Straight answer
When We’re Not the Right Call
Four kinds of business we turn down, written here rather than said after you've paid us.
Why this page exists
Saying who we’re wrong for is the only claim on this site nobody can fake.
Every agency says it’s a good fit for you. It costs nothing to say and it’s what you’d expect to hear, so it carries no information at all. Turning work away is different, because it’s expensive, and nobody does it for effect.
There are four kinds of business we don’t take. We’d rather you read this now than find out on a call, and much rather than find out three months and several thousand dollars in.
One
You don’t answer your phone because you’d rather not.
This isn’t the same as being swamped. If your phone rings while you’re under a sink or sitting in a courtroom and you can’t get to it, that’s a problem with a solution and we offer the solution. It’s one of the least expensive things we do and it usually pays for itself immediately.
What we mean is the owner who sees the phone light up, looks at it, and lets it go, not because they’re busy but because dealing with a stranger on the phone is the part of the job they like least. There are more of these than you’d think, and they’re usually good at the actual work.
Nothing on this site helps that. Every service we sell ends with somebody needing to have a conversation, and if that conversation is the thing being avoided then we’re just increasing the number of missed opportunities and charging you monthly for the privilege.
Two
You’re not a good closer.
We deliver the opportunity. You turn it into a signed job, and that half isn’t a thing we can do for you.
This matters more than it sounds like it should, because a closing problem looks exactly like a marketing problem from the inside. The phone rings more, the work doesn’t increase, and the obvious conclusion is that the calls must be no good. Sometimes that’s true. Often the calls were fine and the conversations weren’t, and spending more on marketing makes the bleeding faster rather than slower.
We’d rather say this before you spend anything. If you already suspect the issue is what happens after the phone is answered, that’s worth fixing first, and it’s not something we’d charge you for finding out.
Three
You want a failing business rescued.
Marketing makes a working business busier. It doesn’t repair one that’s broken somewhere else, and this is the single most expensive misunderstanding in the industry.
If jobs are going wrong, if the reviews are bad because the work was bad, if the pricing doesn’t cover the cost of doing it, or if there’s nobody available to do the work you already have, more calls make all of those worse. You take on more of what’s already hurting you, at speed, and now you’re paying a monthly fee for the privilege. We’ve watched it happen and it’s not a thing anybody recovers from quickly.
Fix the business, then come back. We’ll still be here, it’ll cost the same, and it’ll work.
Four
We have to like each other.
There’s no 12-month contract here, and on almost everything you can stop this month. That’s a real advantage for you and it comes with a consequence: nothing holds this arrangement together except the work and whether both of us want to pick up the phone.
Most agency relationships survive on a signed term long after the goodwill has gone. Ours can’t. So if the first conversation is unpleasant, if you talk to people in a way we wouldn’t want to be talked to, or if we simply don’t get on, it won’t last however good the work is, and it’s better for everyone to notice that at the start.
This works in both directions. If you find us irritating, don’t hire us out of politeness. You’re not locked in, which means there’s no reason to start something you already have doubts about.
What this costs us, and why we do it anyway.
Turning work away isn’t a posture. Every business on this page arrived wanting to give us money, and several of them would have paid for months before either side admitted it wasn’t working. The easiest version of this agency is one that takes all four and lets them find out slowly, which is roughly how the twelve-month contract came to exist in this industry.
The reason we don’t is arithmetic rather than virtue. There’s no 12-month contract here, so an unhappy client is gone inside a few months and we’ve spent the setup effort for nothing. A business that was never going to work is a loss for us, not a win, which means our incentive and yours point the same direction for once. That alignment is the actual product of having no long-term contract, and it’s worth more than the flexibility it advertises.
If none of those is you.
Then the conversation is short and it’s mostly us asking how you’re getting new clients now and whether the thing you think is broken is actually the thing that’s broken. Quite often it’s not, and quite often the answer costs less than expected.
You’re reading the other half of the same idea right now: you should be able to rule us out on your own, without a call, and without anybody trying to talk you into it. If you’d rather just ask us instead, that’s welcome too, and it won’t turn into a sales call.
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