Operations Consulting for Founder-Led Agencies
Fix the bottleneck that keeps eating your week.
I help 10–75-person agencies, studios, and service firms make delivery, capacity, and decisions more predictable.
in agency and digital delivery
people led across PM, interactive and social creative teams
in annual project budgets overseen
It’s an operating problem, not a people problem.
Agencies scale past 15 people on founder charisma, but they scale past 40 on clear operational plumbing. Here is what breaking looks like in real time:
Handoffs
Creative work gets stuck moving from strategy to execution with vague responsibilities.
Ownership
Every decision travels back up to the founder because nobody else clearly owns the call.
Visibility
Client health and true utilization rates are black boxes until the post-mortem.
Delivery
Projects run consistently over budget, requiring heroism rather than repeatable systems.
Leadership Overload
The founder is spending 30+ hours a week fighting delivery fires instead of growing the firm.
Margin Erosion
Revenue is up, but margins are leaking into unbilled scope creep and idle developer bench.
Start with one problem. The expensive one.
Every engagement starts with the Operations Diagnostic.
Recommended first step
2 weeks
Operations Diagnostic
For a problem that’s costing you time or margin, when the right fix isn’t obvious yet. You get a firm answer on the cause, then decide what happens next.
What You Get
- A clear statement of the real constraint
- Root-cause analysis
- Prioritized recommendations
- A written next-step plan
Fee
$4,950
Duration
Two Weeks
You Provide
Lorem Ipsum
Scope
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How It Works
Call
Fit check
Twenty minutes on one recurring problem. You hear whether a Diagnostic is the right next step, or that it isn’t.
Week 1
Discovery
Align on the recurring problem, review the operating context, and speak with the right people.
Week 2
Diagnosis
Map constraints, identify root causes, and turn findings into a prioritized remediation plan.
Decision
After
You choose what happens next: act on the plan yourselves, scope a follow-on, or stop.
After the Diagnostic there are three ways to continue: a Sprint, Office Hours, or a Fractional Operations Lead. Each is scoped and priced at your readout.
Selected outcomes from agency operating roles.
[00 → 00 hrs]
[Founder time metric, before to after. For example: hours a week spent on delivery fires.]
Over[Time period]
[What changed, in one sentence]
Context [Role, company type, headcount, year]
Before [The delivery symptom, with a number if one exists.]
Work [Your role and what you changed.]
[00 → 00 hrs]
[Founder time metric, before to after. For example: hours a week spent on delivery fires.]
Over[Time period]
[What changed, in one sentence]
Context [Role, company type, headcount, year]
Before [The delivery symptom, with a number if one exists.]
Work [Your role and what you changed.]
Fewer surprises, not more process.
Principle 1: Pragmatic over Dogmatic
I do not implement frameworks for their own sake. If a spreadsheet works better than Jira for your team, I keep the spreadsheet.
Principle 2: No Disruption to Active Delivery
I change the tires while the car is moving. Changes are integrated quietly, piece by piece, without stopping billing.
Principle 3: Clear Delivery Baselines First
I establish clear operational metrics first before changing any organizational roles or hiring new project managers.
I’m Kim.
I work by making ownership visible, reducing avoidable handoffs, and building enough structure for the team to deliver without depending on heroic effort.
I started out writing front-end code at Funny Garbage, a New York interactive studio, and spent the next dozen years moving from developer to senior producer. Along the way I earned my PMP, which I’ve kept current since 2012. That year I moved to California to produce at Ignited, an independent ad agency, then joined HYFN, a digital agency, as a senior producer and worked my way to VP of Operations & Delivery. After that, I led operations and delivery at SprintFWD.
At HYFN and SprintFWD, I owned contracts, forecasting and revenue recognition as well as delivery. At SprintFWD I also set up the infrastructure and processes the team ran on, including the ticketing system clients used to reach us, and led the producers while managing projects myself. The work crossed departments because the problems did too.
That path shapes how I work. I’ve been the developer waiting on a decision, the producer holding the schedule, and the operator making the numbers work.
The problems I’m hired to find usually sit between those seats. I’ve seen the same ones in studios, ad agencies and digital shops, so I know they’re rarely about the people.
What it’s like to work with me.
He takes a long view when working with clients, resulting in multi-year relationships and repeat business.
Scott Burton CTO, SprintFWD. Worked with Kim for 6+ years at HYFN and SprintFWD
It doesn’t matter how big or insanely complex a problem is… Kim always keeps his cool and like a machine breaks down the problem to serve up alternate solutions.
Mariella AvenariusAccount Manager. Worked with Kim at Ignited
Kim has always been a pleasure to work with and someone the company has relied upon to do important and difficult work.
John CarlinFounder, Funny Garbage. Worked with Kim for 10+ years
What I don’t do.
This is operating work with a defined problem, scope, and handoff. It is not open-ended executive theater.
- No generic roadmap without an owner and an implementation path
- No disguised full-time COO role
- No permanent substitute for internal leadership
- No process for process’s sake
- No fractional engagement before understanding the constraint
Bring one problem, no deck.
Bring one recurring problem. I’ll ask a few focused questions, tell you whether I see a useful next step, and be direct if I don’t.
Or email directly at kim@kimhowe.com