Agency Mentor, Coach & Advisor
Running your own agency can be incredibly rewarding, but it is rarely easy. Many of us start agency businesses in order improve our work-life balance, gain control over our lives and increase our earnings. All to often we then find ourselves in a reality missing one, two or even sometimes all three of those things. As your Agency Mentor, I see my role as helping you achieve those things and to get the agency you dream of running.
My expertise is grounded in 25 years of digital agency leadership, culminating in the successful sale of my own agency in 2021. I’ve learned a lot along the way, both through our successes and our failures. Since my exit I’ve had time to reflect on both and also to learn more from others than I ever could whilst running my own agency.
I now apply that experience and knowledge as an advisor and mentor to other agency leaders. My approach isn’t to encourage you to follow a formula or replicate what I did, but to find your own path to achieving whatever it is that you want to achieve through your agency life.
“Working with Mat has been a huge game-changer for us. He’s brilliant at solving problems, gets straight to the issues, and he holds me accountable, which is pretty much the holy grail for any business owner. Plus, he brings a calm presence that’s completely devoid of ego.“
– Charli Hunt, Proof Content
How mentoring works
When you engage me as a mentor you get the benefit of another experienced agency leader in your corner. We start out with a 90 minute calls every 2 weeks: your time with me to use how you please: For many that most often takes the form of talking through current issues, with me questioning and guiding conversation to help you find your own best answers. Other times it is more direct with clients asking for direct input based on my own knowledge and experience.
Another common feature is priority and focus. Regular time to talk through business issues, with a knowledgeable person guiding and questioning can be a powerful way to cut through noise and get clarity around what needs to be done. This naturally then leads into accountability, helping you to get more of what you know needs to be done DONE.
Whilst it’s good to keep things adaptable, I do steer things away from being entirely reactive. In our first couple of calls we’ll explore where you and the business are now and how you what changes you would like to see. This exploration helps me steer future conversations back to those goals, which we regularly update and review.
Should you need input or opinion between our scheduled calls, that is fine too. I give all agency leaders I work with access to my private slack for those quick inputs and questions that can’t wait for our next scheduled time together.
“Working with Mat has given me a clear focus of what my role is in the business, every time we meet he leaves me with more confidence that I am on the right track with my thinking and if he doesn’t agree he is the first to challenge my thought process which is always hugely beneficial as at times I can be guilty of running before I can walk!
Mat helps me with looking at the profitability of the workforce, ensuring I understand what my numbers actually mean in Xero and with that information we are now creating a picture of what the next 12 months could look like, not just from a turnover perspective but what the business will need to facilitate that growth.“
– Cecilia Grigor, Planit Scotland
Why work with a mentor?
Understanding where my clients get value is a constant interest for me, as the answers I get to that question are so varied. The reassuring thing is that everyone finds that value, but what form it takes differs. I’ve collected some of the diverse answers into themes below:
Strategy: Defining success and aligning your plans and effort to best achieve those outcomes.
Clarity: The chance to talk things through. Together we unpick, question and challenge plans. We improve them, break them down into manageable parts and prioritise what needs doing.
Accountability: Conversations ensure that plans become reality and diversions only occur when it is right to. Ensuring the job doesn’t become firefighting and that progress is made is in the right direction.
Practical: Drawing on experience relevant to direct challenges. Advice, past experience, recommendations and introductions. Developing process and bringing in new ideas.
It’s difficult to summarise. Adapting the support to fit what each client needs is part of the fun for me and what ensures value for the people I work with.
“Mat has been instrumental in helping me develop my business. Working with Mat has helped me make real progress on developing my business/agency after many years of going round in circles and struggling to pick the right direction to move forwards in. “
-Lorraine McConechy, Keen
What does it cost?
My pricing is simple. I charge £425 per month with no minimum commitment or tie-in. I offer a discount of 20% (=£340 per month) to organisations that have 3 or fewer employees, are a registered charity/CIC or are certified B Corps. If you want more involvement I offer this on a day / half-day rate.
“Mat has helped us to push forward, setting clear goals and holding us accountable to them. His insights in the industry have also been incredibly useful. To top it all off we knew he was good at content marketing, but his recent work to support us has blown me away.”
-Daniel Jones, MODN
Particular areas of interest
I genuinely love the variety of issues and themes I get involved with working with other agency leaders, but there are a handful of topics that I have a particular love for. These include:
- Content marketing for leads
- Positioning, repositioning and specialisation
- Making agency businesses more saleable
- Personal effectiveness (Getting the right s*** done)
- Scaling without breaking
- Making your agency business less reliant on you
“As a lone agency founder, Mat has saved me from my ‘lonely at the top’ existence. Working with him has allowed me to bounce ideas and questions and benefit from his experience, insights and ability to get me to the core of an issue with (mostly) gentle questioning!”
-Duncan Davidson, Rohallion
Find out more
If what you have read on this page sounds of interest, the next step would be for us to have an initial introductory chat over Meet or Zoom. You can either click the button below to book that in below, or click here to contact me if you have any questions.