F*ck Your Agency is a practical guide to online advertising for service-based business owners who want to run their own marketing rather than outsource it to an agency. Its central argument is that the person who best understands the customer — the business owner — is better placed to produce effective advertising than an external agency that understands marketing in general but not the specific business, its customers, or its voice.
The book is aimed at owners of service businesses such as trades, professional practices, and coaching or consulting firms: people who have typically grown through word of mouth and referrals and now want a more reliable and predictable way to generate leads.
It is organised into three parts.
Part One focuses on clarity. It addresses the common objections that keep owners dependent on agencies (lack of time, lack of technical skill, cost concerns), sets out five "ad-spend archetypes" that describe different ways people approach advertising, and works through how to define an ideal customer, why that customer buys, and what the owner is trying to achieve.
Part Two sets out ten principles of effective advertising that the author argues hold true regardless of the product or platform. These cover the balance between creative and data, how to interpret performance metrics, matching the message to the audience and their stage of awareness, sequencing emotional and rational appeals, addressing objections, guiding prospects one step at a time, and diagnosing where a campaign is failing. Each principle is illustrated with campaign examples and the underlying psychology.
Part Three brings the principles together into a step-by-step process: selecting a platform, structuring a funnel, writing the ad, building a landing page, and measuring and iterating on results.
The author, Brandon Willington, is the founder of a marketing education business that teaches service-based business owners to run their own Meta and Google advertising. He was named Australian Young Entrepreneur of the Year (Marketing) in 2025. The book is written in an informal, direct style and draws on his experience running an agency and, later, teaching business owners directly.
