At some point, your agency stopped being the thing you built and became the thing you carry.
I coach the founders of creative and marketing agencies. The ones doing well enough to feel the weight of it, and starting to wonder about the cost.
Growth is happening. Revenue’s there. But the decisions feel heavier, the boundaries have blurred and the business has quietly become dependent on you for everything. It’s sustainable until it isn’t.
You’re experienced and commercially capable. You’re also carrying too much, making too many decisions alone and wondering whether the way you’re working now can get you where you want to go.
That’s usually the point a second opinion starts to matter. Someone who’s run agencies, sat in the chair and made the calls, and can think it through with you.
WHY COACHING, WHY NOW
Most founders who come to me have never worked with a coach. A few are quietly sceptical about what that means. They’ve heard it involves a lot of questions and not many answers, and they’re not sure they’ve got time for that.
That’s a fair read of some coaching. But it’s not what I do.
I have 35 years of agency experience. I’ve run agencies, sold them, bought them, sat on their boards and watched what happens when founders get the big decisions right and when they don’t.
When you’re working with me, you get that experience in the room. I’ll ask you hard questions when that’s what you need. I’ll also tell you what I think, push back when I disagree and say the thing that nobody else around you is saying. I’ll also let you know when you’ve nailed it, when you need to trust your instincts and push harder.
Most of my clients describe it as having someone completely in their corner. Someone who knows the industry, has no agenda and will be straight with them in a way that their team, their partners and their shareholders can’t always be.
That’s what I mean by coaching. If it sounds more like having a very good advisor, that’s fine too.
WORKING WITH ANDY
Three things shape the weekly conversations.
The Founder Portrait is a quick read on where you are right now and what’s driving it. It tends to surface things founders half knew but hadn’t put into words.
The Emotional Overdraft Framework, based broadly on my book, is my technique for spotting the patterns founders fall into under pressure, and the costs they don’t clock until later.
Both are ways into the real conversation, not the point of it.
So the third thing, and most importantly, is our on-going conversation. Tactical and strategic. Reflective and directional. Challenging and supportive. The weekly cadence means we really can cover some ground and affect significant change in you and your business.
Darren Lassiter
Founder, Arthur London
“A lot of advisors and coaches tell you what you want to hear, or ask you questions until you figure it out yourself. Andy does neither. He’s direct, he has opinions and he shares them. He also knows agencies inside out, so his straight talking comes with real context. It’s not just confidence, it’s experience. I trust his judgement and that’s not something I say lightly.”
Sadie Groom
Founder, Bubble
“Running an agency is isolating in ways that are hard to explain to people who haven’t done it. Andy gets that. He’s run agencies and knows the pressures that don’t make it into the board pack. Our conversations feel like talking to someone who’s been where you are and has something useful to say about it.”
Nick Farrar
Founder, Shaped By
“I was solving problems I shouldn’t have been near and avoiding the thinking I needed to do. Working with Andy has changed that. Through a rebrand, a new market and becoming sole director, he’s helped me see what I should be doing, what I should stop, and what kind of leader the business needed.”
Nick Dudley-Williams
Founder, Barfly
“A co-founder buyout is one of the most personally and commercially complicated things a founder can go through. Andy helped me separate the emotional from the practical and make decisions I’m still confident about. Both sides came out of it well. That doesn’t happen by accident..”
George Owen
Founder, Itch
“Andy has been integral to our agency’s growth. An inspiring coach and mentor offering encouragement and guidance on both high level strategy and the practical day to day. Very few people can be called life changing. Andy is one of them..”
James Hilton
CEO, M&C Saatchi
“I cannot thank you enough for what you have done for the business. I feel the business is on a far better footing since the first session.”
WHY ANDY?
Andy Brown has spent 35 years in the agency world. He’s run agencies, bought them, sold them and sat on the boards of dozens more. For the last eight years he’s worked only with agency founders, as a board advisor, non-executive director and coach, taking them through growth, leadership transitions and exits.
He’s the author of The Emotional Overdraft, an Amazon number one bestseller on founder leadership and Business Book of the Year. He chairs one of the Agency Hackers founder boards, working with agency leaders across the UK.
His thinking’s been featured in Forbes, the Financial Times, Fast Company, Management Today and the Daily Mail, and on BBC Business News.
He knows what the job actually involves. The commercial pressure, the personnel calls, the moments where the right answer isn’t obvious and nobody around you can tell you what it is.
Do something now
If any of this sounds familiar, the pressure, the decisions, the sense that how you’ve been leading is due a rethink, it’s worth a conversation.
No pitch, no programme to sell you. Just an honest talk about where you are and whether working together makes sense.