Running a creative agency is hard and many of us were never taught about business in university or college. We’d rather spend our time in the Adobe ecosystem (maybe not) than in spreadsheets or in endless HR meetings. And yet growth of our creative businesses often take us far away from the tasks we want to do and into the unknown, the unfamiliar and often the unlikable business tasks.
On top of this, navigating growth, maintaining profitability, and planning for the future can feel overwhelming when you’re simultaneously managing client work, team development, and operational challenges.
This is where agency consultants come in.
The right advisor doesn’t just offer advice; they bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to support you on your journey. Whether you’re just starting out or planning your eventual exit, an agency consultant is the person to help you get there.
Before we go any further. This is the service we provide at Move at Pace. We are agency consultants who specialise in supporting creative and technical founders at every stage of their entrepreneurial journey. I personally built a multi-7-figure agency from 2009-2020 before successfully exiting and now I help agency owners worldwide to do exactly that. This is practical knowledge and experience backed by the many mistakes I share, so you don’t make the same ones.
In this article, I’m going to tell you what you can expect from an agency consultant, how to select the right one for your business and best practices for maximising the value of the relationship.
What Are Agency Consultants?
Agency consultants are specialised business advisors who work specifically with service businesses such as creative, digital, or marketing agencies to improve operations, increase profitability, and drive sustainable growth. Basically, if you sell time or service, they can help you.
Unlike general business consultants, they understand the unique challenges that agencies face. Running a service business is hard, maintaining the relationships we have with clients is harder and scaling this type of business requires specific skills that not everyone has.
A true agency consultant brings:
- Industry-specific experience: I normally ruffle a few feathers when I say this. But if your consultant hasn’t achieved what you are looking for, then that’s a red flag. Because understanding theory is one thing, but actually living and breathing the business as you are is another entirely.
- Practical insights: I have made many mistakes and paid the price for them. I have also made significant wins in business that were frankly life-changing. As your advisor, we help you decide when to move at pace and when to put the brakes on your entrepreneurial ambition.
- Proven frameworks: They follow structured methodologies that have delivered results for similar businesses
- Objective perspective: They can see problems and opportunities that agency owners miss when working in the business
When to Hire an Agency Consultant
Whenever I teach people how to sell high-value branding services one of the key triggers is a material change in the client’s business. Are they looking to grow, to move into new markets, launch new products or services.
And this type of inflection point in your business is the perfect time to consider hiring an agency consultant.
Consider the following:
- Moving to the next phase of business: We work with start-ups, scaling agencies and those on their journey towards exit. While there is a commonality in the challenges and opportunities we face, at different levels there are different devils and an agency consultant will help you navigate the current phase you’re at while giving consideration to the longer-term plan.
- Growth plateaus: If your revenue has stagnated despite your best efforts to scale, what are you doing to address this? When you’re in the middle of a challenging period it can be hard to see the answer. We successfully launched our business in the global financial crisis and we thrived during the pandemic and sold the business for our full asking value.
- Operational challenges: As your team grows, maintaining quality and efficiency becomes complex. Maintaining operational efficiency and putting the systems in place to manage a growing team can be a lengthy and costly process.
- Strategic planning: When you need to define a clear path to achieve your goals, but you’ve been winging it to date. The truth is, we all are and even I still am to an extent.
- Exit planning: If you’re considering selling your agency in the next 1-5 years your strategic plan is just one part of the mix. The process of selling your creative agency requires specific planning and an approach that maximises the exit value.
- You have no trusted peer in the business: Many of the agency owners we work with feel a certain loneliness in the business they built. There’s no one at their level to support decision-making and actions that need to be taken. Agency consultants provide objectivity in the decisions and choices you need to make.
Selecting the Right Agency Consultant
Any consultant who promises instantaneous 10x growth or unrealistic expectations of you is an immediate red flag. Yes there will be a few unicorn agencies who will rocketship to the moon, but this rapid growth often comes with a myriad of challenges few of us want to face consistently.
