How much is enough?

ByKelly Molson

For years, the £1 million turnover has been seen as the holy grail for agency founders. If you aren’t aiming for it, you’re “just” a lifestyle agency, right?

The reality is that less than a quarter of UK agencies are actually achieving that £1 million mark. So why is this the golden goal, and what are founders sacrificing to chase it?

The mismatch between goals and reality

I often speak to founders who set an ambitious goal of hitting £1 million turnover in just three years with a small, five-person team. At the same time, they want the freedom to be present for every school run, travel extensively, or pursue other passions.

The 2025 Benchpress Agency Milestones report defines a typical £1 million agency as having 17 people, taking an average of 7 years to get there. That’s a significant gap between the dream and the reality, and it raises a critical question: “At what cost?”

  • What are you prepared to give up to achieve that financial goal?
  • What would you be willing to sacrifice from your personal life?
  • Are these goals truly realistic?

In most cases, our agency and personal goals are completely misaligned. We strive for more revenue and recognition, but it comes at the expense of the balance and freedom that motivated us to start the business in the first place.

Redefining success: beyond the revenue number

The message of growth and scale is pushed hard in the agency world. If massive scale isn’t your main aim, you can feel judged as being less ambitious. But there’s a huge misconception that a “lifestyle agency” doesn’t want to grow.

It’s absolutely not the anti-growth path. Many of my clients have goals to increase revenue and profit, but in a way that is sustainable for their business and their own lives.

Lee Sturgess of Polar is a perfect example of this. Rather than using a specific turnover goal as the metric of success, he prioritised human relationships and community impact.

When Lee established his Essex-based branding studio 13 years ago, his goals were:

  • Establish an international presence at home: To bring the “London experience” and its professional levels to Chelmsford.
  • Cultivate local talent: To create an environment that attracts high-level creative talent out of London, offering great projects without the commute stress.
  • Create a specialised lifestyle model: To “find something you really enjoy,” evolving into an operating model that supports a sustainable lifestyle for his team.
  • Focus on client impact: To directly help small business owners improve their lives and businesses through design.

Building a Lifestyle Agency that thrives

To achieve his vision, Lee implemented strategic shifts at Polar:

  • One project at a time: A radical model, ensuring maximum attention for the client and preventing the stress of juggling multiple projects.
  • Working ON, not IN: Stepping back from daily production to focus on strategic growth and hiring people better than him, allowing them to excel independently.
  • Becoming oversubscribed: By being willing to say “no” to projects that weren’t a great fit, he shifted from chasing work to a demand model, increasing profitability by 85%.

My client Lee’s story proves you can build a brilliant lifestyle agency that provides the enjoyment and income you want, with the foundations for future growth or sale if desired – but not at all costs.

Define your ‘Enough’ number: Your Finance Foundation

Even if money isn’t your sole metric of success, we all need it. So, how much is enough?

That figure is your Finance Foundation. It is the minimum income that covers everything you need. Mortgage, rent, pension, long-term savings, holidays, and all the fun stuff. If you earned this income working on the things you love, you’d be content and happy.

Your Finance Foundation will be wildly different from anyone else’s, based on your individual circumstances and privileges you have. Your age, debt, family size, location, and lifestyle choices.

Here’s how to start finding yours:

  1. Start with your minimum viable monthly living budget (plus pension and savings).
  2. Raise it by adding a healthy amount for all the other things that are important to you.
  3. Eventually, you’ll find the figure that is enough for you.

Ready to build your version of success?

The key to building a brilliant agency on your terms is setting the criteria for success before you define financial goals.

The path to true success involves:

  1. Set your Founder Success Criteria: This is your personal success compass.
  2. Define what’s ‘enough’: Your Finance Foundation.
  3. Find the joy in the journey: Explore my CALMER Framework™

My CALMER Framework™ helps you build an agency on your terms, choosing profit over pressure and putting life before work. Book a call with me to see the difference it could make to you.

You get to choose the exact way you want to build your agency – after all, lifestyle is a plan.