When our first designer left and took our entire design capability with her, everything nearly fell apart. But that disaster taught me the most important lesson of my business career: never build a business with a single point of failure.
Today I’m sharing the seven strategies that took us from chaos to £220k months. These aren’t theories I’ve read in a book and regurgitated here but rather, they’re hard-learned lessons from 13 years doing what you’re doing too. Building a business.
Actually, before we start, let me show you what NOT to do first: most of us think that working harder will solve everything. If you’ve ever sent client work at 11pm on a Friday thinking ‘this is just what it takes’, drop a comment below – you’re not alone.
Most business advice tells you to work harder, be passionate, and focus on the customer. That’s like telling someone to be happy by smiling more. It’s surface-level nonsense that doesn’t actually help you build a scalable business.
I’m Connor from Move at Pace and after scaling and exiting my agency, I now advise over 50 agency owners on what I’ve learnt actually moves your business forward. And it’s not what most people think.
Here are the top seven things that actually grew our business:
Systems Beat Passion Every Time
Everyone talks about passion. But passion doesn’t scale. You know what does? Systems.
We documented every process in our business. Not because we enjoyed it – it’s boring as hell – but because it meant anyone could deliver our service without me being there.
I had one client who was working 70-hour weeks because “only he could do it right.” Six months after implementing proper systems, he took a three-week holiday. The business continued while he was gone. It didn’t fall apart like he thought it would and it might have beforehand. Thankfully, we’ll never know.
Stop Being the Bottleneck
Every decision in our agency used to flow through me. It felt like control, but it was actually chaos.
The turning point came when I went to Malaga for a month to write our 5-year business plan. For the first time, my team had to handle everything without me. And you know what? They handled it brilliantly.
That month taught me that my need for control was the very thing preventing us from scaling. So we started pushing decision-making down:
- Project managers could approve scope changes up to 10%
- Account managers owned client relationships completely
- The design team could choose 3rd party support without my input
The business started running like an actual business, not a one-man show with employees. This had a huge boost in team morale and output. The bottleneck I was fully responsible for was no longer an issue.
Track Your Numbers Like Your Life Depends On It
Most business owners check their bank balance and think they know their numbers. That’s not tracking – that’s hoping.
We tracked:
- Win rate on proposals and total value of outstanding proposals
- Time from enquiry to invoice
- Profit per project (not just revenue)
- Client lifetime value
- Cashflow forecasts
When you measure it, you can improve it. When you guess, you’re gambling with your family’s future. But I get it, many of you are not confident in Excel, in Xero or in your CRM. But to scale your agency, you need to understand the financial function the same way you would the Adobe suite. The life of your business lies within the finances, make sure you put your attention here.
Fire Bad Clients (Yes, Really)
The clients who complain most about price are usually the ones who drain your energy, scope-creep every project, and refer nobody. They’re the ones who WhatsApp you an idea on Friday night and complain on Monday that you haven’t designed it, when they sent the message “over 2 days ago”.
We fired our biggest client in year three. They were 20% of our revenue but 80% of our stress. Within a month, we’d replaced them with four better clients at higher margins.
And I see this time and time again with the agency owners I support. They stick with those historic clients who were there from the start. But this loyalty is costing you money. Your service will have grown and your delivery is better and I’m sure your rate card has increased for every new client you take onboard.
But why is this not the case for those clients who’ve been with us the longest? They’re getting your new service and yet we charge them the least, they expect you to drop everything for them and worse, they’re often the worst payers.
Your worst clients are preventing you from finding your best ones. And I don’t say this lightly, but sometimes we outgrow them and we need to decide at which point we need to be the ones to leave the relationship or change the terms.
But do this with a plan to find their replacement or better yet have them ready and waiting.
Build to Sell From Day One
We built our business to be sold from the very beginning. Not because we wanted to exit immediately, but because businesses built for sale are better businesses to run.
This meant:
- Revenue not dependent on my relationships
- Predictable recurring income
- Clean financials that told a growth story
- A team that could operate without me
Whether you sell in 2 years or 20, you win either way.
And that sounds like a neatly wrapped up little story. But I promise this journey was anything but. Your business will evolve and you will pivot more times than you should. There will be curveballs sent to test you. But knowing what you want to achieve and having the plan to achieve it allows you to return to it after any detour.
Charge More Than Makes You Comfortable
If you’re winning more than 70% of your proposals, your prices are too low. Full stop.
Pause this video right now and write down your current win rate. If you don’t know it, that’s your first problem to solve.
Last December, I challenged one of my clients to track their win rate. Turns out they were closing 90% of proposals. Within three months of raising prices, they were at 70% win rate but making 92.6% more revenue.
We went from £150 logos to £20k brand projects by incrementally testing what the market would pay. Every time we won a project, we’d quote £500 more on the next one. I’m sure there’s some business advice on pricing ceilings I should quote, but the bottom line is that you should continuously test what your market will pay for your service. And when they stop paying it, you can always walk the price back down. If you want to.
The day you stop being slightly nervous about your prices is the day you’ve stopped growing.
Focus on Commercial Value, Not Time
Stop selling hours. Start selling outcomes.
When we pitched £20k projects, we spoke like business owners, not designers. We talked about:
- How it would increase their revenue
- The commercial advantage they’d gain
- The problems it would solve in their business
Your clients don’t care about your design. Yes, they will respect it and many will love the work you create. But the bottom line is they care about the results it will have in their business.
When you focus on this, you will position yourself with authority and be in the position to command greater prices and justify this because of the value you bring.
Look, I know what you’re thinking.
You’re watching this thinking about all the things you need to change. All the control you need to give up. All the clients you should probably fire.
It feels overwhelming, doesn’t it?
But most businesses fail not because the owner lacks passion or doesn’t work hard enough. They fail because the owner is too busy working IN the business to work ON it.
Every hour you spend doing work your team could do is an hour stolen from strategic growth. Every decision you hold onto is a bottleneck you’ve created.
The question isn’t whether you can do it better than your team. The question is whether doing it yourself is the best use of your time.
So let me ask you this:
If someone offered to buy your business tomorrow, would they be buying a job or an asset?
Because if it’s just a job with your name on it, you haven’t built a business. You’ve created a job that disappears the moment you do.
So here’s my advice! Start small. Pick one thing.
What’s the one thing in your business that you know you should work on first?
And if you want help implementing these strategies in your agency, you know where to find me.