Running order – Group B

⏰ 1.30pm

Welcome

Welcome to the event! Hear what’s coming up, and who’s in the room.

📍 Theatre

⏰ 1.35pm

A

Productive.io

We’ll be hearing from the sponsors of this event, Productive.io.

📍 Bronte

⏰ 1.55pm

How to Get Your Team On Board with Change

“Every single day, profit is leaking out of your business”

Peter Czapp, co-founder of The Wow Company, says, “It leaks in the details, in projects that drag, retainers that balloon, and teams that don’t know when to push back.”

Agencies often think that smart positioning and healthy rates are enough to keep margins strong.

But in reality, the cracks usually show elsewhere.

 If you’ve ever watched a project bleed profit, or a retainer turn into a slow drain, Peter will give you the tools to plug the leaks and protect your bottom line.

📍 Elliot

⏰ 14.15pm

“How Simple Ops Moves Rocketed Our Profit”

“It’s not that deep, guys.”

That’s how Lisa Paasche sums up the changes that took her agency from scraping by to selling for millions.

In 2014, her agency had a healthy turnover but less than £100k profit. “I remember thinking, ‘What the hell?’. We were working harder than ever, but the margins were collapsing.”

Lisa’s solution wasn’t a shiny new strategy. It was the basics – done well. Profit shot up massively in just two years, setting up a successful sale.

 In this session, Lisa will show you the deceptively simple ops moves that transformed her agency, and how you can apply them to yours.

📍 Theatre

⏰ 15.20pm

“You’ve Got to Let Go, to Let Your Ops Grow”

When Lee’ann Kauffman founded iseepr 20 years ago, everything came down to her. In the early days, she was the owner, manager, doer – running invoicing, client servicing, recruitment, even reconciling credit cards.

But as the agency grew to £2.5m turnover, she couldn’t keep up anymore.

 In this session, Lee’ann will explore how she split her team into Leadership and Business Management – an entrepreneurial structure where people pitch for their role – and how the clarity and shared ownership have transformed the agency and how it runs.

📍 Chaucer

⏰ 15.20pm

Scaling Your Ops Through Rapid Growth

“We went from 12 people to 21 quickly.” 

That’s how Bottled Imagination’s Kate Boddy describes the growth spurt that forced the agency to scale, fast, without losing its head. There was no time for a perfect plan. 

“I had like two weeks to get something set up,” Kate says. She rolled out Asana at pace, then handed ownership to the PR team so project management didn’t bottleneck with ops. 

Now, as the next growth wave approaches, the team is calmer, with talent pipelined, scenarios mapped, and clearer triggers for when to hire or spin up a new pod. 

 If you’re bracing for rapid growth, Kate’s playbook shows how to scale quickly – without burning your team or your clients.

📍 Bronte

⏰ 15.20pm

Running Your Agency on Data, Not Gut Feel

Most agencies work hard, deliver great work, and still struggle with one thing: visibility.

When profitability, utilisation, hiring triggers and delivery capacity are unclear, decisions become reactive and expensive.

In this session, Hiyield COO Laura Hudspith shares how she rebuilt her agency’s operating rhythm during a period of rapid growth, when data conflicted, margins were uncertain, and teams couldn’t rely on dashboards.

Facilitated by Supo founder Iouri Prokhorov, Laura will walk through the simple metrics she now uses, how she aligned leadership around one source of truth, and the behaviours and rhythms that brought clarity back into hiring, forecasting and delivery.

📍 Elliot

⏰ 4.10pm

Build Processes That Work Without You

“If you haven’t got traction, you’re pretty much hallucinating your vision.” 

That’s how agency founder Paul Trilk frames EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, that helped him scale, and survive a shock no one plans for.

Paul tried OKRs and “all the systems”. None stuck.  But EOS did. Why? Because everyone owns it. 

Then came the test: Paul was diagnosed with cancer. He stepped out of the business for months… and as it turned out, the team actually ran the business better than he did.

That experience cemented the culture: clarity, accountability, and vulnerability. “All leaders do not know all the answers. Just admit it.”

 Paul will be sharing his story, and the processes he built to work without him.

📍 Theatre

⏰ 4.30pm

You Should Treat Ops Like a Product, Not a Helpdesk

“Ops isn’t plumbers fixing a leak,” says Olivia Royce. “We’re here to upgrade the system.”

At NOVOS, Olivia has reframed operations as a product: internal teams are the customers, and the ‘product’ is the operational ecosystem – systems, rituals, and UX- that powers the work. 

Instead of reacting to complaints, she now runs discovery, ships betas, collects feedback, and iterates in sprints with a visible roadmap. And it’s already paid off. 

 If you’re done firefighting and want ops that actually sticks, come hear Olivia’s playbook: treat ops like a product, not a helpdesk. Hear the missteps, challenges and learnings as well as the wins of approaching ops as a product.

📍 Theatre