realized from my work at Diamond Hook. And that, you so we got some great introductions from that in our first year. And then between, this kind of, you know, coming together, you know, this multiplicative effect of, you know, the holding companies, introductions, Webflow's introductions and the Webflow experts network. And, know, any momentum I, you know, built up on my own. Yeah, led us to, you know, yeah, became, yeah, we developed some solid momentum.

of, you know, and I have been able to grow consistently since there. Webflow design and development exclusively, all focused on marketing websites, B2B focus, financial services, professional services, hospitality, a lot of technology and startups, of course. And yeah, now we're starting to double down on A and SEO a bit, but it's basically been four years of steady growth in those verticals. yeah, that's a TODR on us. Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (07:28.653)
Nice. What a good path to be. And talking specifically about year one, now looking back, what do you think is something that you totally misjudge about running an agency?

Jacob Sussman (07:44.025)
Wow. I mean, it's just incredible. It feels like every year I can't believe how we were doing it a year ago. And like, I even feel bad about the beginning of 2025, You by the time we got to 2026, the agency had completely transformed. So if we go back to 2022, well, you know.

at the beginning, you know, at the beginning, you don't have a lot of clients and you don't have revenue, so you just do everything, you know. and, you know, I even did a lot of the development. You know, I would do design at times, you know, I would, you know, I was project managing everything. I would say like, like the biggest mistake was that I didn't go about, you know,

forecasting the work we had sold in and managing my own allocation in a realistic manner so I you know, we experienced something happened around I think it was like around like May or June and you know experience this like huge surge of work and you know, was still doing a lot of the development still doing a lot of all of the project management and You know, we really needed project managers, you know, if I were to do that first year differently I probably you know, honestly

I would have just decided, I shouldn't do any project management You know, every...

Yeah, every project should be delegated to a project manager then, you know, and then, know, around that June, July period, I got completely overwhelmed, almost burned out, you know, it, uh, you know, it came really, yeah. Yeah. reached a point of like pretty severe burnout and unfortunately, yeah, you know, it's like, we, we, did, you know, overall the businesses, know, really succeeded and, you know, I think, and we got through, say about like 90% of the work. you know, like, uh, on, on the level, so to speak, but like, you know, I do, I can think of at least like, uh, like one relationship, uh,

Jacob Sussman (09:34.083)
from that period that, we weren't able to get through, you know, at an appropriate level. So, you know, I still feel bad about that, that relationship that, you know, could have gone better. I also got really lucky. You know, I pulled in some, yeah, I pulled in, you know, someone I had worked with at the past agency and, you know, last minute and, you know, she was able to jump on a project last minute, like a really tough big project and just dive into it with like no heads up, you know, so like, you know, and that was unfair to her. So, you know, you don't, don't want to onboard people in that matter, Tim. The only reason it worked is

Cause you know, we already had a prior relationship and she's particularly talented. And, um, yeah, so I think that's the biggest one. Yeah. I think, know, and that's also like the trend that continues through, uh, you know, through each, uh, yeah, often, often the biggest sorting points are years like, Oh, I was doing this thing that I could have delegated, you know, and like in 2024 I was managing all the project managers and that was unsustainable. I was doing all of the sales and managing all the project managers and hiring like a director of project management was like a huge inflection point.

Diogo Dantas (10:21.772)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (10:33.907)
for me, and then in 2025, you know, we, uh, outsourced, you know, we, delegated sales, you know, uh, Mike Leach, who was a salesperson at Webflow, um, you know, came aboard and now he manages our sales pipeline. And I've also realized I shouldn't ever have been doing the sales and, know, and yeah, uh, you know, so yeah, over time, you just realize that, you know, there's always someone who's, can do the thing you're doing better than you can do it, particularly if they're, know, often because of ability and at the very least just because they'll be focused on it. Um,

Diogo Dantas (10:49.421)
You

Jacob Sussman (11:03.877)
And the sooner you can get that delegated, the better.

Diogo Dantas (11:07.501)
Yeah, that's great. You got to a point where in such short amount of time that sometimes I see founders and I talk for personal experience, sometimes founders just spend their life just on that like project management and sales and they can't move away from that so congrats on getting that done. I think there is You need some

kind of self-awareness and

bit of courage I would say to be able to delegate those things that usually are kind of the toughest things to to get out of because you want to control in the sense of you want to make sure that you are delivering everything properly but you have to trust it to someone else so yeah nice nice place to be so now talking about your role today how that where is the type of job or role that you do at at the x studio now

Jacob Sussman (12:08.497)
Hmm. Yeah, it's interesting. you know, I think number one, yeah, ultimately it's like responsibility for the success of the business, you know, so we need to, uh, you know, be generating enough revenue and keeping our costs low enough that we're profitable. You know, I think that's the highest level of description, you know, um,

Uh, something I need to delegate is, I've, I'm involved in a lot of the day to day marketing work, like updating their websites, preparing, you know, case study, you know, so I think that's something I'm hiring. Actually, if anyone knows of any one, I'm hiring for a marketing manager because I think now I've recognized that's an expert opportunity. Um, I think like, you know, there's something to be said for like, uh, you know, it's kind of supporting the team is very important, you know, like weekly one-on-ones with the directors and being that, you know, support sounding board, you know, um, also kind of like, you know,

Diogo Dantas (12:39.629)
you

Jacob Sussman (12:57.915)
There are certain times where things need to be done a certain way and intervene, but help define the system and processes.

