Are you the Big Fish or Small Fry?

How size matters in picking a Service Provider

Welcome to the latest entry in The Workaround. You’re in good company with thousands of fellow entrepreneurs and innovators!

I’m Bob, your host. My mission here is to share personal, behind-the-scenes stories of the ups and downs of my career leading tech startups and corporate innovation.

I write to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Here we go…

When a shark needs dental care, it trusts these small specialist service providers to do the job well.

My brand promise in this newsletter is to provide shortcuts to success. And today, I’m sharing a juicy one that I’ve learned across thirty years of buying and selling professional services:

Make sure your business is important to the service provider you hire. And almost always, the size of the check you write—compared to other clients—is the measure of importance.

Let me prove it with a story…

The little client that couldn’t

I began my career in marketing at a big corporate job. That’s where I first learned to work with professional services businesses, including creative agencies, market research companies, and production firms. As the world’s largest advertiser, our business was critically important to each of these partners, so we always got their best and brightest to work on our business.

But I was spoiled…and missed a lot of insights about how the rest of the world works.

My true education began when I left my corporate job to become a partner at a growing digital marketing agency. As head of new business, strategy, and client service, I touched every customer and project in the company. My ultimate job was to assign resources and hit revenue and profit goals.

Early in my agency role, we had a very small, new packaged goods company reach out, hoping that we would be its creative partner on a national launch. The CEO of this company specifically wanted an agency partner that worked with the biggest brands in the world—hoping his new business would join that list someday.

It sure felt good being wanted! We were used to doing competitive pitches that could last months, but this company wanted us immediately. While its budget was much smaller than our core client base, our company was always hungry for revenue. Our default answer on any opportunity was “Hell Yes!”

We also loved the chance to work directly with a CEO rather than the junior or mid-level brand managers who were our usual clients. And we’d be the only agency for this business rather than just fulfilling digital marketing needs.

So we gladly accepted his business, quickly signed a contract, and assigned this new work to one of our packaged goods teams. A week later, we had a productive two-hour kick-off meeting, and the gears of creative briefs and project management processes swung into action. Our team was more excited about this small client than with the multiple billion-dollar brands that they usually served.

But then an emergency need popped up for one of those billion-dollar brands. The team was forced to prioritize this work and look for wiggle room in other schedules. They asked our new client if we could get an extra week or two before sharing creative ideas. He accepted and gave us good feedback on our first round of work.

Right after that meeting, another big client decided to change direction on a website design, and the team had to drop everything to make it work in time for its deadline. They told our small client they would need more time to make revisions. Again, he was flexible.

But the team lost momentum after putting out the big client fire. They had to set up a meeting with the client to go back over the original feedback a second time. This delayed the next steps further…and their energy waned…

Things got worse when the CEO of our new client asked for several changes and extra work that he had not mentioned before. Our CFO had already warned our team that the project was exceeding budget, so this would make it worse.

In the months ahead, more balls were dropped. The work was shuffled among team members, depending on who had spare time, and the client got more frustrated. Eventually, we delivered what was promised, and the new brand was launched.

We didn’t get more work from this client. We weren’t surprised…and a bit relieved.

I spent 8 years as a leader at this agency. We grew from $10 million to $45 million in revenue during this time and enjoyed industry-leading profits. We won work with several giant brands and were acquired by the largest agency holding company in the world.

But we repeated this error at least once a year, and I fully accept my guilt in making the same mistake: We took on clients that were too small for us, and both sides suffered.

Why does this keep happening?

I’ve seen this play out in other areas:

• Years ago, I had a startup idea that a software agency said they could automate for $10k and finish in six weeks. However, bigger clients and projects forced them to drop it and repeatedly delayed my timeline. Each time they re-started, I had a different client success lead. It took five months to finish, and even I lost interest by the time it was done.

• I just heard a local 100-student Montessori school attached to a nearby university hired McKinsey to do a strategy study, which recommended scaling back its education mission. They spent $100k to save $300k and forced a bunch of parents to look for a new place to send their children to school.

• The building next to my home is getting a year-long redesign to add multiple condos. Four trucks from the plumbing company are parked there daily. We had a small plumbing job and figured we’d hire them to do the work while they were next door. It took them months to move forward, and they made basic mistakes, missed promised time windows, and brought the wrong parts for the job. We gave up and hired someone else.

Unlike software or physical products, which large and small buyers can equally enjoy to some extent, service businesses vary widely. Unlike pushing products off an assembly line or pushing code through a cloud, professional services are delivered personally by, well, people.

And people are…complex. We are unique bundles of backgrounds, emotions, and motivations. Our decisions when providing services (or buying them) often get us into trouble. But seeing the game so many times, I’ve glimpsed a certain “physics” behind how this world works.

You never want to be a small customer of a service business.

When you’re small in revenue, you’re low in priority. Your project will be in line behind the big players who pay the big bills—and when they sneeze, you catch a cold. The most junior, low-skilled talent will usually be assigned to your projects. It’s not personal; it’s just the reality of business.

You probably should never accept small clients for your service business.

Small clients take as much care and feeding as big ones yet deliver just a fraction of the revenue. And since their budgets are low and intermittent, you’ll likely lose money on them anyway.

