I scaled my agency to £220k months and sold it. But for years before that? I was working 100-hour weeks, stressing about inconsistent revenue, and winging every single decision. I promise it’s easier and cheaper to learn from my mistakes than to make them yourself. Now I help other agency owners avoid that same struggle.
How many more months can you handle the feast-or-famine cycle? The stress of not knowing where next month’s revenue is coming from? Business coaching for creative agencies isn’t just nice to have – it’s the difference between staying stuck in that cycle and actually scaling.
In this article, I’m sharing the five things I focus on when coaching agency owners. These are practical strategies you can put into action today. And I’ll explain why most agencies fall short of their goals without proper coaching.
1. Getting Clear On What You Actually Want
When agency owners come to me, they’re usually burnt out from working on everything except growing their business. They say things like “I want to grow” but they’re too busy firefighting to get specific about what that actually means.
Here’s the problem: without clear targets, you’re just working harder, not smarter. In our first coaching session, we pick a real number. Let’s say £100k revenue for the year. Then we work backwards together:
£100k annually = about £8,500 a month
You could hit that with:
- 4 clients paying £2,000 each
- 17 clients paying £500 each
- Or whatever mix works for your services
But in coaching, we don’t stop there. We map out how many people you need to talk to, what your conversion rate is, which services make the most money. All that boring stuff that actually matters.
Without coaching: “I hope I make £100k this year” while working 100-hour weeks
With coaching: “Right, I need to have 3 proper conversations with prospects this week”
This clarity is why business coaching works for creative agencies – we turn desperate hope into specific actions that actually move the needle.
2. Challenging The Stories You Tell Yourself
This is where coaching gets uncomfortable, but it’s the most important part. Most agency owners are stuck in revenue cycles because they’re walking around with limiting beliefs that are costing them thousands every month.
“I can’t charge that much round here” “Clients won’t pay for strategy” “I’m not experienced enough for that kind of project”
Sound familiar? These beliefs keep you trapped in low-value work whilst you watch competitors charge double what you do.
In coaching, we don’t just talk about these beliefs – we test them. I had one client who was convinced he couldn’t charge more than £4,500 for a website. We agreed he’d test £6,000 with the next three prospects.
Two said yes immediately. The third negotiated down to £5,500.
He’s now moving towards £10,000 per project and has the confidence to keep raising his prices. That pricing change alone added £40,000 annually to his revenue.
Without coaching, he’d still be charging £4,500, working twice as hard for half the money, and wondering why he couldn’t scale.
Here’s the reality: every month you don’t challenge these beliefs is costing you money you’ll never get back.
3. Setting Up Proper Accountability
Here’s what every agency owner knows but won’t admit: you’re winging critical business decisions, and it’s exhausting.
Everyone knows what they should be doing:
- Regular business development
- Following up with prospects
- Planning properly
- Having difficult conversations
But when you’re drowning in client work and putting out fires, this stuff gets pushed aside. You tell yourself you’ll do it next week, next month, when things calm down. But they never do.
I tried every app and system when I was running my agency. None of it worked consistently because willpower doesn’t work when you’re overwhelmed.
What works is coaching accountability. Having to report back to someone about whether you did what you said you’d do. And if you didn’t, we figure out why and fix it.
One of my coaching clients books a session the day after every holiday. He knows he needs that external accountability to get back into business mode instead of drifting for weeks.
You might think you can do it all yourself, but here’s the truth: the cost of making decisions alone is higher than the cost of coaching. Every month you delay getting proper guidance is another month of missed opportunities and revenue you’ll never recover.
4. Fixing Your Sales Process
This is where coaching pays for itself immediately, and it’s probably why you’re reading this article. Most agencies are losing revenue because their entire sales approach is broken – not just the follow-up.
You’re winging discovery calls, sending proposals that get ignored, pricing based on what you think clients will pay rather than the value you deliver, and yes – completely failing at follow-up too.
I’ve literally written the course on selling creative services. It’s called “Selling Creative Services” and covers everything from initial conversations through to closing deals properly. But here’s what I see when coaching agency owners: the problem isn’t just knowing what to do – it’s having someone hold you accountable to actually doing it consistently.
Most agencies treat sales like something that happens when they’re desperate for work. In coaching, we build proper sales systems that work whether you’re busy or quiet.
One client went from closing 1 in 6 prospects to 1 in 2 by fixing his entire sales process – better discovery questions, value-based proposals, and yes, professional follow-up. That change added hundreds of thousands to his annual revenue.
Here’s the painful truth: if you can’t consistently convert prospects through a proper sales process, no amount of marketing will save you. Every prospect you lose to poor sales technique is money walking out the door that you’ll never see again.
5. Why You Need Agency-Specific Coaching
Here’s the biggest mistake agencies make: hiring a generic business coach who’s never run a service business or achieved what they want to achieve.
I see agency owners getting advice about “10X growth” and other nonsense that doesn’t work for agencies. These coaches talk about scaling strategies they’ve read about but never actually implemented in a creative business.
Agencies aren’t like product businesses. We scale through people and processes, systems and automation. The challenges are completely different.
When I coach agency owners, we focus on agency-specific problems:
- Project-based revenue management
- Creative team leadership
- Client relationship dynamics
- Service pricing strategies
This is why you need business coaching for creative agencies specifically – not generic business advice from someone who’s never dealt with your actual problems.
Why Coaching Works For Agencies
Let me be honest about why I started coaching other agency owners. After I sold my agency, people kept asking how I’d scaled it. When I explained what I’d learned, they said “I wish someone had told me this years ago.”
That hit me hard. I’d spent years working 100-hour weeks, stressing about cash flow, winging decisions in isolation, when I could have shortcut most of that struggle.
That’s exactly what business coaching for creative agencies does – it shortcuts the learning curve and stops you wasting years on trial and error.
Instead of spending the next two years figuring out pricing, systems, team building, and sales processes through expensive mistakes, you learn from someone who’s already been through it.
My coaching clients typically see measurable results within the first 90 days because we focus on fixing what’s already broken before adding complexity.
But here’s what I need you to understand: every month you wait is costing you money. The client who could have paid £10,000 instead of £4,500. The prospect who went to your competitor because you didn’t follow up properly. The revenue cycles that keep you stuck working IN your business instead of ON it.
If you want to explore what focused coaching could do for your agency, I offer 30-minute strategy sessions where we’ll identify the biggest leak in your revenue and map out exactly how to fix it in the next 90 days.
Book your discovery call here – but don’t wait. The cost of delay is always higher than the cost of action.
Ready to stop struggling alone and see what business coaching for creative agencies can do? Watch the full video for more practical insights, and don’t forget to subscribe for more content like this.