Eric DeeranOne mission — help agency owners build businesses they actually love running.

Feeling trapped in agency

19 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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In this short monologue, Eric Deeran addresses video creative agency owners who feel trapped by the traditional project‑based model. He argues that many agencies work longer hours than a full‑time job yet earn less profit because they lack proper systems and were sold a broken, one‑off project dream. Deeran explains that relying on one‑off projects leads to burnout, high overhead, and unstable income. He proposes shifting to a retainer‑based model where clients pay $5k–$15k per month for ongoing simple content that drives their growth, providing stability, higher margins, and predictable cash flow. He concludes with a call‑to‑action, inviting viewers to click a link for a short follow‑up video on how to implement this retainer strategy.

Chapters

Look, you ultimately got into this for freedom, but now you're working more hours than when you were in a full time job, all just to make less profit at the end of the day than when you were working in a job. If that feels like you and you're a video creative agency owner, you might be feeling like what's the point? But the truth is is that you just don't have the right systems in your business to actually make it run the right way. And unfortunately you were sold a broken model and sold the dream that big one off. Projects are the way that you grow your agency, when in reality it just leaves you burnt out with less margin and having to have a ton of overhead just to support yourself every month. What you need to be doing is crafting retainers where businesses pay you 5, 10, 15k a month for simple content that helps them grow their business. This gives you stability so you have profit and stability in your business so you don't have to stress about where that next client's coming from. If you want to learn how you can start doing this, put together a short video on the next page. Click the link below, check it out, we'll see there.