From Independent Agency to Elite HubSpot Partner: Lessons from Digital 22 with Rikki Lear

Gray MacKenzie interviews Rikki Lear, Director of Digital 22, about building the largest 100% HubSpot-focused agency in the UK. At the time of recording, Digital 22 had 50 employees with plans to grow to 80 by 2022. The agency offers services across 13+ channels including SEO, PPC, design, and development - all centered on the HubSpot platform. Rikki shares the bold strategic decisions that drove that growth and the operational systems that keep it running.

The Bold Pivot to HubSpot Specialization

The most defining moment in Digital 22’s history was the decision to go all-in on HubSpot. Before the pivot, the agency managed around 50 SEO and PPC clients at approximately 500 pounds per month each. When they decided to focus exclusively on HubSpot, only four of those clients made the transition - but at 5,000 pounds per month retainers.

That math is striking. They dropped 92% of their client base by count but dramatically increased the value of each remaining relationship. It was a decision that required decisive leadership and a clear bet on where the market was heading. Rikki explains that the team recognized growth opportunities required alignment with HubSpot’s platform expansion trajectory. As HubSpot added CRM, sales tools, service hub, and CMS capabilities, Digital 22 grew alongside it.

The lesson for agency owners is that platform commitment - when the platform is on a strong growth trajectory - can be more valuable than maintaining flexibility. Digital 22 did not just offer inbound marketing services that happened to use HubSpot. They became a HubSpot agency, making the platform central to their identity and positioning.

Building a Hybrid Revenue Model

Digital 22’s revenue comes from two streams. The majority is retainer-based work, which provides predictable recurring revenue and deep ongoing client relationships. But project-based work was the fastest-growing segment at the time of recording, accounting for 35% of total revenue.

Project work includes website builds and redesigns, HubSpot platform setup and configuration, and strategic implementation projects. These engagements often serve as entry points for longer retainer relationships. A client who hires Digital 22 for a website build experiences the team’s quality and depth of HubSpot expertise, making the transition to an ongoing retainer a natural next step.

This hybrid approach gives the agency both stability and growth momentum. Retainers provide the base, while projects create pipeline and allow the team to demonstrate capabilities to new clients.

Measuring Client Health Beyond NPS

One of the most operationally interesting parts of the conversation is Rikki’s approach to client health measurement. Rather than relying solely on Net Promoter Score surveys, Digital 22 developed a proprietary client health score incorporating 12 or more factors. These include payment timeliness, project approval speed, engagement in meetings, financial performance of the account, and several other signals.

The multi-factor approach provides earlier warning signs than NPS alone. A client might give you a 9 or 10 on an NPS survey while quietly becoming disengaged - paying late, taking weeks to approve deliverables, and skipping strategy calls. By tracking those behavioral signals alongside satisfaction scores, Digital 22 can identify at-risk accounts before the client reaches the point of cancellation.

This kind of proactive retention measurement is something every agency can learn from. The specific factors will differ based on your service model, but the principle is universal: track behavior, not just sentiment.

Strategic Partnership Selection

When it comes to technology partnerships, Rikki takes a disciplined approach. Digital 22 limits their partnerships to tools that fill genuine capability gaps - like Databox for reporting - rather than pursuing every vendor relationship that comes along. Technology companies constantly approach agencies with partnership offers, and it can be tempting to sign up for every one. But each partnership comes with expectations, training requirements, and potential conflicts.

By keeping partnerships tight and purposeful, Digital 22 maintains focus and avoids diluting their HubSpot specialization. Every partner tool in their stack needs to integrate cleanly with HubSpot and serve a clear purpose that the HubSpot platform itself does not cover.

Scaling the Team and Retaining Talent

Rikki is candid about his motivation for growth: he loves winning, and he loves the game of building a business. But he also recognizes that growth serves the team, not just the founders. Ambitious employees need growth opportunities. If the agency stops scaling, the best people leave because there is nowhere for them to advance.

This creates a healthy alignment between business growth and talent retention. Digital 22’s expansion from 50 to 80 people is not growth for its own sake - it is creating room for team members to step into leadership roles, specialize in new areas, and advance their careers. As Rikki puts it, “winning business is easy, but servicing it really well is the hard bit.” The focus on hiring and developing people is what makes sustainable scaling possible.

Resources Mentioned

• Rikki Lear on LinkedIn - Director of Digital 22
• Digital 22 - Elite HubSpot agency in the UK
• Digital 22 Guides and Downloads - Learning resources
• Databox - Reporting and analytics platform