Episode 60: The Collective Model (and Why This Founder Stopped Hiring Full-Time)

Jan 20

Written By David Hoos

Interview: How Chris LaFay Rebuilt His Agency With a Collective Model, Partnerships, and a Test-Drive Offer

Behind the Agency Podcast with Chris LaFay, Founder & CEO, Classic City

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Prefer the highlights? Key takeaways and summary below.

TL;DR – Key Takeaways

The core pain: Agency owners hire too early and too permanently… then panic when the “guaranteed overhead” kicks in.
The big mistake: Chris “hired on a hope” — hired full-time expecting he’d magically figure out sales/lead gen next.
The pivot: He rebuilt with a nimble collective model (trusted freelancers + a few key roles), instead of stacking full-time payroll.
The growth engine: He’s betting on agency partnerships + community-style events, not random referral luck.
A practical tactic: Host a “content day” (video crew + time slots). He filled 16 slots in ~24 hours and ran 14 sessions in a day.
A smart “foot-in-the-door” offer: A 2-week homepage prototype (test drive) that de-risks the big website project.
Transparent pricing as a filter: Put pricing right on the homepage so bad-fit budgets self-select out early.
Contrarian move: While other agencies ditch websites because they’re messy, he’s leaning in and trying to make weirder, more textured sites that stand out in an AI-search world.

Meet the Guest

Chris LaFay is the Founder & CEO of Classic City, a web design and development studio focused on building websites (and making that process feel a lot less confusing and risky). He’s been doing web work since he was a kid, and after a painful “growth phase” where he scaled the wrong way, he rebuilt the business with a lighter team model, a partnership-first growth approach, and a test-drive offer that helps clients try before they buy.

Episode Summary

1. The “hire on hope” origin story

Chris walked through a few phases of his business. The one that matters most here is 2016–2019, when he finally had money in the bank and did what a lot of founders do:

He hired full-time people fast, delegated aggressively, and assumed he’d “figure out sales” once he had time.

Spoiler: it didn’t work. Over about three years, the money ran out.

2. The main trap: overhead raises your minimum survival number

Chris describes the moment where payroll turns from “exciting growth” into “holy crap, I have to feed other families now.”

“You don’t hire on a hope… once you go into that full-time and that guaranteed money… your minimum to survive is that much higher.”

This is one of those agency misconceptions I’ll push on a bit:
A lot of founders think hiring reduces stress because it removes work. In practice, it often moves the stress into a different place: you’re now carrying fixed costs that don’t care if leads dry up.

3. His unique approach: the collective model

Instead of trying to keep every seat filled with full-time staff, he prefers “drafting” the right team per project:

A small set of dependable designers (with different styles)
A small set of dependable developers (with different strengths: WordPress, Shopify, etc.)
A project manager
A couple strategic leads for discovery

The key detail: these aren’t flaky moonlighters. He wants people who do this professionally, so when a project comes in, the answer is “yes” most of the time.

4. The method: rebuild, then delegate the right things

In the 2019–2025 rebuild phase he:

Took more work back on himself
Added a project manager (promoted someone already close to the business)
Hired part-time contractors (dev + design) to handle overflow
Avoided massive overhead while regaining stability

It’s like upgrading a house one room at a time instead of taking out a massive loan and hoping the remodel pays for itself.

5. The partnership playbook (that doesn’t collect dust)

You called out a real agency-world failure mode: “let’s do a referral agreement” … then nobody does anything.

Chris’s answer is basically: stop making partnerships theoretical. Make them shared experiences.

Examples he’s actively running:

Content Day: video crew + coworking space + 16 time slots, founders show up and walk away with clips
Agency owner hangout day: small, intentional, in-person, “talk shop” without the conference vibe
Co-hosted events: one partner brings 70% of the room, the other brings 30% — split the cost, both meet new people

That’s way more real than “hey keep me in mind.”

6. Why he chose websites (when others are ditching them)

He noticed a trend: a lot of agencies were trying to get away from websites and go narrower into SEO/PPC/branding.

Chris basically said: “Cool. If nobody wants the messy job… maybe that’s the opportunity.”

Also: doing marketing retainers made it hard to tell a clean story. Websites let him simplify the offer, simplify pricing, and simplify delivery.

7. The test-drive offer: a homepage prototype in 2 weeks

He wanted a way to reduce risk for buyers who hate the “we won’t know until we start” problem.

So he created a prototype offer:

Design a homepage in 2 weeks for a smaller price
If they move forward, credit that cost toward the full project
If not, they still keep the work (Figma files + notes) as a launch pad

This is also a partnership tool: branding agencies with no web team can bridge from brand → site without committing their client to a full build immediately.