Nigel shares his journey from scaling his London agency from three Founders to 25 staff and multi-million pound turnover, to ultimately watching it collapse.

In this episode of eCom@One with Richard Hill, Richard interviews Nigel Davies, former WPP design veteran, Co-Founder of 300 Million Agency and now Solo Consultant at Pin Creative. He discusses the dangers of relying too heavily on one large client, the pitfalls of over-investing in admin roles too early and the lessons learned from rapid growth & hiring.

Nigel reflects on how agency work has evolved, the significance of having a physical office and the value of building long-term client relationships versus chasing short-term projects. Now thriving as an independent consultant, he emphasises clarity in branding, using even his 6,000-strong vinyl collection to explain branding simply.

The episode offers candid insights into the highs and lows of agency life and the importance of adaptability and brand clarity.

Topics Covered

00:00 - How Nigel became a brand consultant after years of running an agency

04:20 – Formed a band as a playful bet, highlighting team camaraderie and creative bonding

08:18 – Launched his business by leveraging contacts, securing early clients and establishing credibility with a standout office in Exmouth Market

12:28 – Experienced profitable early growth with minimal advisors/admin. Scaling from 12 to 20 staff brought operational and managerial challenges

16:31 – Community workspaces enhance well-being and appeal to businesses by offering vibrant team and client hubs, more effective than remote setups

19:26 – Emphasises billing senior staff time to maintain profitability and quality; over-reliance on junior teams can lead to inefficiencies

22:21 – Monitoring utilisation rates across roles is essential for balancing workloads and maximising billable hours

25:09 – Long-term client relationships are key to stable business; balancing creative branding with routine delivery is an ongoing challenge

29:41 – High-value projects can stretch teams, drive profits, and spur financial growth

32:46 – Profitability is boosted by mixing project work with retainers and forming strategic partnerships (e.g., printing deals)

36:48 – Managed internal challenges with care, always prioritising team dynamics and relationships

37:46 – Running an agency requires resilience; Nigel left agency life for independent work but stayed in the branding space

41:11 – Staying personally connected to clients helps leaders remain attuned to real-world issues as teams grow

47:10 – Recommends "A Technique for Producing Ideas", a short, classic creativity guide by a New York ad professional

Amanda Walls, Founder and Director of Cedarwood Digital, a Manchester-based agency specialising in SEO, paid media, and digital PR and international speaker sits down with Richard Hill to share her agency journey.

Amanda gives an honest and frank account into the journey of launching Cedarwood as a solo venture nine years ago to growing it into an award-winning team with impressive client retention and a thriving agency culture.

You’ll hear Amanda’s insights on why specialising beats trying to be everything to everyone, her go-to strategies for scaling boutique agencies without losing your soul and the real frameworks that help keep both clients and staff happy.

Plus, Amanda opens up about the challenges of managing growth, building a standout agency brand and her approach to handling client relationships, even when things go wrong.

Whether you’re building your own agency, leading a team or seeking inspiration from those who’ve been there, this conversation is packed with real-world advice you won’t want to miss.

Listen now!

Topics Covered

1:39 - Journey of Cedarwood Digital

5:14 - Investing in your people and helping them do their best work

6:30 - Building a buzz around your brand

8:12 - The 6month appraisal process

11:46 - Getting speaking gigs

16:15 - Retention starts at acquisition

20:50 - Why Amanda doesn’t ask for client referrals

23:50 - Client challenges

29:20 - Tools to run the agency

34: 22 - 3 years until they won one award and how they finally secured their first one

45:24 - The next 6 months for Cedarwood Digital

48:08 - Book recommendation

Welcome to a milestone episode of Agency Intensive. In this special 10th installment, we take a look back at the most insightful and inspiring moments from our conversations so far.

Host Richard Hill revisits the memorable stories and strategies shared by a stellar line-up of agency founders and industry leaders, from the explosive growth tactics of Stephen Kenwright at Rise at Seven to Chris Thomas’s authentic niche-building at Cake Agency and Nathan Lomax’s whirlwind 45-event networking marathon.

