Elias Rubel

Profit Labs

Bookkeeping & accounting for agencies who are serious about profitability.

NoBoringDesign (NBD)

The go-to design agency for portcos at Sequoia Capital, A16Z, Bessemer, Y Combinator and countless others.

Owner

Matter Made

Companies like Jasper.ai, Dropbox, Loom, Yelp, G2, Calm for Business, Productboard and many others trust Matter Made to smash their yearly growth targets through best in class paid media.

Glider

I used to think I didn’t have any specific skill, and sometimes I still feel like a total impostor. 

$10M+ in profit is a crazy number but the path has been all but smooth. 

Imagine losing $200k/mo (coming straight out of your bank account) for 6 months while you try to give your team stable pay in the face of a collapsing market. 

Imagine stumbling around in the dark, pretending to know what you’re doing while others rely on your direction. 

Building small businesses isn’t easy, which is why I’m building mine in the open. 

For all of you to see. 

The ups, the downs, the hardships and the wins. 

I hope you’ll join me for the journey.

I hope sharing this publicly sparks further inspiration and sheds light on what can be for many (myself included) one of the most wild rides of your life.  

Let’s build together. 

---------------------

Investor / LP:
- A16Z
- Accel Ventures
- Tribe Capital
- GTMFund
- Offline Ventures

Angel Investor:
- Endgame
- Northbeam
- Grain
- Folk

Marketing Advisor:
- Jasper.ai
- Dropbox
- Loom
- Productboard
- Grain
- TestBox
- G2

Note: I’m no longer actively advising or investing in startups.

Companies like Dropbox, Hopin, G2, Calm for Business, Loom, Productboard and many others rely on Matter Made to smash their yearly growth targets through best in class Go-To-Market programs.

Our work ranges from championing high velocity digital campaigns, to driving Account Based Marketing programs, to diving deep into persona driven messaging & positioning, to launching Product Led Growth Initiatives, to full funnel conversion rate optimization.

Our clients range from post-IPO enterprises, to fast growing scale-ups backed by Sequoia Capital, True Ventures, NEA, Redpoint, and just about every other big name in the valley.

www.mattermade.co

Last night, I built a web app using Lovable that would have taken me a year with 3 full-time engineers. It solves the 1 problem I've heard from 100s of agency owners:

Getting objective client feedback without being the bad cop.

One of two things always happens around client <> agency feedback:

1. You hound clients to complete CSAT surveys, and there's awkward nagging that makes everyone uncomfortable.

2. You passively let the relationship deteriorate without ever knowing what set them off.

And I've scoured the market hoping for a tool like this to exist, but it didn't.

So I decided to build it myself.

Here's exactly how it works:

1. I send clients their monthly dashboards, new website assets, or any deliverables behind a gated link.

2. They can't access anything until they fill out a 30-second CSAT survey.

3. Every response feeds into my backend, where I can see average CSAT across my entire portfolio and individual client happiness scores over time.

4. For larger client teams, I can drill down to see feedback broken down by team member so I know exactly who's happy and who's not.

I can set custom gating rules to:

- Always gate every deliverable.
- Set surveys on a rolling 45-day basis.
- Trigger on specific milestones, like onboarding completion.

For the first time ever, I can track client satisfaction like any other KPI without feeling like I'm bothering anyone.

I'm rolling this out with NoBoringDesign and Profit Labs this week. 

P.S. - This tool is fully functional across any webpage as of now…comment if you want a link to use it for your agency (free plan for early adopters).

Eli Rubel

$10M+ in agency profit since 2020. Follow to build a more profitable agency.

Profit Labs just passed $20,000 MRR, less than 100 days after our launch 🙌 Here’s the journey from start → now:

September 2024: Had the idea for Profit Labs.

October 2024: Started to model out the business.

November 2024: Started to put feelers out for the first hires

December 2024: Started working on messaging, branding, etc.

January 2025 - April 2025: Got website up, completed pricing packages.

May 2025: Launched Profit Labs expecting to grow to $50K MRR as fast as my prior two agencies. Took first 14 sales calls and went 0 for 14. 

June 2025: Questioned if the business was even worth pursuing. Rethought all packages, positioning, and pricing as a last-ditch effort.

July 2025: Took 5 more sales calls with new look and feel, closed 2 of them. Also closed our biggest deal on a 12-month term right after.