Tips for Service Shopping

The next time you are in the market for a service provider, keep these key points in mind:

• Don’t let their brand fool you—I’ve seen mid-sized company CMOs hire the sexiest creative agencies because they aspire to be in the big leagues. Don’t fool yourself—or let your ego get in the way. The service brand means nothing—it’s all about the people staffing your account. They’ll bring their A-team to the pitch, then assign the C-team and/or junior employees once you sign a contract. You might get invited to their party at Cannes, but your business will suffer.

• Be important to them—Usually, this means the fees you pay have the potential to be a big part of their business. With size, you get top talent, priority when issues arise, access to their leaders, and a voice in where they invest and innovate. The most under-appreciated cheat code here is finding a startup service provider whose founder(s) were A-players at a more prominent firm. They’ll be hungry for any business and personally do the work, rather than assign it to others.

• Make it personal—Go into these relationships with the idea that you hope to find a long-term partner. Pick service providers with whom you have a relationship so they take your business more personally. Keep working with them across multiple companies you both move forward in your careers.

Tips for Service Providers

I hope you can avoid this mistake better than I did. Here’s how:

• Raise the warning flag—Your team will continue to want to work on small projects and clients. It’s new, different, and can be fun. Let them make the choice, but warn them and hold them accountable for sticking to their promises. When bigger priorities arrive, they must accept the risk of working overtime to make them all happy.

• Default is “No”—When that small client comes forward, remember that not all revenue is worthwhile. The opportunity cost of taking small, low-profit work will steal time that could be spent on getting more of the right clients and building new solutions for existing clients. It can help to establish some internal rules. At my agency, we eventually forced ourselves not to participate in any client RFP that didn’t have a viable path to be a $1 million/year client. At my next business, in influencer marketing, we gradually increased our minimum contract size as we and our clients grew.

• Say “Yes” but with purpose - Some small clients can add a ton of value. Kevin, one of our agency’s favorite big brand client contacts, moved to Red Bull and invited us to be one of his agencies. Their budget was tiny, but we got to work with Kevin and one of the sexiest brands in the world. This got us a top logo for sales and marketing purposes. And our creative work for Red Bull helped us attract and retain clients and talent. I’ve also had success using small clients for high-potential junior staff to get a chance to up their game. It’s a low-risk, high-reward way to develop promising talent.

As a final shortcut to success—and instead of my usual reminder of how you might work with my businesses—here’s a list of some of my favorite professional service providers.

If you’re looking for a hungry partner to support your business, please contact them—and tell them I sent you!

---

Dan Whitmyer - Marketing strategies and actionable market research plans

Mark Mattimore – Market research, intelligence, and strategy

Simcha Kackley – B2B marketing and sales enablement

Sean Johnson – Marketing for professional services firms

Elizabeth Miller – Data & analytics

Pamela Gilbreath Kelly - Speaking coach

Ryan Derrow – Media buying and planning

Ross Hansen – Ad Ops as a service

Taulbee Jackson – Content marketing

Robyn Bolton – Corporate innovation

Jared Simmons – Corporate innovation

Rebeca Arbona – Brand naming and positioning strategy

Leonora Polonsky – Corporate brand positioning and strategy

Alexys Koeninger – Social media

John Myers – Strategy and innovation consulting

Kevin Doohan – Contract and fractional CMO services

Ben Greenberg – Strategy, Branding and Marketing

Andrea Larson – Digital marketing agency

Wes Lemos – B2B sales and lead gen

Jay Becker – Creative agency

Lauren Nemeroff – Content+Creative agency

Claire Guappone – Fractional marketing leader and integrated marketing consulting

Rob Turner - Business Attorney and outside general counsel

Stacy Aaron – Change management consulting

Emily Geiger Draugelis – Company formation / corporate venture studio

Debra Bass – Corporate strategy and startup+corporate connections

Marc Aiello – Product Management consulting, courses and coaching

Marc Debrody – Security for people, property, and privacy, with a focus on high-net-worth individuals, family offices, wealth managers, and corporate clients

Edward Stogner – Cybersecurity and IT consulting

Lou Carli – Cybersecurity

Christine Fisher – Fractional CFO

Meredith Meyer – Executive coaching and team building

Bob Goodwin – Career coaching

Alex Beirach – Tech and product executive coaching

Jeffrey Williams – Startup strategic advisor

Alice Turner – Childbirth courses and Doula work

Allison Weiner Kleinman - Caring for adult children with special needs

Michelle Weiner – Integrative, holistic pain management (including Ketamine)

Stephanie Cole – Financial planning for parents of children with special needs

---

BONUS: Cool Content of the Week

A little something I found meaningful. You might agree…

Write Hearted

At least weekly, someone asks me how I got started writing here. Many are interested in developing their voice and sharing ideas on a platform like Substack but aren’t sure how to get started. I’ve not had a great place to send them…until now!

Rick Lewis is a brilliant story-driven speaker and writer over at Honestly Human. If you like what I write here, you’ll love his posts. He just launched Write Hearted, a community for people who want to join the writing game. If you’re tempted at all, you should check it out. Last time we traded messages, he had only a few slots left—so grab one now! I’d love 2025 to be the year you start a writing practice that will bring value to you and others for many more years to come.