As many of you know, I own a digital marketing agency. There's a client we have who is a financial company, whose website we rebuild from scratch. For the past year, we built lead generation systems and funnel for them with our own software subscription and tools, including Google ads under our MCC account, online forms with our formstack account, zapiers and automation, online calendars and so forth. At the beginning of January, they told me that they want to cut back our services to only social media and email marketing… Cutting all the Ad management. They told me they are cutting back their budget. When I pointed out that I do have a cancellation fee clause in my contract they refused to pay the cancellation fee. Now this client is basically firing us… Did not want to pay any kind of 30 day cancellation fee as per our contract. We continue to do their social media and email Marketing at the reduced rate.Then a few weeks later, they asked if we could speak with their "AI consultant" and also asked whether we would be able to migrate the account to be managed by someone else. I don't hold any client accounts hostage so I said yes I can, but you will have to pay a fee equivalent to one month of services for us to help with any tech support and transition. This consultant set up a meeting with my staff member and started asking her all kinds of questions and for logins into all our software systems and how we set up all the funnels and infrastructure and ad strategy. He followed up with a long list of systems he wants access to. I told him that if he wants our support with this, he will have to pay the estimate I sent, which covers all the tech support that he is asking for. This then led to the clients completely cancelling all our services and calling me freaking out because we own all the platforms that we built their whole lead acquisition system on yes it's our tech stack!) They are saying that we should've set up everything and let them own all the software accounts to run all of this. This was never agreed upon. They are freaking out on me because I also sent them an estimate for a $4000 transition fee to migrate all their data and consult with them on how to rebuild the system on their own accounts if that's what they want.

Alright, given it’s a new year, I want to share what I think everyone in here should be doing right now — not theory, not motivation… just practical stuff that you action right now. The objective is simple - reduce the noise, make more by doing less. You want to INCREASE income, and DECREASE outgoings. You should also be thinking about decluttering - everywhere. Your agency, your team, your client base, mentally - everywhere. It's time to clean up the mess and get serious about kicking ass in 2026 - no excuses. 1. Cost reduction – do a proper audit The first thing I’d be doing is a full audit of every single expense. Software, subscriptions, freelancers, contractors, random tools you signed up for “temporarily” and never cancelled. A lot of you will be bleeding cash everywhere through small monthly expenses that don’t feel expensive, but add up fast. Ask yourself: - Do I actually use this? - Is this going to help me reach my goal, or is this purely a distraction? - Does this directly help me acquire clients and make money? If the answer is “probably not needed,” cut it. Cleaner expenses = cleaner margins = less pressure. Once you have done this - share just how much money you've saved yourself below. I have just spent the past 3 weeks doing this and saved over $3k in outgoings. Most of it was absolute bullshit - $20 here, $90 there. Get rid of it! 2. Service reduction – you don't need 35 different services! Most agencies think growth comes from adding "more stuff". In reality, all that's doing is causing stress, complexity and chaos. Go through your services and identify anything that: - Takes a lot of time to deliver - Is hard to standardise - Requires constant hand-holding - Generates low profit relative to effort These services are keeping you stuck - get rid of them! Removing one high-effort, low-return service often has a bigger impact than adding a new one. Less complexity = better delivery and better margins. Most of you could be doing $1M a year with just ONE service offering.