Keep more of what your agency already bills.

20eighty makes sure your services run great, get results, and are profitable. Built for $3-5M digital agencies.

12 hrs
4.5hrs
to make a web page, down from about 12, after the content process was rebuilt.
A legal marketing agency
38%
of client hours went to work no service on the menu covered, mostly revisions.
A B2B web agency
+17%
more revenue the same hours would have earned at the agency’s own list rate.
A B2B web agency

Somewhere in your agency, there’s a service line that hasn’t kept up.

You probably already know which one. Your clients are mostly happy, but you’re further from the work than you’ve ever been, and you’re stretched too thin to dig in. It usually looks something like this:

  • The deliverable that goes back for a third round of revisions, and everybody acts surprised
  • Hours that blow way past the estimate and never make it onto an invoice
  • Your most expensive strategist formatting a report on a Thursday afternoon
  • AI tools open all day, and the work coming out isn’t any better for it
  • A client asking what AI means for their retainer, and nobody on your side can say what the work costs to make

Your team is good. Nobody has had a spare week to rebuild the work since AI showed up.

How you do the work matters.

It decides the quality your clients get, how your team feels at the end of the week, and how much of every dollar you bill you get to keep. In a lot of agencies, nobody ever chose how the work gets done. It built up one client request at a time, and it has run that way ever since.

AI raises the stakes. Built into the right steps, it takes the mechanical work off your team’s plate and gives them room to do their best work: the thinking and the strategy clients hire you for. Bolted onto a process nobody designed, it gets you the same work, faster, and sometimes worse.

Everyone owns their tasks, but nobody owns how the work gets done, and everyone who could fix it is billable. So the damn thing sits on the annual plan year after year.

Fix one service line in about five months.

Your P&L can tell you margin is low. It can’t tell you which steps make it low or what to charge for them. 20eighty works at the step level, one service line at a time.

  1. 5 weeks

    Find it

    The Assessment ยท $4,500

    A month of time data and your own numbers show where margin leaks, by role, team, client and service line. We pick the first line to fix.

    See how the Assessment works
  2. 3 months

    Fix it

    $5,000 or $10,000 a month

    We redesign that line step by step, build AI into the mechanical steps, reset the price, and hand it to an owner on your team.

  3. 30 days after

    Keep it

    Part of the fix

    We measure the same numbers the same way, before and after, and fix anything that slipped.

The work gets better first, and the margin follows.

That’s the order we work in. When a service line is done, you have:

You want to build something bigger.

For some owners that means getting to $10M. For others it means stepping back from the day-to-day, or selling when the time is right. Whichever it is, it sits on the same foundation: services that make money, and a team that runs delivery without you in every decision. Those are also two of the first things a buyer checks before making an offer. Building them now means you don’t have to pick an ending today.

What it looks like inside an agency.

A legal marketing agency

Content production, rebuilt

4.5 hrs
Per web page, down from about 12
$375
Less to make, per page

Briefs were never done the same way twice, so drafts went the wrong way and errors piled up in revisions. We put clear direction and an AI first draft at the front of the process, and fewer errors make it to the end.

Two digital agencies

A new AEO service, built from nothing

$2,100
To set up, per client
$600
A month per client, on under 3 hours of delivery

Clients were asking about AI search, and competitors were launching offers. Each agency now has its own AEO service, built around the team it already had and priced from what it costs to deliver.

A B2B web agency

Where the hours went

Diagnosis, no fix yet
38%
Of client hours went to work no service covered
17%
More revenue the same hours would have earned at list rate

Six months of task and time data showed what an hour of delivery earned in practice. The fixes are being picked now.

A legal marketing agency

Content production, rebuilt

The problem. Writers worked from briefs that were never done the same way twice, and some weren’t done well. Drafts went in the wrong direction, and errors piled up at the end in revisions and rework.

The opportunity. Fix the front of the process, and the back of it gets easier.

What changed. We wrote down what each piece and each client needs before anyone starts writing, used AI to build the brief, and had AI write the first draft for human editors to finish. A web page went from about 12 hours start to finish to about 4.5, and fewer errors make it to the end.

What it means. Every page takes about 7.5 fewer hours, or roughly $375 less to make at the team’s loaded cost. At about 100 pages a month, the old process needed more hours than the whole content and SEO team had. The new one takes about half of them, with room to take on more clients before anyone gets hired. Account managers spend less time cleaning up, and clients see stronger first drafts.

Two digital agencies

A new AEO service, built from nothing

The problem. Clients were asking about AI search, competitors were launching AEO offers, and neither agency had an answer of its own.

The opportunity. A list of AEO tactics is easy to find. The opportunity was building each agency’s own version around the people and processes it already had.

What changed. Each agency went from nothing to a complete AEO service, from its point of view down to scope, price, reporting and training. Both are rolling out now.

What it means. A new service clients are already asking for, priced from what it costs to deliver on day one. At one of the agencies, each client who adds the full version is about $2,100 to set up and about $600 a month on top of the retainer, for under 3 hours of delivery a month.

A B2B web agency

Where the hours went

The problem. The agency sold its work at a set hourly rate, and nobody had checked what an hour of delivery earned in practice.

What six months of task and time data showed. Client hours earned about 15% less than the list rate. Half the accounts earned less than 90% of list. 38% of client hours went to work no service covered, mostly revisions. Only about 60% of the team’s paid hours were logged at all.

The opportunity. Each finding points at a fix: pricing, scope, revisions, and how the team’s week gets planned. The fixes are being picked now.

What it means. At the list rate, the same hours would have brought in about 17% more revenue, roughly $190,000 over those six months. That gap is margin the agency was already earning on paper and giving back in the work.

Gary Magnone in his office 45-second video from Gary goes here
Who runs it

20eighty is Gary Magnone’s practice. Gary ran his own agency, has spent 15+ years agency-side in every seat from delivery to MD, and somehow still likes agencies.

The name comes from the 2,080 hours in a working year. We’d like more of yours to go to work you’re proud of, and fewer to the third round of revisions.

More about 20eighty

See what 1% more margin is worth to your agency.

The 5-minute quiz runs the math on your own revenue and shows the three areas most likely leaking. If you’d rather talk it through, the first call is 30 minutes with Gary. It’s mostly questions about how your delivery runs, and maybe one about the hoverboard on the shelf behind him.