For marketing, creative, digital & PR agencies · $1M–$10M

Brilliant client work. Brutal business behind it.

Coaching for owner-led marketing, creative, digital and PR agency founders. You built the agency on craft. Now you're the senior strategist on every account, the bottleneck on every quote, and the only person clients want in the room. The Business Evolution Framework, applied to agency life.

Apply for coaching → $1,500 Altitude Audit
The trap

You built the agency. Now the work has a name on every brief — yours.

Five things every agency owner past $1M describes in the first call.

01 · The 30% client

One client is 30%+ of your revenue. You know it's a problem. You also know your team is shaped around them. You're stuck.

02 · Founder on every account

You're the senior strategist on every retainer. Clients ask for you by name. Your "team of 12" is, operationally, you plus support.

03 · Scope creep eats margin

You quote a project. You deliver three. Retainers that started at 35% margin are now 12%. You can't remember the last time you said no.

04 · Hiring on hope

You hire when you're already drowning. The new senior leaves in 8 months. Net result: more drowning, plus recruitment fees.

05 · No productised offer

Every project is bespoke. Every quote from scratch. Margin per hour is invisible. There's nothing standardised to scale.

→ The fix

BEF Layers 1–3 in sequence: Foundation (cash, margin), Supporting Systems (productised offer, hiring), Success Triad (sales process, fulfilment SOPs).

Why this happens to agencies

Service businesses scale on trust. The founder is the trust.

Agencies grow because the founder did great work and someone told someone. That word-of-mouth model is unbeatable for the first $1M. Past $2M, it becomes the ceiling. The founder is the brand, the senior strategist, and the last line of defence on quality.

Productisation, account director playbooks, scope discipline, anchor-client diversification — these are the systems that turn an agency from a founder-shop into a real company. Most agencies don't build them until something breaks.

Coaching for agencies isn't a creative critique. It's structural: how the business runs, prices and delivers without you in every room.

Why me

I made the same mistakes — in apparel, not advertising.

I'm a mechanical engineer who started Seight Custom Cycling Wear from my kitchen table. By 24, I was running a $300,000 business. The success was external conditions wearing the disguise of skill.

The dollar tanked. My marriage ended. The business collapsed under $200,000 of debt. I rebuilt with proper systems and sold it. Since 2017 I've coached agency, services and trades founders out of the founder-as-business trap.

Different industry. Same trap. Same fix.

Read the full story →
What coaching is — and what it isn't

Clear, before you book.

What it IS

  • + 1:1 sessions with Tristan, every fortnight or every week
  • + The Business Evolution Framework applied to your agency
  • + Cross-portfolio insight — what comparable agencies just did
  • + Honest accountability for the changes you commit to
  • + Long-term — most clients are 2+ years in

What it ISN'T

  • ✕ Creative direction or campaign critique
  • ✕ A group program or course
  • ✕ An accountability buddy who texts you reminders
  • ✕ A 90-day intensive that promises transformation
  • ✕ A new business pitch coach. That's a different person.
The agency playbook

What we'd work on, in order.

  1. Month 1–2

    Margin + cash audit

    Real margin per service line. 90-day cash buffer. Anchor-client risk score. Foundation first.

  2. Month 2–4

    Productisation + pricing reset

    Three retainer tiers. Standardised SOWs. Scope-creep killer clauses. Pricing floor by service line.

  3. Month 4–6

    Founder release from delivery

    Senior account director hire spec. Account playbook. Founder out of weekly delivery and into quarterly review.

  4. Month 6+

    Diversify revenue + new pipeline

    Anchor-client weight cut to under 20%. Pipeline rebuild. Optional: new service line, productised intensive, AI service tier.

Who uses coaches

Quietly, most of the agency owners you respect.

The agency owners turning over $3M+ and not drowning aren't naturally better operators. They've got someone in their corner who's seen the next two moves before.

Multiple
Active agency clients
$1M–$10M
Annual revenue band
8 yrs
Coaching agencies since 2017
2+ yrs
Typical client tenure
Real agency owners I coach

Four agency founders, named.

Direct fit. The agency founders below are active 1:1 coaching clients. Real names, real revenue bands, real coaching duration.

Names, revenue bands and tenure shared with permission. Specific figures from published case studies.

What to look for in a coach

If you're shopping around — three filters.

  1. 01 · They've built something themselves

    Theory is cheap. Has your coach run a real business? Made real payroll? Lost real money? If not, you're paying for theory.

  2. 02 · They understand agency economics

    Retainers, scope, utilisation rates, billable hours. A coach who only knows SaaS doesn't get the model.

  3. 03 · They're long-term, not 90-day

    Anyone offering a 90-day transformation is selling a course, not coaching. Real change in a $3M agency takes 18–24 months minimum.

The endgame

An agency that doesn't depend on you.

It's not about disappearing from the work. It's about choosing when to be in it. The end state for an agency owner I coach looks like:

  • → A senior account director who actually owns client relationships
  • → Productised retainer tiers with margin you can see
  • → Anchor-client risk under 20% of revenue
  • → A 90-day cash buffer instead of month-to-month
  • → A four-week holiday taken without your phone
  • → An agency that's saleable, fundable, or scaleable when you choose
Is it worth it?

Direct talk on cost.

Fortnightly coaching is from $2,000/month + GST. Weekly from $3,000/month + GST. Six-month minimum. A $1,500 Altitude Audit stands alone or rolls into coaching.

Compare that to: a senior strategist hire that doesn't work out ($60K+ in cost). One client renewal at the wrong margin ($30K+ over the term). One year of scope creep on a flagship retainer ($100K+ in lost margin).

Real coaching pays for itself the first time it stops you making the same mistake again.

For agency owners

Agency-specific pain — the patterns nobody talks about.

Four things I hear from agencies owners in the first call. If three or more land — we should talk.

  • 01 You can't scale by hiring more designers, writers or strategists. Every senior hire you make creates more management, not more leverage. The 5-person stage feels easier than the 14-person stage.
  • 02 Your best clients are the ones you can't turn off. Three pay 60% of the bills. If two of them leave you're running at a loss inside one quarter — and you both know it on the renewal call.
  • 03 Pricing was set in your first year. You've doubled the team since. The economics are creaking under the staff cost but you can't bring yourself to raise rates with the clients you've had since the beginning.
  • 04 Project profitability is a guess. You can tell me revenue. You can't tell me which client makes the most margin and which one is the one quietly eating it.
Real examples

What we'd actually work on.

Three current/recent engagements in this space. Names redacted, specifics intact.

Example 01

A 14-person Melbourne agency where every client brief still goes through the founder. We rebuild the decision flow — senior staff start owning client relationships, founder out of the day-to-day inside 90 days.

Example 02

A Singapore web agency that's been with E2G for 8 years. Eight years of compounding sequencing: Foundation, then Systems, then Triad, now Inner Core. The work that gets done at year 7 is genuinely different from year 1.

Example 03

A creative agency where revenue grew 60% in 18 months. Margin didn't follow. We rebuild the pricing model — different rates by service tier, retainers for the strategic work, projects for the transactional. Owner now drawing what the senior designer draws.

Not ready to apply?

Find out where your business is, before you book a discovery call.

The Altitude Audit tells you exactly where you are in the BEF and what to fix first. From $1,500. Standalone — no coaching commitment.

Book the Altitude Audit →

Ready to step out of the studio?

The $1,500 Altitude Audit is the entry point. One hour over Google Meet, full BEF map, written plan — yours to keep whether we work together after or not.

Apply for coaching → $1,500 Altitude Audit