How do you take over from an entrepreneurial founder and put more structure into the agency without losing its core culture?

Charlie Marchant is CEO of Exposure Ninja, the digital marketing agency. She took over from their founder three years ago. Since then, she’s maintained revenue, reduced headcount through natural attrition and almost doubled their profit.

In this episode, Charlie shares how she:

• Found her own leadership style after initially struggling to see herself as CEO - and why trying to copy the founder would have been a mistake
• Learnt to embrace the messiness of experimentation after years of preferring processes, workflows and optimisation
• Leads change by being explicit about what is changing, what isn’t and whether something is an experiment or a committed decision
• Shares revenue, profit and EBITDA with the whole team - helping people understand both the health of the agency and the commercial reality their clients face
• Builds connection in a fully remote team through regional hubs, cross-department buddies and personalised recognition
• Makes learning part of the weekly rhythm, including company-wide sessions that teach people how other departments and disciplines actually work

Charlie offers a thoughtful perspective on what happens when an operator takes over from an entrepreneurial founder - and why structure and experimentation need each other if an agency is going to keep moving forward.