Can You Scale an Agency Without Relying on Retainers? With Eric Baum | Ep #825

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Are you stuck chasing new clients while ignoring the goldmine in your past customer list? Does your agency feast on projects but starve for predictable revenue? Today’s featured guest knows what it’s like to hit a growth ceiling and being tired of the one-and-done client hamster wheel.

He shares how he pivoted his agency after becoming a HubSpot partner, why he turned to project-based work after customer habits changed following the pandemic, and how he got out of the dreaded “no man’s land”.

Eric Baum is the CEO and founder of Bluleadz, a HubSpot Onboarding and Implementation Agency dedicated to transforming the way companies market, sell, and service their customers through the power of the HubSpot platform. He’ll discuss his cash flow challenges, pricing mistakes that almost tanked the business, and how EOS helped him escape “no man’s land.”

If you're stuck in the fulfillment hamster wheel or scaling past $5M feels like pushing a boulder uphill... listen up.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• Reinventing his agency as a HubSpot partner.

• The real scaling struggle: cash flow.

• Why project-based doesn’t mean profitless.

• Strategic partnerships are the future.

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Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

Accidental Founder, Intentional CEO

Back in the Yellow Pages era, Eric was running two service-based franchises and needed a better way to market them. He brought marketing in-house for PPC, SEO, web dev, and that hire didn’t just turn things around. It turned into a new business.

Fast-forward a few months, and other franchise owners across the country started asking for help. Eric spun that in-house team into an agency, and had 50 clients out of the gate.

As many owners before have admitted to, Eric started out charging way too low—$250 to $500/month.

“I don’t know how I didn’t go broke right out of the gate,” he laughs. And if you’ve ever undercharged in the early days, you’ll feel that one deep in your soul.

Reinventing the Agency (and Himself) Around HubSpot

The turning point came when Eric discovered HubSpot and pivoted Bluleadz to become a certified partner. That’s when the “real” agency began, as he started to study the industry and figure out what he had to do to be profitable, take care of his team, and do it without necessarily doing all the sales work all the time.

From there, Eric leaned into strategy, profitability, and systems. He stopped trying to be the everything guy and started building an agency that didn’t need him in the trenches every day.

Fifteen years later, his agency isn’t just thriving. It’s structured, profitable, and on track to hit 8 figures.

Life in “No Man’s Land” – The $1M to $5M Plateau

After fifteen years in the industry and getting closer to the eight-figure mark, one of the things that most surprised Eric was getting stuck in the ugly middle: the zone between $1M and $5M where a lot of agency dreams go to die. Many call it