The Scale-or-Stay Fork
Both growing big and staying small can work - what kills agencies is drifting between the two without deciding.
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The mechanism
The chart tracks profit per person over time as two paths that split at a point marked the fork. One path stays small on purpose, caps the team, and profit per person keeps rising. The other hires ahead of the work, spikes the headcount, then has to cut back, and profit per person crashes. Both end points are fine; the slow drift between them is what does the damage.
Part of Persistence. Infrastructure that keeps growth compounding past founder heroics.