I think strategic initiatives, you know, like when we hired our SEO and AEO director, Nakia, you know, I had a big effort for all of the project managers to introduce her to clients. You know, that's the type of thing that, know, like she was new, so she wouldn't have been able to do it. one else, you know, kind of, can kind of see like, what's like an important initiative that like, you no one else can do because, you know, they're busy with their current work. And, you know, sometimes that's like preparing like a new internal system or a process, you know. Recently I've outgated like a, you know, a client call monitor that's helping everyone like monitor.

the fact that our clients are satisfied with AI. so that's, you got to be careful with stuff like that because you also, you you don't want to be like wasting your time on a really consuming side project either, you But you know, that actually has proven to be like really valuable. And yeah, and I think hiring great people. Yeah, you know.

Diogo Dantas (14:05.095)
Nice. Yeah, we will have a chance to talk a little bit about the AI part of it and how the impact did you see on the agency itself and also on the market. So we'll definitely discuss about that a little bit. Out of curiosity, since you move away from day-to-day project management, are you still part of all project channels?

Jacob Sussman (14:27.629)
hmm. Yeah. think for the most part, for whatever reason, I get added to all the channels, but I definitely, you know, I'd say the channels I go into least frequently are actually the product channels.

Yeah, because sometimes I'll look at the client channels. But what's been really nice about this client call monitor I built is I think the most important part of the relationships usually happens on calls. So the fact now, this is very recent as of this week, but now I'm monitoring what happens on all of the calls, if the calls are going well or not. So I actually do feel, you'd ask me a week ago, I'd say I actually don't know what's happening on most of the accounts. And now I kind of feel the opposite of I'm shocked by how much visibility I have into every account.

Diogo Dantas (15:01.847)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (15:12.441)
It's a really nice transition because you know, obviously it's better to know things are going well than not. Yeah

Diogo Dantas (15:16.779)
Yeah, no, of course. Now we can maybe get into a bit of how BX work as a business because most people see kind of the output if they go to BX Studio or BX website, they see kind of everything done perfectly, but then they don't kind of see much of the machine that powers it. So in terms of client acquisition, in...

In your four years of agency, just for the BX Studio part, what is the least obvious way of bringing clients today? Something people that usually might overlook, especially in this kind of agency area.

Jacob Sussman (16:01.521)
Yeah, I think the most important thing is partnerships. And partnerships is a really broad catch all for how you form relationships with other organizations that can send you business. And there can be different categories of this. Most of us in the Webflow ecosystem are partners with Webflow. But what you can realize is that

Diogo Dantas (16:11.114)
Mm-hmm

Diogo Dantas (16:21.761)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (16:25.433)
Type of relationship is really a scalable channel that you can intentionally approach with other partners as well. So you can, you know, those can be other agencies, other technology platforms, investors, that those are the, you know, what we find to be like the best like partner categories for agencies. yeah. And then,

Diogo Dantas (16:41.249)
Yeah.

Jacob Sussman (16:44.561)
That's, you know, yeah, we do a bit of cold email. know, now we're trying to, you know, to host like dinners with people in our, you know, like we're having a couple of dinners, actually a few dinners over the next like month with tech marketing leaders. Cause you know, we realized that that's our ICP. We're hosting happy hours. Happy hours, those can also support partnerships, know, if you invite people that you want to be partners with. And then, you know, I mean, we're still trying to, yeah, we have an email list. We're trying to get better at it than just the fundamentals.

Diogo Dantas (16:57.601)
Nice.

Diogo Dantas (17:04.301)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (17:14.515)
of this, like we still don't have like case study pages up on our website. you know, you know, we're actually, yeah, but that's about to change. You know, our case study pages will be published in the next week. So you're just kind of like the B2B marketing fundamentals. Do you have like, do have a great website? You know, are you putting out case studies? Oh, yeah, LinkedIn, personal LinkedIn has been really valuable. You know, just my recent post about this AI tool, it's got an up to like 13,000 impressions, you know, that's pretty, pretty phenomenal reach. You know, yeah.

