A two-person agency has generated more than $2 million in revenue over three years by running its back office on AI. Ian Buck and Yotem Dor, the founders of BaD Mktg, say large language models and a proprietary tool let them operate at the scale of a shop with a dozen employees.

Buck and Dor have worked together for at least 15 years, according to the agency. For the most recent three, they have run BaD Mktg — the name combines the initials of their last names — as an independent shop serving a variety of clients.

The model is lean by design. The pair work with a coterie of freelancers to craft content, and they put several LLMs (large language models, AI systems that generate and process text) to use across most of the agency's back-office operations.

What does the proprietary tool actually do?

The centerpiece is Goody, a tool the founders built themselves. It connects business systems and automates priorities, payments, vendor management and administrative coordination. Human financial checks remain in place — the founders have kept a manual layer over the money, which is worth noting for any agency weighing full automation of its finances.

The payoff, Buck said, is that he and Dor function as a shop that would otherwise need a dozen staffers.

Three operating choices underpin the economics, per the agency:

• No retainers
• No junior hand-offs
• Concepting time cut from six weeks to six days or less

That last figure is the sharpest claim in the story, and the one buyers should pressure-test: a six-week-to-six-day reduction in concepting depends heavily on how the agency defines a finished concept.

What is not said?

The revenue figure — more than $2 million across three years — works out to roughly $667,000 a year for a shop with effectively two principals. That is a workable business for the founders. It is not evidence that a 50-person agency can shed 48 staff tomorrow.

The source does not say how many freelancers the agency engages, what it pays them, or which clients account for the revenue. It also does not break out how much of the productivity gain comes from AI versus from the founders' 15 years of shared working history — a factor that no tool can replicate.

What Goody cost to build and maintain is likewise undisclosed. A proprietary automation tool carries development and upkeep expenses that a two-line revenue summary does not capture.

Why it matters for agencies

BaD Mktg is a small data point, but a clean one: two operators, $2 million over three years, and an explicit claim that AI absorbs the administrative layer that traditionally employs junior and mid-level staff. For agencies pricing against independents, the competitive threat is not headcount — it is concepting cycles compressed from weeks to days.

If Buck and Dor's model holds as they scale clients, the question for larger shops becomes whether their back-office costs can be cut before a two-person shop undercuts them on speed.

By Amara Osei