{"id":13536,"date":"2024-07-30T10:00:29","date_gmt":"2024-07-30T09:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/?p=13536"},"modified":"2026-02-17T15:29:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T15:29:19","slug":"interview-with-ian-harris-agency-hackers-founder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/interview-with-ian-harris-agency-hackers-founder\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview With Ian Harris, Agency Hackers Founder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ian Harris is founder of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.agencyhackers.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Agency Hackers<\/a>, a community that helps established agencies grow with help from fellow founders and leaders, sharing strategies and receiving support from other reputable businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1536\" height=\"718\" src=\"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Agency-Hackers-Homepage.webp\" alt=\"Screenshot of the Agency Hackers homepage\" class=\"wp-image-17168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Agency-Hackers-Homepage.webp 1536w, https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Agency-Hackers-Homepage-300x140.webp 300w, https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Agency-Hackers-Homepage-768x359.webp 768w, https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Agency-Hackers-Homepage-400x187.webp 400w, https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Agency-Hackers-Homepage-800x374.webp 800w, https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Agency-Hackers-Homepage-832x389.webp 832w, https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Agency-Hackers-Homepage-1248x583.webp 1248w, https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Agency-Hackers-Homepage-150x70.webp 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1536px) 100vw, 1536px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ian was kind enough to answer questions about how Agency Hackers got started, how the community has developed over the years, how he stays motivated and more&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Can you tell me a bit about your professional background?<br><\/strong><br>When I was young, I wanted to be a journalist. Eventually I realised there is no money in journalism and it&#8217;s not actually as glamorous as I thought. It only took me 10 years to realise that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One day I noticed jobs being advertised with the word &#8220;content manager&#8221; in them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They all paid twice when I was earning as a journalist, but seem to involve doing about a quarter of the work. That&#8217;s how I got into the agency world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>What sparked the idea for Agency Hackers and how has that idea evolved over the years?<br><\/strong><br>There are two versions of this story. There&#8217;s the tidy lie and the honest mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The tidy lie is that I wanted to create a community where agency leaders could meet each other and learn from them. That&#8217;s a kind of &#8216;neat&#8217; version of the actual truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The honest mess is that I wanted to start my own business, and I knew that if I could build an audience of say 1,000 people there would somehow be money there somehow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I chose agency leaders as an audience because:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>They&#8217;re quite easy to find<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They are generally fun people<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They have similar problems<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They have money<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They don&#8217;t have to ask anybody else to spend money on stuff.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Starting any community is tough, how did you go about approaching the first wave of agencies to come on board?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At first Agency Hackers wasn&#8217;t a community really. For a long time it was just an email newsletter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It didn&#8217;t even have a website or a logo. I&#8217;m not sure even had a name for a while.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Eventually as I grew the&nbsp;newsletter I started asking people what they would buy from me and it turned out to be conferences and events and it took off from there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Running a community is actually quite difficult. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A lot of communities aren&#8217;t actually communities \u2013 they&#8217;re just dead chatrooms. So many people try to start communities and give up after a few months. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The thing is. you can&#8217;t rely on people talking to each other. You have to have smart people watching what&#8217;s going on, stirring the pot and surfacing stories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s actually closer to running a newspaper that is a community, that&#8217;s the odd thing.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At Agency Hackers, most of our employees are trained journalists. If you try to run a community without having any editorial experience, it doesn&#8217;t really gel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>What value do agencies get out of being a member?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Agency Hackers is part sounding board for agency leaders and part training for their teams. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One payment of $\/\u00a3200 per month covers the entire agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Agencies get access to two or three online events per week for their team and for senior leadership. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They also get access to a leadership development program and coaching groups where you can sit down with other agency leaders and work on your strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>What are your goals with the live events and what do you think makes a great conference?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We run more live events than anybody in this space and I think we are getting pretty good now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1443\" height=\"734\" src=\"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/agency-hackers-founder-events.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13541\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/agency-hackers-founder-events.png 1443w, https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/smush-webp\/2024\/07\/agency-hackers-founder-events-300x153.png.webp 300w, https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/smush-webp\/2024\/07\/agency-hackers-founder-events-768x391.png.webp 768w, https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/smush-webp\/2024\/07\/agency-hackers-founder-events-400x203.png.webp 400w, https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/smush-webp\/2024\/07\/agency-hackers-founder-events-800x407.png.webp 800w, https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/smush-webp\/2024\/07\/agency-hackers-founder-events-832x423.png.webp 832w, https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/smush-webp\/2024\/07\/agency-hackers-founder-events-1248x635.png.webp 1248w, https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/smush-webp\/2024\/07\/agency-hackers-founder-events-150x76.png.webp 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1443px) 100vw, 1443px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our events are bigger than others, in better venues, and they are very thoroughly researched. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You don&#8217;t just get consultants and freelancers&nbsp;standing up and trying to sell you stuff. