Join Louisa Pau, ex-agency owner and founder of Otherboard, with over 11 years of experience helping agency owners plan and grow their businesses. Louisa brings her expertise from founding, building, and selling her agency. She shares insights on how to grow your agency to align with your goals and life.
Starting an agency is exhilarating—bursting with energy, ideas, and the drive to do things better. But over time, the pressures mount: managing cash flow, meeting client demands, tackling recruitment, and keeping the pipeline full. Combine this with personal commitments, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and lose focus as a leader.
The following framework – Strategic Self – demonstrates how to reconnect with your leadership potential. By focusing on self-awareness and intentions and building a support system, you can lead your agency with clarity and thrive in business and life.
Awareness
Awareness begins with understanding your current reality, encompassing your operating mode, focus, and fitness to lead. It’s about being honest and curious as you assess where you stand.
Modes of Operation
As a founder, your mode often evolves:
- Artisan Mode: In the early days, you did everything—a natural state during the startup phase.
- Hero Mode: As your team grew, you still felt responsible for everything, stepping in to save the day.
- Meddler Mode: Even with senior hires, you struggled to let go, staying involved in every detail.
- Strategist Mode: When you focus on the future and shape opportunities, you operate as a strategist, making better decisions and finding purpose.
Reflect on which mode dominates your week. If you’re stuck in Hero or Meddler Mode, you might be your agency’s growth bottleneck. Transitioning to Strategist Mode allows you to step back, guide growth, and fulfil a vital leadership role.
Focus and Time Audit
To understand where your focus lies, map out your responsibilities and tasks. A mind map is an excellent tool for this. Write down all the areas you handle and the time spent on each. This exercise often reveals why prioritisation feels impossible and where you need to adjust. Once complete, describe your role in a few words. Are you “spinning plates” or “captaining the ship”? What would others say?
Fitness to Lead
Leadership requires energy across four areas:
- Physical: Is your exercise energising or draining? Does your diet fuel you or deplete you?
- Mental: How is your focus and decision-making? Do fatigue or headaches interfere?
- Emotional: Negative emotions like frustration and anxiety consume energy. Are you managing these effectively?
- Spiritual: Are your values aligned with your work? Does your role provide meaning?
Score yourself out of 10 in each area to identify where to focus improvements.
Energisers and Drainers
List what gives you energy and what depletes it. Compare the lists—it can be eye-opening. Adjusting these factors can dramatically improve your leadership capacity.
Finally, make self-awareness a daily habit. Being open to imperfection and uncertainty is key to growth. Once you’ve assessed your current state, you’ll be ready to set intentions and plan the way forward.
Intentions
Being intentional means acting with purpose and deliberation. For agency leaders, this involves aligning your actions with your agency’s purpose, values, and vision.
Defining Your Agency’s Context
Ask yourself: What is your agency for? Reflect on whether your agency’s mission and values align with your principles. When there’s harmony between these, running the agency becomes more fulfilling and less arduous.
Agencies often distinguish between three types of values:
- Hygiene Values: Basic expectations like honesty, integrity, and teamwork.
- Core Values: Deeply ingrained principles guiding actions, especially during challenging times.
- Aspirational Values: Traits you aim to develop for future success.
Many agencies mistakenly focus on hygiene values, resulting in generic positioning. True values should define tough decisions and set you apart. Explore what your agency stands for—and against. This clarity will help shape a distinct identity and culture.
Envisioning Your Future
What does your ideal role look like? Start with your focus and time audit, adding insights from exercises like What energizes me? and What drains me? Identify one thing to do more of and one to do less of.
To imagine your ideal future, try visioning exercises:
- Draw your future.
- Create a mood board.
- Write your obituary to articulate your desired legacy.
After defining your vision, reverse-engineer the steps to make it a reality. Think about your ideal allocation of tasks and how your current responsibilities can evolve to support this future.
Shaping Your Leadership Style
Your leadership style is a choice—and it should reflect your unique strengths and values. Consider:
- What kind of leader do you want to be?
- Who inspires you, whether in your community, family, or globally?
Leadership can take many forms—empathetic, bold, quiet, or encouraging—but it must be authentic. Use self-awareness to hone your style. Avoid the temptation to be everyone’s friend; leadership requires difficult decisions, and your role is to guide, not to please.
Stay curious and committed to growth. Ask yourself:
- How often do I invest in learning about leadership?
- Am I continually aligning my actions with my values?
Being intentional isn’t a one-off exercise. It’s a daily habit. Begin each day or meeting by asking: What matters most today? This focus will help you stay aligned with your purpose while adapting to change.
With clear intentions, you’re better equipped to grow your agency, define your leadership, and build a purposeful future. Next, we’ll explore the importance of support systems and delegation to achieve your goals.
Support
Building a robust support system is essential for agency leaders, both for growth and maintaining personal well-being. Here’s how to embrace support effectively:
Active Listening
A simple yet powerful practice is giving someone your full attention. Commit to genuinely listening for ten minutes—without interruptions, judgment, or distractions like notifications. This fosters stronger connections and ensures meaningful communication.
Peer Networks
Finding your tribe is invaluable. Peer networks, such as industry groups or professional communities, provide camaraderie and shared wisdom. These connections can help alleviate the isolation often felt in leadership roles, whether through formal organisations or informal gatherings.
Mentors and Advisors
As you grow, personalised guidance becomes essential. Coaches, mentors, or advisors can help you navigate challenges and uncover solutions. Sharing openly with someone who understands your journey is a relief and a catalyst for growth. Look for someone whose experience aligns with your needs and whom you trust to be a collaborative partner.
Training and Development
Invest in your growth. Many agency leaders neglect their professional development, focusing solely on their team. Allocate a portion of your training budget to enhance your skills. Continuous professional development (CPD) isn’t just for clients—it’s essential for positioning yourself and your agency as leaders in the field.
Delegation
Letting go is key to scaling your agency. Define what tasks you can delegate based on your ideal mind map. Share this with your team and involve them in similar exercises to match tasks to individual strengths. Delegating effectively requires clear communication, proper briefings, and trusting others with decision-making. Avoid micromanaging and instead focus on creating a framework for accountability.
Practical Tips for Sustaining Support
- Power Breaks: Take at least one ten-minute break daily to recharge, whether through stretching, dancing, or stepping outside.
- Mindful Breathing: Practice techniques like balanced breathing to regulate emotions and reduce stress.
- Diary Control: Prioritise thinking time in your schedule every week—it’s crucial for strategic growth.
- Self-Compassion: Leadership is challenging, but being kind to yourself fosters resilience and balance.
Support is not just about external resources but also about creating systems and habits that empower you. Leadership may be demanding, but with the proper support, it doesn’t have to be lonely.
What is the AC Growth Programme?
The Growth Programme provides crucial peer support alongside expert talks, events, and networking designed for agency leaders who want to take their agency to the next level, whatever that means for you.
Key features include:
- 45-minute expert sessions with a 15-minute Q&A.
- Optional 60-minute group discussions after each module.
- Unified learning through video calls, with accountability groups based on agency size.
Want to hear more from Louisa?
Become an Agency Collective Grow member to access the entire recording and all Growth Programme sessions. To chat about membership options, book a call with the team.
