Stephen Kenwright - Launching, Scaling and Exiting Rise At Seven. How Turning Clients Down Helped Them Build A £7M A Year Agency

Turning down clients is the best thing that you can do to grow your agency. Sounds counterproductive right? 

But, that’s exactly what led to Rise at Seven’s impressive growth. Love or hate them, you can’t argue with the fact that they dominate the Digital PR & Search Agency space. From day one, they were working with big and established global brands. Clearly they were doing a lot of things right. 

But, growing a business to £7M a year doesn’t come without its challenges. 

Stephen Kenwright is generous enough to share an honest and unfiltered account of Rise at Seven’s rollercoaster journey to the top on this podcast. 

He touches on recruitment, marketing, targeting, positioning, whether industry awards are just smoke and mirrors, how to attract your ideal client, exiting Rise at Seven and what’s next for his career.

If you are an ambitious agency owner who wants to scale, this episode is for you. 

Topics covered: 

00:00 - His agency background

05:57 - Positioning, marketing and recruitment 

08:50 - Client perspectives

12:24 - Identifying potential clients and their fit, commercially and culturally

14:16 - Client budgets and partnerships

22:30 - Identifying key hires for company culture

25:21 - Managing talent is challenging 

26:56 - Late hiring of HR caused a flood of issues

32:05 - Balance between human and commercial factors and the value of awards for agency owners

34:24 - Rise strives to prove an SEO agency can compete creatively with the best

38:58 - Why Kenwright exited Rise at Seven

42:17 - Advice for Agency Owners…get a good accountant 

45:44 - 18 months of change, renovating, catching up and mini MBAs

49:11 - Kenwright’s next steps 

50:19 - Book recommendation