Observation: the agency owner who did the maths
What happens when the numbers you’ve been avoiding become impossible to unknow
Everything from the audit and the positioning work sounds different when someone actually does it out loud, with another person in the room.
Tom runs a digital agency in the Midlands. Fourteen people when we last met, six months ago. Twelve now. Decent client list, mostly B2B tech and professional services. Solid reputation, the kind of agency that doesn’t make the news or win flashy awards but delivers consistent work and keeps clients for years. Tom built it from scratch after leaving a bigger agency in his early thirties. He’s forty-four. The agency is his livelihood, his identity, and about 70% of his self-worth, though he’d never say that last part out loud.
He didn’t fire the other two people. One left for a client-side role and he decided not to replace her. The other was a contractor whose project ended, and when Tom looked at the scope of the next project, he realised the AI tools his delivery team had started using could cover the gap. So he didn’t renew.
“It wasn’t a conscious decision to cut,” Tom says. “It was more like, the space where those people used to be just, sort of, filled itself in? The tools did it. We didn’t even have a meeting about it.”
That’s how it happens. Nobody makes the big decision. The small ones make themselves. And then one day you look around and the office is half empty and nobody remembers the meeting where they decided to cut. Because there wasn’t one.
“Yeah, that’s exactly it. And I’m looking around thinking, right, if two gaps filled themselves in six months, how many fill themselves in the next twelve? Eighteen?”
Tom rubs his face. He’s the kind of person who starts sentences and reroutes them mid-way, which is how you know the thinking is live, not rehearsed.
“So, right. We’ve got twelve people. The tools are good now. Really good. The reporting that used to take the account managers a day and a half is basically done by the time they sit down in the morning. Campaign setup, bid management, the tagging stuff, most of that’s automated or close to it. Which means the account managers are spending, I don’t know, maybe 40% of their time on actual client work and the rest of it is sort of, looking for things to do. And I can see it. They can see it. We’re all just sort of pretending we can’t.”
“How many account managers?”
“Four.”
“And if the tools do 60% of their current work, the maths says you need, what, two?”
“One and a half, probably.”
There’s a pause where you can hear the sound of someone doing the arithmetic they’ve been avoiding and arriving at a number they can’t unknow. Not shock, exactly. More like the moment you check your phone after a long drive and realise you’ve been going the wrong way for an hour. The destination hasn’t changed. The route has.
“Your wife’s income being in a different sector is the best thing you’ve told me today,” I say, after we’ve walked through the household numbers. “If the agency income drops, the household doesn’t collapse. That’s rare. Most of the agency owners I talk to are married to someone in marketing or PR, which means both incomes are in the blast radius.”
Tom nods slowly. Hadn’t thought about it that way.
The conversation moves through the practical terrain. Two account managers need to stay, the ones with deep client relationships. Two need to transition, the ones who do the work the tools now do. Not because those people are less capable. Because the work they’re best at is the work that’s being automated away.
“I feel like I’m betraying them,” Tom says.
“A bit, yeah. That’s the cost of running a business during a transition like this. You can minimise the betrayal. You can’t eliminate it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.”
We walk through the timeline. Eight months of runway. Fixed mortgage rate for twenty-four more months. A window where the household costs are predictable and the business can change without panic. The kind of window most people don’t have.
“If you wait until the P&L forces the decision, you’ll make it badly,” I tell him. “From panic, in a hurry, and the people who leave will leave angry because they felt blindsided. If you make it now, while you’ve got eight months of runway and the choice is yours, you can do it properly. Transition support. Honest conversations. Genuine references. Time for them to find something else. The difference isn’t the outcome, the headcount ends up the same. It’s how much damage you do on the way there.”
Tom is quiet for a while.
I ask him what comes next for him personally. Not for the agency. For him.
“The agency at fourteen people and the agency at eight are different businesses,” I say. “The second one makes more money per head but it needs a different kind of leader. Less people management, more strategic direction. Less operations, more client relationships. Are you that person?”
“I’m not sure,” Tom says.
That’s an honest answer. Better than the people who say yes without thinking.
I suggest a different shape for the work altogether. Advisory. Training. Fractional director work. Three or four businesses at a senior day rate. Portfolio career. One where the agency survives but isn’t all of it. One where if a client drops, the household doesn’t panic.
“Is that what you do?” Tom asks.
“Part of it, yeah. Plus the tools, plus the EdTech platform, plus the writing. Multiple income streams, different risk profiles, none of them dependent on a single client or a single industry. Not because I’m clever. Because I’ve seen what happens when you put everything in one basket and the basket gets automated.”
The meeting runs over. Tom checks his phone. The unconscious gesture of someone who has somewhere else to be but doesn’t want to leave yet.
“The people I let go,” he says quietly. “The two account managers. What do they, like, actually do? Not the LinkedIn platitude version. What actually happens to them?”
I sit with the question. It deserves a pause.
“Some land on their feet. The ones with strong networks and transferable skills and a bit of financial runway, they’ll find something. Maybe not equivalent, but decent. Some struggle for six months to a year and then find a new direction. Trades. Teaching. Healthcare. Something with a physical or relational component the tools can’t touch. And some of them, the ones without savings and without networks, have a really hard time. A third of UK adults have less than five hundred quid in emergency savings. If your account managers are in that bracket, redundancy isn’t a career setback. It’s a household crisis.”
Tom nods slowly.
“My account manager Rachel. She’s been with me seven years. She was my second hire. She came to our wedding.”
“I know.”
“And you’re saying she’s one of the ones whose role doesn’t, sort of, survive?”
“I’m saying her role as it currently exists doesn’t survive. Rachel might. Depends whether the things she does beyond the orchestration, the client relationships, the judgment, the ability to calm down a panicking CEO, are enough to justify a restructured position. You know her better than I do.”
“She’s brilliant with clients. They love her.”
“Then restructure the role around the bits that are brilliant and let the tools do the rest. But be honest with her about what’s changing and why. People can handle a changing role. What they can’t handle is waking up one day and finding out the change happened without anyone telling them.”
Tom stands up. Puts his jacket on. Pauses at the door before leaving.
“The team conversation. Don’t put it off,” I say. “Every week you wait costs you options.”
He nods. He knows. That’s always the hard part. Not the decision. The conversation that comes after.
After he leaves, I open my laptop. Orca has already drafted the follow-up email from the meeting transcript. Key decisions, action items, ready for review. I add one line at the end, something about Tom handling a tough situation well, because the AI can summarise a meeting but it can’t tell someone they’re doing okay when they need to hear it.
The next meeting is in forty minutes. Another business owner. Another set of numbers that don’t quite work. Another conversation where the uncomfortable truth has to be said out loud before anything useful can happen.
This is the work. Three sides of the same thing. Building the tools. Advising the people. Measuring the skills that survive. The tension doesn’t resolve. You just get used to holding it.