“Agency mentor” gets used for everything from a friend who gives you advice over coffee to a course with a community attached. In this article I’ll explain what an agency mentor actually does, how that differs from a coach or a consultant, and when you’d be wasting your money on one.
I’ve been on both sides of it. I hired a mentor when my first agency was stuck, and I’ve since mentored more than 500 founders and business owners myself.
What an agency mentor does
An agency mentor is someone who has built and run an agency, and who tells you what they would do in your position. That’s the whole job.
You bring a problem. I tell you whether I’ve had it, what I tried, what worked and what didn’t. Then you decide what to do, because it’s your agency.
The value is in the years you don’t have to spend finding things out the slow way. When I started my first agency I couldn’t get clients, I couldn’t manage the ones I had, and the money never added up. It took me years to work out what a successful agency actually runs on, and things only started to move when I hired a mentor of my own.
What we talk about on a call
A mentoring call usually starts with whatever is on your desk that week. These come up again and again:
- A price for a project, and how to ask the client for their budget
- A proposal that has to go out on Friday
- A client who keeps adding to the scope
- Where the next clients come from when referrals go quiet
- Whether to pick a niche, and which one
- Whether to hire, and who to hire first
Between calls you can send me the proposal, or the email you’re not sure about, and I’ll tell you what I’d change.
Mentor, coach or consultant?
These three get mixed up, and they do different jobs.
- A mentor has done your job. They tell you what they’d do, from experience.
- A coach asks the questions that help you find your own answer. A good coach doesn’t need to have run an agency.
- A consultant is hired to do a piece of work, or to hand you a report with recommendations in it.
None is better than the others. If you want to know why your proposals keep losing, you want someone who has written a lot of them. If you already know what to do and keep not doing it, a coach will serve you better.
When you don’t need an agency mentor
Some of the people who ask me for a call get an honest no, and somewhere better to look. These are the usual reasons.
You want someone to do it for you
A mentor won’t run your ads or build your website. If you need the work done, hire a freelancer or another agency.
You have one technical problem
If the question is why one ad account is underperforming, find a specialist in exactly that. You’ll get further in an hour with them than in a month with me.
You won’t have time to act on it
Mentoring works at the speed you act on it. If the next three months are already full, wait until they aren’t.
You need accountability more than advice
If you know what to do and need someone to hold you to it, that’s coaching. There’s nothing wrong with wanting that, and a coach is the right hire.
Your agency has outgrown it
When the agency is established and you want someone involved in the commercial decisions from week to week, you need an advisor. I do that separately, as Founder Counsel.
How to choose an agency mentor
Three things I’d check, whoever you’re looking at.
- Do they still run an agency? The business has changed a lot in the last few years, and advice from someone who stopped a decade ago has a shelf life. I still run two.
- Are the reviews independent? Look for reviews they didn’t write, pick or edit.
- Do they tell you how long it took? My first agency is 25 years old. Be sceptical of anyone whose story is an overnight success.
Then have a call before you pay for months of it. You’ll know quickly whether you can work with someone.
Does agency mentoring work?
It did for me. My own agency only started to move when I hired a mentor, and he had built his agency with a mentor before him. I kept him for four years.
It isn’t quick. Most people who commit see a real change in their business within six months, and many see it sooner. How much you get from it depends on how quickly you act on what we discuss.
If you run an agency and want to know whether mentoring would help, the agency mentor page explains how I work, and you can request an intro call from there. If I’m not the right person, I’ll tell you.