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When it comes to a rapid increase in growth, it’s easy to get caught up in all the excitement – but without the right structure, scaling can lead to serious challenges.

By 2022, search-first social agency Rise at Seven had grown to £7m. But with that immense achievement came two problems – they had too many people, and the founder, Carrie, was exhausted.

Enter Karl Loudon, the now global managing director.

“I met Carrie for a drink, and we hit it off very quickly,” says Karl. “It became very clear that she had a commercial gap in the leadership of the business, and I’m a very commercial, growth-oriented person. We ended up putting processes in place to track the pipeline, win rates, and financial reporting.”

By 2023, the agency had reestablished to £5.5m in revenue, with it now on track to grow back to £7m – but in a much healthier way.

Drawing on his financial expertise and experience running his own agencies, Karl introduced more efficient commercial metrics to help Rise at Seven stabilise and set the stage for sustainable growth.

In this session, Karl will be sharing:

• How he implemented commercial metrics that balance creativity with accountability. Karl introduced structured processes at Rise at Seven, including weighted pipeline probabilities to improve forecasting. “We use weighted probabilities at each stage of the pipeline – 50% at pitch, 75% at verbal, and 90% at signed. This ensures realistic forecasting and proper resource allocation.”
• The key to sustainable growth at Rise – that didn’t overextend their resources. Rapid growth brought challenges to the agency, but Karl helped stabilise this by aligning investment with deal value. “Never invest more than 10% of the deal value in winning it. Otherwise, you might not make enough money.” He also introduced processes to track time spent on new business. “We get reports regularly on how much time people have spent on new business to make sure we’re not over-indexing.”
• The practical strategies that fostered a culture of embracing change while staying true to the agency’s creative DNA. At Rise, the team’s openness to change has been pivotal. “Everybody’s up for change. It’s a blessing because it enables us to iterate quickly and find what works without getting stuck in the old ways of doing things.”

And despite these new commercial processes, creativity remains at the heart of Rise at Seven. “Introducing structure doesn’t mean losing creativity. It’s about creating clarity and accountability while maintaining your agency’s spirit,” says Karl.

In this session, Karl will explain how instilling Rise at Seven with financial rigour and commercial metrics has taken them to even greater heights – and how you can do the same.