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Are you an agency owner chasing the $1 million mark, believing that milestone will finally transform your business? Today’s featured guest once felt the same way—until he got there and discovered it was all a myth. Hitting seven figures looked like success on paper, but behind the scenes he was burning himself out just to keep things afloat. In this episode, he reveals the processes that helped him escape no man’s land, the critical lessons he learned about hiring, and the one thing he would do differently if he had the chance to start over.

Justin Rashidi is the CEO and co-founder of SeedX, where he leads data-driven marketing strategy and operations. Justin never planned to start an agency, but what started as a tutoring gig in New York soon turned into a full-blown business. After getting past some common agency growth hurdles, he’ll share what he’s learned on overcoming no man’s land, hiring, why he thinks like a SaaS founder when it comes to running his agency, and more.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

Don’t fall for the million-dollar myth.
Why growing fast was a problem and how he would change it.
Hiring? Don’t go for the entrepreneur type.
Getting beyond ‘no man’s land’.

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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.

When “The Side Thing” Has the Potential to Become a Growing Business

Justin grew up in a family where being a doctor, lawyer, or engineer was the gold standard. Entrepreneurship wasn’t even on his radar. After moving to New York and starting a tutoring company, he realized business was way more fun than he expected. That small company eventually led him into freelancing—websites, marketing, whatever clients needed.

The real turning point came when he and his now-wife recognized that the “side thing” they kept ignoring was actually worth building. Instead of just coasting from project to project, they doubled down and started turning Seedex into a functional, growing organization.

The Million-Dollar Myth

Hitting the million-dollar mark sounds like the dream milestone for agency owners. Justin admits he thought so too… until he actually got there three years into the business. In reality, it was one of the hardest stages of growth.

At that point, your agency looks successful on paper, but reality tells a different story. You don’t have the capital to hire senior talent. Your team is probably junior and undertrained. Processes are shaky. And you—the founder—are working yourself into the ground to hold it all together.

Justin remembers that stage as “a form of hell” that helped him understand why many owners try to sell at one million. He was gaining weight, losing weekends, and burning out fast. Scaling too quickly without solid processes or proper capital can trap you in a worse spot than before.

Grow Slower, Build Stronger

Looking back, Justin sees one of the biggest problems for his agency was how fast they grew. If he could change anything, he would’ve slowed down growth. That doesn’t sound sexy, but it’s real. At the moment, it felt exciting to see his business grow so much. What he didn’t know, however, was that scaling without processes or capital is like building a skyscraper on quicksand—it looks impressive until it collapses.

He recommends two key moves for agency owners chasing growth:

Build strong processes first. Make sure you can consistently deliver client success before you pile on more clients.
Secure working capital. Don’t wait until you’re desperate for cash to get financing. Get a line of credit while things look good—because once you actually need it, banks disappear.

This is one of those lessons that sounds boring… until you’ve lived through the chaos yourself.

Thinking About Hiring Entrepreneurs? Justin Says “Just Don’t”

Another one of Justin’s biggest realizations after hitting $1 million was that he had pushed the agency as far as his own hustle could take it. Suddenly, growth wasn’t about what he could do—it was about what his team could do.

As he put it, “I got myself here, now I have to get the rest of the team here too.” That’s when he realized growth isn’t about finding the right “how,” it’s about finding the right who.

That focus on hiring also came with hard lessons, Justin learned what makes an employee succeed or fail within an agency. He also learned the hard way: never hire entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs leave within 6–12 months to chase their own ventures. Instead, hire people who want to grow inside your company, who hold themselves to high standards, and who take ownership of improving processes.

Once you have those people, agency life gets a whole lot easier. You’re no longer solving every problem yourself—you’ve got a team that can think, adapt, and solve without you micromanaging.

Beyond “No Man’s Land”

Every agency owner eventually hits that “no man’s land” stage—the space between $1M and true scale—where everything feels hard. For Justin, it didn’t end with some big breakthrough moment. It faded slowly over time.

Piece by piece, things got easier: better operations, employees leveling up, hiring stronger talent, having more capital, and—maybe most importantly—understanding how a business actually functions. That compounding effect created stability. And while he wouldn’t call it easy, he admits the business is way more enjoyable today than it was a few years ago.

Numbers Don’t Lie

Which KPIs you pay attention to may differ depending on your particular market. When it comes to running SeedX today, Justin thinks like a SaaS founder and focuses a lot on contract retention and contract expansion.

He wants zero churn and contracts that expand over time. That’s how you build a healthy, stable agency without constantly chasing short-term clients. On top of that, he keeps a close eye on profit margins - aiming for 20% and runs monthly reviews with a tight bookkeeping process.

For some, the more their agency grows the harder it is to maintain margins. In Justin’s case, as his business has grown, their margins have expanded. Why? Because they got better at scoping projects and started moving upmarket to clients who pay properly for expertise.

The agency world is full of bad scoping, undercharging, and scope creep. Justin’s team now tracks time, analyzes leakage, and runs post-project reviews to tighten estimates.

Raising Prices and Playing to Win

One of the most powerful lessons Justin learned once he started tracking these KPIs was the danger of undercharging. Once he was running profitably, he realized he should be charging some clients more, and at this point he was confident enough to go back to clients and renegotiate that rate. In the early days, fear drove pricing. He didn’t think clients would pay more. Now he sees it differently.

If a prospect won’t pay what it’s worth, let them go. The client that undercut you will eventually realize they made a mistake—and when they come back into the market, they’ll be ready to pay at the right price.

“It’s like a magic $30K shows up,” he says. Since you’re running operations correctly and the time is already committed, that revenue drops straight to the bottom line. That’s the power of pricing confidence.

So stop racing to the bottom. Raise your rates, deliver great work, and let the unprofitable clients filter themselves out.

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