Is your agency suffering slow growth because you’re not managing your people well?

You don’t have to learn how to be a great manager the hard way. Years of ineffective delegation, discipline problems escalating into blowouts, and blown deadlines are the usual learning curve for agency owners.

I can help you level up faster.

Becoming a better manager is a skill that you can learn without all that pain. Doing so will reduce turnover, increase morale, reduce blown deadlines, and increase team output.

I coach overwhelmed agency owners who are struggling to manage their team. After 6 weeks, almost every one of them feels dramatically more confident and capable in their role, and is seeing better performance from themselves and their team.

I remember that first day…

It was 10 years and 3 months ago when I said, “I’m not cut out to be a team lead.”

I almost said to my boss, “Assign me back to the programming team, please!”

I was an awesome programmer. I was used to turning formidable technical and business challenges into fast, reliable, well-documented code. And I thrived under the pressure of needing to ship and the constant growth that came with that. But managing my former peers…

It Made Me Feel Like the Pointy-Haired Boss From Dilbert

I knew I was doing it wrong. I was:

• Heavy-handed when I tried to delegate
• Letting little stuff slide and regularly duking it out in super-stressful confrontations with certain members of my team
• Constantly getting pushback when I tried to set expectations with other departments
• Running my team too hard, and fighting low morale

The worst part was, I always felt like I was letting my team down! I mean, I was one of them seven months before!

Why couldn’t I be as good a manager as I was a programmer?

One day I asked my dad for help

See, my dad had been in management for 19 years. He wasn’t in tech, but he knew people, and he knew how to to get them to work together.

What my dad said blew me away.

It was so simple, and it changed everything for me.

He said…

“SON, EVERYONE DESERVES A GOOD MANAGER.”

My heart sank.

At the same time, I knew I had to become the manager my team deserved.

I started by doing one of the most difficult things I could imagine: I quit coding 100% and focused on doing what I was paid to do. I got to know my team. I built relationships and political capital with my team’s customers.

I read about management… a lot. And I found a manager I admired to coach me.

What I learned allowed me to:

• Feel more confident in managing programmers
• Avoid the daily discomfort of feeling bad at managing
• Perform better in my role
• Manage conflict better
• Delegate with confidence (without being a jerk)
• Communicate realistic expectations to external customers, my boss, and others
• Protect my team and get others to play by the rules
• Deal with employee discipline
• Handle situations from casual correction all the way to corrective action plans
• Plan the work in a realistic way with sufficient slack to accomplish both customer and team goals

I Want to Give You a Fighting Chance

You don’t have to learn how to be a great manager the hard way. I want to help you level up faster.

I get paid to coach overwhelmed technical managers. After 6 weeks, almost every one of them feels dramatically more confident and capable in their role, and is seeing better performance from themselves and their team.

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“Marcus helped me build a team I can delegate to effectively.”

Marcus helped me build a team I can delegate to effectively, and they build deliverables that I am proud to ship to our clients.

Before working with Marcus, I had “delegation deadlock”. I delegated poorly to my team because I knew I could do it faster if I just did it myself. But every time I did that, I shortchanged the long-term growth of my programming team, and ultimately my business.

Keith Perhac, Delfinet

With 18 years of experience and a $750-million track record of success, I help Team Leads, Programming Leads, and Software Managers just like you learn to be awesome managers.

To your success as a manager,

Marcus Blankenship

PS – If you have an immediate need to become a better technical manager, please contact me now. I can help.