We’ll hear powerful lessons on trust from Richard Mawer, explore how cultural alignment led Simon Penson’s agency to a £37 million exit and get a candid take on resilience and focus from Ady Collins after his personal battle with cancer.

Kelly Evans shares her passion for leading a purpose-driven B Corp at Social Change, while Adam Pearce reveals how his focus on community and CRO helped Blend Commerce achieve an impressive client retention rate.

Tune in as we celebrate these moments of bold risk-taking, genuine relationship-building and transparent leadership, all culminating in our double-digit milestone.

Whether you’re just starting out or looking to scale your agency, this episode is packed with the wisdom and motivation you need for the road ahead. Let’s dive in!

Adam Pearce is the CEO of the leading Shopify CRO agency, Blend Commerce. They help online retailers sell more online by increasing AOV and Conversion Rates He also runs a very successful events business which we are sure you have heard of, eCom Collab Club.

In this podcast, Adam goes deep into Blend’s service focus and how they work strategically with specific partners. He shares how they navigate the competitive UK market, how to manage capacity planning and hiring talent who all work on the same mission for the longevity of his agency.

With his years of experience running events, Adam generously discusses how he secures sponsorship, how to attract the right people to your events and how to build a successful and supportive community.

Scared of posting online? Adam shares why you shouldn’t give a shit, own your voice and share your expertise to build an online personal brand.

Of course, Adam shares his challenges of scaling an agency and why a 70+ man agency isn’t the right fit for Blend Commerce.

Topics Covered

1:34 - Start of the agency journey

4:18 - Navigating the challenges of the first year in agency world

6:51 - Reacting to the market, narrowing down and finding their specialism

10:18 - What actually is CRO?

11:30 - Retainer vs one-off projects

12:23 - Losing a client due to not being their perfect fit ICP

15:22 - Events as a tactic for new business

16:53 - Birth of eCom Collab Club

21:02 - Building an event partnership ecosystem

22:02 - Using brands to speak at events to attract other brands to events

24:05 - Securing sponsorship and proving ROI

27:42 - Building a community

29:30 - Gamification and community groups

31:34 - 2024 being the toughest year that Adam has had

35:09 - Recruiting and retaining top talent

40:02 - UK vs US market

44:34 - Unexpected things that he has seen in a pitch, yoghurt is involved

46:58 - Finding your own voice in the personal branding world on LinkedIn

50:31 - Book recommendation

Kelly Evans is the Chief Executive at Social Change, a UK social research and social campaign company. They use research, insight, behavioural theory and psychology to design campaigns and programmes to lead behaviour change. They tackle issues such as, obesity, smoking, gun, crime, alcohol harm, climate change, recycling, litter, water usage, flu, cancer prevention and addictions.

In this podcast, Kelly outlines how she niched down and found her passion after being made redundant. As the first BCORP certified agency in Lincolnshire, Kelly outlines the process and impact of going through this journey.

As a behavioural science agency, Kelly discusses the biggest shifts in human behaviour and how fully remote work is impacting people’s mental health. Find out what keeps Kelly up at night, how being risk averse helps the sustainability of her business and how she focuses on utilisation rates to secure the dream £100K a head figure for her team.

If you want to make your agency more profitable, this is the podcast episode for you.

Topics Covered

1:45 - Influencing human behaviour with the power of understanding behavioural science

3:32 - How Kelly secured her first client after being made redundant and the types of campaigns Social Change works on

8:05 - The shift/behaviour change since pandemic

9:04 - Working fully remote isn’t good for anyone’s health

11:20 - WHY and the process of becoming a BCORP

16:39 - Advice to anyone going through a BCORP

18:55 - What to do when things are tough

21:40 - How being risk averse helped Kelly navigate tough periods

25:44 - Keeping cash reserves

27:20 - What keeps Kelly up at night

29:13 - The pipeline challenge, getting and converting new business

34:44 - Utilisation rates and how Social Change is hitting the £100K a head number

46:30 - Book recommendations

Niching seems to be a theme across these agency podcasts and this episode is no different.

