How to Scale a DTC Growth Agency with Common Thread’s Taylor Holiday

Taylor Holiday is the Managing Partner and CEO of Common Thread Collective (CTC), a fully remote eCommerce growth agency. CTC is the growth arm for clients that have product-market fit and are primed to scale thoughtfully leveraging the agency’s suite of tools and tactics.

A core function of CTC is that they own and operate brands in-house, enabling them to speak credibly to their clients about real-time best practices. We spoke with Taylor at length about:

• Scaling a business without compromising values
• Why having a niche offering is better in the long run
• Building a winning playbook for your client management

Train Good People and Get Out of Their Way

To grow a healthy business, Taylor believes that founders should separate themselves from the service they're offering to clients. It can be easy for founders to market themselves instead of their services or get involved with different aspects of a project. 

But this can impede growth. Focus first on empowering your team to operate the systems and processes you've built, then get out of their way. 

From Taylor’s hands-on experience growing brands, this is how you scale.

“If you believe in me, you should trust my ability to teach, train, and develop the people in my organization to develop an eCommerce strategy tailored to your business.”

Guiding Principles: Honesty at the Core

Early on, CTC accepted any project they could to bring in revenue. Today, Taylor and his team are transparent about where they add value and don't.

They’ve discovered that developing a competitive advantage over other agencies would be more operationally and financially sound for their business.

The model looks like this:

• Provide a niche service to your clients 
• Repeat and refine that service for your clients
• Understand the market demand based on your services
• Offer new services when you've built system and resources around your team

“When you introduce other services to clients, and you know you can't deliver a quality experience for them, it sets both the client and your team up for failure."

How to Build a Winning Client Playbook

CTC is thoughtful about the way they onboard their clients. Before they work with any business, CTC completes a "scouting report," assessing the company’s past and present business state.

They leverage those insights to create a growth roadmap, including a revenue forecast for the following twelve months. 

CTC manages all of this information inside their in-house tech stack – Statlas – an admin containing channel-specific media strategies to match the client’s marketing calendar. 

So Good They Can't Get Rid of You

Taylor believes that CTC's work is so beneficial that brands can't replace it with an internal hire. 

The way they justify keeping clients long-term boils down to two things:

• The Tech: CTC’s proprietary admin features forecasting, growth metrics, and inventory data is so rich that few agencies or internal hires could replicate it.
• The People: The team of 150+ offers unique skill sets suited to eCom that their clients could rarely source independently. Hiring the right people makes all the difference.

“Our goal is to deliver so much value that my customers can't imagine their life without us. We have so much to offer that an internal team could never replace.”

Clarifying Mission, Direction, and Leadership

Many founders lack clarity for their people. "It's a leader’s job to clarify their company's mission and where their company is going," offers Taylor.

And there's a difference between how clear you think you are and how your people perceive that. Unless you’re exhausted by repeating the same mission to your team, you're not clear enough.

While many companies view their employees based on how much money they cost rather than how much value they'll add, Taylor contests that this thinking is backward.

Instead of offering those employees the least amount of money possible, Taylor says to provide them with what they're worth. Those people will bring their best selves to work, paying dividends in the long run.

Taylor’s Hiring Traps To Avoid

In addition to Taylor’s philosophy on how startups should compensate new hires, he's also aware of the pitfalls of the hiring process.

Here are a few hiring blunders to avoid:

1. Hiring in Haste

Finding good people is the hardest part of running a service agency. No one ever complained about hiring the right person too slow, but hiring the wrong one too fast can be devastating.

2. A Company of Clones

Leveraging your network to find candidates is important, but it can also cultivate an environment where everyone thinks the same. There is strength in hiring diversity.

3. Doing Your Homework

Map out how a new hire will add value based on their skills and what you ask them to do. If you skip this part, you're setting them up for failure.

“Being thorough is being considerate; it's the best thing you can do for your business. If you build the right foundation early, you don't have to fix avoidable mistakes down the road when there's more at risk.”