Writing · Topic
Running an agency
What the work actually costs, why the email stops arriving, and how to get paid without spending the relationship.
4 pieces
Buying AI work · September 4, 2026 · 6 min
How to tell if AI work is actually getting better
One number tells you whether AI is doing your client work or drafting near it: how much of each draft you rewrite before it goes out. If it is the same in month three as in month one, you bought a tool, not a colleague — and most vendors have never measured it.
Cold email · August 30, 2026 · 9 min
Why your cold email stopped arriving
Cold email rarely dies from one bad day. It dies from a fortnight of small mistakes — a ramp that looks like a leak, a sequence that retries dead addresses, one domain quietly carrying the whole day — and by the time you notice, the fix is a new domain and three months of waiting.
Running an agency · August 29, 2026 · 8 min
What a junior actually costs
A junior on $55,000 costs about $100,000 in their first year once you count payroll tax, health insurance, recruiting, equipment and the fifteen days of your own time it takes to ramp them. Here is the full arithmetic, and the test for which work is worth hiring for and which is a process problem wearing a headcount costume.
Getting paid · August 28, 2026 · 7 min
Chasing an invoice without losing the client
Most overdue invoices are not a refusal to pay — they are an invoice that reached one person who is not the person who pays. A four-rung ladder where the escalation is in the specificity rather than the tone, the three rules underneath it, and the four things to fix before you fix the chasing.
Common questions
- What does a junior actually cost an agency?
- About $100,000 in the first year for a $55,000 salary, once you count payroll tax, health insurance, recruiting, equipment and the roughly fifteen days of your own time it takes to ramp them. Around a third of that first year goes on work that is not billable to anybody.
- Why did my cold email stop arriving?
- Cold email rarely dies from one bad day. It dies from a fortnight of small mistakes: a ramp that looks like a leak, a sequence that keeps retrying dead addresses, and one domain quietly carrying the weight for all of them.
- How do I chase an overdue invoice without damaging the relationship?
- Most overdue invoices are not a refusal to pay — they are an invoice that reached one person who is not the person who pays. Escalate in specificity rather than in tone: each rung names a more specific person and a more specific fact, not a firmer sentence.
- How can I tell whether AI is actually doing my client work?
- Measure how much of each draft you rewrite before it goes out. If that fraction is the same in month three as it was in month one, the system is drafting near your work rather than doing it, however good the output looks.