Nine years ago, we launched Coefficient Agency with a simple vision: take the marketing talent we’d honed over decades and share it with the world. At the time, that meant being a full-service digital agency for anyone who needed help: B2B, B2C, nonprofits, startups, professional services, and everything in between. If your phone rang and someone needed “digital marketing,” you said yes. That was the business model.
In retrospect, we were opportunistic. Not irresponsible, just unfocused. We believed our versatility was a strength. And while it allowed us to help a wide range of clients, it also prevented us from building the kind of clarity, distinction, and depth that define enduring firms.
Today, we’re announcing something new—though “new” might not be quite the right word.
Coefficient Agency is now simply Coefficient: the value design firm.
You’ll find us now at coefficient.xyz.
This is more than a change of URL. It’s a statement of focus, a sharpening of identity, and a deliberate step toward the work we do best.
It is, in many ways, a culmination of our own journey through the very advice we’ve spent years giving to clients. CEOs often come to us because they’re stuck—stuck in a plateau, stuck chasing the wrong customers, stuck trying to grow by doing more rather than by doing the right things. We help them rethink their offer, their market, and their next growth curve.
But in doing this work for others, we eventually realized we needed to eat our own dogfood.
And so we did.
Rather than reinventing ourselves in one dramatic leap, we transformed ourselves incrementally, applying the same principles we teach every day: find a resonant market, build a bold offer, and commit to the next growth curve before growth stalls.
Looking back, the transformation of Coefficient wasn’t just a business decision. It was an experiment in practicing what we preach. And in that process, we learned three lessons worth sharing. These are lessons we believe every founder, owner, and strategic leader will face in some form.
- Narrowing your market—while scary—creates focus and distinction.
For years, marketers have repeated the line: “There are riches in the niches.” It’s a cliché for a reason. But the more interesting truth is this:
When you narrow your market, you broaden your appeal.
Not to everyone. But to the right ones.
Early on, we served anyone who needed digital marketing. We ran websites, campaigns, funnels, product launches, ads, videos. You name it. If you could assign it to a digital team, we did it. But wide markets dull sharp value. Your expertise spreads thin. Your message gets diffused. Your team gets fragmented.
As we grew, a pattern began to emerge. We consistently delivered the greatest value—not just good work, but transformative outcomes—for B2B technology firms, IT services firms, and professional services companies. These organizations had complex value stories that needed clarity. They had strong capabilities but weak articulation. They felt the symptoms of growth friction but couldn’t diagnose the source.
That’s where Dynamic Value Design™ was born.
We weren’t just “good at marketing” for these companies. We were reshaping offers, repositioning solutions, diagnosing value gaps, and helping leadership teams find new growth curves.
So we asked the question we ask our clients: “What’s the market where your value resonates most clearly and powerfully?”
The answer wasn’t “everyone who needs marketing.” It was B2B companies selling complex solutions who needed their value re-engineered around what customers care about most.
When we narrowed our focus to serve tech and services companies exclusively, the effect was immediate. Our work deepened. Our message clarified. Our team aligned. The value we delivered sharpened.
Narrowing the market wasn’t constraining—it was liberating. It forced us to articulate who we served best, double down on what we do differently, and build a firm around a very specific problem: helping companies create an offer their best customers can’t ignore.
- The best path to growth is to follow the energy. Both market energy and your own.
Value design is both a business strategy and a human one. It lives at the intersection of what the market wants and what you want.
Most businesses over-index on one or the other.
Some owners love their business more than the market does. They push, refine, invest, and insist on a value proposition that simply doesn’t match buyer demand. Passion is necessary but not sufficient.
Others do the opposite: they chase market opportunity long after their own internal energy has dried up. They stay out of duty, fear, habit, or sunk cost. But leadership without energy becomes mechanical—and it shows.
Healthy growth requires both kinds of energy working together:
- Market energy: Do buyers value this? Does it resonate? Does it solve a real problem?
- Founder energy: Does this work energize me? Does this market interest me? Can I lead a team toward it?
When we evaluated the next chapter of Coefficient, we didn’t simply ask, “Where is the opportunity?” We also asked, “Where is our energy?”
- What kind of work lit us up?
