Author: Brian LaMee

Capacity, clarity, and leading when there is no margin for error

This post is a Q and A pulled from our conversation with Amy Anderson, CEO and co-founder of Wild Coffee Marketing. It is lightly edited for readability, but the answers stay in Amy’s voice.

 

Watch the full interview here

Q: First, what is Wild Coffee Marketing, and do you actually market coffee

A: I am the co-founder and CEO of Wild Coffee Marketing. We actually do not market coffee. It was a plant that was growing outside my window while I was writing a business plan in Miami, and it was growing up over the window, and I kept having to cut it back with a machete. I looked up what it was, and it was called wild coffee. So I thought it was a perfect name for a strategy led group that serves as a growth partner to our clients.

I would not describe us as a typical agency. I am a brand-side marketer of 30-plus years. When I say strategy-led, it is led by CMO thinking and fractional CMO services backed by a fractional marketing team. We have creative services and writing, but we are strategists at heart and lead every engagement with that.

 

Q: What did 2025 feel like from your seat

A: Postponements and scope demand. We were being asked to do more, and to be more nimble and flexible to drive results in a macroeconomic environment that had a lot of uncertainty.

Because we are strategy-driven, it was so much about our market contracting, where are we going to take the business, where is our area of focus, what are additional platforms, is our messaging right. In this environment, we were really asked to do more, and then had some unexpected turbulence in the market.

 

Q: You talked about operational clarity. What does that actually mean

A: Operational clarity is really important. Where are your resources going at any given time. When you have to pivot, you have to be able to pivot the resources as well.

So it is really understanding where I had capacity, what people were in what seats, were they in the right seats in order to deliver. That clarity from an operations standpoint is really important. You have to have processes. You have to have the right people in the seat.

 

Q: As a CEO, what are you focused on day to day

A: My primary areas of focus are always culture, and people, and the numbers. Capacity and utilization definitely comes up as a primary driver of those numbers.

Culture is the umbrella over it. Have you created a great place for your team to work. Feeling psychologically safe so they can be creative. We focused on work-life harmony. I do not even want to call it balance. That is very important, but we also work hard.

So to strike that balance of harmony and safety and kindness while demanding the rigor and the delivery is not the easiest balance to strike, but it is something we need to all be looking at.

 

Q: Capacity and utilization can get weird fast. What did you learn this year

A: You have to be careful with capacity number discussions. That is a major learning for me this year.

I hear 70 percent billable, 90 percent in an IT focused production firm. Well, we are strategy. How much discussion and work and participating in meetings that may not be directly billable do they do.

I took this year to figure out what that number was. The ambitious leader in me always wanted to drive the billable percentage. But what I started to notice is what is the impact on the team.

Given what I am asking of them, given what clients are asking of them, is it right to continue to try to drive that number up. The answer was no.

What I found is that the billable percentage is lower, and that has to be okay, and you have to run the business around that. But also, how do you talk about that with your team. It is sensitive.

I do not want people coming into meetings defending what their percentage is, and they cannot always control that. Maybe I did not sell enough, and our business development team did not sell enough. Maybe we did not sell something that directly correlated with billable work.

This year was really about learning caution and the nuance of how you handle your capacity in a turbulent market. When I have a lot of it, I have to make business decisions. When I have a little of it, I have to make staffing and operational decisions.

 

Q: You mentioned giving your team space to think. How do you protect that?

A: We will ask ourselves, what about this pivot. What about these 5 to 7 other strategies that we can deploy in this engagement. Our scopes are flexible because they have to be as an outsourced marketing team, and we have freedom and flexibility to do that.

If I do not give the team enough time to sit and think, they are not going to be able to deliver that. That is hard to quantify. That gray area of billable percentage.

We do reviews every 90 days, and they will ask, can you make sure the next quarter I have space to think.

 

Q: In a year where there is no margin for error, what do you lean on to make decisions

A: I have a conversation with my CFO quite a bit. He is always looking at margin. I think it is important. It is an important baseline.

What is your most profitable work. What do you think you and your team can lean into the most and be really proud of what you can produce. Where do you see it having a competitive edge in the market. One example of that for us is our branding work.

 

Q: You also talked a lot about foundations. Why does that matter so much right now
A: In most of our engagements, it does not make sense unless we start with that foundational piece.

Are you positioned right in the market? Because you cannot really afford to miss.

In this market with so much data, there is really not a lot of uncertainty with respect to return. Building that foundational layer is a key part of that. Then you get to know the business and each other so well that the subsequent activities and performance marketing comes from that.

When I say assertive strategy, it is bringing our experience to the strategy, who we are trying to target, bringing our point of view. That is what our clients are paying for. They want us to come in with our point of view, bringing our experience and energy.

 

Q: Let’s talk AI. What is your real take after living through it with a team
A: I really think I was looking for magic bullet platforms in 2025. Somebody brought one to me with highly trained marketing agencies, and I brought it to my team, and they said, Amy, that is what we are doing.

My big learning was that it is these micro interactions with AI, or AI features being built into multiple platforms that my team is using. That is creating efficiency and broadening the power of their work. It is expanding an idea set, not replacing the people.

Twelve months ago, there was slop work happening. A few prompts, copy-paste into a document, without realizing limitations. So, even helping them build project structure, helping them build instructions, turning off the model so it does not share our IP, that was a big one.

Your eye has to be on the ball, but not on it all the time. Keep looking and thinking and talking and asking, but be sensitive to your team.

 

Q: Any final thoughts heading into 2026
A: Finding balance in the capacity and the utilization, finding balance in the scale, controlled growth, figuring out how to ride these turbulent times going into 2026.

