It’s Thursday baby!

Either you’re stoked for the weekend. Just starting to get amped up for the mid-week grind. Or like me in Row 27 on an American Airlines flight in a aisle seat that won’t recline, we’re all gonna be just fine.

Before we get into this week’s newsletter I just want to express my legit gratitude for each and everyone of you guys that read this thing. It started as fun almost three years ago and has now transformed into something so much bigger than that. It doesn’t happen without the responses, the shares, the words of encouragement that keep me coming back to the keyboard. So much love.

The past five days have been an absolute blur. I got back from a beautiful wedding in Palm Beach celebrating some of my closest friends. My Knicks continue to break my heart. I flew to Dallas to pull off our biggest dinner of the year. We legit had 350 people on the RSVP list and I had to kick people out like I was a club promoter because people we’re sneaking into our entrepreneurship dinner. Imagine that. What a world.

Last thing I got for you is The Founders Club is officially hiring. We have three open roles and they are all Miami / South Florida based.

1. Head of Community Retention

2. Event Coordinator

3. Executive Assistant

If you, or someone sharp you know, wants to be part of this next chapter, email me back and I’ll send over the job descriptions.

Now, onto the real reason you’re here:

Let’s talk about a mistake that nearly every founder I know (myself included) has made at some point:

Blaming the agency for a mess you created.

Read that again.

The mess YOU created. It’s the same conversation every time with all my friends. We hire an agency to do something (Facebook ads, Amazon, graphic design, you name it). The relationship starts really hot. Everyone is super excited. Then it goes to shit.

Rinse and repeat.

This has probably happened 7+ times in my career at CROSSNET and already twice at The Founders Club.

It’s easy to point fingers when your marketing misses.

• Your acquisition cost is too high

• The creative’s are terrible

• The landing page isn’t converting

• Return on ad spend is trash

• Nothing is working

So you hop on a call. You sound frustrated.

“Why isn’t this working?”

And their response? Something vague. Half-reassurance, half-corporate speak.

You hang up, still annoyed, and start texting your cofounder:

“Should we fire these idiots?”

But here’s what I’ve learned the hard way:

The agency usually isn’t broken, your communication and understanding of what they do is.

And the longer it takes you to own that, the more time and money you’re going to burn. Let’s break this down:

The Communication Problem Nobody Owns

When you hand your marketing off to a partner: agency, freelancer, internal hire, you’re not buying a guaranteed outcome. You’re buying a translation.

You’re trusting someone else to understand your:

Product
Audience
Brand
Vision
Voice
Metrics

That’s not a task. That’s a full-on download. And if you’ve ever dumped that onto someone in a 30-minute kickoff call, rattled off a few KPIs, emailed over a brand kit from 2022, and then said “run with it,” you’re not delegating. You’re abandoning. I’ve done this. Multiple times. And I paid for it every time.

When CROSSNET started scaling, we cycled through creative agencies trying to find the “right one.”

The truth? We were the problem.

Nobody on the outside could figure out what we actually wanted because we didn’t know what we wanted. Our goals changed weekly. Our messaging lacked consistency. We had no clear testing framework. And we expected an outside team with some 24 year old right out of college to read our minds and deliver gold. They didn’t fail.

We failed to equip them to succeed.

Your Agency is a Mirror, Not a Magician

Here’s the truth that most founders don’t want to hear: Your agency reflects your clarity.

If your creative direction sucks, your ads will suck. If your landing page brief is vague, conversions will stall. If you don’t define the win, don’t be surprised when nobody hits it.

I see this happen all the time with our members inside The Founders Club. Right now a member is chatting in our Slack about his frustration with an agency they hired. They are venting and doing everything to get out of their relationship. And once we start asking questions, it becomes clear.

• There was no shared scorecard

• No campaign brief

• No weekly feedback loop

• No clarity on who’s responsible for what

It’s not misalignment. It’s mismanagement. And yeah, a good agency should push back. They should clarify. But the best ones? They work best with founders who come correct.

The Five Inputs That Change Everything

If you want to actually get results from your agency partners (and stop churning through them like Tinder dates), here’s what needs to change:

1) Write the Brief You Wish You Got
What’s the real goal? What’s the exact audience? What assets exist? What tone should be hit or avoided? What does a win actually look like?
If you can’t answer that in a doc or Loom, don’t expect them to either.

2) Decide Before You Delegate
Don’t hand off decisions you haven’t made.
“Can you figure out if we should optimize for clicks or purchases?”
No. YOU figure that out. Then brief accordingly.

3) Set the Scoreboard
Weekly tracking. Shared doc. Clear benchmarks.
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. And if you don’t define success upfront, they’ll define it for you.

4) Create Feedback Cadence
Not micromanagement. Just rhythm.
Quick calls. Clear feedback. Tight loops. This is a relationship, not a relay race.

5) Own the Outcome
You picked them. You briefed them. You greenlit the work. You’re still the founder. Ultimate accountability stays with you.

Control > Coddling

Let me be clear: I’m not defending bad agencies. There are plenty out there. Lazy ones. Cookie-cutter ones. Ones that overpromise and underdeliver. But if you keep cycling through partners every few months and blaming them every time, you’ve got a pattern, and it’s not a good one.

At some point, the issue isn’t the agency. It’s your onboarding, clarity, and leadership.

And if you’re building a brand that’s supposed to last, you can’t keep duct-taping your growth team together hoping this one’s “the one.” You need systems. Ownership. Alignment. You need to act like the CMO, even when you’re not writing the copy or running the ads.

Final Thought: Agencies Amplify Who Your Business IS

If your messaging is dialed, your voice is clear, and your product hits, the right partner can pour gas on the fire. But if your vision is fuzzy, your positioning shifts, and your leadership is reactive? They’ll amplify that too.

So before you fire the next agency, ask yourself: Did I equip them to win? Or did I throw them in blind and hope for magic?

Fix the brief, fix the clarity. Then you can fix the marketing.

If you need any recommendations here are five of my favorite people that I personally have been using for the past three years. None of them know I’m writing this, so if you hit them up just tell them I sent you so I can get dinner on them next time I see them.

Graphic Design - Christian - [email protected]

Facebook Ads - Uri - [email protected], Joel - [email protected]

Google Ads - Victor - [email protected]

Amazon Ads - [email protected]

Have the most incredible rest of the week!
Chris