Diogo Dantas (17:40.237)
Yeah, good reach. Great. For someone that is in similar industry as us in the Webflow market specifically, what do you say, maybe someone that is starting or doesn't have this relationship in place that can be very useful for the business, how you recommend starting this relationship with Webflow itself?

Jacob Sussman (18:04.166)
Hmm.

Yeah, well, you know, like I was saying, you we got lucky by joining in 2022. I think it's a really different game if you're just starting now. You know, there's a lot of partners and a lot of partners have built trust with Webflow. you know, it's no longer, you know, being a partner now, you know, being someone who does Webflow now is just table stakes. And, know, ultimately, you know, sometimes you get lucky and you find a partner that's just, you know, happy to send you work because they like you or, you know, because, you know, or you know, referral commission. But, you know, with, you know, ultimately, like the only way to

really get, you know, the closest you can get to guaranteeing a successful partnership is to give value, you know, uh, you know, referrals. Um, so, know, I would, uh, rather than focusing on, yeah, so really the path to, having a good relationship with Webflow at this point would be about, know, how can you help them, uh, you know, migrate big companies to Webflow? Um, and that probably means, you know, what, you know, maybe, you know, depending if the person who's asking about this, let's say they're like a big agency that are, they have like a lot of relationships that like,

Diogo Dantas (18:40.576)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (19:05.011)
you know, huge companies and that they could probably do it themselves. But, know, for most of these like smaller, you know, smaller web flow shops, that's probably ironically probably going to take partnerships with other people. know, they're going to have to partner with like, know, bigger agencies that introduce them to clients. And then they can introduce those clients to web flow or something, you know, cause it's tough to get in touch with like the big companies. Yeah. Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (19:21.366)
Right.

Diogo Dantas (19:25.9)
Great. And still on the business development side of things, what are some things that you tried but didn't quite work?

Jacob Sussman (19:33.745)
Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, that's, that's a good question. Well.

Jacob Sussman (19:48.049)
I mean, you know, I think it's funny. I feel like, you know, every, everything we've done to a degree has worked, but we just don't do enough of it. You know, more so, you know, it's really, yeah, it's like, yeah, like, uh, I don't know. trying to think of something that I'm like, yeah, like we, you know, we get leads, like, feel like, know, every, yeah, it's like, I'm not sure I kind of like inventing a channel that isn't part of like marketing best practices or

Diogo Dantas (19:58.925)
you

Jacob Sussman (20:16.807)
yeah, actually, you know, it's funny because I do want to launch Google ads. So I am planning to do this again, but I think we did a little bit of Google ads and we found the leads were low quality, but I still want to go back and do it in part because I want to offer that to our clients. And, you know, I also think it's just good for brand awareness. Like when people are searching web flow, they like see you, even if they don't click on the ads themselves. yeah.

Diogo Dantas (20:20.14)
you

Diogo Dantas (20:37.398)
Yeah.

Jacob Sussman (20:42.533)
You know, we did a, we did a paid LinkedIn campaign with, with Webflow once, you know, where we like, they gave us a budget to like, you know, run some paid media spend through LinkedIn. but I do think LinkedIn spend, I've heard good things about LinkedIn spend, you know, I think if you're going about it effectively and strategically with like an expert person who knows how to do it, it could work. And we just probably at that time didn't have the LinkedIn experience, the paid LinkedIn experience to know how to do it. know, yeah, but I would say, you know,

Diogo Dantas (21:07.03)
Yeah.

Jacob Sussman (21:12.875)
i guess i could talk to maybe a better answer to this about what i think will be the most important channels moving forward and you know it's like with ai like

you everyone's going be overwhelmed with anonymous, you know, swap outreach, you know, from people they don't know from cold emails, LinkedIn, DMs, you know, it's like, if you don't know someone, it's going to be like impossible to get in touch with them. So really, life is, you know, business, particularly the agency business, because these are, you know, really high trust deals is going to become about trust and personal relationships. And I also think being in person, you know, physicality, you know, in person events is going to be more valuable. So I think.

What I would recommend people double down on is how can they lean on trusted relationships? How can they lean on in-person events? And that's why we have partnerships too, because it's very high trust. I think for agencies, know.

you'll have to be careful with anything that isn't, you know, isn't built on trust, you know, like cold, cold out. We still get leads from cold outreach. It can work, but I think it's just going to get harder and harder and harder.

Diogo Dantas (22:23.02)
Yeah, it makes sense. And now only in terms of kind of service offering, you mentioned in the beginning that you started by offering web design and web full development, right? But I see from your website that you are now kind of exploring and you saw results on offering branding services and probably most recently, correct me if I'm wrong, SEO and AEO services as well. So...

what are some of the results that you saw kind of integrating other types of services? Because sometimes in the beginning, I assume that at least in our way, it was like that. We want to simplify things a bit. So we didn't want to be like a journalist agency that does like video, SEO, AO and all of that jam, because it's kind of easy to try to get them all right, instead of being like niche and specific about the services that you provide.

