Mark Orttung - Hard-Won Lessons from Scaling an Eight-figure Services Firm

Most agencies never crack eight figures. Mark Orttung helped one grow to $130M—by breaking every "safe" rule.

In this episode, we dive into what agency owners at the $1–5M mark can actually do to punch past the common growth ceilings.

The most important shift?

He stopped selling to job titles—and started selling to buyers with something to prove.

⏱ Timestamps

00:00 – Intro: Why agencies need a rethink

00:36 – Mark’s background: Accenture, startups, bill.com, Nexient

02:23 – Studying AI in the 90s: symbolic vs neural nets

04:30 – Stepping into Nexient at $39M—and losing $5M first

06:59 – Early differentiation struggles and customer perception

08:29 – Building product-style squads inside a services business

10:38 – The big leap: shifting from selling people to selling outcomes

11:08 – Simplifying the pitch: “life’s too short for crappy software”

13:12 – Saying no to revenue: the scary path to focus

14:14 – Selling without data: enterprise outbound as testing lab

16:26 – Creating their own conference as a positioning feedback loop

19:34 – Cross-industry client base: healthcare to gas utilities to tech

20:25 – Specializing by service vs vertical in today’s world

24:52 – Growth “walls”: from founder-led to decentralized structure

29:21 – Change agents: how to spot internal buyers who take risks

32:40 – The next wall at 150M and why he chose to exit

36:56 – Getting ghosted on a term sheet, then driving a bidding war

40:17 – The Project Works origin story: from spreadsheet to SaaS

42:28 – Why every services firm needs better resourcing visibility

47:29 – What’s next: proposal automation, AI, and growth tooling

48:49 – Where to find Mark and Project Works

Key Points

• Why scaling past the eight figures in a services firm requires breaking the founder bottleneck
• Why “life’s too short for crappy software” became a high-converting mission
• The opportunity of building or early adopters—not the mainstream
• How to identify and win over internal change agents in large enterprises
• How Project Works helps agencies resource smarter and prevent margin leaks
• Using conferences as real-time feedback loops for positioning
• Why now is the time to apply AI to services growth ops—especially proposals

Links & Resources:

• 🔗 Links & Resources

🔗 Book a strategy call with Dan: https://salesschema.com/work-with-us/

🎙 More episodes of the Digital Agency Growth Podcast: salesschema.com/podcast

• Project Works – https://www.projectworks.com
• Connect with Mark on LinkedIn – Mark Orttung