Helping Digital Agency Owners Operate & Grow Their Business | Founder @ FlexOps | Agency Operations & Management

Hi, I’m Ross.

I help agency owners get unstuck and grow their business.

There are 5 key areas I tackle with my clients:

1. Founder - Understand what you want for the business and your role in it
2. Clients - Retain and grow clients through exceptional service
3. People - Get the right people, in the right place, doing the right things
4. Processes - Build a system that the agency operates on
5. Pipeline - Working with more of the right clients for your agency

I’ve helped my clients go from:

- Nearly quitting their agency → Loving their leading role and keen to grow
- A dysfunctional team → Organised, aligned and autonomous
- Losing clients from bad systems → Clear processes for the team to execute
- No defined customer → Calendar full of prospects that fit his ICP

If you are an Agency Owner struggling with these problems…

Send me a DM 📥

Let’s see if I can help.

Ross Brown

I help business owners with their marketing and sales so they can enjoy their business and their life.

I do this through Entrepreneurs Circle - the UK's largest community of Entrepreneurs - where we provide tools, training, coaching, software & world-class live events. 

Here's a few things I have done:

💰 Went to Uni. No clue. No purpose. Had fun.
💰 Graduated. Thought 'marketing' seemed cool. Got a job at a big agency.
💰 Ran Facebook & Google Ads for Amazon, Audible, Pokemon, Bethesda etc.
💰 Quit & started my own agency in 2020.
💰 Spent £20m+ on Meta & Google Ads.
💰 Generated £150m in Revenue for my private clients.
💰 Built the agency to £120k/month (£1.4M/year) by 28.
💰 Exited the agency in 2025 & joined Entrepreneurs Circle

Elliott Botterill

LinkedIn's algorithm is now actively punishing AI-generated content.

I'm seeing 3-week-old human posts in my feed instead of fresh robot-written drivel…

(And praise to the lord it’s happening! 😅)

This is a HUGE signal.

As AI gets better and more accessible, platforms will have to fight to keep their feeds human.

Why?

Because humans crave authenticity.

When everyone automates… being REAL becomes your biggest competitive advantage.

Your unfiltered thoughts, your real stories, your actual experiences... THAT'S what will cut through the noise in 2026.

Not your copy & paste random ChatGPT’ed motivational or generic business lesson that you didn’t even know yourself until after you posted it… 😅

The irony is beautiful.

As AI handles the functional… humans crave the personal.

So my plan is to document the journey. Share the failures. Be human.

I believe that is the arbitrage opportunity of the next decade.

Scaling the UK's Largest Community of Entrepreneurs | Exited Agency Founder | Chief Marketing Officer @ Entrepreneurs Circle

The internet is flooded with "gurus" who have never actually done the thing they're teaching.

AI has made it 10x easier for them to create content that looks legitimate.

They can spin up a course or a framework in a weekend without ever getting their hands dirty.

That's why you HAVE to be so careful who you listen to.

Always ask: 

Have they actually done this?

Do they have the scars?

There's a huge difference between ‘theoretical’ knowledge and ‘procedural’ knowledge.

Theoretical knowledge is what you read or heard.

Procedural knowledge is what you learned by doing.

One is cheap. The other is priceless.

I rant about this and more in my new YouTube video on my 2025 marketing lessons.

Link in the comments if you want to hear more.

For years, I went to the gym six times a week…

It was brutal.

Last year, I dropped to three times a week.

50% less frequency.

BUT I tried to massively increased the intensity.

I found after four rest days, I'm pumped and ready to destroy the session.

And funnily enough, I've had some of the best results of my training career.

It was an interesting reminder…

How HARD you work is not the main driver of success.

WHAT you are working on… and the level of INTENSITY are just as important.

Now apply this to your business and work…

What have you been drudgingly persistent with that might benefit from a different approach?

I have a fridge behind my desk filled with sparkling water and these specific coconut waters in a metal can.

Every day at lunchtime, I crack one open.

The sound, the cold... it's a tiny moment of pure joy.

It costs me maybe £1.50 a can.

Now hold your breath… I this sounds silly 🤣

BUT… I’m a big believer in systematically making your life better in small ways.

What's the point of building a business if you're not enjoying the journey?!!

You don't HAVE to wait for the big wins…

Find your £1.50 upgrade along the way 😅

What's yours?

I was doomscrolling last year when I saw a clip of someone talking about this question… 

"What can I do to make my life better?"

Not in 5 years. 

Not when I hit my next goal.

Right now.

Last year, that question led to:

Hiring a cleaner.

Getting all our meals prepped and delivered.

Having our hairdresser come to the office.

Getting a massage every Sunday.

Keeping a fridge stocked with ice-cold coconut water.

None of these things are particularly expensive.

BUT they've made life soooooooo much better.

It's so easy to get caught in the rut of life. Working hard, keeping the wheels turning.

But if you're running a business… it's inevitably going to get hard(er).

You're going to want to quit.

