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The Antifragile Agency (Italy Edition 🇮🇹)
- Romans Ivanovs
- Mar 18
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 25
A few weeks ago, Kristina and I were in Italy.
We’d wrapped up a big project, and after a few intense months of deep work with our agency clients, we decided to take a break...
Morning walks through cobblestone streets.
Afternoons spent eating fresh seafood and pasta at little family-run trattorias.
Evenings with a glass of wine, watching the sun dip behind old stone villas. Alright, alright - I'm just teasing you.
But what made the trip wasn’t just about pasta and wine.
One night over dinner in Florence we met a consultant who works with billion-dollar organisations—Hermès, Vodafone, even the UN.
He’s the guy they call when things get political. When leadership is stuck, and no one wants to rock the boat.
We asked him what the real challenge was at that level. Without hesitation, he said:"50% of change management is just politics and fear."
People protect their status, even if it means killing good ideas.
They fight new processes because they’re scared of becoming irrelevant. And they undermine progress just to keep their own seat.
People protect their status, even if it kills good ideas. They fight new processes because they’re scared of becoming irrelevant. They undermine progress just to keep their seat at the table.
Agencies are no different.
How many agency owners avoid restructuring because they don’t want to piss off their team?
How many tolerate underperformers just because they’re “nice people”?
How many say they want to grow but refuse to change the way they operate?
The longer something has been around, the harder it is to change and the more fragile it becomes.
Sacred cows. Legacy processes. Org charts that make zero sense anymore. They’re not there because they work. They’re there because people are afraid to challenge them.
And if you’re not willing to challenge the politics, egos and fears inside your own agency…
You’re not serious about scaling.
Periodo. 🇮🇹
What got you here will break you later
(Like the third coffee you didn’t need today but made it anyway.)
At $50K MRR, you can get away with a bit of fragility.
Missed deadlines? You jump in and fix them. A team member drops the ball? You pick it up without blinking. The wheels wobble, but they don’t fall off.
By $85K MRR, that same fragility gets riskier.
You’re still holding things together but it’s getting harder. You start feeling it in the late nights, the rushed approvals, and the growing list of decisions that “only you” can make.
At $150K+ MRR? That’s when things really start to crack. The weight is too heavy. The delivery team is scrambling. Profitability starts to slide. And you’re doing damage control just to keep clients from walking.
Kristina Radeva and I have seen this play out over and over.
We wrote about it in "Is your agency built for $1M, $5M, or $10M?" because most agencies aren’t building for scale at all.They’re just accumulating risk and calling it growth.
Most agencies are fragile by design
(Not because they’re bad. Because they never built for what’s coming next.)
I remember one morning in Florence, watching a guy struggling to park his tiny old Fiat Panda on a steep street.
The engine was revving like crazy. It smelled like something was burning. He was stuck.
No matter how hard he pushed, it wasn’t going anywhere.
Most agencies are the business equivalent of that car.
Overworked teams
Sloppy delivery
Founder bottlenecks everywhere
No clear roles
And profit margins so tight there’s no room to breathe
And you? You’re back in Slack at 10PM reviewing work you thought you’d already delegated.
Also if you’re a technician-turned-agency founder, there’s a good chance you’re stuck perfecting deliverables instead of perfecting your business model.
And while that might feel productive, it’s actually keeping you small. Being a strategic leader requires a whole new set of skills and perspectives.
The 3 pillars of building an "antifragile agency"
(Because you can’t run a Ferrari on olive oil.)
This is where Kristina and I spend most of our time when we rebuild an agency’s foundation.
It’s not about scaling harder. It’s about making the agency stronger with every step. So you’re not adding risk… You’re removing it.
1. Operational model
Simplicity scales. Complexity collapses.
Your delivery shouldn’t depend on superstar talent or you playing air traffic control. It should run like a machine: efficient, repeatable and boring in the best way.
What this looks like:
Clear end-to-end delivery processes, not bloated SOPs no one reads.