August 2025: Pipeline keeps coming and closing. We’re well on our way to $30K MRR, and I feel more energized than ever about this business.

To everyone who’s been here from the start, thank you. I’m beyond grateful and very excited to keep serving agency owners as best we can 🤝

27 sales calls. 3 months of building. $0 in revenue. 7 major f*ckups. Here's everything that went wrong before Profit Labs hit $23,750 MRR:

1. Pricing was completely off.

I started at $2,950/month for our entry tier. But after 10+ sales calls with zero closes, I realized agencies weren't willing to pay that much for what I was offering.

2. Packaging confused everyone.

People thought I launched a SaaS app initially instead of an accounting service. Turns out when you make people guess what you're selling, they usually guess wrong (who knew?).

3. Messaging and Copy was a disaster.

I got distracted by sexy ideas instead of sticking to the core business tenets. Bookkeeping is super sticky, and most agencies aren’t good at modeling their financials and team structure into the future, so I should’ve just built a bookkeeping firm that actually understands agencies and solves these problems. 

4. The brand was too hip and aesthetic.

I learned that agency owners want their accounting firm to be buttoned-up and professional, not fun and trendy like some startups.

5. Zero onboarding process.

I was basically just winging it with our first few clients, which went about as well as you'd expect. We quickly cleaned that up.

6. ICP mismatch was brutal.

I targeted $1-3M agencies thinking they'd feel the pain, but they don't have the stomach for hard financial decisions. Meanwhile, larger agencies who were actually feeling the pain wanted to hire this function in-house, not outsource to an agency.

7. Mistakenly turned down $$$.

We had three prospects that wanted to work with us but were registered in Canada. I mistakenly thought we couldn't service Canadian businesses due to regulations. A few texts and emails proved me wrong.

Here's what I learned: building your third agency business isn't easier just because you've done it before. I had to take my lumps just like every other new business owner.

That said, I know how to weather the storm a bit better now. Onwards and upwards!

P.S. - If you're fed up with crappy bookkeepers and generic accounting firms that don't understand agencies, let's fix that. Profit Labs gives you agency-specific insights so you can run a more profitable business without the worry. DM me.

Screw it - 10 agency-building opinions I have that most people won't agree with me on:

1. Time tracking down to the hour is 100% necessary.

2. Expense cutting is a waste of time. Price increases and better delivery models will put more money in your pocket than saving $150/month on Adobe seats.

3. If you're not willing to fire low performers, you're not serious about running a business.

4. Most agency owners fly by the seat of their pants and stumble into 20% margins when they could have 40%+ if they worked backwards from their profit goals.

5. Hiring based on "vibe" matters more than qualifications. Every time I've ignored my gut and hired the perfect candidate on paper, they either quit or got fired.

6. Internal meetings are the biggest profit killer. 30-40% of your team's time sitting in "alignment calls" instead of doing billable work is insane.

7. Free work to grow your agency isn’t a great option. Strategic* free work is an amazing one.

8. Agency owners who claim 60%+ margins at 7 figures of revenue are either lying or don't understand the difference between gross and net margins.

9. Working 25 hours a week while generating millions in profit is possible, but only if you're willing to give up control and build actual systems.

Let me know which one(s) you think I’m crazy for.

Agency Owner: “I can't productize my services. Every client is unique!” Translation: I enjoy making my life unnecessarily difficult.

We all want to promise the world, so clients stick around for eternity

But truth is, custom services create chaos for everyone involved.

- Your sales team has a hard time upselling because they don’t know how much it costs.

- Your service delivery team is constantly confused about what they're supposed to deliver.

- You're stuck guessing on pricing every single time.

When we first launched NoBoringDesign, we fell into this exact trap.

Every project was custom. Every proposal took hours. Our delivery team was stuck in hell trying to figure out the scope boundaries.

Then we implemented a new approach to productize our offering and have won more business while worrying about pricing less:

1. Intake Form: We score every project requirement on a standardized form.

2. Price Calculator: The scores feed into a mathematical calculator that determines exact pricing.

3. Contract Selection: The price calculation dictates which pre-written contract template we use.

4. Fulfillment Requirements: The contract determines exactly what our team needs to deliver.

This actually gives you the best of both worlds. We can still handle unique requirements. They just become clearly defined add-ons with transparent pricing.

TL;DR: Stop making everything custom. Streamlining your service delivery and creating a productized offering is one of the biggest levers to improving profitability.