But we also started like a kind of a year and a half ago, we started offering branding service and we saw like night and day difference in terms of the quality, like quality of the work that is produced at the end. So what are some of the outcomes that you saw from that?

Jacob Sussman (23:38.309)
Hmm. Yeah. From, moving to a CNA, you know, is that it? Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. We, you know, we don't, yeah. Brand, the way we do branding is like really specific. We try to avoid saying we're like a brand identity agency. but you know, often when you redesign a website, you have to do a rebrand either way. so, know, whatever you want to call it, but yeah, we, like to stay focused on like the website. and, yeah, you know, I mean, I think the way we.

Diogo Dantas (23:42.41)
Yep. And branding.

Diogo Dantas (23:57.066)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (24:09.329)
What we noticed was we were very, very specialized for three years, three and a half years. And we just did nothing but web design and development. And that was really good because we just focused on doing that at the highest level possible.

Jacob Sussman (24:27.153)
And yeah, new services, we did actually try app development and that went very, very poorly. Like our least successful projects ever were doing like apps because we just didn't have the expertise to do it well. So then, you know, when we talk about.

Yes, but then what we noticed was like, websites are great because people go about looking for like, oh, I need a new website. I'm going to find an agency to do it. Oh, I need support with my website. need an agency. And we were really attracted to a well-defined service that people kind of independently choose to buy. we noticed people were that with SEO. And now with all the hype around AI, AEO. also saw AEO was really blowing up in particular. So we were like, OK, let's hire someone who's really good at this. And was really lucky to connect with

with Nikia Griffith who's just, know, both a phenomenal expert in the space and, you know, also a great salesperson. So she's been able to like found her own department leading the sales as well. And, you know, it's been, and that's been a great approach, you know, cause it's, you know, and this is like what I'd recommend, yeah, for a big service expansion like that, that's really outside of your area of expertise. We found this to be a really effective approach. You just find someone who's like, you know, world-class at it and, you know, kind of make them, you know, make them responsible for that department.

Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (25:45.965)
So switching gears a bit on the operational side of things more, I saw, it was quite a long time ago, but it's stuck in my head for some time, like how crazy, how could myself make that happen?

I saw a post from you on LinkedIn, if I'm not mistaken, that at some point, maybe that's kind of the usual for you, but at some point I saw the post like where you were running around 100 plus projects at once. And I was even kind of thinking, I have to talk with Jacob, like how can this happen? How can this be humanly possible? And what can you share about like, how can you spend so much work without sacrificing quality?

Jacob Sussman (26:36.047)
Hmm. Yeah, you know, I think it,

having good processes, like certain standards, and then having good managers. then, of course, just, quality control all the way up and down. it's like hundred projects can either be a nightmare if you're doing it all yourself and that's impossible and you're do a terrible job and you're not gonna sleep. Or it can be, if you have good people doing the work and then good managers supporting the people doing the work and then you just support them. It can actually be, yeah, it can almost be easier

and doing a few projects yourself. I'm really lucky to work with the team I work with. They're able to really guide operations without my direct involvement. It definitely took some foundations. I set up along the way to get there. Thankfully, I'm just really lucky to work with the team we have.

Diogo Dantas (27:11.68)
Mm-hmm.

Diogo Dantas (27:36.365)
And do you have, in terms of execution, do you have a process or a way to scale up and down a team depending, like for example, you might be running 100 projects at once in two or three months, but then in the next three months, it might be like 50. So...

Jacob Sussman (27:51.377)
Hmm.

Diogo Dantas (27:57.993)
you probably need a different volume of resources to be able to accommodate all those projects. So do you have a system to scale a team up and down or you are able to manage the capacity just with the people that you have full time?

Jacob Sussman (28:12.569)
Yeah, it's interesting. I think something that helps is that a lot of our team are hourly. So if there's like minor fluctuations, like let's say one month is like there's 20 % less work than the previous month. A lot of people might just log less hours. I think we've also been lucky that BX has largely just kept on growing.

We haven't had a significant decline in work that necessitated like, you know, you know, reducing, you know, yeah, like, you know, working with us people, you know, there's just a lot of there's a, if anything, it's more the struggle of, know, how do we stop all the work and how do we get all the work done? Um, and then, uh, you know, uh, and then I'm, but, you know, we did, you know, I'd say in the past year we hit a new scale of like, you know, now we like.

Diogo Dantas (28:48.662)
you

Diogo Dantas (28:53.558)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (29:01.711)
Like we, it's, it's a pretty nuts business in a way, you know, cause like we, like, you know, it has meaningful revenue, like, you know, meaningful monthly revenue, but we don't always have a lot of it booked out far in advance, you know, and it, it's been like, know, for the entirety of these four years, you know, like you look three months out and you're like, well, I hope we sell a lot of work in the next three months. And then somehow that has always happened.

