The Conversation We Kept Avoiding
Honesty wins. And yes this cliche is also true.
Last week my business partner and I sat down for 5 hours. No clients. No dashboards. No campaigns. Just us, a table at a coffee spot near Haarlem station, and a list of things we’d been avoiding.
We call it a quarterly off-site. Sounds official. In practice it’s two founders finally admitting what’s working, what isn’t, and what we need to stop pretending is fine.
Why most agencies don’t do this
I’ve talked to agency owners who haven’t had a real strategic conversation with their partner in months. They talk about client work. They talk about hiring. They talk about the tool that’s broken or the invoice that’s overdue.
But they don’t talk about the hard stuff.
Is this team member actually growing, or are we just hoping?
Are we hitting our targets, or are we rounding up to feel better?
Is the business going where we said it would, or did we drift?
Those conversations are uncomfortable. They require you to say out loud what you’ve been thinking quietly. And in a small agency, where the team is 3-5 people and every decision is personal, that’s hard.
How we structured it
We tried unstructured off-sites before. They turn into therapy sessions or wish lists. Nothing sticks. So this time we built a structure.
Morning: the hard decisions. When energy is high. Team calls that need to be made. Client portfolio, honestly. Q1 performance against actual targets, not vibes.
Lunch: no agenda. Let the morning settle. Eat something. Talk about life. You’d be surprised how much this matters.
Afternoon: building forward. Q2 goals. Infrastructure. What each of us commits to doing differently. Specific. Owned. Dated.
Two rules that changed everything:
1. If a topic goes in circles for more than 10 minutes, park it. You’re not ready to decide yet.
2. Keep phones away during the decision blocks. Not on the table. Away.
What we actually talked about
I can’t share the details. But I’ll share the categories, because I think they apply to any agency with 2+ founders.
Energy check-in. We started by asking each other: on a scale of 1-10, how motivated are you right now? And what’s been draining you? Sounds soft. It’s not. If your partner is at a 4 and you’re at an 8, the decisions you make that day will be different. You need to know where someone’s head is before you make calls together.
Honest target review. We set 3 goals for Q1. We hit 1 fully, 1 partially, 0 on the third. That hurts. But we also shipped a dozen things that weren’t on the list. Infrastructure that will pay off for years. The question isn’t “did we hit the number.” It’s “did we build something that makes the next quarter easier?”
The people conversation. This is the one we kept avoiding. We had someone on the team who wasn’t growing at the pace the business needs. We’d been coaching for months. Progress was visible but inconsistent. At some point you have to decide: is this a fit, or are we being kind at the expense of the business? We made the call. It wasn’t easy. It was right.
Who we actually are. We realized we’d been positioning ourselves as specialists when we’re actually something different. Our best client relationships aren’t “we run your Google Ads.” They’re “we think about your growth like a CMO would.” That’s a different business. A better one. But it requires us to stop hiding behind channel expertise and own the strategic layer.
The thing nobody tells you about partner meetings
The value isn’t in the decisions. It’s in the alignment.
After 5 hours, Mathijs and I weren’t just on the same page about what to do next. We were on the same page about why. That changes how you show up on Monday. How you handle the team call. How you talk to the next prospect.
Alignment isn’t a document. It’s a feeling. And you can only get it by sitting across from someone and being honest about the things that aren’t working.
If you’re running an agency with a partner
Block 5 hours. Once a quarter. Non-negotiable.
Structure the morning around hard decisions. Afternoon around what’s next. Put a lunch break in the middle so you can be human for 45 minutes.
Start with an energy check. End with specific commitments, not vague agreements. Write down who does what, by when.
And most importantly: say the thing you’ve been avoiding. The one about the team member. The one about the revenue target you missed. The one about the direction you’re not sure about anymore.
It won’t feel good in the moment. It’ll feel good on Monday.
Have you had that conversation with your co-founder or partner lately?
What’s the thing you keep parking?