Most agency owners plan in months. The strategic orbit asks you to lift your head above the parapet and plan in years.
In the latest episode of The MAP Room, Paul Barnes sat down again with Stuart Brown. Last time, they compared lifestyle and capital businesses. This time, Stuart walked through the planning tool he uses whichever route an owner chooses, and the one he used to build and sell two agencies.
Stuart’s definition of strategy is a simple one: a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term aim. The strategic orbit is a way of mapping that plan out. It doesn’t need to look pretty. A scribble on a piece of paper is enough to start, and you can tidy it up later. It’s also where the podcast gets its name: mapping your objectives down as a series of steps.
Why three years
Stuart’s default horizon is three years. Anything further out, he says, is really vision: the big, hairy, audacious goal. Three years is far enough to zoom out, but close enough to plan against.
The rhythm comes from a model known as 3-1-90, an evolution of the American 3-1-Q approach. Anyone who has used objectives and key results [OKRs] will recognise it:
- 3 – where do you want the business to be in three years?
- 1 – what does this year’s budget need to be to get you on track?
- 90 – what do you need to achieve in the next 90 days to move you towards it?
Year one is the budget you already have. In MAP terms, it’s like building a loose three-year budget around it.
The vision is your destination, not the stops along the way. When you get into the car, you put the end point into the sat nav, not every junction. So if you want to take £150,000 a year out of a lifestyle business, that’s the three-year picture. The steps towards it, perhaps £50,000, then £100,000, then £150,000, are what the plan fills in.
Four quarters, 11 segments
Some people picture the orbit as a spider’s web, others as a clock face. Stuart sees it as a radar screen: the line sweeps round, and obstacles blip into view. Starting at 12 o’clock, the wheel is cut into four quarters and 11 segments, each linked to an area every business has.
Planning (12 to three o’clock)
1. Vision and values. Where are you trying to get to, and why do you need a plan at all? Vision and values are everything. Getting clear on them is often what tells an owner whether they’re building a lifestyle business or working towards a capital event.
2. 3-1-90. If you want to be somewhere in three years, what does this year’s budget need to be? Then, in every segment, what’s the 90-day objective you’ll hold yourself accountable for? Plenty of owners put a budget together and never look at it again. Without a regular review, it’s too easy to find yourself three-nil down at half time with no idea how to get back into the game.
3. Personal aspirations and goals. This is the nub of it. What number does the business need to deliver for you? If it can give you the life you want, brilliant. If you’d rather make sacrifices now for a capital sum later, that’s a different plan. Either way, it needs to line up with the vision. If what you tell people you want isn’t what you really want, it’s time to ask what you’ve got this business for.
Process (three to six o’clock)
If planning is the destination, process is the recipe: the ingredients and the method.
4. Operating processes. How you handle enquiries, send proposals and quotes, and, too often missed, how you sell. Can you qualify a lead? With pipeline a key concern for so many agencies right now, this is where to double down.
5. Customer experience. Clients come to agencies because they trust them, whether for a niche, a skill set or simple chemistry. Your processes exist for one reason: to support the experience you want to deliver.
One client described the orbit back to Stuart as a flywheel. Year one is about getting the gears in place. As each improves, the wheel spins faster, until you’re only making small adjustments.
People (six to nine o’clock)
6. How we hire. Stuart puts how before who. Are you deliberate and intentional about how you recruit? Landing your first blue-chip client doesn’t mean you need an account manager from a large London agency. The person who thrives in a 20-person Manchester agency may be someone else entirely.
7. Values and principles. In Stuart’s words, values are what you come through the door with. Principles are how you bring them to life every day: how you deliver your service, work as a team and look after clients.
8. Learning and development. What do you need to do so that everyone can be the best version of themselves in your business? This is where development and career plans come in.
Stuart is honest about getting hiring wrong. His worst recruitment decisions were knee-jerk ones, made under pressure to fill a gap. Two mistakes come up again and again in agencies: years spent chasing the perfect new-business salesperson, and promoting a great account manager into a management role they can’t teach.
At MAP, the final interview is values-based. Stuart doesn’t see the CV. He trusts the hiring manager to judge skills and experience, and focuses on whether the person will fit the team. It only takes one “mood hoover” to slow everything down. One of his favourite questions: in a year’s time, how will we both know we made the right decision?
Performance (nine to 12 o’clock)
9. People performance. Your team should know how they’re measured and where they’re heading. A fair, open framework helps if you ever face difficult decisions, such as a restructure. It also means no surprises. If someone finds out at the end of probation that they’re not performing, the expectations were never clear. And if a good person leaves because they couldn’t see a career path, you’ve often found out too late to fix it.
Be realistic, too. A small business can’t offer every opportunity to everyone, and sometimes the honest answer is that a role has a ceiling.
10. Business performance. The minimum Stuart wants to see every month:
- Sales against last month, last year and budget
- Profit, in pounds and as a percentage
- Year-to-date position: are you up or down?
- Equity, cash and debtor days
As Paul points out, owners are often told to track all sorts of leading, non-financial key performance indicators [KPIs]. But many can’t yet produce a monthly set of accounts they believe in. Get that foundation right, quickly and reliably, then layer everything else on top.
