Research

Nothing unusual happened in my final few years of running an agency. Even though it was also the toughest period...

If you own an agency, you’ve probably had the approaches from people asking about buying you. The flattering emails. The...

For the first four or five years of my agency, I led most of the sales conversations or at least...

At the agency I ran, there was a period where the senior team was me, my co-founder and two directors....

The first serious conversation about someone buying the agency I ran happened many years before I actually left it. (We...

There’s a trend running through agencies right now that I find genuinely interesting and slightly worrying, in equal measure. Vibe...

Here’s an odd thing I’ve noticed over the years about how unprofitable actually gets spotted. It’s almost never the numbers...

A senior leader who I coach showed me their Google Calendar on a call recently. It stressed me out just...

When I was running my agency, we were given a piece of advice that sounded reasonable and was definitely well-intentioned....

If you run or help run an agency, you’ve almost certainly heard this sentence in a status update and you’ve...

If you’re an agency founder or a senior leader, then the chances are pretty high that this one will resonate...

One of the activities that I do with some clients is to watch back video recordings of their meetings to...

I should say up front that I’m generally a huge supporter of AI tools and enabling people to be more...

A founder I work with recently admitted something that made me laugh: she only got her strategy and finance updates...

“What kind of agency are you trying to build?” This is the question that I’ve asked a couple of my...

Okay, let’s dive into an issue that seems to come up at least once or twice a week on my...

A founder I work with recently went away for a week on holiday. It was their first break for nearly...

I think that one of the hardest things to do as an agency is to clearly communicate how you’re different...

One of the most common challenges that I see agencies experience (and one that I experienced myself) as they grow,...

Let’s talk about team performance and how we often tip-toe around performance issues, meaning that when the time comes to...

An agency I work with recently discovered a client was putting their £13k per month contract out to tender with...

A founder I work with received an RFP (Request for Proposal) from a large organisation in their ideal industry and...

An agency I work with recently told me about a difficult situation they were in the midst of. A major...

Today, I’d like to talk about a tension point that most agencies experience at some point when they start to...

A founder I work with recently told me that they felt that their team had started to give up on...

A founder I work with recently told me about discovering a client was about to leave. Not a small client...

A few weeks ago, I was working with a client and reviewing some numbers around capacity, time tracking and utilisation....

A founder who I work with recently told me that they’d just lost a big client who represented about 15%...

I saw a LinkedIn post earlier this week that inspired the topic of this week’s Founder Focus newsletter. The key...

Let’s talk about your mental health as an agency founder.  Whilst mental health as a topic has definitely grown over...

Should we have account managers? This is probably one of the most common questions that I discuss with agency owners....

After stepping back from my own agency after 10 years, I’ve spent (and continue to spend) a lot of time...

I need to start by being very honest about the topic of this post. I ran my own agency for...