If you’re looking for an agency consultant here are the must-haves:
- Founded or led a creative agency similar to yours
- Successfully exited a business (if exit planning is your goal)
- Worked with agencies at your current growth stage
- Transfer knowledge rather than creating dependency
And most importantly, you like and trust them. You need to be able to have robust conversations without emotion and a good agency consultant will respectfully challenge you. But this won’t be effective if you don’t respect the person on the other side of the table and vice versa. The best partnerships are collaborative and to get the most from your relationship, you need to be able to communicate with them well.
Where does Move at Pace fit into your business?
We primarily focus on the “business stuff” of running a creative agency. No one is ever going to tell you how to do your job as a creative or technical person, because frankly you already do that job a million times better than we could. But here’s where we can help maximise value and drive growth of your business.
Sales and Business Development
Make no mistake, I’m a salesperson. It’s been the foundation of my career and even while building my business, I focused on the sales aspect of my business. Our rule was always “sell more and the rest will take care of itself”. There’s not an ounce of truth in that, but I argued if money could solve the problem, then it was no longer a problem.
When we work with you we will:
- Create systematic sales processes that don’t feel like you’re selling your soul
- Develop frameworks for prospecting, qualifying and prioritising opportunities
- Implement pipeline management tools and methods
- Build confidence in pitching and negotiation
Financial Management and Profitability
If spreadsheets are your idea of a bad day at the office do not fear. A good agency consultant will help you understand your numbers and match them to your ambitions.
Some tasks we regularly help our clients with include:
- Analyse project profitability and client profitability
- Refine pricing models and rate structures
- Implement effective resource planning
- Optimise operational costs without sacrificing quality
Service Offering and Positioning
What if you could charge more for your time and still deliver value to your clients? Standing out in a crowded market requires clear positioning, a strong marketing strategy and identification of your ideal client or clients.
We can help you with all of this and much more:
- Refining your service offering for maximum profit
- Developing a distinctive market position
- Identifying profitable niches and specialisations
- Creating compelling messaging that resonates with ideal clients
Operational Excellence
At the height of my agency we were running over 1000 individual projects per month. Most projects had multiple outputs and potentially dozens of individual tasks assigned across different departments and team members.
Systems and processes enable scale without chaos and ensuring we always retain the highest level of customer service. In many instances we help with:
- Implementing project management systems and processes
- Creating quality control frameworks
- Developing client management direction and actions including communication protocols and best practices
- Building scalable delivery systems
Exit Planning and Maximising Value
There’s rarely an entrepreneur I speak to who doesn’t want to one day exit their business. Even if this isnt on the horizon right now, many entrepreneurs want to build the freedom in their business to allow them to step out of it when they need to. All of this takes time, it takes planning and it takes consideration to build the business around you that will allow you to eventually exit.
As part of our service with clients on this journey we support:
- Identifying and addressing factors that impact valuation
- Creating recurring revenue streams
- Reducing owner dependency
- Preparing documentation for due diligence
- Presenting exit opportunities
Final thoughts
In an increasingly competitive market, creative agencies must continuously evolve and improve to to stay ahead of the competition and to maintain their profitability.
The right agency consultant doesn’t just help you solve today’s problems, they equip you with the mindset, understanding, and capabilities to address tomorrow’s challenges.
By carefully selecting a consultant whose experience and approach align with your needs, following best practices for engagement, and committing to implementation, you can transform your agency’s performance, profitability, and potential.
Remember, running a business is hard and running it alone is harder. Working with a specialist agency consultant provides the objective perspective, proven expertise, and accountability you need to build the creative business you dreamed of when you decided to become an entrepreneur.
About Move at Pace
Move at Pace is a strategic consultancy obsessed with supporting service business owners, helping them transform their businesses through proven growth strategies and exit planning.
Our bespoke training programmes and 1-1 consulting combine industry expertise with practical experience to increase your profitability and business value, whether you’re looking to set solid foundations, scale or prepare for a future exit.
Book a discovery call to explore how we can help your creative agency grow profitably and sustainably.