A behind the scenes look at a full week running a marketing agency in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Some weeks at Launch Kit are relatively calm. This was not one of those weeks.
Two new clients. A new team member. A production day. A gear haul. A to-do list app crisis. And a Monday morning thought that I can't stop thinking about.
If you're building a business, running a team, or trying to figure out how to stay excited about the work long term, this one's for you. Here's what went down.
Early Monday morning, before I even got ready for the day, something clicked.
If you're the type of person who's ambitious, driven, a little type A, you know the feeling. You look at the to-do list. You crush through it. And then when it's done, instead of feeling satisfied, you go looking for new things to put on it. You're kind of wandering. Wondering what you're supposed to be working on next.
That's when it hit me.
"Success isn't finishing the to-do list. It's preserving your love for doing the work."
For me that looks like a morning routine I actually look forward to. A desk setup that feels good to sit down at. Tools that make the work feel exciting, not draining.
When you invest in those things, you're investing in yourself long term. And that pays better dividends than almost anything else.
Okay so this part of the week is a little embarrassing but it is what it is.
Monday I made the call to switch from Things 3 to Todoist. I've used Things 3 for three or four years. Love the app. Incredibly clean, minimal, easy on the eyes. But I started thinking ahead. I wanted to share a to-do list with Ellen, maybe a future assistant, eventually a nanny, who knows. Things 3 doesn't let you do that. So I downloaded Todoist, moved all my tasks over, and committed to a full week trial.
I made it one day.
Here's why Todoist didn't work for me:
Things 3 just shows me what I need to do today. That's it. Clean. Simple. No noise.
Maybe I'm crazy. But cognitive load is real. And if your task manager is making it harder to think, that's a problem worth fixing.
Tuesday afternoon we headed over for our first Pulse meeting with Diana at Roots Therapeutical Services.
For anyone not familiar with how we onboard clients at Launch Kit, the Pulse meeting is our monthly check-in structure. It keeps us aligned, high performing, and on track. The first one is basically:
In a two hour meeting we got access to:
Diana came in with clear priorities for the year. She's looking to fill schedules and grow her team. We've got a solid plan. Feeling good about this one.
Thursday morning we headed to the southeast side of Grand Rapids to shoot with Wolverine Construction.
Wolverine is a large commercial construction company here in West Michigan. The approach we take with them isn't the standard "get ten leads, close two clients" content strategy. These are big commercial projects. What we're doing instead is straight up documentary style. We're sharing their story.
The Diatribe is a nonprofit organization that Wolverine just finished remodeling. A building that didn't have much use is now going to serve youth and nonprofit work in our community. That's the story. That's what we're capturing.
Here's how we ran the production day:
We're posting Reels twice a week for Wolverine. But the strategy behind the content is unique to who they are. That's the whole point.
Thursday was also Lucy's first day at Launch Kit.
Lucy is joining us to work on website projects and ads. She's going to be tagging up with Evan's clients specifically. Watching her walk in on day one, excited and ready to go, it reminded me of a journal entry I found from February 2021.
I had written: "Thought about what it would be like to hire my first employee."
Little arrows. Bullet points. Question marks about whether they'd attend meetings.
Look how far we've come.
This week we also pulled the trigger on some new equipment.
With Evan on the team and production days happening simultaneously across different clients, we needed another photo camera body. Here's what we added:
On the monitor situation: the Asus monitors were technically good. The screen looked solid. But every time I booted one up it felt like I was about to play Fortnite. I want to sit down and feel like I'm going to get work done. Apple somehow charges three times the price and makes that feeling happen. It makes no logical sense. I'm buying studio displays anyway.
Bootstrapping a growing agency means making real decisions about where to put money. Cameras. People. Tools. You're essentially gambling on yourself every time. But when you believe in the work your team is doing, that's the easiest bet you'll ever make.
New clients. New gear. New team member. New production days.
But underneath all of it, the thing I keep coming back to is that Monday morning thought.
It's not about finishing the list. It's about loving the work you get to do each day. When you find ways to protect that, everything else tends to fall into place.
Want to go deeper into how we run the agency?
Inside the Launch Kit Mastermind you can join weekly live Q&A calls, access our ClickUp templates, Go High Level snapshots, SOPs, and the Claude prompts we use to run our entire content system. Start your 7 day free trial here: https://get.launchkitdesign.com/home
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