Most articles about coaching cost dodge the question. They talk about “investment” and “value” and never put a number on the page. I will put the numbers on the page, including my own.
I built a creative agency to £2.2M and sold it. Thirteen years of it. I have since worked with more than 100 agency founders. So when someone asks how much an agency coach costs in the UK, I can tell you what the market charges, what you get at each level, and where the money is wasted.
Here are the bands.
The UK market, by price band
Group programmes: around £200-500 a month. You get a cohort, a curriculum, and group calls. Sometimes a community. This is the cheapest way to buy structure. The catch is that nobody is looking at your specific numbers. You get general advice delivered to a room. For a founder under £30k a month who needs frameworks and accountability, it can be enough. Past that, the lack of one-to-one attention starts to cost you more than the fee saves.
One-to-one agency coaching: typically £750-2,500 a month in the UK. This is the core of the market. A real advisor, monthly or fortnightly, looking at your actual business. Price inside this band tracks experience. At the bottom you are often paying someone who coaches for a living. At the top you are paying someone who ran and sold an agency and can shortcut problems they have already lived through.
Structured programmes: £10,000-25,000. Fixed-term engagements, usually 6 to 12 months, with a defined outcome. Owner independence, a rebuilt sales engine, exit readiness. You are buying a transformation, not a monthly chat. The price reflects the depth and the accountability.
Exit advisory: £30,000-60,000 a year. The top of the market. Retained advisory for founders preparing to sell, or already in a process. This is not coaching in the motivational sense. It is someone with exit experience in the room while you make the decisions that move the sale price by six or seven figures.
Those are honest ranges. Now, what drives where you land inside them.
What actually drives the price
Three things.
Experience. A coach who has read about agencies and a founder who built and sold one are not the same purchase, and the market prices them differently. The person who has carried payroll, lost a major client, and sat through diligence charges more because they are worth more.
Format. Group is cheap because attention is shared. One-to-one costs more because it is your business on the table. A structured programme costs more again because it commits both sides to an outcome.
Depth of access. Monthly calls are one thing. Being able to message someone before a big pitch or a tough board conversation is another. More access, higher fee.
What Move at Pace charges, and who it is for
I show my prices on the site on purpose. It qualifies people. If the number makes you flinch, we are probably not the right fit yet, and that is fine.
I work with creative, digital, and design agency owners doing roughly £20k a month in revenue and up. Here is the full menu.
Exit Readiness Intensive: £3,950, one day. A single focused day plus a written plan. You leave knowing the one constraint holding your valuation down and the plan to fix it. This is for founders who want a diagnosis and direction without a long commitment.
Scale: £1,000-1,500 a month, rolling. Monthly one-to-one strategy, no fixed end date. This sits right in the middle of that UK one-to-one band. It is for owners who want an experienced advisor in their corner every month without signing up to a structured programme. Around six agencies are on it now.
Strategic Growth Programme: £18,000 over 7 months, one-to-one. The structured transformation. Seven months of one-to-one work rebuilding the parts of the business that decide whether you scale and whether you can ever sell. This is the flagship, and it lands inside the £10k-25k programme band for a reason.
Exit Advisory: £50,000 a year. Twelve months of monthly advisory for founders heading toward a sale. This is the top tier, priced where retained exit advisory sits in the UK.
You will notice these prices map onto the market bands above almost exactly. That is deliberate. I am not the cheapest and I am not trying to be. I am priced as someone who has done the thing you are trying to do.
Cost versus return
Here is the maths that matters. Coaching is not an expense you weigh against your bank balance. It is weighed against what it changes.
One pricing change often pays for a year of coaching. I moved one client from charging by the project to a value-based model and their average deal size roughly doubled. That single shift covered the fee several times over inside a quarter.
I improved another client’s close rate from one in six prospects to one in two. Same pipeline, same team, three times the conversion. The programme fee was a rounding error against the new revenue.
And the biggest one: owner independence. An agency that runs without you is worth far more than one that depends on you. Buyers pay a premium for a business that does not need its founder. If advisory takes your exit multiple from 3x to 5x on a business doing decent profit, the fee is not even a conversation.
That is the frame. Not “can I afford it,” but “what does fixing the constraint return.”
What you should expect at each band
At £200-500 a month, expect frameworks, a cohort, and accountability. Do not expect anyone to know your numbers.
At £750-2,500 a month one-to-one, expect a real advisor looking at your business, honest reads, and specific direction. Expect the price to reflect whether they have actually built an agency.
At £10k-25k for a programme, expect a defined outcome, deep work, and accountability over months. Expect to do the work, not just receive advice.
At £30k-60k a year for exit advisory, expect someone with exit experience shaping decisions that move your sale price. Expect it to pay for itself many times over if the sale goes well.
Red flags at any price
Some things should make you keep your card in your pocket.
A coach who never ran an agency. If they cannot tell you what they built and what happened to it, you are buying theory. Enthusiasm does not fix a pricing model. Ask what they built, and what it sold for.
Lock-in contracts. Good advisory earns its renewal every month. If someone needs a long minimum term to keep you, ask why they think you would leave. Scale is rolling for exactly this reason.
Guru group funnels. The £200-a-month programme that exists to sell you the £2,000-a-month one, which exists to sell the £20,000 mastermind. If the product is the upsell, the coaching is the bait.
Hidden pricing. If they will not tell you the fee until a sales call, the price is designed to shock you after they have built emotional investment. Honest advisors put the number on the page. I do.
The honest version
Agency coaching in the UK runs from £200 a month to £60,000 a year, and the right number depends entirely on your stage and what you are trying to change. The fee is rarely the real question. The real question is which constraint is costing you the most, and whether the person you are paying has actually fixed it before.
If you want to see what serious one-to-one work looks like for a creative agency, look at coaching for creative agencies. If you want the rolling monthly option, that is Scale. If you want the full structured transformation, that is the Strategic Growth Programme.
Before you spend a penny on anyone, take the Agency Scorecard. Two minutes, eight questions, and you will see which lever is costing you the most. That alone tells you whether you need a coach, and what for.