Why do you keep hiring the same problem?
You’re frustrated with agencies, I get it. But what if the ‘problem agency’ isn’t who you think it is? There’s a subtle root cause.
I’ve watched this cycle repeat until I’m blue in the face. A founder sits across from me, totally drained, explaining how their last three partners failed to deliver. The stories always sound different on the surface, but the mechanics are identical. “They didn’t get the vision” or “The execution was off.”
Here is what I’ve learned from being on both sides of the table: Usually, the agency wasn’t the problem. The problem was sitting in the chair telling me about the agency.
See, we have a blind spot. A massive one.
There’s this data from the BetterBriefs Project that stopped me cold. They found that 80% of marketers believe they write clear, effective briefs. But only 10% of agencies agree. That isn’t a small disconnect. That is a canyon. And in that canyon, 33% of marketing budgets just evaporate. Poof. Gone before the work even starts.
Why?
Because you’re asking outsiders to read your mind.
You write a brief that feels complete because you’ve been living inside your business for a decade. The context is obvious to you. The constraints are intuitive. But to them, it’s just words on a page without the texture of your experience. So they do what any rational human does when they lack information → they guess.
They interpolate. They assume. And they get it wrong.
This is the hard part to swallow. You aren’t hiring agencies to solve a communication problem. You are likely hiring them to solve a systems problem you haven’t diagnosed yet.
Your business has outgrown your instincts. The hands-on control that made you successful in year one is exactly what creates bottlenecks in year five. You expect the external partner to rise to your standards, but every business eventually falls to the level of its systems.
If there is a gap between your standards and your systems, you will always feel let down.
The agency can’t fix that for you. They can’t build a house if you haven’t given them a blueprint, and they certainly can’t execute a vision that only exists in your head.
Before you fire the next one, ask yourself a different question. Not “Why did they fail?”
Ask: “What am I asking them to fix that I should have fixed internally first?”
If you don’t answer that honestly, you’ll just hire the same dysfunction with a different logo.
Agencies are tools, not magicians.
Drop a “Like” if you’ve felt this frustration before. Or tell me in the comments—have you ever realized you were the bottleneck?
