AI's impact on creative and moving upmarket

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Most agency owners don't fail because they're bad at delivery.

They fail because they underprice, overcomplicate, and build businesses that trap them instead of freeing them.

Today's featured guest unpacks the type of life he envisioned when he set out to start an agency, it took to scale from charging $2,500 a month to closing $45,000/month retainers, surviving a market collapse, and making the counterintuitive decision to split one agency into two.

Eli Rubel is the founder of Matter Made, a B2B SaaS marketing agency, and No Boring Design, a premium design studio serving high-growth tech companies. He entered the agency world in 2019 after burning out on the venture-backed SaaS model, despite a previous exit.

What drew him to agencies wasn't prestige or scale; it was a desire to take control over his time, lifestyle, income, and location. Agencies, when built correctly, offered the fastest path to freedom without sacrificing ambition.

Over the next few years, Eli scaled MatterMade aggressively, navigated a brutal tech downturn, and rebuilt his business with sharper positioning, stronger pricing, and clearer operational boundaries.

In this episode, we discussed:

• Why hiking prices was the right choice early one

• How and why he decided to create his second agency

• The reason that shared services failed fast

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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.

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Why Agencies Beat Venture-Backed SaaS (If You Want Freedom)

After years in venture-backed SaaS, chasing growth at all costs, Eli was done with a model he realized was grinding him down. The pressure, the lack of control, and the delayed payoff didn't align with what he actually wanted: family, flexibility, and financial independence.

Agencies offered speed to cash and autonomy, which SaaS didn't. Instead of swinging for a hypothetical future exit, Eli chose a business model that paid well now and let him design his life intentionally.

It was a shift he made with eyes wide open and clear expectations. The "best" business model depends on what you want your life to look like. For Eli, agencies weren't a step down. They were a strategic upgrade.

Hiking His Prices Relying on Capacity and Confidence

Eli's agency launched at $2,500 a month, not because that was the "right" price, but because he backed into a simple income goal. Sixteen clients at $2,500 got him to $40,000 a month. On paper, it worked.

In reality, it broke fast.

As soon as clients started saying "yes" too quickly, Eli knew something was off. The work was heavy, margins were thin, and building a team at that price point wasn't sustainable. Instead of obsessing over competitive pricing, he leaned into price sensitivity testing.

Every time the team hit capacity, prices went up. If prospects said no, it didn't matter, they couldn't take on more work anyway. If prospects said yes, it justified hiring and scaling.

Over three years, pricing climbed from $2,500 to $45,000 per month.

What he learned was that underpricing doesn't just hurt margins. It traps you in constant hiring, delivery stress, and low-leverage work. Raising prices isn't greedy, it's operational discipline.

What Actually Changes When You Raise Prices

Eli didn't wake up one day and charge $45,000 for the same work he was doing at $2,500.

Early on, the offering was vague: "We'll help with demand gen." Strategy was loose, scope was unclear, and the team was tiny. As pricing increased, the delivery model matured into a defined pod structure with paid media, design, strategy, and leadership baked in.

However, once his agency hit around $15,000 per month, the services didn't change much after that.

What changed was credibility.

Case studies stacked up. Results became undeniable. Sales conversations shifted from "this is a great deal" to "this is what it costs to remove risk."

Eli was upfront with prospects: MatterMade would be $10,000–$15,000 more per month than competitors, and nothing about the deliverables would look different. The difference was the track record.

For buyers who weren't cash-sensitive, that pitch landed hard. They weren't paying for tasks. They were paying for certainty.

Why Splitting One Agency into Two Was the Right Move

At its peak in 2021, MatterMade was flying high, with $4.2M in EBITDA, tech clients everywhere, and acquisition talks underway.

Then the tech market collapsed.

Almost overnight, VC-backed clients cut agencies, froze spending, and hunkered down. They went from crushing it to losing nearly $200,000 a month. Eli held on too long, assuming it was temporary, and paid dearly for it.

During the restructuring, Eli noticed something interesting: design had become a bottleneck across tech companies. Designers were laid off, but the need for creative work didn't disappear.

So he spun up No Boring Design as a separate entity, fast. New brand, new site, launched in a weekend.

Within months, it was profitable.

Separating the businesses allowed each to have crystal-clear positioning. MatterMade stayed focused on growth marketing. No Boring Design became a premium creative solution for companies stuck in hiring freezes.

Trying to keep design tucked inside the marketing agency would have slowed everything down. Separation created speed, clarity, and growth.

Why Shared Services Across Agencies Sound Smart and Fail Fast

One of Eli's biggest mistakes came after the split.

He tried to create a shared management company to handle leadership, recruiting, and operations across multiple agencies. On paper, it looked efficient. In practice, it was chaos.

Each agency had subtle but important differences in how it worked. SOPs drifted. Leaders got stretched thin. The "squeaky wheel" agency got attention while others suffered.

Eventually, Eli unwound the entire structure.

The hard truth: unless your companies operate almost identically, shared services create more friction than savings. Clarity beats efficiency.

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