Peter Kang

This year, I’m grateful for the opportunity to evolve my role in a significant way and take on new and interesting challenges. It’s been about six months since Sei-Wook and I made the shift from agency operators to holding company partners. I’ve enjoyed learning new things, meeting new people, and exploring new ways to create value for the holdco and our agencies. I’m grateful for Sei-Wook–we’ve worked closely together for over twenty years, dating back […]

In early October, we relaunched AgencyDocs as AgencyHabits, a resource for agency operators drawing from the learnings at across our businesses at Barrel Holdings. The reception has been positive and we’ve managed to grow the email list since going live. We’ve posted over a dozen articles and began sending out a weekly email. The goal is to replace the downloadable templates and SOPs currently on AgencyDocs with a tighter and more updated version by the […]

My co-founder Sei-Wook gave a talk this month on digital marketing trends to a private equity group and executives from their portfolio companies. The talk was very well received and may lead to some opportunities for our agencies. Sei-Wook worked tirelessly to create a deeply-researched and engaging presentation, filled with memorable visuals, data, and examples. The presentation opportunity came about as we started representing ourselves as Barrel Holdings, not just focused on e-commerce websites, but […]

When a lead comes in directly to me these days, I usually just loop in the appropriate agency by email and let them take it from there. Still, for a select few calls each week, I end up taking a call on my own first. These are usually opportunities where it’s not totally clear which agency would be the best fit. I enjoy these calls because I can take the time to learn about the […]

It’s been an exhilarating month as Sei-Wook and I fully turned our attention to running our holding company. We have so much we want to accomplish but we know our bandwidth and resources are tight. In some respects, it feels like 2006–it’s the two of us trying to build something new from the ground up. The name of the game is to prioritize and execute one thing at a time. Very hard to do. About Agency […]

In early June, we publicly announced that I would be stepping aside as CEO of Barrel, handing off the role to longtime Barrel partner Lucas Ballasy. It’s been a couple years in the making, and I couldn’t be prouder of the fact that Lucas is more than ready to lead Barrel and take it to a new level. Check out the LinkedIn post of the announcement by me and by Lucas. My co-founder Sei-Wook and […]

Our family enjoyed a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend as we hosted some friends and spent quality time with kids in the pool, eating BBQ, and relaxing in perfect weather. Incredibly grateful for the wonderful time. I still remember the holidays of my past, when I would feel burdened with thoughts of work, convincing myself I needed to devote some hours catching up on proposals and emails. I’d often work myself up to a certain level […]

This is the final month of our lease at our 197 Grand Street office. Next week, we’ll be completely moved out. We’ll be renting a desk and conference room access from our friends at The Working Assembly. It was in 2011 that we first moved to 197 Grand Street. I was on my honeymoon when Sei-Wook orchestrated the move (God bless him, he’s also orchestrating the move out). We were on the 6th floor in […]

A quick update on my LinkedIn posting activities in the first 3 months of 2024: I’ve consistently posted every weekday with the help of Deal Bridge, who keep me accountable for writing new posts and also helping to recycle some older posts for when I don’t have new ones ready. This has been going on since May 2023. Gained about 800 new followers in Q1, not a big number but steady growth.  220k impressions across […]

I’ve been enjoying a biography of Walt Disney, Walt Disney: The Triumph of The American Imagination by Neal Gabler. I’m about 80% through and one of the things that struck me is how, for the first twenty or so years of the business, Disney struggled financially and came very close at multiple points to losing it all as an animation/movie studio. The financing of animation movies was risky business and it took a combination of […]

This cycle may be familiar to many agency operators: when you don’t have enough work, you scramble to ramp up your business development efforts while cutting back on recruiting; when the tide turns and the work starts pouring in, you scramble to ramp up your recruiting efforts in order to have the people to deliver on the work, all while neglecting or cutting back on sales and marketing efforts. It often feels like we’re 2-3 […]

Another year comes to a close – another year of countless decisions, experiments, and initiatives. Like any other year, we made plenty of mistakes and did things that were either inefficient or straight up wasteful. And while I’d like to think we learned a great deal from these experiences, I’m also sure that we’ll continue to make mistakes in the future. My hope is that we can avoid making the same mistakes over and over […]

On my mind during this year’s Thanksgiving weekend has been the feeling of how fleeting life can be. I’ve seen family members get older and enter different stages of their lives. It’s very possible that with some, we may only get a handful more holidays to spend together. I’ve been feeling it with my three young boys – it was just a few years ago that none of them were here and now they’re such […]

October’s been an action-packed month. Every week has felt like a full-on sprint. Thankfully, my energy level and health has held up, and overall, I’m feeling calm and optimistic. With just a couple months to go in 2023, I’m feeling immensely grateful. There were lots of challenges this year and many things didn’t go our way. However, we also learned a lot, made important improvements, and didn’t get discouraged. I don’t really have expectations for […]

I’m taking some family time this month as we welcomed our son Xander. As a result, I’ve not been as involved day-to-day although I’ve kept up with emails and checked in with my Barrel partners. There’s a lot of down time with a newborn, especially the late nights when I’m rocking the baby for a few hours giving Mel some time to sleep before the next feeding. These moments have been good for catching up […]

I spent the last full week of July in Spain on a family vacation. We stayed an hour outside of Barcelona. I loved the view we had from the home we rented, a sweeping panorama of trees with the Mediterranean Sea off in the distance. I thought more than a few times what it would be like to live and work in Europe with primarily American co-workers and clients. Being 5-6 hours ahead means that […]

At the start of the month, we briefly acknowledged Barrel’s 17th year of being in business. I posted something on LinkedIn and after work, poured myself a glass of white wine. On one hand, it’s just another day, month, and year in the business – I like to think that we keep our heads down and continue working hard. On the other hand, every additional day, month, and year is a blessing and a privilege […]

May was a hard month. Lots of travel, meetings, and moments, both business and personal, that tested my patience. Thankfully, I knew this was going to be the case going in, so I tried to be as mentally prepared as possible. The trick was to take things one day at a time, enjoying the occasional down moments as best I could and also celebrating even the smallest of wins. More travel, work, and personal obligations […]

A key to longevity in this business is to have a lot of friends who also run agency businesses. I’ve been lucky to meet and develop relationships with dozens of agency operators over the years. They’ve inspired me with their discipline, creative thinking, leadership, and ambitions. They’ve been great sources of comfort when things haven’t gone so well for me, sometimes lending a patient ear to hear out my challenges and at other times commiserating […]

We concluded our trial of Roam, a virtual office collaboration tool that’s meant to evoke a sense of place online while encouraging more casual “drop-in” conversations among team members. The interface looked sleek and the value proposition was promising, so we went for a 30-day trial with our team. The 30 days came and went very quickly and we decided to send out a team survey to get a check on how people were feeling […]