THE AGENCY GROWTH SUMMIT’25

Finding Growth in the Age of AI

Join us at the 4th annual Agency Growth Summit for three days full of inspiration!
28 expert speakers, three days, 500+ Agency Founders, endless opportunities.

DAY 1 — Finding Growth in the Age of AI

Time	Session Title	Session Description	Speaker
15:00 UK 16:00 CET 10:00 EST	Opening		Barış Onay
15:05 UK 16:05 CET 10:05 EST	What is your end-game - doesn't have to be about selling your agency to someone else	Growth isn’t just about scaling fast—it’s about knowing where you want to end up. In this session, Jonathan Leafe helps agency founders define success on their own terms, whether that means selling, sustaining, or simply loving what they’ve built.	Jonathan Leafe
15:15 UK 16:15 CET 10:15 EST	TBA		TBA
15:30 UK 16:30 CET 10:30 EST	Building with AI	AI is redefining how digital products are conceived, designed, and built. In this session, Studio Graphene shares how it’s embedding AI across the product lifecycle, from research and design to development and quality assurance. Discover practical ways AI can speed up delivery, enhance creativity, and improve product outcomes without losing the human touch.	Ritam Gandhi
15:45 UK 16:45 CET 10:45 EST	From AI Hype to Human‑Centric Systems: AI doesn’t need louder hype; it needs systems that fit human hands	It’s hard to ask a team to disrupt themselves. AI transformation isn’t about louder hype rather about outcomes, culture, and trust. Negativity builds fast when solutions don’t solve the problems they promise. This talk explores how to create space for change, build teams that can challenge the status quo, and reframe AI as augmentation giving people the freedom to do what only humans do best. AI Bots Consultancy is the only company inviting businesses to think about transformation this way: human-centric, outcome-driven, and built to last.	Fatima Ait Moulid
16:00 UK 17:00 CET 11:00 EST	What Does It Take to Win with AI?	What is the state of AI adoption in agencies right now? What are the pioneering agencies doing with it? How are client relationships and pricing models changing? What do you need to succeed?	Jules Love
16:15 UK 17:15 CET 11:15 EST	How to Use AI to Scale at Speed	Felix Velarde developed world’s leading agency scaling programme, 2Y3X, and wrote Scale at Speed. Felix's insights on how to use AI to build a superstar succession team – and make selling your agency easier – will surprise you.	Felix Velarde
16:30 UK 17:30 CET 11:30 EST	5 Things Agency by Agency Learned from 25,000 UK Agencies	What does the data from 25,000 UK agencies tell us about where the industry is heading next? In this fast‑paced session, Agency by Agency co-founder Tom Salmon shares five standout insights shaping the sector into 2026. Drawing exclusively from our national dataset, insights and reports we’ll reveal which parts of the agency world are growing fastest, where investors are placing their bets and key themes in women-lead and women-founded agencies. We’ll also explore how teams are responding to the realities of AI and why many are rethinking traditional billing models to secure more predictable growth. Expect clear, data‑driven takeaways you can use to inform your plans for 2026 against alongside a concise view of what will define success in the UK agency landscape over the next two years.	Tom Salmon
16:45 UK 17:45 CET 11:45 EST	Getting Back to Growth in 2026	In today’s challenging market, waiting for growth to happen isn’t an option. Success comes from consistent, focused action - not occasional bursts of effort. Agencies that build momentum through small, intentional steps each week are the ones that thrive. A major factor in this is new business, something many agencies have struggled with. The key is having a clear focus, a high-energy approach, and a committed team to drive results. At the Agency Growth Summit, Rory will share how agencies can get back to growth by setting the right priorities and taking action every single week. You’ll discover how to focus on your wildly important goal, energise your team, and create real momentum to generate new business and sustainable growth.	Rory Spence
17:00 UK 18:00 CET 12:00 EST	The New Rules of Growth: How U.S. Agencies Are Adapting to a Changing Market	New business has never been tougher for U.S. agencies. Traditional growth channels are delivering diminishing returns. Yet some firms are thriving by rethinking how they attract and convert opportunities. Drawing on insights from agencies nationwide, Christian Banach shares data on where growth is stalling, how buyer behavior is shifting, and what forward-thinking agencies are doing differently to win business in 2026 and beyond.	Christian Banach