- Where did we consistently find flow?
- What conversations did we never get tired of?
- What problems did we solve with the most insight?
The more we examined the intersection of those two currents—the market’s energy and our own—the clearer the answer became:
Our passion and strength is helping companies rethink their value—not their messaging, not their campaigns, not their creative assets. Their value.
Once we embraced that, the entire business reorganized around it. Stress went down. Clarity went up. Confidence grew. And the work improved because the energy was aligned.
If you want to find your next growth curve, follow the energy.
Not just the market’s energy. Your own.
- Take the risk to do different. Growth is always a leap, never a slide.
No company makes one jump to ideal. Transformation is incremental: learn, adjust, refine, sharpen, and take the next step.
But that process requires courage.
The hardest lesson of eating our own dogfood was accepting that you cannot find your next growth curve while clinging to the safety of the current one.
Most companies pivot too late. They wait until revenue softens, leads slow down, or their team loses conviction. They wait until urgency forces change rather than choosing change while momentum is still on their side.
The best time to reinvent is before you need to.
That means paying attention. It means being honest about declining energy, drifting market fit, or an offer that’s gone stale. It means acknowledging that what got you here won’t get you there. And deciding to act on that truth early.
Transformation is always a risk, but the greater risk is staying the same while the market shifts around you.
When we changed who we were, what we sold, and who we served, there was an unmistakable moment of hesitation. The “what if” questions arrived on schedule:
- What if we narrow too far?
- What if the market doesn’t respond?
- What if we lose opportunities?
But the bolder question was this:
What if we’re right?
- What if this is the path to the next growth curve?
- What if this unlocks greater value, deeper expertise, and better outcomes for our clients?
- What if this decision becomes the catalyst for the best work we’ve ever done?
We believed it might. So we acted.
And the truth is this:
The risk didn’t shrink us. It clarified us.
The transformation from Coefficient Agency to Coefficient is not a rebrand. It’s not a coat of new paint on old walls. It is the result of doing the work we advise others to do: find a resonant market, build a bold offer, and reengineer what you sell around what your best customers value most.
We didn’t just teach the framework.
We lived it.
And in living it, we rediscovered something profound: the work we are meant to do, the clients we are best at serving, and the next growth curve we are called to climb.
If you want to be a better dog in your own market, eat your own dogfood.
Not because it’s catchy advice, but because it reveals who you really are, where you create the most value, and where your business wants to go next.
We did. And it tasted good.
WRITTEN BY: LEARY GATES
Leary Gates is a strategic advisor and co-founder of Coefficient, the value design firm helping B2B companies rethink what they sell and how they grow. He writes the Strategic CEO newsletter, a weekly exploration of leadership, strategy, and the next growth curve.
Like what you’re reading?
Get these sent to your inbox. Spam free.
Nine years ago, we launched Coefficient Agency with a simple vision: take the marketing talent we’d honed over decades and share it with the world. At the time, that meant being a full-service digital agency for anyone who needed help: B2B, B2C, nonprofits, startups, professional services, and everything in between. If your phone rang and someone needed “digital marketing,” you said yes. That was the business model.
In retrospect, we were opportunistic. Not irresponsible, just unfocused. We believed our versatility was a strength. And while it allowed us to help a wide range of clients, it also prevented us from building the kind of clarity, distinction, and depth that define enduring firms.
Today, we’re announcing something new—though “new” might not be quite the right word.
Coefficient Agency is now simply Coefficient: the value design firm.
You’ll find us now at coefficient.xyz.
This is more than a change of URL. It’s a statement of focus, a sharpening of identity, and a deliberate step toward the work we do best.
It is, in many ways, a culmination of our own journey through the very advice we’ve spent years giving to clients. CEOs often come to us because they’re stuck—stuck in a plateau, stuck chasing the wrong customers, stuck trying to grow by doing more rather than by doing the right things. We help them rethink their offer, their market, and their next growth curve.
But in doing this work for others, we eventually realized we needed to eat our own dogfood.
And so we did.
Rather than reinventing ourselves in one dramatic leap, we transformed ourselves incrementally, applying the same principles we teach every day: find a resonant market, build a bold offer, and commit to the next growth curve before growth stalls.