But I am super optimistic about this year. I find even-numbered years tend to be my better years than odd years, looking back on my life. Fingers crossed.

Watch the full recording here

 

If you have a modern tech stack but spreadsheets are still driving planning decisions, you are not alone. This shows up in agencies of every size, including the well-run ones.

Spreadsheets are not showing up because anyone is careless. They show up because they create speed and flexibility, and are good at answering questions that live between systems, but often at the cost of false confidence.

As things get more chaotic, that spreadsheet layer becomes less forgiving.

What is missing is not another execution or reporting tool. It is a dedicated planning layer designed to absorb change without freezing assumptions.

This post reframes spreadsheets as a signal, not a mistake. A signal that your stack has gaps in planning, trade-offs, and foresight.

Spreadsheets are the universal adapter

Most agency stacks do two things very well.

Execution tools show what is happening

Project management tools track work in flight, deadlines, owners, and staffing decisions that have already been made.

Finance tools show what happened

Accounting and reporting tools capture invoicing, costs, margins, and revenue truth.

Both matter. But many leadership questions sit between these systems.

Examples:

• Can we take on new work without creating margin risk?

• Do we have the right people for likely demand, not just signed work?

• What happens to utilization and profit if scope expands or timing slips?

• Are we pricing deals based on real delivery capacity or assumptions?

This is where spreadsheets appear. They connect the dots when no system gives leadership a single, trusted view.

Why leadership planning keeps falling back to spreadsheets

Agencies rely on spreadsheets for a few consistent reasons.

1. Data lives in separate places

Pipeline lives in the CRM. Delivery lives in the project management tool. Financial truth lives in accounting. Leaders need one narrative across all three, and spreadsheets make that possible quickly.

2. Planning requires assumptions, not just facts

Execution and finance systems track commitments and outcomes. Planning is conditional. Spreadsheets make it easy to model scenarios without heavy configuration.

3. Tradeoffs are hard to see across projects

Many tools can show project health one project at a time. Fewer can show what happens when the same person gets pulled across multiple deadlines with competing urgency. Spreadsheets create a cross-project view, even if it requires manual upkeep.

4. The business changes faster than systems get adjusted

Agency models evolve fast. Spreadsheets adapt instantly.

The risk is not the spreadsheet. It’s what happens under volatility

When spreadsheets are used for occasional analysis, they are a strength.

Fragility shows up when spreadsheets become the planning layer while the environment gets more volatile.

Volatility often shows up commercially as:

• Scope expansion after kickoff
• Client pauses and restarts
• Rush work, reshuffling priorities
• Approvals slipping and compressing timelines

In that environment, spreadsheet planning gets tested.

Risk 1. Plans drift out of date faster than decisions slow down

A spreadsheet is a snapshot. In a world of constant change, snapshots go stale quickly, while leadership decisions still occur weekly or daily.

Risk 2. Growth becomes more stressful than it needs to be

This rarely creates one visible failure. Instead, it produces margin drift, pricing conservatism, delivery strain, and growth hesitation that only become apparent after decisions are locked in.

Risk 3. Planning becomes dependent on heroic effort

Many agencies have a spreadsheet that quietly powers key decisions and depends on one or two people to keep it current. That is not a team flaw. It is a structural dependency that concentrates planning risk in people rather than systems.

The executive lens: spreadsheets show where the stack stops

A spreadsheet appearing in a modern stack is usually a signal that leaders are asking planning questions that the stack does not answer cleanly.

So the useful question is not “Why are we still using spreadsheets?”

It is:

“What commitments are we making without a reliable, forward-looking planning system?”

Once you ask that, the spreadsheet becomes a helpful indicator, not something to criticize.

A practical audit for leaders

If you want to act without creating a massive internal project, run this audit.

Step 1. List the leadership decisions you repeat

Focus on decisions, not reports. Pick five to eight, like hiring timing, deal prioritization, when to reshape scope, and how to staff new work without harming delivery.

Step 2. Identify how each answer gets built

Look for patterns:

• manual exports and copy-paste
• reconciling multiple sources of truth
• multiple versions of the same file
• heavy reliance on one person’s upkeep

These are not failures. They signal where decision-making lacks system support.

Step 3. Name what repeatedly breaks the plan

Ask: “What happens that makes our plan wrong within days?”
Those answers define what your planning layer must absorb.

Step 4. Decide what stays in spreadsheets and what should graduate

Spreadsheets are great for one-off analysis and quick scenario modeling.

They get riskier when they drive ongoing capacity planning, cross-team staffing decisions, and recurring forecasting that leadership depends on.

If a spreadsheet drives recurring leadership decisions, it is functioning as a planning system, without the reliability, auditability, or adaptability a system requires.

A calmer stack has a clear planning layer

Most agency stacks have execution covered and financial reporting covered.

What is often missing is a dedicated planning layer that connects demand, capacity, timing, and tradeoffs in a way leaders can trust week to week.

This is the role of strategic resource and capacity planning. A system designed to connect demand, capacity, timing, and financial impact before commitments are made.

Parallax can be one example of that planning layer, but the point here is the category, not the vendor. The goal is to reduce reliance on spreadsheet glue for the highest impact decisions.

The point is not to eliminate spreadsheets
Spreadsheets will always exist in modern stacks.
They are too useful.

The goal is to notice what they are telling you, especially as volatility rises.

If spreadsheets keep appearing, leaders are trying to see around corners without a system designed to support them. When those spreadsheets drive decisions about growth, pricing, and staffing, the risk is not inefficiency. It is committing the business based on plans that cannot adapt fast enough when reality changes.

Brian LaMee
Recovering Professional Service Executive
Parallax