How to retain the ‘joy’ as your agency scales
As agency founders it’s easy to get caught up in growth, targets and plans – and slowly drift away from the parts of the work we actually enjoy. This week’s note is a personal reflection on how that played out for me, and a few small ways to stay more grounded and connected to your ‘why’ – even when things are scaling.
Jimmy Carr once said that the most important thing in life is to ‘enjoy the passage of time’. And given how much of our lives we spend working – and thinking about work – it’s probably something worth keeping front of mind.
How we spend our time is, ultimately, how we spend our lives. And we all know it’s the one thing we don’t get back.
When I look back at my time running the agency, some of the things I remember most fondly weren’t the big deals. It was often the everyday parts – working through an idea with a client, talking through a challenge, getting to the point where ideas started to take shape. That process of figuring things out together was always lots of fun and satisfying.
I liked building things for the agency too – tools, processes, new ways of working. When someone on the team said, “Come and take a look at this,” you could see they were quietly proud of what they’d made because it solved something and moved us forward. That’s the essence of innovation and creativity - which is the joy of working in our industry.
I also really valued seeing people grow. When someone came in to the business a bit unsure and, over time, built confidence and found their voice – that was something I never got tired of. I’m proud to have seen so many people work in the agency and go on to achieve great things - and it’s brilliant to be able to see this continue - thanks to LinkedIn and the ability to follow people’s career journeys.
What changed when the agency scaled
But when you start focusing more on growth, things can change. It’s rare to meet a founder of a creative or digital firm who dreamed of actually becoming an accountant or professional manager instead - but the consequence of growth is that this is quite often the outcome (at least for a while).
More decisions end up being driven by numbers – headcount, revenue, targets. You start thinking in quarters. The commercial plan becomes the reference point, and so some of the creative and people-focused stuff can feel less prominent. Not intentionally – it just happens.
After we sold, that became even more noticeable. There were more people involved, more layers, more moving parts. We’d been acquired so there was a whole culture shift happening - the process of ‘integration’ - is all about process and systems. The impact it has on people, including the founder, is more difficult to anticipate and quantify.
The net outcome was that I was further away from the work. My time was spent in a different way. I had bigger targets and bigger responsibilities.
And whilst there was lots that I did enjoy on the new part of the journey, it took a while for me to realise how much I missed the original parts – the ones I used to find most energising. Over time I changed roles to allow me to re-connect to some of this and, in turn, then exited the agency entirely to go back to being a Founder.
A few things that might help
If you’re in that stage now – growing quickly, feeling a bit stretched or thinking about exit – don’t forget what made the work feel good in the first place. Try and hold on to some of that. You don’t need to cling to it (and nor will you likely be able to) - just find small ways to stay close to it. Especially when things are moving fast.
Block out a couple of hours a month for the kind of work you enjoy but often don’t get to – whether that’s idea generation, thinking, internal projects or mentoring someone in the team.
Write down why you started and what still matters – and keep it somewhere visible. That sense of Founder goals is so important and it’s why it’s the first thing I always start with on the Agency 360 programme.
Ask someone you trust to remind you, now and again, what you’re best at – especially when your week’s been all numbers and deadlines.
Scan through your calendar once in a while and ask: is this how I want to be spending my time?
Try colour coding your calendar – create a colour for the work that energises you, and use it to tag those meetings or projects. It’s a simple way to check, at a glance, whether the right kind of ‘fun’ work is being prioritised – and a nudge to rebalance if it isn’t.
You may, in time, bring in a second-in-command who can take over some of those growth and management tasks to allow you to regain that closeness to the creative work. It’s possible, if you want it, but it takes time. Growth is a mission itself and I believe it is the founder who has to lead on that - particularly in those earlier days.
There’s no right way to build a business. But whichever direction you take, it helps to put some thought into how you want to spend your time – not just what you want to achieve.
If you’re scaling, be ambitious – but give yourself a few things that keep you connected to the reason you started. Something you can come back to when your days are full of meetings and dashboards.
PS: Looking to grow your eCommerce agency? We support ambitious founders through both our Agency 360 growth programme and as a Board Advisor. We’ve been there, done that and got the t-shirt (so to speak) having started, scaled and exited one of the first Shopify Plus agencies in Europe.