The Performance-Based Model: Why We Don't Charge Setup Fees or Monthly Retainers

brendan0573
9 hours ago
5 min read

Picture this: you're a coach doing decent revenue — maybe $10-20K a month — and you've decided it's time to bring in an agency to help you scale. You start taking calls. Every single one goes the same way.

"Our onboarding fee is $2,500. Then it's $4,000 a month for management. You'll start seeing results around month three."

Month three. You've already spent $14,500 and you haven't seen a single result yet. Just vibes and Slack messages about "strategy alignment."

I've talked to dozens of coaches who've been through exactly this cycle. They pay the setup fee. They pay two or three months of retainers. The agency produces some content, runs some ads, books a handful of calls that go nowhere. Then they either quietly stop delivering or the client finally pulls the plug — down $15-25K with nothing to show for it.

Here's the thing: this isn't a story about bad agencies. It's a story about a broken model.

The Fundamental Problem With Retainers

When an agency charges you a monthly retainer, they get paid whether you get results or not.

Think about that for a second. Their revenue is completely disconnected from your outcomes. They invoice you on the 1st regardless of whether you booked zero calls or fifty calls that month. There's no mechanism forcing them to prioritize your success over the next client's onboarding call or their own internal meetings.

I'm not saying agencies on retainers are lazy or malicious. A lot of them are genuinely trying. But the incentive structure is just fundamentally misaligned. When money comes in automatically every month, it's human nature to deprioritize the account that isn't squeaking loudest.

And clients know this. Which is why you spend the first sixty days doing check-in calls, asking for reports, wondering if you're actually getting real attention or if you're just another logo on their client roster.

The agency is optimizing for client retention — keeping you just happy enough to not cancel. You're optimizing for growth. Those are not the same thing.

How Our Model Actually Works

We don't charge setup fees. We don't charge monthly retainers.

Instead, we operate on a performance-based revenue share. We build the funnel, run the traffic, write the copy — all of it — and we take a percentage of the revenue we generate together. If we don't produce, we don't profit.

That's it. That's the whole model.

What this means practically: if we put together a webinar funnel for you and it flops, we eat that loss. Our team's time, the ad spend coordination, the creative build — that's on us. You're not sitting there writing checks for work that didn't work.

When it does work, we share in the upside. You grow, we grow. The incentives are completely aligned.

Why Most Agencies Can't Do This

The short answer is they'd go out of business.

Offering a performance-based model means you have to actually be confident in your ability to deliver results consistently. Not sometimes. Not for certain clients in certain niches if the planets align. Consistently.

Most agencies can't make that bet because they don't have the certainty. They have a general process they apply across industries, a templated approach, and hope that it works. That's not a knock — building a system that produces predictable results across different markets is genuinely hard work and takes years. They just haven't done it yet.

We've spent years building out and testing our funnel system across dozens of coaching and consulting niches. We know what works for high-ticket offers. We know what copy angles convert for different audiences. We know which traffic sources produce buyers versus window shoppers. We've made enough mistakes with our own money — and dialed in enough wins — that we can now make bets on clients with a reasonable level of confidence.

If we couldn't, we'd be charging retainers too.

The Trust Signal You're Not Thinking About

Here's something I want you to sit with: when an agency is willing to put their own money on the line, it changes everything about how they operate.

First, it forces them to be selective. We cannot afford to take on a client we don't genuinely believe we can help. If we do, we work for months and make nothing. That's not sustainable. So we only say yes when we're confident we can deliver.

Second, it forces them to actually care. When we're running your funnel, we're not watching the clock. We're watching the conversion rates. We're rewriting the email sequence at 10pm because it's underperforming and that matters to us financially, not just as a matter of professional pride.

Third, it gives you leverage you don't have with a retainer agency. You can't really fire a retainer agency mid-month without losing money. With us, if we're not delivering, you're not paying — so there's nothing to hold you hostage.

I started thinking about this model because I watched too many coaches — smart people with great programs — get completely burned by agencies that promised the world and delivered almost nothing. They'd come to us broke and skeptical, having already spent their marketing budget on retainers that went nowhere. And honestly, I get the skepticism. I'd be skeptical too.

The performance model isn't just about protecting the client financially. It's about rebuilding trust in an industry that has a pretty serious credibility problem.

What "Selective" Actually Means

I want to be straight with you about something: we say no to a lot of people.

Not because we're trying to seem exclusive or create artificial scarcity. It's because our business model requires us to be honest about fit. If we take on a client with an offer that isn't dialed in, or who isn't ready to actually close calls when we book them, or whose audience we genuinely don't know how to reach — we don't make money. So we don't take that client.

When we do get on a call with someone, we're asking real questions. What's your offer? What have you tried? Who's your buyer? What does your sales process look like? We're not just qualifying budget. We're trying to figure out if we can actually help.

If we can't, we'll tell you. I'd rather have that conversation upfront than six months in when we've both wasted time.

When we do say yes, you know it's because we genuinely think we can move the needle for you — not because we wanted another retainer on the books.

What This Means for You as a Client

Lower financial risk. You're not writing a check and hoping for results. We're building and running your funnel before we see a return.

A partner that's actually invested. We're not a vendor you manage. We're in the business of growing your revenue because it directly grows ours.

Honest communication. When something isn't working, we tell you. There's no incentive to dress up a bad month with fluffy reports and vague optimism. We need to fix it, so we'll say it's broken.

And if it doesn't work out — if for whatever reason the funnel doesn't perform the way we expected — you haven't lost a $20K retainer commitment. That's the deal we're putting on the table.

Is it unusual? Yeah. Most people I talk to have never heard of a marketing agency that operates this way. That's kind of the point. The standard model works great for agencies. We decided to build something that works better for clients.

If you want to understand more about how the model works in practice, or see if it might be a fit for what you're building, reach out. We'll have a real conversation — no pitch deck, no fake urgency.

Brendan Kelly is the founder of Video Growth Systems, a performance-based marketing agency that helps coaches and consultants book qualified sales calls. With over $10M in webinar copywriting experience, Brendan and his team specialize in building high-converting funnels that attract prospects who are ready to buy.