How I help creative agencies
I’m an operations consultant for creative agencies. I look at how your agency runs - delivery, finances, people and process - and fix what's holding it back, so you can improve margins, scale and grow while the work stays creative.
Founders usually call me when the agency is busy and doing great work, but profit doesn't match the effort, or growth has stalled.
From designer to operations director
I struggled in school, but design was always my strength and my passion. As a teenager I became fascinated by typography and discovered Letraset books full of typefaces. Inspired, I spent countless hours in my sketchbook, recreating words in different typefaces entirely by hand. At 17, before I’d finished my foundation course in print, I was offered a job at a local book design firm. I was fired after three months. It was a humbling moment, and the wake-up call I needed.
My next agency had just spent £16k on an Apple Mac that nobody had embraced yet. They wanted a junior who was keen to use it, and I was thrilled to oblige. Being early to new technology shaped my career, and it’s why I now help agencies adopt automation and AI in a practical way.
I realised I wasn’t going to be a great designer, but I had a knack for managing creatives. That led to studio management and eventually Executive Operations Director at Design Bridge and Partners, one of the world’s largest design agencies.
After 25+ years in agencies, I know what makes creative businesses tick, and what it takes to make them profitable, scalable and still creative.
Who I help
I work with founders and leadership teams of creative agencies - branding, design, digital, PR and social - in the UK and globally, remotely or in person.
What they have in common is that the agency has outgrown the way it's run. I work with founders who want changes that last.
Signs you need an agency operations consultant
You may need one if:
- Revenue is growing, but profit isn’t
Revenue is up, the team is busier, and yet the profit at the end of the year barely moves. You work harder every year to stand still. - You find out a job lost money after it’s finished
Quotes look fine, then scope creep, rework and over-servicing eat the margin. By the time the numbers land, the client has been billed, the team has moved on and nothing can be fixed. - Nothing happens unless you are in the room
Approvals, pricing calls, client rescues and every awkward conversation land on your desk. You can’t take a proper holiday, and when you do, your phone stays on. - Your best people carry the agency
Great work depends on who leads the project. Your strongest people are stretched thin, the rest wait for direction, and results swing from one job to the next. - Your team is doing work a system should be doing
Timesheets, status updates, chasing approvals, reporting. Hours disappear into admin that should be handled by automation or AI. That is time you pay for but can’t bill. - The agency has outgrown how it runs
What worked at 8 people is creaking at 25. Growth has stalled, and the agency isn’t ready to scale or sell.
There are three ways to work with me:
- Profit Boost Session: find where margin is leaking, or your money back
- AgencyOS™: an audit, roadmap and hands-on support to scale, grow or sell
- Ops On Demand: a fixed-price project to fix one specific problem, from resourcing to automation
Want to grow a profitable agency?
Let's talk about where your agency is today and what's holding it back.