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead you hear from actual agency people who have solved problems in an interesting way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That makes it a lot harder to curate because you have to find these people, and then coach them on the best way to tell their story. It&#8217;s not just a matter of shaking somebody&#8217;s hand and then they&#8217;ll rock up with six top tips on a slide deck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We always get quite detailed feedback on our events \u2013 which is painful sometimes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For example our last two live events were rated 7.5 or something by attendees. That&#8217;s not bad but it&#8217;s not amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The thing is \u2013 MOST conferences are a 7 out of 10, it&#8217;s just that the organisers don&#8217;t realise it because they aren&#8217;t asking for feedback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s why we were so chuffed this month when our agency operations&nbsp;conference was rated 9 out of 10 for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s a direct result of us getting feedback from people and putting it into practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For example, some people told us the facilitation from our team wasn&#8217;t good enough. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So we all went out and got facilitation training, and now people comment on how good it is!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Have there been any surprising hurdles or challenges you&#8217;ve had to over come you didn&#8217;t anticipate?<br><\/strong><br>We don&#8217;t really get any surprises. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The reason for that is we&#8217;re so obsessed with finding out what people want \u2013 and giving them it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The way I see it, if we always know what people want in our audience, and if we always just give them that, we won&#8217;t have any surprises and life will be good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>When did you decide to commit to Agency Hackers full-time and what was making that decision like?<br><\/strong><br>When I started Agency Hackers I had a full-time job. It was about three years before I quit to do Agency Hackers full time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The problem with leaving to start a business is that you have no money, so with Agency Hackers I wanted to wait until I was making more money from it than my actual job. I didn&#8217;t quite get to that point, but not far off it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What actually happened to push me into leaving was two things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I ran out of holiday. We were running so many events I physically didn&#8217;t have the holiday left to be able to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We ran one conference in October 2019 that I didn&#8217;t feel was very good. The speakers weren&#8217;t very prepared and it just felt a bit lame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I realised that to do a good job I was gonna have to go full-time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Agency hackers has really grown over the years, how do you see Agency Hackers developing in the coming years?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the things we need to do is start behaving like a proper specialist&nbsp;media business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That means figuring out how to work with sponsors better, make our live events even bigger and making our membership stronger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the things that&#8217;s really put us on the map is our Ibiza Super Summit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This was just a crazy idea I had one night after two glasses of wine, but it&#8217;s turned into the biggest event we do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It happens at the end of September, in Ibiza. This year will have 200 people there. Next year we are going for 400.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We&#8217;ve actually created the biggest business conference on the island of Ibiza completely by accident! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Over the next few years we want to grow it into like a Cannes festival for independent agencies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But, erm, in Ibiza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Running your own business, and especially one organizing live events, is tiring. What keeps you motivated?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I just keep thinking if we can give people what they want, our life will be easy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whenever something feels hard or I&#8217;m not sure what the next move is, it&#8217;s normally because we&#8217;ve forgotten what people actually want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anytime you get that feeling of pushing water uphill, it&#8217;s time to speak to people and figure out what they actually need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>From your experiences of being close to a community of successful agencies, what tips would you give to new or small agencies who are looking to grow?<br><\/strong><br>Hang around with bigger ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I work in a coworking space with a lot of people who run small design agencies that are basically the other and a couple of freelancers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Or they&#8217;re a small UX consultancy&nbsp;doing about 200K or 300K in revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s fine, but you will always be that size if you don&#8217;t hang around people who are bigger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Agency Hackers is approaching&nbsp;1 million in revenue. The only reason for that is that&nbsp;\u2013 because I run Agency Hackers \u2013 I spend all my time in a world where it\u2019s normal and expected to be a 1 million business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Show me your friends and I&#8217;ll show you your future. That&#8217;s either from the Bible or Judge Judy \u2013&nbsp;I don&#8217;t remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u27a1\ufe0f Find out more about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.agencyhackers.com\/\">Agency Hackers<\/a> and their upcoming online and in-person events.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class='code-block code-block-13' style='margin: 8px 0; clear: both;'>\n<hr>\n<br \/>\n<p>High-performance hosting for agencies. Use our high-spec cloud servers to deliver blazing-fast load times for your clients, every time. Get market-leading speed, security & customer support.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Scale with powerful, yet simple server\/site management tools<\/li>\n<li>Free WordPress staging, cloning, Edge Cache &amp; image\/code optimisation suite<\/li>\n<li>Free Email, DNS, CDN, SSL, SSH, Backups &amp; Security all baked-in<\/li>\n<li>Unlimited PHP Workers, Git Version Control, Unlimited Databases, ElasticSearch & Redis Cache<\/li>\n<li>Global reach with 60+ global data centres<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Find out how our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/agency-hosting\">Agency Hosting<\/a> will help boost your revenue and client satisfaction.<\/p>\n<br \/><br \/><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ian Harris is founder of Agency Hackers, a community that helps established agencies grow with help from fellow&hellip;","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":13547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[270,90,57],"class_list":["post-13536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-interviews","tag-agency","tag-interview","tag-web-design","cs-entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13536"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17170,"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13536\/revisions\/17170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}