Operator in Residence is an engagement for marketing agency owners. I sit inside your agency as your senior operator, rolling up my sleeves and doing the work: not a consultant with a deck, not a coach on a Zoom. We start by stabilizing your single biggest fire in the first 30 days. Then we work the rest of the system from there.
At $500K to $5M, the agency founder is usually wearing three executive hats. Maybe there's a COO, but they're also running delivery for your biggest account. The fires don't stop, but the operators capable of handling them are already burning the candle at both ends. Hiring a real C-suite costs $250K-$400K per seat and they take six months to ramp. Most have never run an agency. Consultants leave you with a deck. What's missing is someone who has actually run a marketing agency, will sit in the seat, make decisions, and own the outcome.
Pipeline is dry, inconsistent, or completely founder-dependent. Deals stall. Forecasts are guesses. The sales cycle keeps getting longer and nobody can tell you why.
No ICP clarity, your positioning sounds like every other agency, outbound isn't working, marketing produces volume but not pipeline. The entire top of the funnel is either invisible or broken.
You're hiring the wrong people, losing the right ones, and the leadership team isn't actually leading. Career paths don't exist. Every decision still has to go through you.
Client projects run over. Account margins compress. Every engagement is custom chaos because there are no real playbooks. Your team is burning out and you're hiring more people to fix what is actually a process problem.
EBITDA is leaking somewhere and you can't see exactly where. Pricing is too low for the work you actually deliver, AR is creeping up, and you don't have real visibility into per-account or per-service-line economics. The owner can't pay themselves what the agency should support.
If even one of those fires is burning in your agency right now, that is exactly what the diagnostic is for. 30 minutes, no cost, no pitch.
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I'm Zach Strauss. I've built and sold two marketing agencies and three companies total. Inc. 5000 four times. Fastest-growing in our category twice. Started with a laptop in a 700 square foot apartment, scaled to 25+ full time, US-based employees.
I'm not a coach. I'm not a consultant. I'm an agency operator who lives for execution and measurable impact, because the agencies I want to work with don't need theory. They need someone who has already made the expensive mistakes inside a marketing agency and won't make them again on their dime.
We jump on a call. You name the fires. We rank them in order of damage and agree on which one we fight first. Even if we never work together, you leave knowing your number-one fire and how to fight it.
I get access, roll up my sleeves, and start putting out fires, agreeing on the approach with you the whole way. The point is to take work off your plate, not add another person you have to manage.
We either ramp down to a lower-touch retainer, transition the seat to an internal hire, or roll into the next fire. Your call. No auto-renew traps.
Real outcomes from real agency owners who brought me in when something was on fire. Different fires. Same operator.
We were stuck at the same revenue line for 18 months and I couldn't see why. Zach spent 90 days inside the agency and rebuilt our entire sales motion. I finally understood what I was missing and the team was running it without me by day 90.
I'd hired three consultants before Zach. None of them did the work. Zach showed up Monday, was in our Slack by Tuesday, and was running our pricing conversations by Friday. The work actually got done and our margins followed.
My team didn't trust me to lead anymore. I'd been winging it for years. Zach didn't coach me. He sat in my chair, ran the leadership meetings, and showed me how it was supposed to look. By day 60 I was leading again and the team noticed.
I thought I needed a fractional COO. Zach told me on day one I needed a sales system, not a COO. Painful to hear but he was right. He built the system, ran it for 90 days, then handed it back. No retainer trap. Real exit ramp.
This isn't a strategy engagement with a deliverable at the end. It's a former agency owner inside your agency, with authority, making the calls.
You get the operator, not a slide deck and a Slack channel.
A fractional exec splits attention across a roster of clients, and a consultant hands you a deck and leaves when the work begins. I embed in one agency at a time, sit on your org chart, and own the outcome until the fire is out.
Less, not more. The whole point is to take work off your plate, not add another person you have to manage. We set standing check-ins so you stay in the loop, and I run the rest.
No. There's a clear exit ramp at every phase: wind down, transition the seat to an internal hire, drop to a lower-touch retainer, or move to the next fire. Your call. No auto-renew traps.
Authority is defined by you, inside a scope you approve, and it earns up as trust does. Day one looks very different from day thirty. You are never handing over the keys to a stranger.
We rank the fires together on the diagnostic and reassess as we go. If we find a bigger fire burning underneath, we pivot. Nothing is locked in.
No. When I'm in your seat, I'm in your corner only.
Marketing agencies roughly $500K to $5M in revenue. If you're outside that range, tell me on the call and I'll point you somewhere useful either way.
30 minutes. You name what's burning, we rank it, and I tell you straight whether I can help. Even if we're not a fit, you leave knowing your number-one fire and how to fight it.
30 minutes. No cost. No deck. No pitch. I'll tell you whether this is the right fit, what fire to fight first, and roughly what it will take to put it out. Even if we're not a fit, you leave knowing your single biggest fire and how to fight it.
Book the Free Diagnostic Call →