THE CHALLENGE
Manual work was slowing down growth
Headlight is a growth marketing agency that helps brands like Calm, Disney, and Uber grow users and revenue.
As they signed more clients, the workload piled up. To meet demand, they scaled from 4 to 30 people, but hit operational bottlenecks.
Teams were buried in time-consuming tasks. As Headlight CEO, Michael O’Brien, explains,"New clients, new channels, new reports… The analytics team had many reports that were urgent, but needed to be manually aggregated while data engineering work was underway.” Meanwhile the marketing team struggled with repetitive ad builds and campaign management.
"Our in-house team would spend their time on bureaucratic step-by-step things and a lot less time on client strategy, which is the real thing we can offer," explains Richard Ingilby, Director of Growth Marketing at Headlight.
These operational bottlenecks had real consequences:
- Slower client onboarding processes
- Delayed campaign launches
- Senior team members wasting time on tasks that can be delegated
- Limited bandwidth to pursue new business opportunities
Headlight had tried working with offshore teams before, but those experiences left them hesitant to try again.
"I had experience with Indian and Chinese software development teams," Shaun Kiernan (CTO at Headlight) said. He faced these problems:
• Poor communication due to time zone differences
• Misunderstandings about project requirements
• Delayed feedback cycles with handoffs at the end of the day
• The teams were siloed rather than truly integrated
THE SOLUTION
Taking a Chance on a Different Approach
A mutual advisor introduced Headlight to GrowthAssistant.
Despite past failures with offshore teams, they gave it a shot, because the GrowthAssistant model was different:
- Talent working in their time zone
- Fully embedded in Slack, meetings, and workflows
- After onboarding and SOPs handoffs, the growth assistant dives into execution from day one
Headlight initially needed a reports assistant to gather and prepare data.
After learning about their ideal candidate, we matched them with Ed.
He brought 5 years of experience in e-commerce and small businesses, with strengths in reporting, project management, and web development.
One of his standout moments: using data to support 1,200 families at the Philippine Department of Social Welfare.
Three years later, Ed is now Headlight’s Senior Data Engineer - architecting pipelines, writing code, and leading complex data initiatives.
"The onboarding process was very smooth," recalls Shaun. "Very fluid, very quick, very painless. Just having Ed drop in and start doing work was lovely."
Encouraged by this positive experience, Headlight hired two more GAs: King for marketing tasks (like ad builds and campaign reporting) and later added Ceejay.
But what did the GAs actually do that made the positive impact?
- Ed advanced from basic dashboard creation to leading complex data engineering projects. "Ed has single-handedly driven our new weighted attribution views," Shaun shares with pride. "He's taken over the bulk of client onboarding work, including data engineering tasks that were formerly outside of his scope." Shaun now describes Ed as "a full-fledged member of the data engineering team."
- King progressed from building ads to performing detailed analysis. "King has been good at not just executing tasks but flagging where things can be better," explains Richard. King now handles complex search query reports, builds client presentations, and identifies optimization opportunities that directly impact campaign performance.
- CeeJay quickly mastered reporting tasks, creating a pathway for others to advance. "Since adding Ceejay, we have been able to level up our existing GA to take on more advanced projects and move more reporting tasks off our Growth team.”
THE RESULT
From Burnout to Breakthrough
• The agency reclaimed over 120 hours per week that had previously been consumed by manual tasks, allowing senior team members to focus on strategy, client relationships, and new business development. No more late-night campaign builds or dashboard scrambles.
• Headlight saw a 40% improvement in overall efficiency. Client onboarding became faster, campaign launches more streamlined, and reporting more consistent and timely.
• The Growth Assistants have become integrated team members. "We're bringing them into more and more meetings discussing client strategy," Richard said.
For Headlight, the key to success was treating their Growth Assistants as team members rather than external resources. "It felt much more collaborative than when I've dealt with offshore teams that are separate, where you very much have to hand them a clean package," Shaun told us.
The Takeaway
What began as a tactical solution has evolved into a strategic advantage, allowing Headlight to scale efficiently while focusing its in-house talent on high-value activities.
"Our GAs are well-loved across the company, and consistently exceed expectations," Shaun shares. When asked what advice he would give to others, Richard doesn't hesitate: "The overall sales pitch is that honestly, they are a new member of the team."
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