Looking back, the transformation of Coefficient wasn’t just a business decision. It was an experiment in practicing what we preach. And in that process, we learned three lessons worth sharing. These are lessons we believe every founder, owner, and strategic leader will face in some form.
- Narrowing your market—while scary—creates focus and distinction.
For years, marketers have repeated the line: “There are riches in the niches.” It’s a cliché for a reason. But the more interesting truth is this:
When you narrow your market, you broaden your appeal.
Not to everyone. But to the right ones.
Early on, we served anyone who needed digital marketing. We ran websites, campaigns, funnels, product launches, ads, videos. You name it. If you could assign it to a digital team, we did it. But wide markets dull sharp value. Your expertise spreads thin. Your message gets diffused. Your team gets fragmented.
As we grew, a pattern began to emerge. We consistently delivered the greatest value—not just good work, but transformative outcomes—for B2B technology firms, IT services firms, and professional services companies. These organizations had complex value stories that needed clarity. They had strong capabilities but weak articulation. They felt the symptoms of growth friction but couldn’t diagnose the source.
That’s where Dynamic Value Design™ was born.
We weren’t just “good at marketing” for these companies. We were reshaping offers, repositioning solutions, diagnosing value gaps, and helping leadership teams find new growth curves.
So we asked the question we ask our clients: “What’s the market where your value resonates most clearly and powerfully?”
The answer wasn’t “everyone who needs marketing.” It was B2B companies selling complex solutions who needed their value re-engineered around what customers care about most.
When we narrowed our focus to serve tech and services companies exclusively, the effect was immediate. Our work deepened. Our message clarified. Our team aligned. The value we delivered sharpened.
Narrowing the market wasn’t constraining—it was liberating. It forced us to articulate who we served best, double down on what we do differently, and build a firm around a very specific problem: helping companies create an offer their best customers can’t ignore.
- The best path to growth is to follow the energy. Both market energy and your own.
Value design is both a business strategy and a human one. It lives at the intersection of what the market wants and what you want.
Most businesses over-index on one or the other.
Some owners love their business more than the market does. They push, refine, invest, and insist on a value proposition that simply doesn’t match buyer demand. Passion is necessary but not sufficient.
Others do the opposite: they chase market opportunity long after their own internal energy has dried up. They stay out of duty, fear, habit, or sunk cost. But leadership without energy becomes mechanical—and it shows.
Healthy growth requires both kinds of energy working together:
- Market energy: Do buyers value this? Does it resonate? Does it solve a real problem?
- Founder energy: Does this work energize me? Does this market interest me? Can I lead a team toward it?
When we evaluated the next chapter of Coefficient, we didn’t simply ask, “Where is the opportunity?” We also asked, “Where is our energy?”
- What kind of work lit us up?
- Where did we consistently find flow?
- What conversations did we never get tired of?
- What problems did we solve with the most insight?
The more we examined the intersection of those two currents—the market’s energy and our own—the clearer the answer became:
Our passion and strength is helping companies rethink their value—not their messaging, not their campaigns, not their creative assets. Their value.
Once we embraced that, the entire business reorganized around it. Stress went down. Clarity went up. Confidence grew. And the work improved because the energy was aligned.
If you want to find your next growth curve, follow the energy.
Not just the market’s energy. Your own.
- Take the risk to do different. Growth is always a leap, never a slide.
No company makes one jump to ideal. Transformation is incremental: learn, adjust, refine, sharpen, and take the next step.
But that process requires courage.
The hardest lesson of eating our own dogfood was accepting that you cannot find your next growth curve while clinging to the safety of the current one.
Most companies pivot too late. They wait until revenue softens, leads slow down, or their team loses conviction. They wait until urgency forces change rather than choosing change while momentum is still on their side.
The best time to reinvent is before you need to.
That means paying attention. It means being honest about declining energy, drifting market fit, or an offer that’s gone stale. It means acknowledging that what got you here won’t get you there. And deciding to act on that truth early.
Transformation is always a risk, but the greater risk is staying the same while the market shifts around you.
When we changed who we were, what we sold, and who we served, there was an unmistakable moment of hesitation. The “what if” questions arrived on schedule:
- What if we narrow too far?