Ady Collins is the CEO of Knotted Commerce, a specialist agency on a mission to help brands simplify their integrations using iPaaS. Using his years of eCommerce experience in the tech side and at Patchworks, Ady is tying tech together to make things easier for retailers.

In this episode, Ady shares how he is scaling his team using global talent in an ethical way. He shares his mission and WHY Knotted Commerce exists.

Are you a full service agency? Well, Ady tells you why you could be falling short in this episode. Find out his pricing strategy, his lead generation tactics, the challenges he is facing around scaling, the process of venture capital and the EOS framework he uses to grow the agency.

Ady shares something incredibly personal in this episode. While he was setting up his agency, he got diagnosed with testicular cancer. A sentence nobody ever wants to hear. Ady gives an honest account of this experience and the symptoms that led to his diagnosis.

We want to personally thank Ady for sharing his truth with our audience. It’s a story nobody ever wants to have to tell, but one that is so important to do so.

Listen in!

Simon Penson is an Exited Agency Founder turned Consultant. He founded one of the very first content marketing agencies in 2009, Zazzle Media.

After securing successful growth and merging with Stickyeyes, Simon sold his business for an impressive £37M. Then Scaled was born. It is his latest venture, where he consults other agency owners to build and grow profitable businesses all the way to exit and beyond.

In this episode, Simon gives an honest account of the deal structure that resulted in that impressive valuation. As a journalist at heart, Simon stresses the importance of owning and understanding your audience to talk to them in their language to build that meaningful connection.

Listen to find out how he built and scaled his agency from 1 to 250 team members, how his opinion on culture changed throughout this period and the challenges he faced along the way. He also shares the secret to how his team’s content managed to become the most viewed on Moz.

Simon discusses the shift in content marketing, shares his advice to agency leaders who are interested in selling, his opinions on options pool & team investment and the power of honesty and transparency during those challenging months.

Would Simon do it all again? Find out by listening to this podcast episode!

Topics Covered:

1:40 - Journey into Agency life

6:40 - Championing content marketing as a business

9:01 - Initial acquisition conversations

10:43 - Merging and buying process of his agency

11:47 - Growth of his agency

15:30 - Launch of B2B SaaS fund

20:40 - Most viewed content on MOZ. How the agency achieved that.

25:15 - Maximising cross-channel content strategy

27:45 - Maintaining a collaborative culture during rapid periods of growth

36:00 - The deal that generate the agency sale

44:19 - Advice for agency owners who are thinking about selling

49:30 - Options pool & team investment

51:50 - Honesty and transparency. Testing things along the journey.

53.40 - Would Simon do it all again?

54:20 - Roadmap for Simon

Joshua Grant is the Director of Digital at Absolute Design, a website design agency based in Nottingham. With a team of web developers and designers, they specialise in Magento and Shopify platforms, helping eCommerce businesses scale.

This podcast episode is relevant to you if you have challenges with managing difficult clients & retaining your staff and unsure what tactics will add longevity to your business.

Find out how to build long-term strategic partnerships, improve the productivity amongst your team members and how to secure perfect fit attendees to your events.

It can’t be ignored that this business has been around longer than a lot of Founders in the agency space. There’s heaps of value and credibility to help you with your agency journey in this episode of Agency Intensive.

Topics Covered:

5:46 - Why Absolute Design are pulling away from Magento

9:22 - Niching down and choosing a specialism

12:34 - Recruiting the right people and attracting talent

16:25 - You will lose talent if you don’t offer flexibility

19:01 - Office vs remote working

21:40 - Selecting the right partners

29:01 - Scaling up the team and how to manage the process

30:45 - Building a community with events

34:47 - Getting the right people to your events

38:01 - Measuring productivity across the business

43:58 - Prioritising marketing time and budget

46:50 - Tools that his company can’t live without

51:34 - The biggest mistake he has made at the agency

54:30 - Firing clients!

57:54 - The roadmap over the next 12 months