Business & Strategy
The Timeline Questions Most Founders Forget to Ask an Agency
You'll ask an agency about price a dozen times before you ever ask them what happens if the schedule slips. Ask the second question first.
"Every agency will happily tell you how fast they can go. Almost none will volunteer what happens the moment that fast timeline doesn't hold."
Questions Beyond "How Long Will This Take"
This Journal's questions to ask before hiring article covers the broader vetting checklist — timeline specifically deserves its own follow-up questions: what happens to the schedule if a revision round runs long, how TTB approval timing (covered in this Journal's approval process article) factors into their stated timeline, and whether their quoted schedule assumes everything goes right the first time.
A Timeline With No Contingency Built In Is a Red Flag
An agency that presents a single, optimistic timeline with no acknowledgment of where delays typically happen — a rejected COLA submission, a slow co-packer response, a client-side approval bottleneck — is either inexperienced or not being fully honest about how projects like this actually go, covered from the realistic-timeline side in this Journal's launch strategy article.
Ask About Their Worst Recent Project, Not Just Their Best
The single most revealing question remains the one covered in this Journal's portfolio vetting article: ask about a project that ran long, and listen for whether they can explain specifically what caused it and what they changed as a result.
Sources
Raw Guild Studios
We Build Beverage Brands From the Ground Up
Creative direction, naming, identity, packaging, and production — one studio, start to shelf.