NC Niall Cotter On Build a Better Agency Podcast

“He ended up cutting his business by 75%, but his margins were better. And he said if he had that time back, he would have thought long and hard about whether he was running a business that would be exciting to a venture capitalist or whether it was his own vehicle, where he was paying for that growth and he was the one that either had cash in the bank to compensate himself or not.”

Build a Better Agency Podcast · Agency Business · November 2026

Context

He describes an agency owner who spent ten years growing while profit slid to break-even. When revenue fell, the owner repriced, dropped clients and shrank the business.

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Transcript

Build a Better Agency Podcast Around 07:48 into the episode

Niall Cotter

…across all of his clients and renegotiating his margins. And to his surprise, he found that there was actually more room than he expected. And the other decision that he made was that if Brian, if clients didn't accept that price, then it wasn't really businesses that he wanted in the first place.

Drew McLellan

Right.

Niall Cotter

So he ended up cutting his business by 75%, but his margins were better. And he said if he had that time back, he would have thought long and hard about whether he was running, you know, kind of a business that would be exciting to a venture capitalist or whether it was his own vehicle where he was paying for that growth and he was paying for that margin. And he was the one at the end of the day that either had cash in the bank to compensate himself or not.

Drew McLellan

Right. Right. So back in the 90s, you were an accountant at a marketing communications firm in Toronto. What did you learn back then about how agencies make and lose money that you still are seeing today?

Niall Cotter

So my background is professional services and consulting. My exposure to the agency world was as a CFO of a strategic communications company that was owned by MTC Partners. I don't know if you remember MBC. I'm sure a lot of people will know that company. So I had a lot of exposure to the CFOs…

Drew McLellan

What mistake do you see founders make in agencies that a big company would never make?

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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“Having been on the purchasing side myself, it's quite easy to poke holes in the story of a business. Your numbers need to meet the story that you're telling. If it's a growth story, you need to have shown that historical growth. If 40, 50% of your clients are from five to 10 companies, that's a weakness. And is it the owner's relationships that are holding this business together? Am I buying the business or am I buying the owner?” — Niall Cotter, Build a Better Agency Podcast

“I think it's about 10 or 15 people. That's when an agency owner no longer knows everything that's going on inside the agency. When you're five people you're like a unit that just moves together, but you get to double digits and all of a sudden you have people working on work that other people don't see. The owner can no longer keep their finger on the pulse, and you need checks and balances that you did not need at four or five people.” — Drew McLellan, Build a Better Agency Podcast