11. Continuous improvement. Once the pieces are in place, what does it take to keep the wheel turning? This is where forecasting comes in. Say your goal is £3 million of sales in three years: £1 million, then £2 million, then £3 million. Few businesses jump straight from one to the next, so watch your exit run rate. If you’re billing more than £80,000 a month, you know you’re on course to pass £1 million.
Forecasting is also a test of how realistic your plan is. If you’re aiming to double sales next year and your pipeline is flat, it’s better to know now. Perhaps it’s £1.5 million this year, and a four or five-year plan rather than three. That’s fine. The forecast is your barometer for direction and pace.
Everything connects
No segment works in isolation. Whether you picture a wheel or a web, every spoke comes back to the middle, and a decision in one area ripples through the rest. The question to keep asking is whether a decision is truly in line with your vision.
That’s where the lifestyle and capital lens matters. A lifestyle owner might be perfectly happy with a family member doing the books, or running everything on spreadsheets. If it works for you and you enjoy it, crack on. But a buyer won’t accept the same compromises, and we see that time and again in due diligence work.
Paul frames it as sellable versus enjoyable. Take the sales process:
- Building to sell? If you’re holding on to sales because you love it, that’s a red flag. A buyer wants a process that’s robust, repeatable and works without you.
- Building to keep? If you love selling and clients love buying from the principal, it may be exactly the right thing to hold on to.
Stuart has seen lifestyle owners get this wrong. Under pressure to grow, they hire someone to do what they do, assuming two people will win twice the clients. Often it doesn’t work, and they spend a lot of money going backwards. His advice: before a decision like that, count to 10 and check it against your vision.
Capital-focused owners face a different reality. The team that gets a business off the ground is rarely the team that takes it to the next level. Owners often think the sacrifices of building to sell are their own: longer hours, fewer holidays. The harder ones can involve the team.
When to do it, and how to keep it alive
There’s never a bad time to build your orbit. The only wrong decision is to wait for the perfect moment. “Let’s see what the year end looks like” can easily become a six to nine-month delay while the accounts are finalised. Natural moments include your annual review, or when you sit down to set a budget. If you’re building your first ever budget, ask whether it should really stand alone without a two or three-year vision behind it.
Stuart still carries a sheet of paper from October 2015, when he invested in a Manchester agency. Its 12 o’clock spine ran from year zero to year three, with target sales revenue for each. Other spokes covered the number of new clients needed and profit margin. Agencies are usually valued on a multiple of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation [EBITDA], so a sharp focus on profitability was key to building value. The business had been successful for 15 years, but the next five needed to be more intentional. Each year, when budgets were set with David Arden as finance partner, the plan was checked and, where needed, changed.
Make it a shareholder conversation
Alongside a monthly board meeting, Stuart holds a quarterly strategy meeting with the strategic orbit as its agenda. In each segment, the question is simple: what’s our 90-day objective? It might be big or small. Before chasing that new-business hire, it might be setting up a values-based interview process, or checking that your contract of employment hasn’t been sitting untouched for five years.
The point is to step back from the day-to-day. In the board meeting, you’re directors. In the strategy meeting, you’re shareholders, looking at the business at arm’s length. It isn’t easy, but it stops you neglecting one area while you firefight in another. If you keep losing people, are you just replacing them, or fixing how you hire?
Use the radar
Years two and three don’t need to be fully worked out. Put things on the radar so they don’t take you by surprise: a second office, a senior leadership team, an Enterprise Management Incentive [EMI] scheme. You don’t need to decide now. You just need to know when a decision is due, before it’s too late.
It’s a bit like writing down your ideas before bed so they stop keeping you awake. They’re parked, not ignored, and they’ll get the attention they deserve when the time is right.
Used this way, the orbit helps you say no. Many owners feel real relief when they realise anything that doesn’t serve the plan is a distraction. And it isn’t there to judge. If your day-to-day doesn’t match the orbit, either you’ve been pulled off course, or the plan needs updating. Either way, you’re making the decision consciously.
Who it isn’t for
Whether an orbit suits you depends less on lifestyle or capital, and more on personality. Our sector is full of brilliant creative agency owners whose drive comes from creativity itself. Asking them to knuckle down on a detailed three to five-year plan can feel like a straitjacket. Stuart has had clients tell him it was holding back their creative juices.
So ask yourself: do you find comfort in a plan, or do you like to go off the beaten path? If a plan gives you confidence, the orbit will be your best friend. If it doesn’t, it may be a distraction, and we’ll tell you so. It’s only worth doing if it adds value to your business.
Lifestyle owners shouldn’t rule it out either. For them, the orbit is the barometer that keeps the business ticking along and stops every passing opportunity pulling them off course. Not everyone wants to build to sell. But if you’re clear on your vision, this is a tool to help you get there. If you’re not, start with the vision.
Where to start
Start by understanding what strategy means for you and your business. It doesn’t have to be our model. Stuart is clear that it isn’t perfect, and there are plenty of other ways in. But it’s the model he used to build and sell two agencies, mistakes included.
If you’d like to talk through your own strategic orbit, or how it fits with your budget and forecasts, get in touch with the MAP team. And to hear the full conversation, listen to this episode of The MAP Room on Spotify.
