Clockwork – Group A itinerary ⏰

Welcome to the event!

Hear what’s coming up, and who’s in the room, before we get on with the day.

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

“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.

“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.

When Supo‘s founder Iouri Prokhorov was exiting his agency, he discovered the same hard truth every time: you don’t get a good deal without a grip on your numbers.

Profitability. Utilisation. Hiring triggers. If you can’t show them, you’re guessing.

That’s why he started Supo. And in this session, he will share the framework they now use to help agencies escape the cycle of firefighting.

“It’s not to say that you need to use Supo to achieve this,” says Iouri. “But what we’re looking at is: what do we actually track in the tech that gives agencies results – and gives them the headspace to know whether to hire, how profitable they really are, and where they stand in terms of utilisation.”

This isn’t about software. It’s about the operating system of your agency, and the simple metrics that stop you running blind.

👉 If you’ve ever wondered whether you can afford that next hire, or why your margins don’t stack up, this session will show you how to finally get clarity.

When Lee’ann Kauffman founded iseepr 20 years ago, everything lived in spreadsheets. 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, the spreadsheets couldn’t keep up. And neither could she.

“The shift to platforms is about more than efficiency,” Lee’ann explains. “It’s about trust. You’re sharing data, giving your team the tools, and the responsibility, to do their jobs. That’s the only way to scale.”

👉 In this session, Lee’ann will explore the different phases of agency evolution:

• Why spreadsheets are vital in the early days.
• How and when to introduce platforms.
• Why stepping back is really about people, not software.
• And how to balance oversight with trust.

“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.

“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.

The day will round of with Hackers’ own, Ian Harris.

He’ll round off the day with the key takeaways.