Diogo Dantas (29:13.898)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (29:23.057)
But you know, we're now starting to get to the scale of like, well, you know, it's like, not like, you know, a 20 K difference, you know, it could be like a 100, a $200,000 difference, know, if, if, you know, we don't sell on all that work. Uh, and, uh, you know, we, we recently brought on it a really talented agency operator, uh, you know, as a kind of like COO advisor type, you know, he, he previously was in project management leadership at, actually planning the same holding company where I started my career, like one of the publicist agencies. Um, and he felt that was very sophisticated.

Diogo Dantas (29:50.572)
you

Jacob Sussman (29:53.962)
system where he has all of the projects that were sold in and all of the projects that are in our sales pipeline loaded into a pipeline that also basically calculates the dollar value of the work we're doing each month. And then from that, he has a formula to be like, well, 25 % of this dollar budget should go to PM. And this means we have like, we need...

like 500 PM hours this month. And then, know, based on how many hours, know, because, you know, some of our staff have guaranteed hours, some of our staff are hourly, you he has like the team bandwidth. So he's built out a system where we'll be able to monitor this going forward. But I will say, you know, he, yeah, I will say, you know, it,

Yeah, so that would be really useful because I do think the business has changed a bit and significant fluctuations. We actually do need to monitor that and stay on top of it.

Diogo Dantas (30:52.095)
Great, yeah, it definitely sounds sophisticated, so nice to hear that. If you could think of three SOPs that you think are crucial, just three, that's probably the hard part, that are crucial, that you couldn't function without it, what are those?

Jacob Sussman (30:55.087)
Yeah.

Jacob Sussman (31:04.913)
Yeah.

Jacob Sussman (31:11.055)
Hmm. Yeah, that's a good question. Wow. You know, it's funny because like, you know, I basically, for a period of like, I wrote all the recipes and kind of defined the processes. But now, you know, then when I stepped out of operations, you know, I, you know, the team really took ownership of like, you know, the process and improving it, you know, on an ongoing basis.

So early on, think our QA checklist and certain technical, yeah, I was thinking about it. Yeah, it was like we had this list of technical line-in points. It's like when you launch a website, you need to figure out the email integration. The client needs to set up their Webflow account. You need to set up the DNS. You need to install Analytics. that meant that any client that did a website with us, they always had Google Analytics installed. always routed into their email system. We made sure that the Webflow account was ready in time.

got a lot of mileage out of that SOP, but that was pretty early on. And I think now the team is figuring out much more sophisticated processes. Because we're starting these big web design projects that they're very, to complete a big web design project in 10, 12 weeks is really complicated. And particularly to make sure the client is aligned with the scope and understands what the scope is. That has to be the accumulation of a dozen SOPs. It's like, how do you run the kickoff?

How do you run the site map meeting? How do you run the hero directions meeting? When do you figure out all the graphics across the site? You know, how do you you know, how do you write the SOWs? And you know, and how do you I think the big thing is just how do you build trust with the client? You know, so that they trust you and aren't like fighting you, you know during the process and you know, feel like they have to like micromanage you. You know, and then on the other hand, know, then we now have the business that's just doing ongoing work with clients and you know, our Nick who heads up that project

management of that department, he defined a lot of processes that are really unique to ongoing work with clients. Like number one, he moved it to an agile model where all the work was done on weekly sprints. So, you know, the clients give a ticket and then it's delivered a week later. And that allows us to like really effectively like deliver a lot of tickets, you know, in a scalable way across, know, speaking of 10, you know, dozens of accounts, you know, so there's all these processes that, you know, like I'm aware the team has implemented them to a degree, but you know, I, you know, I, yeah, I have kind of like less visibility into like,

Jacob Sussman (33:33.975)
which ones were truly like the most like crucial to success. you know, it's just very, yeah. Ultimately, I think there's too much complexity to really say like these are the three most important things. know, it's like, yeah. Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (33:36.981)
Mm-hmm.

Diogo Dantas (33:43.882)
Yeah. Got it. And now switching a bit to, which is related to the SOPs, just to align and to make sure that we try at least to all clients to have the same experience, hopefully a good one. I want to approach the topic that...

many agencies avoid talking about or because it's difficult. So which is difficult clients. And there are three layers I would like to cover. One is kind of during the sales phase. I know that you are moving away a little bit from that. So, but you have a lot of experience doing that part. What are some red flags that you pay attention during a sales call that probably would make you think that this client is not a fit?

