AGENCY GROWTH CLUB
Why Agency Owners Keep Hiring the Wrong People
with Tom Jauncey
with Tom Jauncey
Most agency founders don’t have a strategy problem. They have a people problem. And the most expensive version of that problem isn’t the hire you fire in month two, it’s the one you kept for six months because you were too nice to let them go.
Tom Jauncey, founder of Nautilus Digital, has built a 27-person fully remote agency over eight years. He’s grown it steadily, expanded into AI-driven tooling, and retained clients without a single long-term contract. In a recent conversation on the Agency Growth Club, he was refreshingly honest about what’s actually worked, and what’s cost him.
Here are the lessons that every agency owner building a search marketing team needs to hear.
Tom’s hiring philosophy is blunt:
“I would always hire a person based on who they are. People are very good at elevating things on their CV.”
Most agency owners screen candidates the same way:
The problem is that skilled candidates have learned to game this process. They know which results to highlight. They know how to answer “what did you build last year?” without proof.
Tom’s approach cuts through it. At Nautilus, they’re looking for demonstrated output, case studies, real data, a genuine personal brand on LinkedIn. And beyond the credentials, they’re asking: what’s the vibe? Does this person bring energy? Are they self-sufficient? Will they go out and find better ways to do things without being told?
“We’re not a boring corporate agency,” Tom said. “So a boring corporate CV isn’t a good fit.”
“We’re not a boring corporate agency, so a boring corporate CV isn’t a good fit.”
– Tom Jauncey
The wrong hire, even a skilled one on paper, creates cultural drag, slows delivery, and costs far more than their salary in lost momentum.
Tom admitted something that most founders think but rarely say out loud:
“We’ve made some really bad decisions hiring the wrong salespeople, and I’ve been too nice, giving them more chances than they probably need.”
There’s a well-known principle in high-performance teams: hire thoughtfully, and move fast when it’s not working. Tom has lived both sides of getting this wrong. The cost isn’t just financial, it’s the team’s time, the client relationships impacted, and the opportunity cost of every month you delay the inevitable.
If the data isn’t there after a fair period, extend your process one more time, or don’t. But the worst thing you can do is let a misalignment run on momentum and goodwill.
This is where Tom was most direct, and most urgent.
“If agencies aren’t keeping up with what’s going on, they’ll either get fired or just start getting really bad client results. And then clients are going to leave and the agencies will go under.”
That’s not hyperbole. It’s the structural reality of what’s happening in search marketing right now. GEO, AEO, AI Overviews, LLMs, the landscape is shifting faster than most agencies are moving. And the teams that thrive aren’t the ones with the smartest founder. They’re the ones where every person on the team is actively learning, experimenting, and building.
At Nautilus, that culture is embedded. One team member independently built a full SEO audit tool inside Visual Studio Code, it scrapes a client’s URL, generates a full Nautilus-branded report, and produces a simplified version to share with prospects. They didn’t ask for permission. They just built it and brought it to Tom.
That’s the standard. Self-sufficiency. Proactive improvement. People who go out and find better ways to do their job before they’re told there’s a problem.
When you’re hiring into your search marketing team, this is the filter: are they actively using AI in their current role? Are they building things? Are they curious? If the answer is no, or a rehearsed yes, that’s a flag worth taking seriously.
Nautilus doesn’t lock clients into 12 or 24-month contracts. For most of their book, it’s 30 days’ notice.
Tom’s reasoning is simple:
“They obviously must like what we do and like the results we get for them. I don’t think there’s a need to lock them in.”
This is a high-standards position. It removes the safety net and forces the agency to earn the relationship every month. But it also creates a fundamentally different dynamic with clients — one built on trust and ongoing value, not obligation.
The way Nautilus supports retention is through communication. Not portals. Not automated reports. Actual conversations.
“A lot of agencies hide behind portals and stuff. But I think people want to build a relationship with whoever they’re working with.”
For agency founders managing search marketing teams, this translates directly into hiring decisions. You need people who can carry client relationships, not just deliver tasks. Account managers who have charisma, who can navigate difficult conversations, who treat every client interaction as a chance to build trust. That’s not on a CV.
You have to feel it in the interview.
Tom’s onboarding process ends with a question most founders never think to ask: what would you change?
“I hire people because they’re smarter than me. If something doesn’t work, tell me it doesn’t work. Why doesn’t it work? What could we do better?”
– Tom Jauncey
One of his social media hires walked in after two weeks and told him the onboarding process was “absolutely awful.” Rather than getting defensive, Tom listened. She redesigned the client onboarding questions from scratch, and the improved process made content creation faster and more consistent across the board.
That’s what A-player culture actually looks like. Not deference. Not silence. Honest, direct feedback delivered with the intention of making the agency better.
If you want that culture, you have to build it deliberately. Hire people who challenge you. Create the psychological safety for them to do it. And when they do, act on it.
Every lesson from Tom’s eight years at Nautilus points to the same thing: the agencies that grow are the ones that take people seriously as a competitive advantage.
Not just hiring the right people, but building the environment where the right people thrive, stay, and push the agency forward without being told to.
The wrong hire costs you £50,000 and six months of momentum. The right one builds tools that cut your audit time in half, challenges your process, and makes your clients want to stay without a contract forcing them to.
That’s the standard worth building towards.
If you’re scaling and don’t want hiring to slow down your momentum, that’s where we can help.
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