GOOD CEOs

GOOD CEOs is back 📬

Welcome to our refreshed newsletter. Every fortnight we’ll land in your inbox with an account of what’s actually happening on the front lines of the creative economy. Scaling a creative business? Restructuring or looking to acquire one? Or looking for signals of where the cash is flowing? You’re in the right place.

It’s a newsletter that won’t make you feel less-than – but better-than. 

And like you can.

In every issue…

One insight 💡

One stat 📈

One quote 🎙

One fix 🛠

And, one diary entry 📝

ONE INSIGHT 💡 
 

About time: the smartest agencies aren’t thinking about hours or days – they’re focused on results

For decades, agencies have tied their economics to time. Every person has a rate. Every task has an hour count. Time and Experience became the proxy for value – not because clients asked for it, but because agencies lacked a firmer way to define or measure the work itself.

That system held up when workflows were slower and scope was stable. It collapses the moment work accelerates. AI now compresses timelines, eliminates layers, and reduces the human effort required to produce the same output. Yet agencies continue pricing as if nothing has changed. The model is out of sync with reality.

The core issue is simple:

 
You can no longer justify value by counting hours when the hours themselves are disappearing.
 

The missing metric isn’t time or talent.

It’s the one thing clients actually experience and pay for: the result.

🔼 The Triad 🔼

Three core considerations for agencies.

1. Scope
   What must be delivered. What is included. What is not.

2. Resources
   Human effort and capability required to deliver the scope.

3. Outcomes
   The impact of the work – the KPIs clients recognise and value.

Most agencies track the second metric and ignore the first and third. That is why margins erode, teams inflate, and client expectations spiral. Without defined scope and measurable outcomes, time-based pricing is little more than selling labour by the pound, or dollar.

The Two Options for Agencies

1. Continue charging for time + expertise

This keeps fees low, increases client volume, and accelerates cadence.
But it does nothing to correct the structural imbalance.
More clients, more tasks, more pressure, more rework – the familiar treadmill.

This is the model that created the industry’s long-term profit decline.

2. Move to products + outcomes

This requires discipline:

• Defined deliverables

• Defined timelines

• Defined success criteria

• Fixed pricing

• No ambiguity

Productisation is not a trend. It’s a natural evolution.

It forces clarity around scope and shifts the economic conversation from hours to value.
We’re seeing some of the best agencies in our network move to this model. Their output is priced around benefits clients can see - not the internal effort required to generate them.

The Reality

Clients do not care how the sausage is made. 🌭
They care about what the work achieves. 🤝

AI accelerates this shift. Every automation pulls value away from labour and toward IP, process, and platform. Agencies that continue selling time will be trapped in declining economics. Agencies that sell outcomes will capture the upside.

 
There’s a lot of upside for the people that stop counting hours and start defining value.
 

Do this on Monday:

Read Madison Avenue Makeover: The Transformation of Huge and the Redefinition of the Ad Agency Business, by Michael Farmer. The book features brilliant clues on how to shift from an ‘ideas factory’ model, where the emphasis is on creative output (time and expertise), to one that is about client business growth.

Take inspiration from Uncommon Creative Studio’s Shop. The company sells an array of merch, but is that a signal to how they price their services too? Check out COLLINS too. Notice how their site speaks in client value. 

Start a shared document called: “How things get done around here” (this was the working title we had at UNKNOWN. It stuck). Invite everyone to contribute a story of when they or their team contributed to a real concrete client outcome. Pass the results through some questions. Like: ‘what was the biggest win for a client?’, ‘how much commercial value did we create for them?’, and ‘how can this action become more of a product than a service?’ 

Follow Caroline Johnson on LinkedIn. Her consultancy The Business Model Company (TBMC) designs and operationalises new models for the creative industry. 

ONE STAT 📈
 

The figure burning a hole in private equity pockets

The phrase ‘dry powder’ refers to the unallocated capital in possession of investment managers. Like gunpowder in the early days of firearms, it’s kept safely in store but ready to be deployed rapidly - and with explosive results.

Right now, PE firms have a lot of it. As of June this year, there was $2.515 trillion in the collective coffers of firms globally, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. As private equity (PE) firms re-shape the agency landscape we expect to see large sums put towards high-performing creative companies.

Drop us a note to join our creativity meets capital community (where we’re building a community of PE investors and creative entrepreneurs).

ONE QUOTE 🎙
 

Secret skills

 A stand-out (and anonymous) quote from one CEO in one of our network... 👇

ONE FIX 🛠
 

Warm, fuzzy Fridays

Admiration is underrated. At UNKNOWN we have a Friday ritual. At an all-hands, every team member is asked to describe one thing that they admired about someone else that week. People head off into the weekend either (i) feeling good about themselves, (ii) feeling grateful for the people who work alongside them. But - ideally - (iii) both.

Simple. Super effective. And just a lovely thing to do. 

ONE DIARY 📝