Founders learn their business through gut. I had to learn it through Raymond.
He’d been at the company for years. Knew every system, every workaround, every reason why that one bit of the system had to be updated before the other one.
I was sitting with him in an open-plan office, rows of hot desks, very ‘noughties’, asking question after question. He was matter-of-fact and would answer exactly what you asked, thoroughly, but only what you asked. You had to know the right questions.
I didn’t always. But I kept asking, because I’d joined at a senior level without growing up through the ranks. I didn’t have the instincts yet. Couldn’t feel when something was off. So I had to build understanding deliberately, piece by piece.
A founder-led agency is the opposite.
They’ve lived every stage of the business. Their gut is built from years of tiny observations - every workaround, every client quirk, every reason that process exists.
That gut is their superpower. Until the business outgrows it.
At some point there’s too much to feel. The team grows, the clients multiply, the processes layer up. The gut starts missing things - but it doesn’t feel like flying blind, because they’ve never needed instruments before.
Utilisation looks okay but margin feels fragile. Decisions keep escalating. Scope drift becomes normal, so project profitability gets decided by who shouts loudest, not by guardrails. Things feel slightly off but you can’t quite explain why.
That’s usually when I meet them. Not when things are broken. When the gut that got them here can’t see what it used to.
Where do you feel ‘slightly off’ first - delivery, capacity, or the numbers you don’t quite trust?