AGENCY GROWTH CLUB
Adam Heitzman on 17 Years Running Higher Visibility: Cash Flow, Hiring, and Growth
Guest: Adam Heitzman
Guest: Adam Heitzman
Adam Heitzman has run Higher Visibility for 17 years, through COVID, a full shift to remote, and a stretch of stagnation he only broke by rethinking how the agency competed.
On this episode of the Agency Growth Club, he breaks down the client-alignment lesson that’s cost him most, why comparing yourself “apples to apples” against competitors is a losing strategy, and the daily notepad ritual he still uses to manage his own time.
Pulled from the transcript’s real per-line timestamps, matched to where each topic starts.
Heitzman points to a standing practice, not a COVID-specific fix, as the reason Higher Visibility weathered the pandemic better than some competitors: consistently scaling staff to match actual company growth, rather than hiring ahead of revenue. That discipline meant the agency was already prioritizing sustainability over rapid expansion when COVID hit, so the adjustment required was smaller than it was for agencies that had been over-hiring.
The agency still runs leaner today as a standing philosophy, specifically to avoid ever reaching layoffs again, which Heitzman calls the last resort.
Actionable advice:
Heitzman names two related lessons as the most expensive of his 17 years. The first: waiting too long to part ways with team members who don’t fit the culture or aren’t meeting expectations, a delay that drains resources, damages morale, and slows progress, even though it’s still, in his words, “a struggle today.”
The second: bringing on clients without clear alignment or expectations set upfront, which reliably leads to churn and disproportionate time spent trying to retain clients who were unlikely to stay regardless.
“It’s always difficult to do that, but in the long run it’s important to make those tough decisions early on, rather than waiting longer to delay what might be the inevitable.”
Josh raises a parallel from Chris Dreyer’s episode, that Rankings.io runs “hire fast, fire fast” rather than the more common “hire slow, fire fast.” Heitzman connects this to client selection: early on, agencies take on nearly any client to build revenue, but the quality of that client directly affects the team members who work with them day to day, not just the agency’s bottom line.
Heitzman is candid that early-stage agencies don’t have the luxury of being selective, Higher Visibility took on clients it might not otherwise have accepted while building up its base. The shift toward being pickier came only once the agency had enough of a client base and revenue cushion to afford saying no, aligning goals with a prospective client upfront specifically to reduce the churn risk that comes from mismatched expectations.
Actionable advice:
Heitzman describes a period where growth stalled below expectations, prompting Higher Visibility to take “a deep dive” into its competitive landscape. Using IBISWorld data, he found that the number of digital marketing agencies had grown from roughly 50,000 when Higher Visibility started (around 2008-2009) to hundreds of thousands today, a landscape he describes as far more cluttered, with niche agencies now covering nearly every vertical.
The agency’s first instinct when comparing itself to competitors was to ask “where are we missing the mark”, an apples-to-apples framing Heitzman now considers the wrong approach entirely. The shift: focus on genuine differentiation, what Higher Visibility does that competitors don’t even talk about, rather than trying to match the field on price or deliverables, which he describes as a race to the bottom.
“When you’re the same as everybody else, in a sea of this many agencies, it’s very difficult for customers to know and understand what the difference is between you and these other ones.”
Heitzman self-assesses continuously, but takes a deeper strategic look roughly every couple of years, the post-COVID period being the most recent trigger for a serious reassessment, which he credits with renewed growth since.
Actionable advice:
Heitzman’s answer centers on hiring for skillset and cultural fit specifically. Higher Visibility started as an in-person agency in Memphis, Tennessee, hiring mostly straight out of college and training people internally, partly because specialized skills like SEO and paid search weren’t taught at the level the agency needed.
The difficulty: Heitzman initially assumed training would close any skill gaps, but it often proved more costly and time-consuming than expected. Two changes fixed this. First, investing in automation for client reporting and internal task tracking freed up time for actual client strategy. Second, and larger, going remote after COVID and never looking back, which widened Higher Visibility’s talent pool to the entire country instead of Memphis alone, making it far easier to hire specifically for skillset and cultural fit rather than training generalists from scratch.
