Two $1M Agencies. Very Different Realities.

2026-01-28

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If you’ve ever looked at the version of “success” the agency world keeps promoting and felt a quiet sense of resistance, here’s a question worth sitting with:What if growth isn’t supposed to feel this heavy?Most agency owners aren’t afraid of growth. They’re ambitious. They care deeply about their work. They want their businesses to be profitable, respected, and sustainable.And yet, somewhere along the way, growth starts to feel like more pressure instead of more clarity. More responsibility instead of mo...

If you’ve ever looked at the version of “success” the agency world keeps promoting and felt a quiet sense of resistance, here’s a question worth sitting with:

What if growth isn’t supposed to feel this heavy?

Most agency owners aren’t afraid of growth. They’re ambitious. They care deeply about their work. They want their businesses to be profitable, respected, and sustainable.

And yet, somewhere along the way, growth starts to feel like more pressure instead of more clarity. More responsibility instead of more freedom. More motion instead of more stability.

This episode kicks off Small But Mighty: A Different Way to Grow an Agency — a five-part series exploring why so many capable agency owners feel misaligned with the dominant growth narrative, and what it looks like to build something different.

This conversation isn’t about tactics or positioning tricks. It’s about identity. About understanding why many “right” moves start to feel wrong when the underlying growth logic doesn’t actually fit the kind of agency you want to build.

In this episode, we unpack:

The unspoken assumptions behind most agency growth advice — and how they quietly push agencies toward volume and complexity
Why pricing, boundaries, and decision-making get harder even as revenue grows
A concrete contrast between two $1M agencies — and why they feel radically different to run
What the Small But Mighty agency identity really means in a market shaped by commoditization and noise

If you’ve ever wondered why growth feels harder than it should — or why success hasn’t delivered the ease you expected — this episode will help you see your business, and yourself, with more clarity.

Because there may be nothing wrong with you at all.

You may simply be building toward a different kind of success.

Hey thanks for hanging out with me at the Small But Mighty Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode it would mean the world to me if you hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app and share it with a friend. And I’ll see you on the next one.

Get the full show notes and more information here: https://audreyjoykwan.com/podcast/ep145

Podcast Edits by Lindsay Curtis

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