Our Guest: Marcel Petitpas, co-founder and CEO of Parakeeto

This episode of Operation Agency features the journey of Marcel in building up Parakeeto. He narrates how his dream of empowering the small digital agencies and consultancies turned into reality through great software. He also shares his service business model and metrics that will make great profitability among those who would like to scale up in their business.

Conversation Highlights

  • Sidetrack of Marcel’ journey as a table tennis champion
  • His dream of building a business worth a million dollars before the age of 30
  • Starting off with a real estate agency after quitting his sales and marketing job
  • The birth of Parakeeto after a call from Jared, owner of Royal Jay Agency
  • Marcel’s encounter with a software and business coach on how to build a software company
  • Parakeeto: The opportunity to come in and be the solution
  • Challenge: learning the fundamental economic realities of a service business model
  • Challenges in growing your business
  • The 3 metrics in running a service business
  • The idea of optimal utilization

Key Podcast Moments

  • [6:06] What life lessons did you learn from playing table tennis that you still carry over today?
  • [8:43] How did Marcel start Parakeeto?
  • [13:24] Learning the fundamentals in starting, validating, and scaling up a software company
  • [19:46] Understand your business model and the economic realities
  • [24:12] How to run a service business
  • [26:03] What is optimal utilization rate?

Magic Marketing Quotes from our Guest

  • “There’s a difference between being proficient and  becoming a master.”
  • “[There are] metrics which will give you the opportunity to see the smoke before the fire happens and get a chance to go in and resolve those things.”
  • “Implement procedures [and] processes to prevent them from happening again.”
  • “…utilization is how much of that time are you actually utilizing for billable work that you’re getting paid for…”

Resources Mentioned

About Our Guest

Marcel Petitpas is the co-founder and CEO of Parakeeto and the COO of Gold Front, an award-winning creative company in San Francisco. He is also a keynote speaker and consultant.

Get in Contact with Marcel

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Operation Agency Freedom podcast to stay up-to-date about the best ways to own your agency.