DAY 2 — Mental Health & Wellbeing in Agency Life

Time	Session Title	Session Description	Speaker
15:00 UK 16:00 CET 10:00 EST	Opening		Barış Onay
15:05 UK 16:05 CET 10:05 EST	Build an Agency That Doesn’t Break You	Running an agency can appear successful from the outside, but behind the scenes, many founders are burning out. In this honest and hopeful talk, Claire Hutchings, former agency founder and now Guide at The Agency Adventure, shares her personal story of rebuilding after burnout and the lessons she’s learned about creating a business that fuels, rather than drains, the people who lead it. Through the Your Agency of the Future framework, Claire explores how six core pillars; Mapping, Fuel, Leadership, Resources, Checkpoints, and Fitness, can protect founder wellbeing while driving sustainable growth. Expect a talk that’s candid, human, and practical: a reminder that your agency’s future health starts with your own, and that success doesn’t have to come at the cost of your sanity.	Claire Hutchings
15:15 UK 16:15 CET 10:15 EST	Creating Hopeful Communities	Join Ellie MacDonald on 12th November at 3.15pm for a special session focused on suicide prevention in the workplace. The founder and CEO of HelloHope, Ellie formed the organisation in May 2024, following her dad’s suicide and having battled poor mental health herself. Focused on hope, HelloHope leads from a place of positivity, understanding that most suicides are preventable. Ellie will share some tips and advice on how to ensure your workforce feels supported, what signs to look out for and how to safely and confidently intervene to help reduce future suicides. Providing a safe space, no graphic methods of death will be discussed, the session aims to be an uplifting, educational session with a chance to ask Ellie anything.	Ellie Macdonald
15:30 UK 16:30 CET 10:30 EST	Breakthrough. Don’t Burn Out — Rethinking Mental Health in Agency Life	Agency life has always been thrillingly intense. But lately, the pressure has tipped from energising to exhausting. In this talk, Nikki Gatenby explores how marketing agencies can transform that tension into purpose, balance, and growth. Drawing from her agency growth journey, where wellbeing became a business strategy long before it was fashionable, she shows how putting people first doesn’t cost performance, it fuels it. Through insights from post-Covid culture shifts, AI anxiety and new engagement data, Nikki challenges leaders to reset how we work: building harmony between human creativity and technological pace. This is not another wellbeing pep talk; it’s a call to design agencies that make life better, for people, clients and the planet. Expect data, laughter, and a few uncomfortable truths about how to create businesses worth belonging to.	Nikki Gatenby
15:45 UK 16:45 CET 10:45 EST	Supercharge your superpowers: how to gain a competitive advantage with neurodivergent employees	In this inspiring and insightful session, discover how embracing neurodivergent employees and recognising the value of different minds can transform your organisation’s performance. What some view as additional needs or adjustments are, in fact, opportunities to unleash untapped potential. When people feel understood, valued, and supported, they bring their full creativity, focus, and innovation to the table,turning inclusion into a true competitive advantage.	Alex Stone
16:00 UK 17:00 CET 11:00 EST	Building Mental Resilience	A fireside chat with Clair Heaviside on building your resilience.	Clair Heaviside
16:15 UK 17:15 CET 11:15 EST	Happier people, happier clients: listening your way to trust, loyalty and growth	Agency life moves fast, but behind every deadline and deliverable are people who need to feel heard. Drawing on insights from The Agency–Client Benchmark Report, Remeny Armitage explores how listening to both clients and teams is not just good practice, it is vital for mental health, trust and long-term growth. When people feel listened to and valued, stress drops, creativity flourishes and loyalty strengthens. Remeny shares real stories of agencies that turned burnout and client loss into renewed energy and stronger relationships simply by tuning in and acting on what they heard. This talk is a reminder that genuine wellbeing begins with better conversations. Listening builds happier teams, happier clients and more human businesses where trust and growth naturally follow.	Remeny Armitage
16:45 UK 17:45 CET 11:45 EST	Remote Team Culture: What We Learned Building a Global Agency Over 14 Years	For 14 years, David Wain-Heapy and Bachir Smahi built and scaled a digital agency that consistently hit double-digit margins before exiting. To achieve this, they stopped thinking about offshore hiring as outsourcing and started treating it like actual hiring, with the same process, standards, and integration they'd use for someone sitting in the office.	Bachir Smahi David Wain-Heapy