PS - If you're an agency owner who wants actual financial visibility without the accounting headaches, DM me. Profit Labs handles the boring stuff so you can focus on what matters.

I’m disgusted. I just audited an agency’s books: $2.1M in revenue, $97K in profit.

After 2 hours digging through their QuickBooks, I found $340K in profit they were hemorrhaging without realizing it.

This is the case for more agency owners than you think. 

They think they know where their money goes. But when I audit their books, I find the same problems every single time:

→ Labor costs eating 73% of revenue (should be 55-60%)
→ "Marketing" expenses that are actually owner perks
→ Clients billed at rates from 2019 while costs inflated 40%
→ Contractors getting paid for hours never delivered to clients

I get that maintaining healthy net margins isn’t easy. Heck, even after keeping multiple agencies above 40% for years, I still find it tough sometimes.

But today, I’m here to help:

I want to PERSONALLY audit your agency’s books, 100% FREE.

I’ll highlight where you’re bleeding money AND give you a detailed action plan exactly where you're losing money and how to fix it.

This is NOT a sales call. 

Comment "AUDIT" and I'll send you the link.

PS - When you comment for an audit, I'll also send you our Profit Model template 100% free.

My new agency, Profit Labs, scaled from $0 - $23,000 MRR in 90 days, and now we're STUCK. Behind the scenes of the last 21 days:

WINS

1. We hired two finance managers instead of one to build redundancy. Both are 10/10 candidates, so we have coverage and optionality.

2. Our bookkeeping team took several of our clients books from chaos to completely under control.

3. The Hopes, Dreams, and Fears workshop launched with clients and they're saying "this is f*cking awesome." Creates real bonding and aligment early in relationships.

LOSSES

1. Sales pipeline is crickets - only one call this week with a vague "end of year maybe" timeline. I've been so heads down in making sure our first set of clients are happy that I really haven't focused on sales or BD. Next week I’ll begin to focus on BD again so it doesn't come back to bite us later. 

2. Cold email went from 7 meetings in the last week with our old provider to zero meetings in two weeks with the new one. This was planned for and expected (ramp up period) however it’s still a kick in the gut to have to wait. 

3. I over-promised on dashboard delivery timelines because I didn't realize how messy every client's books would actually be. You'd be shocked at how some agencies' books look. To that point, check the PS for help on that 👇

TAKEAWAY: it's not supposed to be easy. I hope seeing an agency owner on his third time around still deal with problems like this is comforting to you to some degree.

PS - I want to personally audit your agency's books and give you an actionable recommendation plan to increase margin 100% free. If that's interesting to you, comment "audit" and I'll send you a link to book.

People will work 50-60 hours per week on their business to gain time and financial freedom, then get it, only to not enjoy the fruits of their labor.

It’s me. I’m people.

After building and handing off my prior two agencies to Managing Directors, a couple of months ago, I took on my third venture.

In the 6 weeks that followed, even though I had been through this 2x before, I felt guilty every waking minute I wasn’t actively doing something for Profit Labs (sound familiar?).

It’s a terrible feeling, and one I’m sure many people reading this relate to.

After some pretty serious soul searching, only now, 90+ days into my new venture and 15+ years into my career, am I realizing that it’s okay to take a step back here and there to enjoy the benefits of what you’ve built (it’s still an ongoing battle, to be fair).

The business won’t die, and you won’t either. Hell, you’ll probably come back better for it.

Remember: Enjoying the fruits of your labor (and the process itself) is the whole point. 

Don't let it take you as long as it took me to realize.

90% of agencies at $1,000,000+/year flounder at sub-20% margins. I easily add another 5-10% profit with this "Goldilocks" pricing strategy:

I think about pricing as a customer journey with levers I can pull to move clients through my structure.

The Goldilocks approach guides clients to the middle tier through psychological positioning.

Here's how I'd set it up:

→ Entry Price Point: Gets clients in the door

→ Middle Tier: Where you want everyone (include features your ICP really wants)

→ Premium Tier: Makes the middle tier feel reasonable and creates upsell runway

The psychology is simple.

Most clients avoid the cheapest option (feels risky) and the most expensive (feels excessive). They naturally gravitate toward the "just right" middle option.

But this only works if you make the jump from entry to middle small enough that it feels like a no-brainer.

