I met Rob Harr at the Agency Builders Conference in Florida. He wasn’t trying to impress anyone—but he impressed the hell out of me.
He spoke about agency operations with this calm clarity, like someone who’d seen behind the curtain, broken the machine down to parts, and built it back up better. His message was simple, almost annoyingly so:
“Most people already know what the right thing to do is. They just don’t do it consistently.”
That stuck with me. Because I’ve seen it too. Whether you’re running paid ads, launching client sites, or just trying to follow up on leads—you already know the playbook. But ideas aren’t the problem. Execution is. More specifically: consistent execution.
Rob calls it the accidental agency owner problem. You start as a designer or a developer. You’re great at your craft. Suddenly, you have clients. Then a team. Then payroll. But no one taught you how to run a business. You’re still thinking like a technician, not an operator.
That’s where Rob shines. He helps agencies zoom out. Build systems. Break goals into repeatable actions. Treat their agency like the product.
We also talked about AI, enterprise work, and Rob’s origin story as a second-generation software engineer. He got his start writing code at 12. Landed at LexisNexis. Survived the banking meltdown. And eventually co-founded Sparkbox, where he still works today. He also runs an ops consultancy called Upwell.
You can watch the full interview below. But if you take away nothing else, take this:
“Goals are good. Systems are how you reach them. And consistency is everything.”
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