Jacob Sussman (34:38.609)
Hmm. That's really interesting. Um, I kind of like three framing front way. I guess you're like occasionally there is a difficult client. I actually think for the most part, those are very few and far between, you know, like, like kind of like a needle in a haystack type experience. Um, particularly if you think about it first from this perspective, are they an ICP fit? You know? Um, and you know, I think, I think this is something I've only really started to internalize in the past few months is that if a client, you know,

Diogo Dantas (34:47.371)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (35:08.465)
A lot of things are downstream of ICP, know, like budget, openness to change orders, know, timeline and, uh, you know, Clients that are in your ICP are very likely to accept the budgets you need to work. Be open to change orders when they're required. And, uh, you know, so like, you know, uh, you know, what.

And then also likely just be good collaborators during the process. And often when you think of the collaborations at One South, it's because you...

Whether it was the type of project or the type of business that you're working with, they're not actually in your ICP, you know, and a lot of things that people think, Oh, like that was really difficult. It's like, well, if they're like really early stage startup and they have like very little funding, you know, they're going to be, um, you know, very, they're going to be tight with the initial budget. You know, they're going to fight you on every change order, you know, um, and then, know, that tension can like, really spiral. Um, I do, I do think, you know, what, whether, you know, sometimes during sales, your, your gut tells you, you know, something.

Diogo Dantas (35:44.331)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (36:08.915)
And you know, that's really important to listen to. You know, you're, think the best, yeah, the best way to know if a client is going to be difficult is just if you're, if you can sense that during sales, you know, it, it, sales is interesting, you know, cause it's like, you're sales is you showing, you know, good sale. You want to run a really good sales experience because it's actually showing the client what it's like to work with you. You know, there are the moment there are sales, they're already working with you and in reverse, the client is showing you what it's like to work with them. You know, so if they're, you know, if someone's a jerk in sales, they're clearly going to be a jerk.

Diogo Dantas (36:29.099)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (36:39.155)
You know when you work with them, it's you know, it's yeah, it's it's like that phrase You know when someone shows you who they are believe them, but you know overall I think you know, know the the project set up and difficult I I don't often I don't think I've been because of the client personalities But rather either mistakes on our end or because you know They just weren't we shouldn't have taken on the project in the first place if we are being more disciplined. Yeah

Diogo Dantas (36:39.999)
Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (37:01.651)
Right. Now it makes sense. But when the wrong client is already in the work, maybe during the sales call, maybe they were, maybe during the sales call, maybe we weren't even kind of.

in touch with the real person that you will be working on a day-to-day basis and then someone shows up and it's completely different from who you spoke to during the sales process. How do you handle misalignment or friction that happens during the way?

Jacob Sussman (37:25.104)
Yeah.

Jacob Sussman (37:36.803)
Hmm. Yeah, that's interesting. you know, mean, I think it, you know, I think again, it's kind of good to, you know, flip from, you know, like this person's, you know, you know, this, yeah, it's like, it's, really like, how do you, you know, build trust like with whoever you have to work with and,

Diogo Dantas (37:53.333)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (37:54.479)
And it's true, know, new stakeholder transition is a really critical event for, you know, an agency client relationship. If there's a new stakeholder, you know, we were with a couple of coaches that both are like, yeah, when there's a new stakeholder, you basically have to treat the account as like already lost and you're basically going back to the sales process and you're having to pitch them. You know, that is just like a new person that you need to convince that they should work with your agency. And, you know, if you don't kind of approach it with those fakes, it's very often to, you know, it's very, it's very easy to lose the relationship.

And then, I wouldn't even say I'm necessarily the best. This is where I think our creative director, Vincent, has really good instincts for how do you start a relationship on, he's very focused on the kickoff of our website redesign projects. How do those first two meetings build a lot of trust so that then the stakeholder from there, yeah, it's like once they trust you, things tend to be a lot easier. But then that also takes a lot of great project management.

reset expectations. you do you tell them, you know, this is like the timeline, this is what we're going to do during each week. You know, this is what you're going to have to do during each week. You know, did you design a good process that, you know, does set them up to like launch on time? Does the process deliver the quality they're hoping within the timeline they wanted? Is the scope complete or do you need to start giving them heads up that it's going to require more change orders? You know, there's so many things that go into like, you know, yeah, it's very challenging to do all of the things on our end that allow us to have a

Diogo Dantas (39:23.081)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (39:24.313)
experience and you know I think yeah it can be yeah yeah I think overall you know clients clients that are difficult in the absence of any mistakes on the agency's end are pretty rare yeah but of course they do they do exist you know you know yeah

Diogo Dantas (39:38.281)
Yeah.

Yeah. Did you guys ever have like a Dior story of having to fire a client?

Jacob Sussman (39:49.529)
Hmm, that's interesting.

Man, think, you know, honestly, probably to our detriment, you know, we just for years ran BX in such a way that like, you know, we, just said yes to everything, you know, we were just focused on winning as many, as many clients as possible. And now, now I can say in the opposite, very focused on like ICP fit and, know, uh, be more so, you know, we have, have a big book of existing clients, you know, we have a, you know, like we, don't, we, know, and actually, you know, at our scale, it can just be on very, you know, you take on a bad relationship and it's actually just unprofitable, you know, and then you're adding complexity.

