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How does a print designer become the founder of a thriving strategic web agency? Spoiler: It wasn’t all smooth sailing. But this agency founder figured out how to stop being the bottleneck, leverage systems and AI, and make his agency way more profitable along the way. It all began by creating a digital brain for his agency.
In this episode, Shawn Johnston, owner of Forge and Smith, a Vancouver-based agency shares how he’s been building bespoke WordPress sites for 13+ years. He’ll share his story—and some seriously smart tips for agency owners looking to scale and create more freedom in their agency.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Why documenting your processes is key to scaling
How to use AI to build a “digital brain” for your agency
How to step out of day-to-day work and empower your team
Tips for focusing your team on high-value, strategic work
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E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.
Like a lot of us, Shawn didn’t set out to build an agency. He started as a print designer back in 1996, cranking out newspaper ads when CSS came on the scene, sparking heated debate at the office over whether it would change the internet or not.
Shawn got curious, taught himself to code, and started building sites on the side.
What started as a hobby turned into freelancing… and when the 2008 housing collapse hit, he went all in. He hustled hard on Craigslist, building $1,500 WordPress sites and quickly realizing he was making more than his day job.
This gave way to his first lesson in business: Hustle works early on, but you can’t scale without systems.
Starting out, Shawn was able to handle all the WordPress development, design, and strategy by himself. By setting up some repeatable pieces, he was able to grow his client list, with some of them coming back for site support. As projects stacked up, however, he hit a wall: He couldn’t sell, deliver, and support all at once.
He decided his first hire would handle client support, so he could free up time for higher-value work. From there, he slowly backed himself out of development… then strategy… then design - replacing himself piece by piece.
Of course, this didn’t automatically erase all the agency’s problems. Initially, it only created a new set challenges. Adding new pieces to the team made their lack of documented processes very clear. For a while, the handoff confusion created meant everything continued to run through Shawn... The real issue was that there was too much knowledge trapped in his head.
The obvious solution was to start documenting everything from UX components to strategy guides to build quality standards. From that point on, everyone knew who was responsible for what and at what point. The goal wasn’t to limit creativity but to empower the team to make smart decisions without running to Shawn for answers.
For Shawn, a focal point of this shift had to be underlying the agency’s why. Everyone on the team had to be very clear on: Why do we work with clients the way we do? Why are we doing things this way and not that way? Making sure everyone understood the overall goals would inform the decision-making, cultural aspects, and would help the team work cohesively.
Documented systems = freedom for you and clarity for your team. Win-win.
Fast forward to today, and Shawn is using AI to level up even more.
He records and transcribes sales calls, discovery calls, and proposal work—then synthesizes it into a knowledge base his team can actually use. No more “Shawn said this one thing on a call” confusion mid-project. The team can look back at the records and apply direction to move forward without him.
We’ve talked about the next step with AI for agency owners: train an AI assistant on your agency’s entire knowledge base.
That means training it with everything you have in your knowledge bank, including:
Past client insights
Brand guidelines
Design patterns
Sales conversations
Internal processes
Apply these practices ASAP so that your team can tap that knowledge instantly — without pinging you for answers. Think of it as your agency’s “digital brain” and the key to your freedom.
One of Shawn’s smartest moves has been leaning hard into reusable systems and low-code tools.
He’s baked strategy into UX components, aligned dev processes with design frameworks, and streamlined builds so 80% of each site is repeatable. That frees the team to focus on the 20% that really matters—the strategic stuff that drives results (and justifies premium pricing).
More profit, faster delivery, better outcomes. Everybody wins.
If you’re tired of everything running through you and want your team making smart decisions without constant handholding. Then it’s time to plug into a community of agency owners who’ve figured this stuff out. Inside the Agency Mastery Mastermind, you’ll learn exactly how to:
-Document and systematize your agency’s IP
-Leverage AI to scale your team’s capabilities
-Increase profit margins with smarter processes
-Step fully into the owner seat—so you can lead, not grind
You don’t have to figure this out alone. Come hang out with the smartest agency owners scaling today.