In this episode of Beyond the Build, Shawn Johnston talks with Sarah Jolly, co-founder and managing partner of Jolly Creative Agency, about building a WordPress agency from scratch, staying focused on what you do best, and delivering big projects on time without burning relationships to the ground.
Sarah shares how the agency started from a self taught CSS book and a band website, then grew into a tight, long running team that partners out non core services on purpose. The conversation gets into what actually makes delivery work at scale, including why they moved away from wireframes, why content comes first, and how they set clients up to approve faster by doing the heavy lift early.
They also cover:
- Why specializing beats trying to be full service
- How content first prevents “almost launched” websites
- How to balance what is best for the business with client capacity
- How remote work forced sharper systems and better hiring
- Sarah’s take on AI, including what it can support and what it cannot replace
