For agencies that consider themselves "specialists": every quick win outside your niche slows the compounding of your expertise.

A couple examples from our Barrel Holdings agencies: Barrel has been steadily sharpening its edge in CPG commerce selectively taking food & beverage clients with omni-channel needs & stacking relevant case studies; and BX Studio has continued to go deeper into Webflow, helping launch several client sites each month while uncovering new integrations & edge cases.

Choosing those lanes was easy. Staying in them when a warm, slightly off-track lead arrives is the real test.

When we do veer, the true cost rarely shows up on the P&L:

• Three to nine months of team effort spent solving problems that don’t deepen our mastery

• Case studies that never make the portfolio because they don’t fit our story

• Lost momentum while a more disciplined specialist agency widens the gap

  
  

Maybe you end up pivoting and new opportunities open up because you didn't "limit" yourself. This is the story generalists embrace and it works out well for some and backfires for others.

There's nothing wrong with doing many things for many types of clients, the full-service industry-agnostic path has plenty of success stories. But to waffle midway between specializing and being generalist is a dangerous place to be.

Our record isn’t spotless. We’ve chased “adjacent” projects that later felt like detours. The takeaway isn’t to never deviate. It’s to weigh every opportunity against the long-term compounding of expertise you mean to build.

Before saying yes to the next appealing yet not-our-ICP/specialization opportunity, ask yourself: Will this deepen the capability our future clients will prize, or is it just short-term revenue dressed up as growth?