How Can You Build a Less Stressful Agency?

Running an agency can take everything out of you.

For Andrew Bloch, it reached the point where it just wasn’t worth it anymore.

“I just lost passion for what we were doing, although we were making quite good money. It was just very stressful.”

Andrew started his first agency at just 22. By 24, he’d already landed big brand contracts, built a team of 15, and was managing huge ad spends. But success came with chaos.

“You win a big contract and hire a lot of people… but then when you lose the contract just based on the CMO changing or whatever happens,” Andrew says. “You now have to freak out and run again to try to do it again.”

Eventually, Andrew exited his agency at 29, and went on to build ClickTrain, a business designed to take away the very stresses that nearly burned him out.

“The goal was to fix all the issues that I had in running an agency. And the first one was getting good staff. That was such a big challenge.”

In this session, Andrew shares what he learned from his first agency, and how he’s rethinking growth the second time around. We’ll explore:

• Why rapid growth often comes with hidden risks:  “I was very addicted to these big brands and big projects and big launches… but it was very risky working towards big.”
• How agency owners can get stuck in the wrong role:  “Some grow quite big… but they absolutely hate all the managerial things.”
• Why simplification beats trying to do everything: “When you’re solving one single problem, you can actually scale faster than trying to do everything.”
• The difference between theory and reality when starting out: “Those initial stages you’ve just got to grind… there is no magic to it besides hard work.”

Andrew’s story shows that building a less stressful agency isn’t just about growth.  It’s about process, simplification, and building a business that works for you.