- What if the market doesn’t respond?
- What if we lose opportunities?
But the bolder question was this:
What if we’re right?
- What if this is the path to the next growth curve?
- What if this unlocks greater value, deeper expertise, and better outcomes for our clients?
- What if this decision becomes the catalyst for the best work we’ve ever done?
We believed it might. So we acted.
And the truth is this:
The risk didn’t shrink us. It clarified us.
The transformation from Coefficient Agency to Coefficient is not a rebrand. It’s not a coat of new paint on old walls. It is the result of doing the work we advise others to do: find a resonant market, build a bold offer, and reengineer what you sell around what your best customers value most.
We didn’t just teach the framework.
We lived it.
And in living it, we rediscovered something profound: the work we are meant to do, the clients we are best at serving, and the next growth curve we are called to climb.
If you want to be a better dog in your own market, eat your own dogfood.
Not because it’s catchy advice, but because it reveals who you really are, where you create the most value, and where your business wants to go next.
We did. And it tasted good.
WRITTEN BY: LEARY GATES
Leary Gates is a strategic advisor and co-founder of Coefficient, the value design firm helping B2B companies rethink what they sell and how they grow. He writes the Strategic CEO newsletter, a weekly exploration of leadership, strategy, and the next growth curve.
Like what you’re reading?
Get these sent to your inbox.
Spam free.
Nine years ago, we launched Coefficient Agency with a simple vision: take the marketing talent we’d honed over decades and share it with the world. At the time, that meant being a full-service digital agency for anyone who needed help: B2B, B2C, nonprofits, startups, professional services, and everything in between. If your phone rang and someone needed “digital marketing,” you said yes. That was the business model.
In retrospect, we were opportunistic. Not irresponsible, just unfocused. We believed our versatility was a strength. And while it allowed us to help a wide range of clients, it also prevented us from building the kind of clarity, distinction, and depth that define enduring firms.
Today, we’re announcing something new—though “new” might not be quite the right word.
Coefficient Agency is now simply Coefficient: the value design firm.
You’ll find us now at coefficient.xyz.
This is more than a change of URL. It’s a statement of focus, a sharpening of identity, and a deliberate step toward the work we do best.
It is, in many ways, a culmination of our own journey through the very advice we’ve spent years giving to clients. CEOs often come to us because they’re stuck—stuck in a plateau, stuck chasing the wrong customers, stuck trying to grow by doing more rather than by doing the right things. We help them rethink their offer, their market, and their next growth curve.
But in doing this work for others, we eventually realized we needed to eat our own dogfood.
And so we did.
Rather than reinventing ourselves in one dramatic leap, we transformed ourselves incrementally, applying the same principles we teach every day: find a resonant market, build a bold offer, and commit to the next growth curve before growth stalls.
Looking back, the transformation of Coefficient wasn’t just a business decision. It was an experiment in practicing what we preach. And in that process, we learned three lessons worth sharing. These are lessons we believe every founder, owner, and strategic leader will face in some form.
- Narrowing your market—while scary—creates focus and distinction.
For years, marketers have repeated the line: “There are riches in the niches.” It’s a cliché for a reason. But the more interesting truth is this:
When you narrow your market, you broaden your appeal.
Not to everyone. But to the right ones.
Early on, we served anyone who needed digital marketing. We ran websites, campaigns, funnels, product launches, ads, videos. You name it. If you could assign it to a digital team, we did it. But wide markets dull sharp value. Your expertise spreads thin. Your message gets diffused. Your team gets fragmented.
As we grew, a pattern began to emerge. We consistently delivered the greatest value—not just good work, but transformative outcomes—for B2B technology firms, IT services firms, and professional services companies. These organizations had complex value stories that needed clarity. They had strong capabilities but weak articulation. They felt the symptoms of growth friction but couldn’t diagnose the source.
That’s where Dynamic Value Design™ was born.
We weren’t just “good at marketing” for these companies. We were reshaping offers, repositioning solutions, diagnosing value gaps, and helping leadership teams find new growth curves.
So we asked the question we ask our clients: “What’s the market where your value resonates most clearly and powerfully?”
