CEO Summit
Tuesday 11th July 2023 – 1.30pm to 5pm
Techspace, London
• Meet other agency leaders and share a snapshot of your business
• Share your journey – and hear “developing situations” from other agencies
• Be part of a community of mature, £1m+ agencies
Where are you in the “book” of your business?
One member says: “It’s our away day tomorrow, and I will be presenting the third chapter in the book of [agency name].”
- “The first chapter was ‘fake it ’til you make it’…”
- “…the second was ‘maturing’…”
- …”and the third is ‘a rocket up its arse’!”
“After 10 years of constant learning, improving, failing, and working out the secret recipe, we feel we’ve got the right ingredient now to start the third chapter which is about supercharging performance.”
Most businesses in Agency Hackers are working towards a defined goal. Join us in London for CEO Summit and hear exactly where other agencies are in their journey – and what challenges and wins they are experiencing.
You can learn from the people who are one step ahead of you, and share your advice with people who are following in your footsteps.
Go behind the curtain in confidential live case studies
We are assembling 70 agency leaders for an afternoon of candid and inspiring case studies. You will hear other leaders reveal where they are in their business today, which will help you reflect on your own plans.
- Hear agency leaders present where they are in their journey – what’s going well, and what’s not.
- Share your experiences with other agency leaders who can weigh in on whatever situations you bring to the table
- Get inspired and enjoy the feeling that you are not alone in our supportive and friendly community.
This is what people are bringing to the table
CEO Summit is the place agency leaders can be candid about where their agency is at right now, and what they’re coming up against.
We’ll be spotlighting a few leaders on the day about their current challenges, and they’ll be talking about things like:
- How can you keep that ‘small agency culture’ as you scale? “One of the things that you love about working in a small agency is the fact that you’ve got that flexibility to do whatever you want, whenever you want to. And you kind of lose that as you grow.”
- Recruitment is becoming an expensive problem. “We’re finding it incredibly difficult to find talented people that have not overpriced themselves. Either we’re out of touch with the market, or it’s an inflated market that can’t sustain.”
- Issues with staff churn and retention. “I’ve almost aligned it to a grief process – there’s quite a lot of anger, then there’s a bit of upset, and then you get to a point where you accept the way things are and you can’t please everyone.”
- Succession planning and going for big-time growth. “We’re looking to double the size of the business in the next three years… we’re making a bigger statement about growth, rather than just going, ‘Oh, we just want to grow bit by bit.’”
- Recognising when you’re burnt out as a leader. “I remember I got home from work, walked in my front door, took my coat off and looked at the stairs. And I thought, ‘I can’t get up there’. I sat on the bottom of stairs and just burst into floods of tears. I couldn’t do it anymore.”
Meet agency leaders who are interested in your story
CEO Summit helps you get inspired, and meet other people you can learn from. We blend interactive talks and group discussion.
- We seat you at round tables so you can interact – and we mix up the groups so you meet different people.
- We poll you before the event to see what you want to talk about.
- We make sure all the talks are original and interesting. We facilitate questions and reflections throughout.
Q: What actually happens on the day?
We start the event at 1.30pm, so try to arrive by 1.15pm.
The afternoon’s format is pretty simple: you will spend some time hearing from guests with interesting stories that you can learn from, and you will also spend some time in small groups discussing your journey with like-minded agency leaders.
The event is hosted by an Agency Hackers facilitator who makes sure that everybody with something interesting to say gets heard. (We poll attendees before the event, so we know who to “pick on” on the day.)
We will serve tea, coffee and sweet-toothed things to keep you going, but please eat a sandwich before you arrive. The schedule doesn’t leave us time to serve lunch, unfortunately.
Q: Who will I hear from? Who are the speakers?
The people you’ll hear from are the actual guests at the event.
We decide who to spotlight based on the information we capture in the weeks before. (Look out for our emails!)
We will publish the line-up a few weeks before, but mostly we hope that you will trust us to select interesting folk from our audience. We find that the people who choose to attend our events are overwhelmingly on fascinating journeys that will resonate with you.
Also, the “talks” aren’t really linear presentations. They’re more like structured case studies, with lots of questions and reflections from the audience.
You could potentially call them “fireside chats”, but these are not rambling cosy conversations. They are planned and structured . We put a lot of work into researching our guests, out of respect for your time.
Q: Why are there two types of ticket?
Member’s tickets are for people with an agency that has an active Agency Hackers membership.
When you’re a member, you can buy as many member tickets as you like. (Please make sure they only go to people in your business, though.)
If you aren’t a member, you can buy a non-member ticket.
We don’t generally allow vendors to attend. There are exceptions (you might work with agencies, but you might also be an agency yourself), so if you aren’t sure just ask.