Why I Built ELY Public Affairs as an Anti-Agency
- ELY
- 11 minutes ago
- 2 min read
By Year 4, we’d secured our federal women-owned small business designation, built the groundwork for some strong partnerships, and delivered a few big wins. We also decided to walk away from the pressure of using an agency model.
The shift from agency to consultancy is trending and I’ll admit, I felt the pull. In a place like D.C., where agencies dominate everything from public relations to lobbying to media buying, there was no shortage of friends and colleagues worn down by bloated teams, siloed strategies, and client churn.
It provided a contrast for me. If my goal was to help people in the transportation industry build a clear and compelling voice, did it mean I had to grin and bear it through the traditional agency grind?
Honestly, no. I didn’t start ELY Public Affairs to let the business model run me. I started it so that I could make it easier to talk about and build support for fun and transformative transportation and development projects. The idea of creating multiple layers between me and our clients, the overreliance on billable hours, and being optimized for revenue but not necessarily results just was not appealing. I knew that I had to structure the business so that we wouldn’t fall into this trap.
Not all growth is headcount or revenue. I knew if we lost sight of that very fundamental part, that we wouldn’t be in this for the long run and we wouldn’t build the services and products that best serve our clients. Impact matters. Prioritizing expertise, focus, and trust would enable direct access to our change-makers, facilitating faster pivots.
However, lean doesn’t mean limited. By year 4, we reflected on clients’ needs and began to refine our services and products to meet them where they were. One clear pattern emerged: many transportation-focused clients were struggling to understand the perspectives of the people their projects were meant to serve.
Whether it was a non-profit organization creating a membership-driven strategic plan or an economic development agency building out a new line of business in the maritime sector, they needed real conversations, not just a survey or a public meeting.
By now, we knew what we did and what makes us stand out from the rest, but wanted to dig deeper into how we can scale our impact. We started asking harder questions about voice, purpose, and impact, not only to our clients but to ourselves too.
A clear mission and purpose set the foundation for ELY Public Affairs’ next chapter. In our final post, we’ll share how our pursuit of deeper clarity led to the development of a new product designed to elevate stakeholder voices and place them at the core of our consulting practice.
We'd Love to Hear From You
Have you walked away from the agency model too? If so, let me know in the comments what led to your decision.
