Let’s be honest: most agencies are world-class at marketing their clients' brands but hopeless at marketing their own. But give just one AI-powered wizard the keys, and you can grow exponentially.

Agencies and consultancies are notoriously bad at two things:

1. Marketing themselves to generate a steady flow on new business (including differentiating themselves and their offering).

2. Designing their business for leverage and scale (profitable growth).

This article will show you how to combat both problems (for the full solution, you need a complete operating system, like SimpleOS™ which we built for creative businesses).

Let’s start with some stats (don’t yawn, this is important):
An important metric and indicator of profitability, strategic advantage and efficiency is RPE (Revenue Per Employee). To give you a ballpark idea:

  • 7‑figure agencies average around $150,000 RPE.
  • 8‑figure agencies reach around $225,000 RPE


What This Means for Creative Agency and Consultancy Owners

If your agency is under $100,000 RPE, you're operating in shaky ground—unlikely profitable and vulnerable to margin erosion. At that level, the “Marketing Department of One” idea becomes much more than clever—it becomes essential for survival.

If your agency is hitting $150K–$200K per employee, you’re in solid territory—but consider how AI augmentation and sharper workflows could push you toward the $225K+ sweet spot, while keeping the team lean and nimble.

Reported average (IBISWorld)~$140K

Having run agencies and consultancies for much of my life, I know just how stressful it gets when you hit the lower thresholds. Thin margins, weak profitability is like the plague. You must avoid it at all cost.

What affects RPE, you might ask?

Lots of factors, most of all the business model, focus, level of standardisation of a company. When I productized the core services of my brick-and-mortar brand consultancy, (long before AI), I was making over $300k per employee and made a 45% net profit margin on my business. I’ve since helped hundreds of agency owners do similar things, yet most still operate a business model from the 1990’s.

Let’s look at what is going on in other, more leveraged industries for comparison (and a bit of shocking jealousy).