General Manager (Remote, Chicago)

Blacksmith Agency LLC; Chicago (IL); Remote; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Blacksmith Agency is a remote agency serving US clients. We seek a General Manager to run the company day to day, owning Sales, Recruiting, Delivery and Marketing. The founder sets direction, but you translate it into operational reality with the team you have.

You will lead four department leads, own the weekly rhythm and priorities, protect delivery margins, and drive profitable growth while coaching leaders to become true operators.

Qualifications

• Proven sales leadership at VP/CRO level in an agency or SaaS environment.
• Experience scaling teams and driving profitability across multiple functions.
• Strong negotiation, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead four department leads and manage day-to-day operations end-to-end.
• Set weekly cadence, priorities, and make trade-off decisions when needed.
• Protect margins on delivery, evaluate hiring costs, and manage client contracts.
• Coach leaders to become high-performing operators and align with founder goals.

Skills

Sales leadership

Agency experience

People management

Negotiation

Communication

Job description

About The Role

Blacksmith Agency is a remote agency building websites and running paid and organic programs for US clients. As General Manager you run the company day to day. Sales, recruiting, delivery and marketing all report to this seat. Today that work sits on the founder's desk, which is the whole reason it is open.

We want an operator who came up through sales. You carried a quota, then managed salespeople against a number, then ran a sales org as a VP of Sales or CRO, ideally at an agency (SaaS or professional services also work), and took on the rest of a business from there. Sales is the department this seat leans on hardest, and you will run it alongside recruiting, delivery and marketing. The founder owns where the business goes; you run it day to day, with the people we actually have, and you are accountable for the profit number underneath.

Blacksmith Agency

• Executive
• Full time
• Remote (USA or Canada)

What You Own

• Four department leads: their numbers, their development, their reviews, and the call when one of them is not going to get there.
• The week. The meeting rhythm, this quarter's priorities, and what gets cut when two of them collide.
• Profit, measured on attainment rather than activity. Margin on delivery, the real cost of a hire, which business we take and which we turn down.
• The commercial conversations: client contracts and the redlines that come back on them, vendor terms, and what we will and will not agree to.
• Building strong operators into actual leaders. Several of them have never been coached as one.
• The decisions that wait on the founder today, made the same day instead.

What You Need

• A sales background: you carried a quota, then led salespeople against a number as a VP of Sales, CRO or sales-led general manager. You can coach a rep, run a pipeline review and close a deal yourself.
• Agency experience first: a digital, marketing or creative agency is ideal. A SaaS or professional services business also works. You know how a services company sells, prices and delivers.
• More than one function reporting to you, where their numbers, their hiring and the decision when a leader was not working out were yours to make. Running a large team inside a single function is a different job.
• You joined a company at one size and left it three or four times bigger. Forty people to a hundred and forty is the shape we mean. Expect to be asked for the headcount the day you arrived, the day you left, and what you put in place to make the second number survivable.
• A profit number you personally carried. Margin, not revenue somebody else sold and not a budget you were handed to spend.
• Real negotiation experience, on contracts and with people. This seat sits across the table often.
• A communicator. Most of what this job is, is being clear with four leaders and one founder about what is true right now.

Please do not apply if

• You have never managed salespeople against a number. A project, program or operations management background without sales leadership is a different seat.
• Nobody has ever reported to you, or you have never owned someone's review or had to performance-manage a leader.
• You have only ever led inside one function.
• The company you point to for growth was already large when you arrived.
• What you want is the visionary seat. That one is taken, and this is explicitly the other one.

Process

Three conversations, then a decision. A thirty minute screen with our recruiter, a first round with the founder this seat reports to, and a final. No take-home project and no panel interview.