The shift to remote wasn’t voluntary timing, it came directly out of COVID-era uncertainty, as clients pulled back marketing spend and revenue tightened. Higher Visibility had to make a small number of layoffs to right-size the business during that period, a decision Heitzman still frames as difficult even while crediting the forced transition with ultimately positioning the agency to hire much stronger talent afterward.
Heitzman is upfront that building culture remotely is “still the hardest thing” and remains a continuous work in progress, not a solved problem. The agency runs monthly town halls where leadership shares company and revenue goals transparently, followed by each department lead speaking to what’s working and what isn’t in their area.
Beyond the formal structure, Higher Visibility runs regular informal touchpoints, short daily or near-daily “coffee break” calls, book clubs, and periodic in-person gatherings at the corporate office for remote team members specifically to build face-to-face rapport that a fully remote structure would otherwise lack.
Heitzman’s team works through three levers in a specific order, deliberately starting with what doesn’t require new spend before moving to what does.
Heitzman’s clearest hiring regret ties directly back to his answer about what he wishes he’d known: relying on a small local talent pool in Memphis for tech and marketing roles, hiring fresh graduates and training them internally. Some became exceptional, but many were still working out their career direction at that stage, adding risk to the strategy.
His advice to other agency owners: don’t limit hiring to your immediate geography. It restricts access to the right experience and fit, a constraint remote work has since removed entirely for Higher Visibility.
Heitzman credits Higher Visibility’s structure success to clearly defined roles split into two types: “brand success managers” who own the client relationship and rapport, and specialists dedicated to individual service lines, SEO, paid search, content, and analytics. The split ensures every project gets the right technical expertise while keeping client communication centralized through one consistent point of contact.
Heitzman’s hardest lesson as a leader has been knowing when to decline client requests or projects that aren’t a strong fit. Early on, agencies take on nearly anything to fill the pipeline, but those projects often distract from long-term strategic direction. Higher Visibility is now more deliberate about who it takes on, aligning client fit against its own expertise and goals, a discipline Heitzman acknowledges is genuinely difficult to practice early on, when any revenue still feels necessary.
Heitzman names time management as the hardest skill he’s had to build, describing the early struggle of getting pulled into day-to-day tasks his team could have handled just as well, instead of focusing on higher-leverage priorities.
His fix is deliberately low-tech: every morning, he writes his three biggest priorities of the day on a physical notepad, and treats completing all three as the goal before anything else gets attention. The underlying discipline is setting clear priorities, avoiding micromanagement, and trusting the leaders he’s hired to handle the details.
Heitzman is candid about the recurring temptation to just redo a piece of work himself rather than send it back for revision, since it’s faster in the moment. His argument against that shortcut: doing so creates a cycle that keeps him permanently stuck doing the work instead of building the team’s capability.
The fix is spending the extra few minutes giving direct feedback instead, which both grows the team member and strengthens the organization over time. With roughly 70-71 team members now relying on him and his two business partners for continued growth and advancement opportunities, Heitzman frames working “on the business” rather than “in the business” as an obligation to the team, not just a personal productivity choice.
Adam Heitzman credits a standing practice of scaling staff to match actual company growth (rather than ahead of it) and prioritizing sustainability over rapid expansion, which meant Higher Visibility was already positioned more conservatively than some competitors when the pandemic hit.
Using IBISWorld competitive research, Higher Visibility found the digital marketing agency landscape had grown from roughly 50,000 agencies to hundreds of thousands since it started, prompting a shift from apples-to-apples competitor comparison toward leading with genuine differentiation instead.
Heitzman names two: waiting too long to part ways with team members who weren’t the right cultural or performance fit, and bringing on clients without clear upfront alignment on expectations, both of which he says quietly drain resources and increase churn.
In order: improving existing sales close rates, generating more upsells through structured quarterly business reviews, and strengthening client retention through relationship-building, deliberately starting with levers that don’t require new spend.
Heitzman writes his three biggest priorities on a physical notepad each morning and commits to completing all three before the day ends, a practice he credits with correcting his early tendency to get pulled into tasks his team could have handled.
Higher Visibility pairs dedicated “brand success managers,” who own the client relationship, with specialists focused on individual service lines like SEO, paid search, content, and analytics, keeping technical expertise and client communication separate but coordinated.
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