Profitable Projects & Retainers
“Every single day, profit is leaking out of your business”
Peter Czapp, co-founder of The Wow Company, says, “It leaks in the details, in projects that drag, retainers that balloon, and teams that don’t know when to push back.”
Agencies often think that smart positioning and healthy rates are enough to keep margins strong. But in reality, the cracks usually show elsewhere.
That’s what this talk at Clockwork is all about: how to stop profit from slipping through the cracks, and keep more of what you earn.
We’ll cover:
- Cost to serve: Why some projects look profitable on paper but quietly drain time, attention, and technical resource.
- Methodologies: How written processes can cut delivery costs, improve quality, and free senior staff to focus on high-value work.
- Utilisation traps: Why busy doesn’t always mean profitable, and how false assumptions about time can wreck your margins.
- Scope creep: How to train your team to spot it, push back, and ask the golden questions.
- Healthy retainers: How to set clear boundaries, review activity regularly, and stop long-term agreements becoming unprofitable.
- AI as margin protector: Why the agencies lowering prices because of AI are getting it wrong, and how to use it to safeguard profit instead.
If you’ve ever watched a project bleed profit, or a retainer turn into a slow drain, Peter will give you the tools to plug the leaks and protect your bottom line.
“Profit is protected in the details. Let’s deliver like it.”