Articles
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Why design agency founders get trapped
Design agencies are built differently - and that makes them uniquely vulnerable to four traps that stop talented founders from growing beyond themselves.
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What a chance encounter taught me about cold email
The best outreach doesn't feel like outreach at all. Being in the right place, at the right time, and saying something real - rather than pitching - is how meaningful professional relationships actually start.
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Track time for now. Tomorrow it will be tokens.
As an agency founder your most important job is allocating resource. Time is your unit - imperfect but essential - and knowing what it costs tells you which clients make real money and how to build a business that doesn't need you billing.
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Cold outreach is like wearing a giant green hat
Cold outreach works - but only once you've earned the right to make the ask. Leading with your offer before you've built any visibility is like putting on a giant green hat with no context.
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The rules apply to you
Financial KPIs feel like something for bigger agencies. But even tiny ones have delivery margins and effective rates - they're just harder to see. Here's how to start measuring them before they start to matter more.
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The one thing I'll never do to you
LinkedIn is full of people who've learned how to make you feel like you're missing something. Here's why you don't need to know all of it - and why whatever state your agency is in, you're doing better than you think.
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The hire that won't pay for themselves
The quick maths you do before hiring - new revenue vs new salary - misses on-costs, management overhead, and the margin contribution a hire needs to make. Here's why that instinct gets less reliable as your agency grows.
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Why are you faking your revenue?
Deposits, prepayments, and retainers all make your revenue line lie to you. Here's why your monthly analysis is built on bad data - and how accrual accounting fixes it.
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Buying triggers
Most of your content reaches people who aren't ready to buy yet. Buying triggers are specific signals that tell you when a prospect might be in the market, letting you reach out at exactly the right moment.
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How to leave a prospect unimpressed
Most of your prospects aren't looking for an agency right now, so talking about yourself won't land. The real play is solving their actual problems until they trust you enough to call when they are.
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Only half of your marketing works
Marketing is a chaotic system where half the results are invisible, but that's not a reason to stop. The mistake isn't doing marketing that doesn't work — it's standing still instead of experimenting.
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Steal my forecasting template to see your future
A practical guide to building a financial forecast for your agency, starting simple and adding sophistication over time, so you can see the impact of your decisions before you make them.
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Why small agencies should hire in the Goldilocks Zone
The highest-ROI hires for small agencies are people with just enough experience who are on the cusp of becoming authoritative, they bring passion and loyalty in exchange for mentorship and opportunity.
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You might not need to scale
Scaling means doing more of the same, but sometimes the real opportunity is re-potting your agency entirely, changing what it is rather than just making it bigger.
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The three seats of marketing
Marketing feels overwhelming when you treat it as one thing; breaking it into market insights, strategy, and execution reveals which parts the founder must own and which can be outsourced.
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Your best people aren't unicorns
Treating your best employees as irreplaceable unicorns keeps you relying on luck; breaking down what actually makes them great gives you a repeatable way to find more of them.
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The art of marketing without marketing
Agency founders are already marketing effectively through networking, referrals, and authentic interactions, the key is recognising what is already working and building on it before investing in anything new.
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Setting goals for your agency: why arbitrary deadlines actually work
The calendar year is an arbitrary milestone, but it remains one of the most effective forcing functions for agency founders to set goals and reflect on direction.
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The onboarding framework: using behaviours to assess new hires
Vague company values like 'be human' fail to guide real decisions; defining specific observable behaviours gives you a shared standard for feedback, hiring, and holding your team to a clear bar.
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Why three-month probation periods don't work (and what to do instead)
The standard three-month probation period is an inherited convention that delays critical hiring decisions; a structured 4-week onboarding framework gives you evidence-based confidence far sooner.