Business Systems Consultant for Marketing Agencies

01 · The constraint

Tribal knowledge is not a system

The client onboarding process lives in one person’s head. The QA checklist is whatever someone remembers to check before hitting send. The handoff from sales to delivery is a Slack message and a hope.

It works. Right up until someone quits or the team doubles and the new hires have no idea how anything is supposed to happen. Every gap shows at once, and the fix is always the same: find the person who knows and ask them. That is not a system. That is a single point of failure that happens to work.

I have spent twelve years building the systems that solve this. It is the core of my delivery operations practice for marketing agencies.

02 · The build

What I build

A system is a documented, owned, actually-used way that a recurring thing happens. Each one gets four things:

• An owner

  The owner is a person, not a role.

• A trigger

  The trigger is the event that starts the process.

• Steps

  The steps are short enough to follow without asking a question.

• A home

  The home is the place inside your existing tool where the system lives.

Agencies use ClickUp, Asana, Monday.com, Airtable, Notion, Dubsado, and a dozen other tools. I build inside whichever one your team already works in. The point is to remove friction, not to add another login. If your systems need workflow automation beyond what those tools handle natively, that is part of the work too. And where a step in the stack calls for AI rather than a plain rule, AI automation for marketing agencies covers how I scope and build that layer. The documentation layer, the SOPs each system runs on, has its own engagement.

The systems an agency needs first

1. 01

   Client onboarding

   Every client relationship starts here. A weak onboarding poisons the months that follow.

2. 02

   Sales-to-delivery handoff

   This is where scope gets lost and expectations diverge. The gap between what sales promised and what delivery understood is where most client frustration is born.

3. 03

   Weekly reporting

   Clients judge agencies on communication more than output. A consistent reporting cadence is the cheapest trust you can build.

4. 04

   QA before delivery

   Rework is expensive and embarrassing. A checklist that takes five minutes saves hours of back-and-forth.

5. 05

   Offboarding

   You will lose clients. The exit shapes whether they come back, refer others, or warn people about you.

Why most SOP projects fail

Most agency SOP projects produce a folder of documents. The documents are written once, shared in a kickoff meeting, and never opened again. Within a quarter they are stale. Within two quarters they are fiction.

The failure is not in the writing. It is in the design. A document that lives outside the workflow will not survive. A document that takes twenty minutes to read will not be read. A document with no owner will not be maintained.

I build systems that survive because they are short, embedded, owned, and reviewed. Short means under ten minutes to read and follow. Embedded means the system lives where the work happens. Owned means one person is responsible for keeping it current. Reviewed means there is a date on the calendar when that person checks it against reality.

What I leave behind

When the project ends, the systems live in your tools. Each has a named owner and a review date. I document the review process itself so the system for maintaining systems does not depend on me being there. You keep the systems alive by doing the reviews. That is the whole job after I leave.

03 · Pricing

How it works

• Agency Ops Audit

  Two weeks. A written 90-day operations roadmap and a 60-minute readout call. This is where most engagements start. Full details on the audit.

  $1,500 fixed

• Fractional operations retainer

  10 to 15 hours per week, 60-day minimum. For agencies that need ongoing operational support while they build internal capacity. For broader operational leadership alongside systems work, operations consulting for agencies covers that scope.

  From $3,000 / month

• Automations

  One repetitive workflow at a time, built in the tools you already use, with a named person checking the output. Start the retainer with 90 days and one automation is built free.

  Fixed quote per workflow

04 · Proof

The record

• 12Years
• 92Completed engagements
• 12,000+Hours delivered

More client outcomes are on the case studies page.

05 · Fit

06 · Questions

Questions agencies ask

• What does a business systems consultant do?

  A business systems consultant identifies the recurring processes in your business that depend on individual memory and turns them into documented, owned, repeatable systems. For agencies, that means client onboarding, project handoffs, reporting, QA, and offboarding, each with a defined owner, a trigger, steps, and a place it lives.

• Which systems should an agency build first?

  Start with client onboarding, because every client relationship begins there and a weak start affects everything that follows. Next is the handoff from sales to delivery, where scope and expectations most often get lost. After that, weekly reporting and QA before delivery. Offboarding comes last because it matters less until you are losing or graduating clients regularly.

• How do you stop documentation from going stale?

  Build the system inside the tool people already work in, not in a separate document they have to leave their workflow to find. Keep it short enough that someone can read and follow it in under ten minutes. Assign an owner and a review date. A system with no owner and no review date is a document waiting to die.

• Do you build inside our existing tools?

  Yes. I work in ClickUp, Asana, Monday.com, Airtable, and Notion. If your team already lives in one of these, the systems get built there. The point is to reduce friction, not add another tool nobody asked for. If you use something else, I will work with what you have.

• What does it cost?

  The Agency Ops Audit is $1,500 fixed and gives you a written 90-day operations roadmap plus a 60-minute readout call. A fractional operations retainer starts at $3,000 per month for 10 to 15 hours per week with a 60-day minimum. Automations are quoted at a fixed price per workflow, built in your own tools.

• How long does a systems project take?

  The audit takes two weeks. A full implementation project typically runs six to ten weeks depending on how many systems we are building and how much existing documentation needs to be untangled. The retainer is ongoing with a 60-day minimum.