7 Things agency CEO's should do to level up with AI
November 7, 2025
You built a successful content, PR, or communications agency. 50 people. Good clients. Solid reputation. Then AI hit, and suddenly the game changed while you were still playing by the old rules.
Your business model is the same as it was five years ago. Your team has scattered AI experiments but no systematic capability. And your clients? They're asking pointed questions:
"How are you using AI?"
"What's your AI strategy?"
"Why does this take three weeks?"
You can feel it. The credibility gap. The pricing pressure. The structural shift in what clients expect. What used to be called scope creep is now just reality. The math that made your business work is changing underneath you.
The train has left the station and you can jump on. 2026 will be different than 2025, nobody can exactly tell how, but we do know that the below applies to all.
So if I were you, I'd stop. Take a breath. Get calm. And do these seven things, in order, starting tomorrow.
1. Get honest about where you actually are
Most agencies are at CRAWL pretending to be at WALK. No systematic AI usage. Maybe some individuals experimenting. Lots of talk, little capability. Clients can tell.
Audit yourself honestly. What can your team actually do with AI right now? Systemically? How much better quality do you deliver? How much efficiency have you gained? What's real capability versus hopeful experimentation? Where are the gaps between what clients expect and what you can deliver?
You can level up fast, but only with clarity on your starting point.
2. Train a core group fast, then expand rapidly through the team
No time for slow rollouts or careful change management programs. Grab 5-10 key people who get it and will run with it. Get them fluent on fundamentals.
Not tools. Principles. How to prompt well. How to structure information for AI. What LLMs actually need to do good work. The stuff that transfers across any platform and survives when the next tool launches.
Then let them spread it through the team. You need 25% of your staff AI-literate by summer, not 5% of them playing around. Capability building that moves at speed.
And critically: don't focus on learning specific tools. Every tool is time consuming and you're learning how to navigate software, not AI. Tools are fleeting. Principles last. When the platforms shift, you're not starting over.
3. Connect your thinking and methodologies to AI
Build prompting libraries that capture how you think. Create quality frameworks that define what "good" looks like for your agency. Document your process in ways AI can apply.
Agency IP has always been hard to scale. One brilliant strategist can only work on so many accounts. One creative director can only review so many concepts. Your methodology lived in people's heads, which meant it lived in however many heads you could afford.
This finally makes your methodology transferable and consistent across the entire team. When a junior account person needs to write a strategy brief, they can access how your agency thinks about strategy. When someone's building a campaign, the system knows your quality standards.
This is how 50 people start operating like 75, without hiring 25 more.
4. Redesign your service model for new economics
What used to be called scope creep is now structural expectation shift. Clients expect more, faster, for similar budgets because they see AI capabilities elsewhere. Three rounds of revisions. Faster turnarounds. More channels. More content. More everything.
Your 5-year-old business model assumed human-hour economics. That math changed. You can't keep pricing like it's 2020 while delivering like it's 2025.
Redesign what you offer, how you price it, what AI handles versus what humans do. Figure out which parts of your work AI accelerates and which parts it can't touch. Price accordingly.
And measure what actually matters. Not "how many people are using AI?" but "are we delivering better work, faster, more profitably?" The business model only works if the economics work.
5. Build honest client positioning you can use right now
When clients ask "how are you using AI?" in December pitches, you need an answer that's true and confident.
Not "we're exploring it." That's death. Everyone's exploring it.
Not "we're AI-first." That's a lie and they know it.
Something honest: "Here's our roadmap. Here's where we are on that journey. Here's what we're systematically building. Here's what it means for how we work with you."
Honest positioning beats vague claims. Always. Clients respect agencies that are real about transformation over agencies that pretend they've figured it all out.
Get your story straight now for the Q1 planning conversations that are already starting.
6. View AI as multiplying your team's expertise and your agency's value
Your best people are getting recruited by AI-native agencies. Some are considering going independent because AI tools make that viable. The retention risk is real.
But the opportunity is also real. Upskill your team systematically and they become more valuable, more capable, and more loyal. People stay where they're growing and becoming better at their craft.
Don't frame AI as threatening their roles. Frame it as multiplying their expertise. The junior person who learns to work with AI well becomes far more valuable. The senior person who teaches AI their methodology extends their influence across the entire agency.
When your people get better, your agency gets more valuable. That's the virtuous cycle that keeps your team intact while competitors lose theirs.
7. Position yourself to guide clients through their own AI transformation
This is where real and true value lives in the new world.
Your clients are facing the same questions you are. How do we use AI? How do we transform? What stays the same and what changes? They need partners who can guide their journey, not novices who claim they've figured it out.
Lead clients to navigate AI adoption. Create shared ways of working with AI so you become more integrated into their every day and facilitate what they now need, and avoid getting pushed out because what you used to do gets AI'd.
The agencies that survive aren't the ones with the best AI tools. They're the ones who can guide clients through transformation while transforming themselves. That's the relationship that lasts. That's where the value is.
You built something valuable and you can adapt it, if you're honest about where you are, systematic about building capability, and clear about where value lives now.
2026 can be your year. 1) Get honest. 2) Get moving. 3) Get systematic.
The clients have already asked the questions. Time to have real answers.