The answer wasn’t “everyone who needs marketing.” It was B2B companies selling complex solutions who needed their value re-engineered around what customers care about most.
When we narrowed our focus to serve tech and services companies exclusively, the effect was immediate. Our work deepened. Our message clarified. Our team aligned. The value we delivered sharpened.
Narrowing the market wasn’t constraining—it was liberating. It forced us to articulate who we served best, double down on what we do differently, and build a firm around a very specific problem: helping companies create an offer their best customers can’t ignore.
- The best path to growth is to follow the energy. Both market energy and your own.
Value design is both a business strategy and a human one. It lives at the intersection of what the market wants and what you want.
Most businesses over-index on one or the other.
Some owners love their business more than the market does. They push, refine, invest, and insist on a value proposition that simply doesn’t match buyer demand. Passion is necessary but not sufficient.
Others do the opposite: they chase market opportunity long after their own internal energy has dried up. They stay out of duty, fear, habit, or sunk cost. But leadership without energy becomes mechanical—and it shows.
Healthy growth requires both kinds of energy working together:
- Market energy: Do buyers value this? Does it resonate? Does it solve a real problem?
- Founder energy: Does this work energize me? Does this market interest me? Can I lead a team toward it?
When we evaluated the next chapter of Coefficient, we didn’t simply ask, “Where is the opportunity?” We also asked, “Where is our energy?”
- What kind of work lit us up?
- Where did we consistently find flow?
- What conversations did we never get tired of?
- What problems did we solve with the most insight?
The more we examined the intersection of those two currents—the market’s energy and our own—the clearer the answer became:
Our passion and strength is helping companies rethink their value—not their messaging, not their campaigns, not their creative assets. Their value.
Once we embraced that, the entire business reorganized around it. Stress went down. Clarity went up. Confidence grew. And the work improved because the energy was aligned.
If you want to find your next growth curve, follow the energy.
Not just the market’s energy. Your own.
- Take the risk to do different. Growth is always a leap, never a slide.
No company makes one jump to ideal. Transformation is incremental: learn, adjust, refine, sharpen, and take the next step.
But that process requires courage.
The hardest lesson of eating our own dogfood was accepting that you cannot find your next growth curve while clinging to the safety of the current one.
Most companies pivot too late. They wait until revenue softens, leads slow down, or their team loses conviction. They wait until urgency forces change rather than choosing change while momentum is still on their side.
The best time to reinvent is before you need to.
That means paying attention. It means being honest about declining energy, drifting market fit, or an offer that’s gone stale. It means acknowledging that what got you here won’t get you there. And deciding to act on that truth early.
Transformation is always a risk, but the greater risk is staying the same while the market shifts around you.
When we changed who we were, what we sold, and who we served, there was an unmistakable moment of hesitation. The “what if” questions arrived on schedule:
- What if we narrow too far?
- What if the market doesn’t respond?
- What if we lose opportunities?
But the bolder question was this: What if we’re right?
- What if this is the path to the next growth curve?
- What if this unlocks greater value, deeper expertise, and better outcomes for our clients?
- What if this decision becomes the catalyst for the best work we’ve ever done?
We believed it might. So we acted.
And the truth is this:
The risk didn’t shrink us. It clarified us.
The transformation from Coefficient Agency to Coefficient is not a rebrand. It’s not a coat of new paint on old walls. It is the result of doing the work we advise others to do: find a resonant market, build a bold offer, and reengineer what you sell around what your best customers value most.
We didn’t just teach the framework.
We lived it.
And in living it, we rediscovered something profound: the work we are meant to do, the clients we are best at serving, and the next growth curve we are called to climb.
If you want to be a better dog in your own market, eat your own dogfood.
Not because it’s catchy advice, but because it reveals who you really are, where you create the most value, and where your business wants to go next.
We did. And it tasted good.
WRITTEN BY: LEARY GATES
Leary Gates is a strategic advisor and co-founder of Coefficient, the value design firm helping B2B companies rethink what they sell and how they grow. He writes the Strategic CEO newsletter, a weekly exploration of leadership, strategy, and the next growth curve.
Like what you’re reading?
Get these sent to your inbox. Spam free.