If you're systematically making your life better along the way… then in my experience you'll have the energy to keep going.

And honestly, life is too short to not be happy.

So now I keep asking myself every week: what can I do right now to make my life better?

And then I do it.

I only wish I had started doing it sooner…

Last year we went all-in on live webinars for our high-ticket offer…

Five webinars.

£109,000 in ad spend.

The results?

5,413 sign-ups from ads.

322 applications.

225 scheduled calls.

103 people signed up.

Total new revenue (12-month commitments): £1.4 million.

That's a 13.21x lifetime value return on ad spend.

Why did live webinars work so well?

Because they compress relationship-building into 90 minutes.

In a world where trust is low and attention spans are shor…

…getting someone to watch you for 90 minutes live is pure magic.

This was our single biggest win of 2025.

I detailed the entire model, from the ads to the follow-up sequence, in my annual recap on YouTube.

If you want the full playbook on how we did it, I'll leave the link to the recording in the comments.

Everyone knows the phrase "hire slow, fire fast."

Almost no one actually does it.

I've learned this the hard way.

Keeping the wrong person on the team, hoping they'll improve, is a catastrophic mistake.

It's not just about their lack of performance.

It's the toxic effect they have on your A-players.

One bad apple really does spoil the bunch.

Your gut tells you in the first 30 days.

You have to learn to listen to it and act decisively.

The short-term pain of letting someone go is nothing compared to the long-term damage of keeping them.

Trust your instincts.

Most business plans start with revenue targets or market analysis.

This is a mistake.

The most important question in your business plan is: What do YOU want?

The way I see it a business is a vessel to deliver the founder/owner the life of your dreams. 

That's it.

We must never lose sight of that.

If you build a business that consumes all your cash, energy, and time… naturally you will grow to hate it.

And when you hate your business, you will sabotage it. Consciously or unconsciously.

This is how so many businesses die.

The founder tries to be selfless, removing their own wants and needs from the equation.

But in doing so, they create a prison they no longer want to be in.

So before you plan your revenue, plan your life.

How much income do you need?

How many holidays do you want?

What do you want your weeks to look like?

Build the business plan around your life plan.

Not the other way around.

If you’re struggling to write ads that convert then you might want to swipe this simple strategy…

Stop brainstorming and start listening.

The best marketing copy you will ever find is hidden in your customer's own words.

Here's what we did:

We started interviewing our newest customers, asking them to describe their problems before they found us.

Then we took their exact language and used it in our ads.

The result?

Scroll-stopping hooks that resonated deeply and attracted the perfect customers.

Your customers are writing your best ads for you.

Are you listening?

Last year we made a massive mistake… 🤦🏼‍♂️

We ran ads with a HUGE guarantee: 

"Scale risk-free, you don't pay a penny unless we double your profits."

The result?

On the surface… incredible!

Our cost per booked call dropped from £150 to just £22!!!!

The marketing team was ecstatic.

We thought we'd cracked it.

BUT the reality wasn’t quite as sweet…
 
You see, the sales team was drowning in low-quality calls.

We attracted EVERYONE who wanted a free ride… 

…not the serious business owners we could actually help.

Here's what we painfully re-learned:

Your hook determines who you attract.

Big promises (often with numbers & financial claims) can attract tyre-kickers.

Articulating the specific problems your customers have attracts serious buyers.

This was just one of several expensive lessons from 2025… 😅

I broke down this story and many more in a recent YouTube livestream, sharing all our biggest wins and fails from spending over £1.15M on marketing last year.

If you want to see the full breakdown, I'll drop the link to the recording in the comments… 👇

For years in my business I HATED “planning”...

When I started my agency, my only goal was to make £25,000 to match my old salary.

That was it.

I had no grand vision.

Every business book told me I needed a 10-year plan, a mission, a vision... 

But every time I tried, I just stared at a blank page.

My business grew, but life was unpredictable.

We had amazing months…we had bad months.

We were constantly scrambling, hiring reactively, and lurching from one fire to the next.

I thought I had control. The reality is I was just a passenger.

The big unlock for me was realising this:

A proper plan isn’t about predicting the future. 

It’s about putting you in control of the present.

It’s the tool that turns you from a reactive into proactive

It gives you clarity. And I’ve learnt clarity creates energy.

Without a plan, you're drifting.

With one, you're navigating.

I filmed a video explaining how I plan to destroy 2026 (in a good way).

I’ll link it in the comments if you want to watch.

I have learnt the hard way that my brain is tremendous for having ideas…

…BUT absolutely shocking for storing them 😅

I’ve lost track of the times I’ve had a ‘eureka’ moment in the shower and then… poof.

I step out. Forgotten. 

Enter: 𝗘𝗽𝗶𝗽𝗵𝗮𝗻𝘆.

It's an app on my Apple Watch.

I press a button, speak into my watch.

It then sends an email to my assistant, myself, OR it adds it into Notion.

The idea is captured. Stored. Actioned.

