Profit Isn’t a Vibe: The 3 Dials That Actually Make Agencies More Profitable
Interview: How to Stop Leaking Money and Run a Leaner, More Profitable Agency
Behind the Agency Podcast with Mike Koziol, Agency Profitability Consultant (works with agencies, consultants, and expertise-based businesses)
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Prefer the highlights? Key takeaways and summary below.
TL;DR – Key Takeaways
Profitability isn’t automatic when you grow. Growth can actually hide problems.
Mike’s “3 dials” for profit: Pricing, Cost, Efficiency (and efficiency is the one most agencies ignore).
The easiest money you’ll ever “make” is canceling tools you don’t use (financial hygiene).
If you don’t know your profit per client / per service line, you’re basically driving with your eyes closed.
Lower prices often attract stressed, high-demand clients with tiny budgets and big expectations.
Most agencies over-deliver in places clients don’t value (onboarding + reporting are common time-sinks).
A simple method to clean up operations: DAD = Delete, Automate, Delegate.
A referral program doesn’t work if you “hope” referrals happen. You need a system: proactive + incentives + scripts + follow-up.
Meet the Guest
Mike Koziol helps agencies, consultants, and expertise-based businesses become more profitable by tightening pricing, cutting waste, and improving operational efficiency.
Before doing this work, Mike trained as a lawyer in Poland and worked as a fraud investigator—basically a professional “money leak detective.” He later built and ran multiple marketing agencies across Europe, Canada, and the U.S., then shifted into consulting after people kept asking how he scaled agency revenue fast.
He’s now worked with 900+ businesses, and he’s known for bringing an outside, numbers-first view to decisions that founders often get emotionally stuck on.
Episode Summary
1. From fraud investigator to “profit leak” fixer
Mike started in a world where the job is literally: follow the money. That mindset never left him.
He took that same approach into agencies: instead of guessing why things feel stressful and unprofitable, he tracks where time and money are bleeding out.
2. The main tension: agencies chase growth and ignore profit
Mike pushes back hard on the “growth at all costs” mindset. He sees growth as a vanity metric if it doesn’t translate into actual take-home profit.
“Growth is a vanity metric… what is the point if it doesn’t bring results?”
He sees this mistake even in bigger agencies: they can quote cash flow, revenue, headcount… but can’t tell you profit margins or profitability per client.
3. The 3 dials of profitability
Mike’s core model is simple:
Pricing structure (are you charging what the market will pay?)
Cost structure (are you dragging around dead weight?)
Efficiency (are you delivering results in a sane way?)
His take: most agencies only touch pricing, some will look at costs, and almost nobody fixes efficiency, even though it’s usually the biggest needle-mover.
4. Pricing: be the orange, not another apple
Mike’s pricing advice is basically: first, make sure you’re not undercharging out of habit.
A lot of agencies have legacy pricing and never update it. Meanwhile, the market moved.
Then he goes one step further: if your service is easy to compare “apples to apples,” the cheapest apple wins. So don’t be an apple.
“You want to be the orange… not comparable apples-to-apples.”
That means differentiating scope, positioning, and brand so you can command higher prices and attract better-fit clients.
He also called out a brutal reality: lower prices often attract clients who are stressed, broke, and expect the moon.
5. Costs: “financial hygiene” before fancy strategy
This part felt painfully real. Mike sees agencies paying for piles of tools they bought during Black Friday and never used.
His quick win: clean your P&L and credit card statements. Cancel anything that isn’t tied to ROI.
Then: evaluate people costs by profit impact. If a role is a fixed cost, it should clearly support revenue delivery or growth.
6. The real villain: efficiency (onboarding + reporting)
Mike shared two classic agency time traps:
Overbuilt onboarding (weeks of meetings, strategy, and team intros that clients don’t even care about)
Over-reporting (beautiful reports + long calls where the client is half-paying attention)
He gave a story where an agency had 8 people join a kickoff call for a $3k/month client.
That’s… wild.
His fix wasn’t “stop caring.” It was “stop doing expensive things that don’t create value.”
A better approach: record once, reuse forever. Put onboarding material in a doc or Notion. Make it scalable.
7. The DAD method: Delete, Automate, Delegate
This was probably the cleanest, most usable framework from the episode:
Delete: Do we even need this step?
Automate: Can this be handled once and reused?
Delegate: If it must happen live, who’s the minimum person needed?
It’s basically the “spring cleaning” method for agency operations.
8. Landing better clients: referrals + content + proof
Mike’s take on referrals was solid and slightly uncomfortable: most agencies “rely on referrals” but do it passively.
His 4-step referral system:
Be proactive (remind people you want referrals)
Incentivize (discounts, payouts, etc.)
Help them help you (give scripts, blurbs, PDFs)
Follow-up (keep it top of mind every 60–90 days)
He also emphasized:
Content marketing is underused by agencies (ironically)
Social proof matters more than self-praise
Consistent publishing builds compounding attention over time
Notable Quotes
“Profitability should be our focus. Growth without profit is weird to me.”
“Most agencies look at pricing. Very few look at efficiency. And efficiency drags them down.”
“If you have to repeat yourself twice, it’s a candidate for automation or delegation.”
“You want to be the orange… not comparable apples-to-apples.”
“Good economy hides inefficiencies. Bad economy exposes them.”
Learn More / Get in Touch
Visit → MikeKoziol.com
LinkedIn → Mike Koziol (K-O-Z-I-O-L)
Newsletter → Weekly (linked on his site)
Free resource → Workshop: 27 power activities to scale your business (by revenue stage)
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