Automation, where possible (AI isn’t optional anymore)
Judgement, where it counts (your team makes decisions without you)
One agency we worked with freed up 40 hours a month for the founder by tightening delivery systems and empowering pod leaders. The work got better. Client retention went up. And he finally got out of Slack hell.
2. Organisational model
You don’t need always more people. You need the right structure and right people.
Structure = freedom.
We mostly build pods because they work.
Small, self-sufficient teams that own client results. No bottlenecks. No waiting for approvals. And no more founder as the glue holding everything together.
What happens without this?
People step on each other’s toes
Accountability disappears
Founder burnout hits hard
This isn’t theoretical. We’ve helped agencies go from founder bottleneck to self-managing teams in 3 to 6 months. And yes, it’s uncomfortable at first. But it’s the difference between building a machine… And running a hamster wheel.
Imagine yourself... No laptop. No emergencies. Because the team has it covered.
3. Financial model
If you’re chasing top-line revenue without understanding what are you optimising for you’re most likely scaling your risk, not your profit. And if you’re underpricing because you’re afraid of losing deals, you’re making yourself fragile.
What antifragility looks like here:
Clarifying what business outcomes you're optimising for: exit or cash cow.
Predictable pipelines
Pricing that reflects your value
Capacity planning that keeps your team sharp, not overwhelmed
Profit margins that let you walk away from bad-fit clients without blinking
Optionality is everything. If you need every client or every deal just to keep the lights on? That’s fragility.
I highly recommend you read about and watch our conversation with Valentin Kuznetcov who is our Financial Consultant at Big Growth Group: How misaligned finances and your psychology are "killing" your agency:
The common traps agencies fall into
(And no, it’s not ordering cappuccino in Italy after 11AM.)
Here’s where most agencies get it wrong. They try to fix complexity with… more complexity. More services. More headcount. More steps.
It’s like overpacking for a trip - you carry more than you need, and by day two, you regret it.
Instead:
Strip back your services
Simplify roles
Fire bad clients
Kill old processes that don’t serve you anymore
Via Negativa, my friend.
Why we build. Why we "step away".
Sitting in Florence, I had one of those moments where everything felt… still.
Not because things were slowing down. But because they didn’t need me to move. The business was running. Clients were happy. The team had it handled.
And I realised, this is what freedom looks like for me.
Not passive income.
Not sipping cocktails on a beach with a laptop (I hate sand in keyboards, anyway).
But space. Space to think. Space to decide what’s next, on my terms. Space to be present... in work, in life, in the moments that actually matter.
We built it for this.
And we help other founders do the same because, truthfully? The business game only gets better when you stop being the bottleneck.
By the way - we hosted a super fun agency dinner in Milan.
A great group of people:
→ Domenico Vitolo, sold his marketing agency, now building Marketing Ignorante.
→ Oliver Gockov, ex agency owner, now building a fast-growing retail brand Pimp My Dog Italia.
→ Emanuele Barban, growing and acquiring agency and martech businesses under Underdogs Group.
→ Alexandru Birleanu, one of the leading eCommerce consultants in Italy.
→ Antonio Boccanfuso, founder at Höski, growing and scaling online products and services.
We're off to Dominican Republic next week to speak at the agency mastermind. See you there if you're coming.
Ready to Build an Agency That Runs Without You?
We’ve helped dozens of agency founders go from firefighting to freedom by building the systems, teams and leadership structure they need to scale without being the bottleneck.
If you’re ready for the uncomfortable but transformational work apply for Strategy Consultation here.
About what we do
At Big Growth Group we help agency owners build high-profit and self-sufficient agency businesses so they can step away from daily operations and focus on strategic growth.
We’re not just consultants who leave you with a list of ideas. We’re also Growth Operators who get in the trenches and work alongside you to deliver real, measurable results.
Are you an agency founder? Want to break free from operations and scale past $1M more easily and strategically?
Listen or watch our podcast "Big Growth Show"
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