As entrepreneurs, we're filled with amazing ideas that come at random times.

This helps you capture them.

And actually do something with them.

Here's a tactic I learned from Jean-Baptiste that paid for an entire mastermind 50 times over.

When people register for our live webinars, we invite them to join a private WhatsApp community.

Not a group. A “community”.

Only we can post. They can like and reply.

This gives us a direct line into their pocket.

And because it's WhatsApp… the engagement is insane.

We discover a ‘magic. number:

70% of people in the WhatsApp community show up live to the webinar.

Every single time.

If we get 100 people in the WhatsApp… 70 show up.

If we get 1,000 people in… 700 show up.

It's been scarily consistent across eight live webinars now.

So if you're running live events, this is non-negotiable…

Anyone who knows me knows one of my biggest vices is the humble croissant… 

I eat a pretty healthy diet Monday through Thursday.

Then at the weekend, I indulge.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday... I'm having my (multiple) croissant’s.

(We do a 4-day week here at EC)

Is it great for the abs? No.

Is it f*ckin awesome and a ginormous morale booster?!

Hell yeah.

I've learned over many years of trying different routines that the best routine is the one you can stick with for the longest period of time.

And I like to inject a sweet treat to keep the morale high.

So I can tackle the week with intensity, then relax at the weekend.

I'll say it: for most businesses, automated webinar funnels are a TRAP.

(Trust me… we have ran them for YEARS but 2025 we saw them die a painful death 💀)

The allure of a sales machine running 24/7 for many is too good to resist.

But the reality is CONSUMPTION becomes the biggest problem.

It’s easy to get people to opt-in… 

…but very hard to get them to consume enough of the content.

Is it the TikTok-ification of attention spans?

Dare I say Temu-ification?!!

Maybe.

What I do know is there is a real MAGIC to running live webinars and events.

People show up and people consume when it’s live.

But if they get one sniff that it’s ‘recorded’... poof. Engagement evaporates.

It’s why we are ‘all-in’ on live events this year… 👍

I genuinely believe AI search might be about to change everything…

ChatGPT now has 900 million weekly active users.

83% of users prefer AI search over traditional Google.

And the early signs are showing AI search traffic nearly 8x higher than traditional organic Google Search… 🤯

But here's the catch...

AI engines prioritise trusted sources.

And what are the most trusted sources?! 

Third-party reviews like Google and Trustpilot.

When someone asks ChatGPT "who's the best business coach in the UK," it crawls Trustpilot first.

I explained this entire strategy in my 2025 lessons learned livestream.

You can watch the full video here: https://lnkd.in/eQbCBUxs

Everyone's using AI to write ads...

...and that's exactly why most of them SUCK 👎

It reminds me of ' Syndrome' the villain in the first Incredibles Movie...

"If everyone's super, then nobody is."

That's EXACTLY what's happening with AI in marketing.

Pushing a button and asking an AI to 'write an ad' gets you the same generic muchy slop as everyone else.

Most people can already smell lazy AI a mile off...

But the advertisers getting extraordinary results aren't just pushing buttons.

They're going one step deeper.

They're feeding the AI massive context about their business, their customers, and their proof.

They're using it to pull out specific, powerful angles to test AND then getting it to create copy.

And most importantly, they're applying the 10-80-10 rule:

10% human - your own thoughts, ideas, story, experience

80% AI - doing the heavy lifting of writing & formatting

10% human - proper authentic human "polishing" at the end.

AI is a powerful tool... but it's NOT a magic wand...

It's a workflow.

I broke down my exact process for writing ads that actually convert in a new video.

Link to watch is in the comments 👇

We spend multi-six-figures on marketing every month…

…and AI touches almost every part of it.

Our ads? Done by AI.

Our landing pages? Done by AI.

Our email sequences? Done by AI.

Our presentation slides? Done by AI.

This LinkedIn Post? Done by AI.

(Lol… jk about the last one 😛 although it did help me format it…) 

But here's the thing...

AI didn't replace our team. It multiplied them.

We can now turn around a full live webinar funnel in DAYS… not weeks.

We can test 10x more creative variations.

We can personalise at scale.

But the strategy? The insights? The human touch?

That's still us.

I don’t need to bang the drum anymore but if you're not using AI to 10x your output, you're going to get left behind.

Einstein said, "Failure is success in progress."

We take that literally.

Every quarter, our entire team gets together and we discuss one major thing: our failures.

We dissect what went wrong, the specific actions that led to the failure, and what we will do differently next time.

It's not a blame game. It's a data-gathering exercise.

Because here's the truth:

A failure is only a failure if your behaviour doesn't change as a result of the insight.

If you reflect, learn, and adapt, it's just expensive education.

I shared our three biggest (and most expensive) failures from 2025 on a recent YouTube livestream.

Check the comments for the link to watch.

taplio

The Battle

Ross Brown

Elliott Botterill

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Elliott Botterill's LinkedIn Performance

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