Perspective
Articles and resources for hardening the model, leading the team, and navigating the market.
Core thinking. Start here
These core articles convey the key concepts that underpin my approach to agency business. Start here if you want a sense of my thinking or want to read more but don’t know where to start.
- Velocity not speed
A reminder that moving fast is dangerous if you are heading in the wrong direction. This article explains the vital difference between speed and velocity, and why most 'stuck' agencies don't need more effort, they need better alignment and a clearer route.
- What breaks first?
A difficult question I ask founders to uncover points of critical failure and the bottlenecks that rob them of their freedom in the business. It is the starting point for building a business that can adapt, and carry on either without you or without breaking you.
- What is an agency anyway?
Exploring the three pillars of strategy, delivery, and leverage that define a genuine agency business.
- Better not bigger: Rethinking growth as a goal
A challenge to the 'Cult of Growth' that often leads founders away from the lives they actually want. This article explores why growth is a tool, not a goal, and how to build a business that serves your personal ambitions rather than someone else's metrics.
- Beyond the craft: Expertise isn’t enough to build a successful agency
Deep expertise in your craft is rarely enough to build a successful agency. This article explores the fundamental shift from expert to entrepreneur, and the three priority gaps every founder must fill to move beyond 'being on the tools' and start building a business.
Where are the gaps?
Leading an agency is a balancing act between the founder, the machine, and the market. Explore the area that currently needs your attention.
Leadership
Leading the Self & Team: On the harder parts of leadership, decision quality, mental load, and the founder’s evolution.
- The week that never comes
The calm week where everything is finally under control never actually arrives. Why founders keep waiting for it, and how to take time for important work instead.
- Stop training your team to ignore you
Announce enough initiatives you don't follow through on and your team learns to tune you out. How founders train people to ignore them, and how to break the habit.
- Traffic jams and sleepless nights
Why leaders often do their best thinking in traffic or at 3am, and what that signals about business design.
Model
Engineering the Model: On the structural health of the business, metrics, delivery systems, and the mechanics of profitability.
- The Oh Shit Document
A single file a trusted person can reach if you're suddenly out of the picture, so someone can keep your agency alive. What it is, why you need one, and what goes in it.
- You’re irreplaceable… and that’s the problem
Most agency founders are the one person the business can't run without. Why that dependency is a real risk, what the Agency Loop data shows, and how to start fixing it.
- What is an agency anyway?
Exploring the three pillars of strategy, delivery, and leverage that define a genuine agency business.
Market
Navigating the Market: On intentional direction, positioning, strategy, and staying relevant in a shifting landscape.
- No more word of mouth. No more referrals
Why “word of mouth” and “referral” are lazy CRM labels that hide what actually drives new business.
- The web is toast
Why LLMs don’t just disrupt search, but undermine the web’s entire browse-and-click model.
- How to land new clients with a single LinkedIn post
A practical breakdown of how trust, consistency, and a clear ask turn LinkedIn into a repeatable client channel.
Agency toolbox
Practical frameworks, calculators and agency intelligence to help you audit your agency and implement structural changes.
- The Agency Loop : Quarterly agency data and peer insights. Free for contributors
- Mat’s Agency Mixer : Relaxed, online speed networking for agency leaders
- Try this : Practical and proven ways to improve your agency (email list)
- Pension fee impact calculator : Because, much as we love our work, we need to stop sometime
- Agency utilisation & recovery calculator : A tool for modelling team capacity and identifying billable time leakage.
- Retainer lifetime value spreadsheet : A calculator for determining the long-term value of recurring client contracts.
Archived resources
No longer actively maintained, but preserved for posterity and utility
- How to sell an agency podcast : Interviews with exited founders about their build to sell journey
- No dumb (agency) questions : Video series giving straight answers to anonymous agency questions