FN#3: Agency Transformation Isn’t Instant (Here’s What It Really Takes)

Step-by-step insights from 18 months of real agency transformation work – what changed, what stalled, and what stuck.

If you're a founder, operator, or internal lead trying to improve delivery, growth or ops, here’s what a real 18-month agency transformation looks like.

This post documents a current 18+ month transformation journey I’ve been part of with a long-established creative agency.

We didn’t take 18-months because they were slow - it was because they were doing it while still running a business.

Key lessons:

• Evergreen content frees time and becomes a sellable service

• Coaching roles beats rushing hires

• Resilience is a system, not a personality trait

• Profit = confidence in scope, not just higher rates

Forget the growth hacks. Here’s the exact layered approach I took for them on this full 5-step journey. Plus - what didn’t work, and why.

Let’s get into the details …

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The Transformation Journey (Step by Step)

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1. Initial Assessment - A Fresh Outside View

Before any retainer work began, I delivered a paid diagnostic report outlining how I’d approach improving their business - based on an outside-in review grounded in my experience running and scaling agencies.

At that time, cash flow was a key issue. They were also considering laying off some team members who no longer fitted with the direction they wanted to take the business.

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2. Evergreen Marketing - Buying Back Time

Our first official project was to implement a way to automate and evergreen their social content.

Doing this:

• Freed up internal team time to focus on client work.

• Helped them show up consistently in their own marketing - which had long been deprioritised.

The unexpected win?

We turned this evergreen process into a repeatable service they could offer to their clients.

Within two months, they’d sold an evergreen content service to two new clients as part of wider project work. Bringing in immediate, low-effort revenue that helped ease some of their cash flow issues.

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