For instance, if you're selling an entry tier at $2,900 and the next jump is only $500 more, spending an extra $500 to get tremendous additional value becomes an obvious choice.

That's how you quite literally create an extra 5-10% margin out of thin air.

My point: Stop thinking about individual price points. Start thinking about the journey and what levers you can pull to guide clients to the tier you want them at.

P.S. - If you're an agency owner who wants actual financial clarity, we should chat. Profit Labs handles the boring stuff so you can focus on what matters.

“Let’s hop on a call to discuss this” is the silent margin killer plaguing way too many agencies.

More specifically, I’m talking about internal meetings. Truth is, every time a salaried employee is sitting on a call not directly related to a client project, you are losing money.

Yet, especially with bigger agencies, heavy internal meeting culture often becomes the norm, eating away at margin 0.1% by 0.1%.

It’s your job to stop it.

That's not to say you shouldn't have internal meetings, but it is to say you need to be very conscious about not letting 30-40% of a team member's time be eaten up by non-revenue generating activities like this.

And the best way to ensure this stays under control, whether you like it or not, is to track your team member’s time and review it on a regular basis.

Convert their annual comp to an hourly wage, analyze how much time they spend in internal meetings, and your view on this will forever change.

I grew Matter Made, our demand efficiency agency, to $4,200,000 profit by year 3. This is the exact 3-step monthly financial audit we used to scale fast:

1. We pull in the company numbers.

We take our time tracking sheet with every employee’s hours per week, and we bring it into QuickBooks, which knows exactly how much each person’s payroll costs.

From there, we feed it into our internal dashboard to generate profitability by client and profitability by project.

2. Reflect on your past month.

Once we have the reports, we sit down as a leadership team and walk through the previous month:

- What actually happened, and why?
- Where did we land on revenue and margin?
- Which accounts expanded or churned?
- What changed that we didn’t plan for?

This helps us identify what’s working and what’s not, so we can devise a sound plan to course-correct.

3. Forecast 3+ months ahead.

From there, we look ahead and ask: What do the next three months look like, and what are the levers we’re pulling to get to our desired account? This should include everything like:

- Advancing the sales pipeline to increase the number of accounts won
- Strengthening retention by identifying at-risk accounts that may churn
- Optimizing headcount (ie, hiring or firing decisions)
- Adjusting sales and marketing investments

After that, we layer in weekly check-ins and monthly retros to track execution against the plan.

If you’re not auditing on a regular basis, you’re flying blind and headed for a rude awakening.

Follow this 3-step audit to maintain a strong internal grasp of your numbers and never lose sight of what’s happening under the hood.

PS - This was instrumental in our growth, yet I know very few agency owners actually do this. So, I started Profit Labs to help make it extremely easy for anyone regardless of tooling or size to follow this exact same process on autopilot. DM me if that sounds interesting.

I launched Profit Labs 117 days ago. Since then, I’ve talked to 37+ agency owners about their agencies finances. 100% of them brought up 1 of these 3 pain points:

1. “I don’t know where we’re making/losing money”.

In its simplest form, these people wanted to know what was causing them to make/lose money month, but often couldn't. They didn't understand what gears were contributing to what results, therefore couldn't optimize much at all.

2. “I want to make this hire, but don’t know if I can or should”.

When you don’t have clear pipeline or capacity forecasts, you can’t confidently make decisions around hiring. Simple as that.

3. “I want to understand margin by client”.

Pick a random client and ask yourself if you know how much net profit you generate from them each month. If you can’t do so without searching through time sheets and SaaS receipts, you aren’t set up properly.

The bad news for these agency owners: All of these problems suck.

The good news for agency owners: Each month, more and more of them are having these problems disappear after signing up for Profit Labs.

We help track margin by customer, run scenario planning and model for staffing changes, model your profit/forecast growth, and a whole lot more.

DM if you’re curious to see how we could help 🙂

Knowing what I know now, if I were starting an agency in 2025, I'd solve for these 3 financial blind spots on day one (instead of losing $$$ by not doing so on day 742):

1. Low financial visibility

Most agency owners feel like they're running blind. They don't truly understand all the gears of their business or what's contributing to what financially.

Solution: Set up an Agency Command Center by pulling CRM data, QuickBooks, and P&L reports to keep an accurate pulse on your financial health.

2. Poor forecasting and planning

The conversation always goes: "I want to make a couple of hires, but I'm not sure if I can or should." Without proper financial modeling, you either over-hire and hurt margins or under-hire and increase churn or leave money on the table.

