Guest · Ep 086
Phil Rivers on Fast Hours.
On Fast Hours
Episode 86 brings on Phil Rivers, Rory's former boss at the email agency Tetra, who now runs an email and SMS agency of about 40 clients and a 16-person core team.
The 30-second version
- 01
Automate the soul-sucking admin first: once a client clicks approve on Phil's campaign calendar, Asana gets the task, subtasks, assignees and due dates automatically.
- 02
Write tasks so nobody has to ask: Phil's rule is that if the executing team asks the account lead one question, the task isn't good.
- 03
Share one MCP instead of separate setups: Phil serves a repo snapshot and Supabase data store from a virtual machine, and the whole team connects through one connector.
- 04
Control who can save: only Phil and one colleague can write to the repo; everyone else uses a skill to summarise useful work and send it to them.
The episode
He’s Using AI to Double His Agency Without Hiring
ft. Phil Rivers
Episode 86 brings on Phil Rivers, Rory's former boss at the email agency Tetra, who now runs an email and SMS agency of about 40 clients and a 16-person core team. He walks through an operations system built on Claude Code, MCP, Supabase, Asana, Slack and Figma, including client-approved calendars that spawn Asana tasks and a Slack agent named Tim, and argues the same team could handle twice the clients.
Open the episodePhil's stack, as they told it
- Claude Code ▲ Rates it
Phil's build tool for the whole agency system: Klaviyo API scripts, the repo, Supabase data store and automations
- MCP (Model Context Protocol) ▲ Rates it
Phil calls MCP a stable standard; one MCP to his virtual machine gives the team every tool and data source
- Claude ◆ Mixed
Helps copywriters with drafts but 'like a hammer' isn't always right; an unannounced connector-permission change broke Phil's setup
- Figma ▲ Rates it
Writers and designers draft emails together on Figma boards with client references and do's and don'ts
Phil, on the record
- 01 Why his agency optimises for service over results
“I've lost clients that we have A plus results for and C plus service. And I've kept clients where we have C plus results and A plus service.”
- 02 The rule behind Tim, his task-drafting Slack agent
“I tell the account leads if the if the team that's executing has to ask you one question about your task, the task isn't good. They should ask you no questions.”
- 03 What he tells his account leads
“I'm like, dude, I want you to do less stuff. Like if you're doing stuff, I'm like, something's wrong.”
- 04 How far AI ops could stretch his current team
“In terms of the the ceiling now, I think we could two X the client roster with no new headcount.”
- 05 Which AI projects aren't worth building
“Not everything we're building is … worth building because we can build everything now. And so that being able to discern what is valuable to build and what isn't is a task in and of itself.”