Diogo Dantas (40:22.942)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (40:23.943)
and stress to the system for no benefit. So yeah, think we would be a lot. Yeah, let's see.

I think, I think it would be a lot more open to it now, but, but historically. But yeah, it was just often just like easier what, know, it's like, get through the project. Yeah, we've definitely never like canceled a project that we were scoped for, but I think there are clients that we would be, you know, we would kind of try to not win the best project, the next project with them. Like maybe we, you know, they ask for a proposal and like, never ship it or, know, or like, you know, we've heard them to someone else, stuff like that, you know, well, actually, I mean, it was something we're doing a lot is like, you

Diogo Dantas (40:56.66)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (41:06.306)
that we know how long the work takes and you know, but we were stricter about pricing and we refer work to freelancers, you know, like just to, yeah, I saw this actually was with the startup that I would say is an ICP fit, you know, they're, you know, they're, have a good amount of funding, but they asked for a website in two weeks and we just can't do that. So, know, we, yeah, we sent them, you we know this guy who has like a two week package. I don't know how he does it, but you know, he, yeah, we just send people to him when they have like, you know, unreasonable expectations. Yeah. Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (41:21.93)
Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (41:27.722)
Hmm.

Diogo Dantas (41:32.137)
Yeah, that makes sense. So maybe we can talk a little bit of a macro review on the Webflow AI and future models in the industry. Where do you see Webflow and Webflow?

Jacob Sussman (41:46.459)
Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (41:51.387)
or agencies that have Webflow at their core heading over the next three, five years. And probably three, five years is like a long time, especially like the speed that AI goes into, but let's change it to like two, three years.

Jacob Sussman (41:59.47)
yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. So what we're hoping, and this might not fully play out, is that Webflow's momentum as a top enterprise CMS continues, and a lot of big companies migrate to Webflow. And I think there's going to be a healthy amount of work migrating and supporting big organizations on Webflow. I do think we might see a lot of the lower end of the market shift towards Framer. And I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the smaller Webflow agencies end up doing a lot of Framer work.

Diogo Dantas (42:33.78)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (42:35.923)
Also think we're gonna see some really interesting like new opportunities with vibe coding and you know a lot of the you know a lot of the agencies will end up doing you know vibe coded websites, know as of now it seems like that's gonna be on like the lower end of the market but um, know, so, know, we'll see what happens, know, like it might the technology might improve, you know faster faster that we expect But yeah as of now, yeah, we're pretty far You know, like yeah

Yeah. And then also, know, Webflow might get, you know, think a big thing to watch too is how, you know, how effective Webflow is at incorporating vibe coding technology into its platform. And that can mean that, you know, the Webflow becomes a very good CMS for the well end of the market because it has great vibe coding. And then it also could help accelerate it in the enterprise segment, you know, because if they can really nail enterprise level vibe coding that will, mean, that's the thing we're interested to watch is like who figures out enterprise level websites

vibe coding management first. And we think Webflow is a really good horse to bet on in that race, but you never know. And we think that whoever figures that out will have the best enterprise CMS.

Diogo Dantas (43:40.094)
Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (43:49.663)
Yeah, agree. And out of curiosity, what is your opinion and recommendation? Because that's a common question from leads usually, which is what is the difference between Webflow and Framer? And when do you recommend Framer to your clients if they reach out to you with that word in mind?

Jacob Sussman (44:09.562)
Yeah.

Jacob Sussman (44:14.287)
Yeah, think, I think framers that better if you want to move fast and break things and you want to like, you know, just hack on your site more. think if you want like a really rigid, like enterprise level design system level is better. I think if you want to choose a platform and never leave it.

level is better because you can move up market with it. you know, assuming you're ambitious about your business and like you intend to grow it, know, if you, you know, if you, know, framework could be a great long-term solve if you, uh, you you aren't trying to like, you know, really scale your team and yeah. Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (44:43.914)
Yeah, I agree. And on the topic of AI, I would like to hear about specific applications and value that it's bringing to your team. You specifically said on your role now at EX Studio that...

you created some type of system that analyzes calls and all that. And so that could be one of the values that are in applications of AI to your role. But what are other applications that you see specific on, for example, delivery in terms of speed and margins? What are some of applications of AI that you saw like bringing value to the agency?