Solution: Model 90 days out using historical performance and future planning to understand pipeline potential and team utilization:

- Team utilization >90% for 3 months = you're understaffed
- Team utilization <75% for 3 months = you're overstaffed

(comment if you want my template for this)

3. Margin by client

This one's like crack cocaine for agency owners. Everyone wants it, but most don't have it. 

If you don’t track client-level profitability, you’ll never know which accounts are profitable and which ones are bleeding you dry.

Solution: Agency owners with 10+ employees need to time track. This lets you allocate costs properly and see true client profitability.

Get this right and you won't be operating in a financial black box.

P.S. - If your bookkeeper isn't telling you this, they probably aren't doing their job. I started Profit Labs to give you full financial visibility without touching QuickBooks ever again. DM if you want that.

Agency owner: "It feels like we can afford another $85,000 hire." Two months later: "Why are our margins 19% lower than projected?"

I know this because these are the exact words I used to say in the early days of running an agency, long before I had financial models in place to forecast decisions.

Most agency owners crossing $1M are making financial investments with back-of-the-napkin math. They commit to massive expenses based on gut feeling, such as:

→ New hires ($65K-$120K+ annually)
→ Office leases ($15K-$40K monthly)
→ Marketing investments ($10K-$50K quarterly)
→ New software and tooling ($2K-$10K monthly)

Two months later they're looking at their bank accounts wondering where the money went. In many of my calls with agency owners, I end up saying "you know, this could've been modeled out, right?"

If this even remotely sounds like you, and you’re wondering what that model might actually look like, keep reading.

To build out an accurate, predictive model, you’ll need:

1. Historical performance data - Trends that have already happened to your business, including margin by client and service line, plus churn rates over multiple quarters

2. Forward-looking financial modeling - The ability to model out scenarios before you make decisions like hiring, firing, or taking on new clients.

Once you have this type of granular visibility, you’ll avoid making poor financial investments that shoot you in the foot later.

And sure, you could see profit margins over time in a custom P&L report in QuickBooks. You could manually export that data and show variants over time to get the same insights. 

But that's already more than 99% of agency owners are ever going to go. Most will simply look at last month's P&L, compare it to the month prior, and call it financial planning.

So it's not a question of whether you could do it. It's a question of are you doing it, and is it easy enough?

P.S. - If you're tired of wondering where your profits went, DM me. Profit Labs gives you agency-specific visibility at your fingertips while we handle all the boring accounting stuff.

How do you lower cost per closed-won deal by 45% in 120 days? Ask CallRail.

The call tracking platform came to Matter Made when their paid media hit a wall. Brand CPCs had increased 200% over 18 months with no extra conversions - paying more for the same results.

Growth stalled, efficiency plummeted, and they were overly reliant on one channel.

Matter Made took on the challenge. Instead of just fixing inefficiencies, we unlocked new opportunities for long-term growth.

In the first 6 months:

- Optimized Brand bid strategies to eCPC to lower CPCs while maintaining Impression Share

- Expanded and Refined Keyword Targeting: Added competitor and non-brand keywords while cutting waste.

- Rebuilt Landing Pages by Intent: Redesigned brand and non-brand landing pages to align with user intent.

- Implemented a Full-Funnel Campaign Structure: Mapped campaigns to each buyer journey stage to prioritize lead quality and improve sales alignment.

- Launched New Channels Like NextDoor: Expanded beyond usual platforms and tested NextDoor, a hyper-local social network with verified household-level targeting.

- Refreshed and Tested New Creative Across Paid Channels: A/B tested new messaging and creative across Facebook and LinkedIn.

The results this multi-channel strategy delivered in 6 months:

- 45% reduction in cost per closed-won deal
- 93% increase in influenced MQLs (nearly 2,000 in Q1)
- 34% lift in Sales Accepted Leads (SALs)
- 35% increase in closed-won deals quarter-over-quarter
- 58% drop in brand CPC by Day 60
- 186% growth in MQLs from Facebook
- 61% increase in MQL volume from LinkedIn, with a 49% decrease in cost-per-MQL

Huge shoutout to Colin Saunders and the rest of the talented team at Matter Made, and Russell Holm for leading the charge!

P.S. If you feel like your paid program is stagnant, DM me and I'll put you in touch with the same team that delivered these results.

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