Would you like access to our advanced agency training for FREE? https://www.agencymastery360.com/training What if scaling your agency wasn’t about adding clients—but building a community that fuels growth from within? During Covid lockdowns, today’s featured guest felt the need to turn his clients into a community, hosting events where they could get to know each other and build relationships. To this day, it remains one of the best changes he’s introduced at his agency. With a dedicated community, a focused niche, and a cap on the amount of clients the agency takes, he created a sense of exclusivity that turned his agency into a “category of one” business that continues to thrive. Join us as he unpacks how his agency journey began, how he accidentally ran into his exclusive niche, and the ways he found to turn clients into members. Oli Luke is the founder of Orange & Gray, a hearing healthcare marketing agency that’s not just thriving—it’s become a “category of one.” He shares how going ultra-niche, building a true community, and capping client growth actually led to bigger success. His story offers agency owners a powerful blueprint for growth by focusing less on volume and more on depth. In this episode, we’ll discuss: The power of creating scarcity. Choosing community over clients. Why client selection will save you headaches. Using AI to have a bigger impact with clients. Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio 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. Creating Category Leadership with Your Agency Oli started in the marketing world as early as fifteen years old, running a “questionably illegal” business that relied on marketing savvy more than morals. That spirit of experimentation, however, continued to evolve into something far more focused and in 2017 he launched a niche agency focused solely on hearing healthcare. Like many agency owners, Oli knows the pain of being a generalist—serving anyone and everyone just to keep the lights on. But once he committed to a hyper-niche model, everything changed. “We help a very specific type of business,” he explained. “There’s only about 2,000 potential clients in the world for us. So we’re not looking for quantity—we’re looking for quality.” According to Oli, once you’re playing in such a specific arena, you’re playing against maybe three competitors, which helps you become very good at that sweet spot. By focusing on a tight, underserved market, Oli’s agency was able to create a “category of one” positioning. It wasn’t just another agency—they were the agency for hearing healthcare and that kind of positioning is gold. The Power of Capping Growth and Creating Scarcity Here’s something you don’t hear every day: Oli has no plans to scale his agency to the moon. In fact, he’s capping it at 100 clients. “We don’t want more. We want depth of relationship,” he said. This kind of intentional limitation creates natural scarcity and urgency and real, earned exclusivity. Prospects know there’s a limit, so they know if they leave coming back will mean paying significantly more. It’s a model Seth Godin once praised: deep focus, selective intake, and high trust. Oli’s clients know they’re one of the few, which raises the bar for everyone—team, clients, and prospects. Community Over Clients: How COVID Changed Everything Oli’s most unexpected move—and perhaps his most impactful—came during COVID when, like many agency owners, he had to rethink everything. Prior to that, he ran a very traditional agency, with one-to-one relationships with clients that mostly didn’t know each other. This all changed during COVID, when amid the shutdowns and uncertainty, Oli’s team started hosting weekly “campfire chats” to bring them together. That simple shift sparked a powerful transformation. “We almost pivoted from being just a marketing agency and to being a communications company,” he said. By bringing clients together, the bonds formed turned into something more powerful than any campaign. That organic community—born out of crisis—evolved into something deeper. Today, Oli’s agency doesn’t just have clients; they have members. And the community has only grown since the days of the campfire chats. For him, there’s nothing more powerful than getting people together, especially in this new AI era where human connection will become increasingly rarer and more important. There are monthly calls, print newsletters, annual events, and even an Austin Powers-themed meetup in London for their U.S. clients. The community is more than a retention tool—it’s a moat. ...
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Jun 25 202526 m