DAY 3 — Fundamentals of Growth

Time	Session Title	Session Description	Speaker
15:00 UK 16:00 CET 10:00 EST	Opening		Barış Onay
15:05 UK 16:05 CET 10:05 EST	PSG (Predictable Scalable Growth) // Three Key Elements That Are Fundamental To Agency Growth	Tired of growth feeling like a gamble? PSG (Predictable Scalable Growth) is a model designed to replace the chaos, guesswork, and dependency on referrals or unicorn hires with a structured, reliable path to agency growth. It’s about building a business engine where budgets are meaningful, forecasts are grounded, and scaling becomes a consequence of smart strategy - not serendipity. We’ll explore the three core fundamentals - Stand-Out Sales, a Profitable Commercial Model, and a Truly Scalable Operations so that when you turn the volume up, growth responds predictably.	Janusz Stabik
15:15 UK 16:15 CET 10:15 EST	Coming Soon	Discover the habits and frameworks behind consistent agency growth. This session shares six real-world takeaways to boost your pipeline and win rates — from systemising your business development to staying authentic and relevant in marketing. Learn why preparation is everything, how visibility builds trust, and what it means to go the extra mile in every pitch. Expect concise, practical advice on aligning business development, marketing, and the pitch process into a single, growth-ready system.	Andy West
15:30 UK 16:30 CET 10:30 EST	TBA		TBA
15:45 UK 16:45 CET 10:45 EST	Forget Likes - Think Leverage: LinkedIn Agency Strategies for 2025 and Beyond	Vanity metrics don’t pay the bills—strategy does. Nigel Cliffe shares how agencies can move beyond chasing likes to build meaningful connections, attract ideal clients, and turn LinkedIn into a genuine growth engine in 2025 and beyond.	Nigel Cliffe
16:00 UK 17:00 CET 11:00 EST	How to craft messaging that tells and sells	Most agencies sound the same. Smart, capable, creative but not different. This session shows you how to fix that by making your messaging do the selling for you. Roland Gurney from Treacle will walk through how to turn vague positioning into meaningful and memorable messaging that prospects understand, feel and act on. You’ll learn the simple structure your messaging needs to convert interest into action, the mistakes that kill clarity, and how to shape your words to win the work you deserve. In this practical session, you’ll see how to: - Focus your positioning - Build a buyable offer - Write a story that tells and sells it.	Roland Gurney
16:15 UK 17:15 CET 11:15 EST	Why We Must Reframe New Business	Many agencies still approach new business with a “sales first” mindset — chasing opportunities rather than creating the conditions for them. Yet the way our future clients are being influenced and making decisions has fundamentally changed. To win new business today, we need more than a pipeline and a pitch: we need a connected sales and marketing strategy and a clear plan of activity. In this session, Lucy Mann will explore why “new business” isn’t an activity but a desired outcome — and how agencies can shift focus from short-term selling to long-term relationship building. Expect practical insights on aligning marketing and sales efforts, creating meaningful touchpoints with prospects, and building the kind of relationships that turn visibility and trust into sustainable growth.	Lucy Mann
16:30 UK 17:30 CET 11:30 EST	The New Rules of Agency Profitability	Margins are tighter, data is messier, and the old “sales–delivery–finance” model no longer works. In this keynote, Marcel Petitpas breaks down the new, integrated model for managing profitability — connecting delivery, data, and decision-making into one coherent system. Learn how leading agencies are creating clarity, forecasting with confidence, and protecting profit in a changing market.	Marcel Petitpas
16:45 UK 17:45 CET 11:45 EST	Coming Soon	The fastest path to exponential growth is to buy it. In this session, Peter Lang demonstrates how agency owners can achieve repeatable growth through off-market acquisitions, tuck-ins, and streamlined integration playbooks. Practical and actionable.	Peter Lang
17:00 UK 18:00 CET 12:00 EST	Using AI to Enhance (Not Replace) the Client Experience	The future of client experience isn’t human or AI - it’s both. Discover how agency owners can integrate AI to enhance personalization, speed up communication, and deliver deeper insights, all without losing the empathy and strategy that drive long-term partnerships. Walk away with a smarter, more balanced approach to account management that helps your agency scale without losing its soul.	Tiffany Molloy
17:15 UK 18:15 CET 12:15 EST	Uncover where 6-7 figs of hidden profit is leaking out of your business right now	In this hands-on session, Jhana Li (Founder of Spyglass Ops) will guide you through her Profit Finder Method — used by hundreds of founders to identify the hidden profit gaps in their business and reclaim that profit for free, so they can scale faster and easier. You’ll walk away with a personalized breakdown of exactly where your profit is slipping through the cracks, a step-by-step framework to profit audit your business, and actionable takeaways to close those leaks and drive smarter, more profitable growth.	Jhana Li
17:30 UK 18:30 CET 12:30 EST	Getting Your Entire Team to Be Client Superstars	There’s another way to grow your agency beyond new business: Grow your client accounts. Trenton will share how he equipped his whole team to upsell work, reduce unbillable work and keep clients happier - and boosted client revenue by 35% in the process.	Trenton Moss
17:45 UK 18:45 CET 12:45 EST	Sales Is a Tough Problem to Solve	Too much reliance on outsourcing, which often fails to deliver results. Founders often leverage their black book and network, which doesn't scale and eventually dries up. Hiring 'sales people', who rarely work out, so you're constantly going round in circles hiring, looking for that unicorn hire. An overdependence on inbound, which you can't predict, and it's either feast or famine. The root of the problem is often the same. A lack of systemisation, a lack of focus, not tackling outbound and having the wrong expectations of what it really takes to solve sales. But can it be solved? Well, yeah. It can. With 23 years of playing the agency game, and two exits along the way. Ryan shares his playbook for taking ownership of sales to create a scalable, predictable and sustainable sales engine.	Ryan Hall