Together we’ll work out where your agency is going, focus on what will get you there and drop what slows you down.
What is standing between you and where you want to be? Most of the agency founders I speak with either have too many ideas and demands competing for limited attention, or one big thing slowing them down. I help with both.
I founded an agency in the mid-nineties, ran it for 25 years, then sold in 2021. Since then, I have worked as an agency advisor with dozens of small-agency founders and had regular conversations with hundreds more through the initiatives I run. When it’s competing ideas, the value is in knowing which ideas count, which can wait and which need to be dropped. When it’s one big blocker, there are times when the answer comes from my experience, though finding the new answers is the challenge I really love.
Knowing the next play is one part of the solution, but getting it done is often the hardest part. Even armed with a good answer, founders are blocked by a lack of confidence in the decision, their own capacity or unexpected complexity. What I offer is gentle, persistent forward pressure: easing you along the agreed path and working together to remove the blockers as we encounter them.
When founders make contact
Founders contact me looking for an agency coach, mentor, NED or advisor. Whatever term they use, conversations about working together often start with something specific: prices you know are too low, an over-dependence on referrals, thin profitability or the feeling that every decision has to pass through you. Other times there’s a less specific sense that things aren’t working as well as they could, things that used to work no longer do or the sense that you “don’t know what you don’t know”.
Where the conversation starts is rarely the full shape of the work we do together. As I probe and question, as we create space for thinking and remove the immediate issues, the bigger opportunities and challenges come into view. That’s where the most valuable work often begins.
As we work through what matters most, fewer things compete for your attention. The business becomes calmer and more predictable and progress speeds up… without everything feeling urgent.
Who I work with
I work specifically with small founder-led agencies. They are typically based in the UK and have headcounts ranging from one to fifteen, but these aren’t hard rules. What they have in common is that the founder is still the engine of the business.
I have worked successfully with all types of technical, marketing and creative agencies: SEO, PPC, PR, social media, brand, web, development and more, including some very niche ones. The discipline is less important than the model, as my role is to support the business, leadership and better thinking rather than delivery.
If you are looking for a way to regain momentum without adding more noise, there are three ways to go from here:
Or, if you’ve had enough of reading, get in touch.