Jacob Sussman (45:24.113)
Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I definitely am constantly in touch with AI as kind of like a personal advisor. You know, I ask it, we did a great, you know, I had to get like a car repair and you know, I was asking me like, how much of this charge is the guy ripping me off? You know, it's like, you know, I asked it about taxes. I asked it about, you know, yeah, like, you know, complex topics I don't know about, you know, so it's funny, I actually think I use AI more just like in a kind of like day to day context, you know, than I do in the business. My big breakthrough with AI has been I built

this tool that, uh, you know, takes actual, the big AI thing actually was first, you know, we started using a call recorder and then taking, and then you can ask, you know, the AI about the call recordings and, know, turning calls into these like highly portable assets that you can analyze and quickly recall information from that was a huge, but that that's been at the X, I think for like a year and a half, but it's the type of thing that like, you know, you know, if you're not using a call recorder, it's just like, you know, I don't know how we like ran the business.

Diogo Dantas (45:59.882)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (46:22.653)
this without it. It's just amazing. then what I'm really excited about, this is a new tool, so who knows, maybe it'll crash and burn and something horrible will happen and I'll have to cancel. But what I'm loving in the past week is now every time someone at VX has a call with an external email, it sends an analysis of that call to a leadership-only Slack channel. does sentiment analysis, growth opportunities, churn risk.

Yeah. So again, it feels like a complete one idea of like, you know, how I'm able to relate to the business of it was literally impossible, you know, to understand, you know, how well, you know, everything was going, you know, personally, you know, I could get reports, you know, you know, but like, know, you know, yeah, but like now, now I have like, you know, direct access to like what's happening every single day and every single client interaction. And it's just unbelievable. You know, it feels like I have like this ultimate dashboard now. So yeah.

Diogo Dantas (46:59.721)
Mm-hmm.

Diogo Dantas (47:16.136)
Yeah, that's actually amazing. So maybe at some point we see a product coming from that, that you can sell to agencies to get that overview and sentiment on the agency. And values. So have you seen with this all AI rage, have you seen any shift in terms of how clients value an agency, either to the good side or to the bad side?

Jacob Sussman (47:29.135)
Yeah.

Jacob Sussman (47:44.305)
Yeah, sometimes you get the question, you why don't we do this with AI? But you know, the truth is like, there's no way to, you know, if you want really top level of design work, or you want like a really, you know, team scalable CMS right now, AI isn't a threat to that, you know.

AI could maybe, you if you want to take a design and, know, quickly turn it into a landing page on like custom hosting that you manage with five coding. Yeah, I could do that, but you know, that's, it is a very different like use case than, know, like what, you know, what are, you know, our, agencies do. so yeah, we're, we're, we're lucky, you know, we're, AI is definitely getting really close to us. You know, I feel like it's like the barbarians are at the gate, so to speak. But, you know, so far, you know, to, you know, I think.

Yeah, and hopefully, this might be harder than one, than.

We think it'll be, but we can be the ones that really kind of spearhead AI. Hopefully our team can be very good at using AI. So it's beneficial for clients to hire us, because we use AI better than they might know how to do in specific context, the same way we won't. Yeah. So yeah, think ultimately agencies like ours just develop technical expertise and become really good at using a specific tool in a specific business context. And I think AI is just going to create new applications for us

Diogo Dantas (48:43.016)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Sussman (49:06.043)
that we could develop expertise and then offer services to clients at the end of the day. Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (49:11.089)
Yeah, no, sense. So coming to the end of this session, where do you see BX Studio from what you can share publicly? Where do you see BX Studio going or in terms of vision that are comfortable sharing in the next year or two years? Where do you see BX Studio going?

Jacob Sussman (49:35.985)
Yeah, I want VX to be like a really a top of the line, B2B focused digital experience and organic growth agency. Yeah. And yeah, just keep scaling that, you know, work with great clients, do great work, build long-term relationships, grow more recurring revenue and, you know, just build a, yeah, really top of the line shop that, you know, does, you B2B digital experience and growth work, you know, yeah.

Diogo Dantas (50:02.461)
Great. And closing question, what is one thing that you're struggling right now that maybe someone that is watching can probably reach out to you and help?

Jacob Sussman (50:14.129)
Hmm.

I need a marketing manager. need to hire a marketing manager. I need to hire an account manager. And I want to hire people who can help us, you know, develop more leads. know, biz dev, you know, go to market, whatever that is. So yeah, if you know some talented and it'd be interested to connect with people who are really, really great at B2B marketing that could help us build out more B2B marketing capabilities, you know, maybe pay media, you know, like whatever, however we can help B2B clients, you know, grow their business. I want to talk to people who are experts in that.

experts at B2B growth and might be interested in working with BX.

Diogo Dantas (50:50.525)
Great. I hope that this gets you some, some contacts. and Jacob, thank you so much for taking the time. It was really nice to learn from you.

Jacob Sussman (50:58.629)
Yeah. Yeah. This is it. Yeah. Thanks so much for the chat. I really, really appreciate the opportunity and yeah, let's catch up soon. Yeah.

Diogo Dantas (51:07.412)
Sounds good.

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