I recently had a great meeting with Tom and James McIlvenny from Avenue 85, sitting down together to review where their project is and where it is going. I travel to my clients whenever I can, and the energy boost I get from these small trips is honestly insane. People assume visits like this are a cost or a nice-to-have. For me they are one of the most valuable things I do.
Why a Visit Beats a Call
You can run a project entirely over calls and shared screens, and most of the industry does. But there is a level of understanding you only reach by being in the room, walking the floor, and seeing how a business actually operates day to day. Until you have been backstage at a client’s company, you have not seen the real picture of the business that you represent as their agency. You have seen the version that fits on a screen, which is never the whole thing.
Being there changes the quality of the conversation. People share more, they commit more, and they remember more, and you pick up the small details that never make it onto a call agenda. It is the same reason I argued for showing up in person for the year-ahead strategy meeting rather than doing it remotely. The setting does something a video call cannot.
Seeing the Real Business
When you represent a client as their agency, you are making decisions on their behalf constantly. Which problem to prioritise, where to invest the next round of effort, what the business actually needs rather than what it asked for. Those decisions are only as good as your understanding of the business, and that understanding is far richer when you have stood inside it.
A site is an abstraction of a real operation, with real people, stock, constraints, and pressures behind it. Seeing that operation first-hand stops you from optimising the abstraction while missing what matters to the actual company. It is a large part of why our client relationships tend to last, which I wrote about in three years with a client and no contract holding them there, and why clients tell us they value the team the way they do.
Go Big or Go Home
That energy is also the honest reason I keep doing it. These trips remind me why I enjoy this work, and that enthusiasm flows straight back into the projects. A tired, detached agency does tired, detached work. Showing up in person is partly for the client and partly to keep myself genuinely invested, and the partnership is better for both, the way a real client partnership story always is.
So if you run an agency and you have never been backstage at your clients’ businesses, go. And if you are going to do this work at all, do it properly. Go big or go home.
MageCloud Operating Note
What a Visit Actually Buys
THE CALL
The version of the business that fits a screen
Enough to manage, never enough to fully understand.
THE VISIT
Backstage at the real operation
The full picture, and the energy that comes with it.
Paul Ryazanov · MageCloud · go big or go home
If you would like an agency that turns up in person and genuinely learns your business, not just your website, get in touch. The first visit usually tells both of us more than a month of calls ever could.