Lifting margin.
Cutting drag.
Freeing founders.

Commercial & operational leadership for creative companies.
Delivered fractionally.

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Free. 25 minutes. No pitch.

Creative company founders are stuck running their businesses, not leading them.

Commercial drift

Margin is down, even when revenue isn't.

Procurement sets the terms of the sale. No one owns a project's commercial health. It's split across creative, client services and production teams with competing priorities. Margin leaks where no one's accountable.

Operational drag

The industry is changing faster than the business can.

AI is rewriting delivery by the week. Teams are leaner. You don't have the time or headspace to design what's next.

Founder bottleneck

There's no one to hand things to.

You can't justify full-time commercial or operational leadership. Day-to-day decisions still flow through you. You're leading, running, and carrying it all.

The gross profit gap
64%

Sixty-four percent of £1m+ creative agencies sit below the 50% gross profit margin (GPM) benchmark that signals a healthy, sustainable business. The average creative agency sits at 43% GPM.

Source: BenchPress 2026, The Wow Company. £1m+ agencies.

Why it matters

Below that line, there's rarely enough margin to invest in people, innovation, or the founder's own headspace.

tare. exists to close that gap. To get creative companies running with margin to grow, not just survive.

The solution

Commercial & operational leadership, without the full-time cost.

Someone to shine a light on commercial health and value creation.

Senior systems-thinking to bring order to the noise.

A calm, experienced head to share the weight of the decisions.

Track record

Commercial

  • Pricing and profitability
  • Service portfolio and productisation
  • Methodology and positioning
  • Commercial modelling

Operational

  • Team design, accountability and incentivisation
  • Workflow and delivery models
  • Embedding innovation
  • Purpose, B Corp and sustainability

Leadership

  • Decision and ideation support
  • Troubleshooting staff frictions
  • Commercial and operating coaching
  • Opportunity identification & future proofing
How it works

A retained fractional partner.

The first 90 days

01 · Intro Call

We talk about what's going on in the business, where the pressure is, and whether there's a fit.

02 · Discovery

Listening and understanding how the business currently works. Interviews with the team and sitting in on the meetings that matter. We uncover where margin leaks, where processes don't hold, what the founder is carrying that belongs elsewhere.

03 · Month Two

We move from discovery to direction. Foundations are put in place and the quick wins begin to materialise.

04 · Month Three+

Interventions take hold and pricing tightens. New workflows and accountability land. You feel the headspace return and are making decisions with more data and less instinct.

What tends to shift
  1. 01 Margin stops leaking between brief and greenlight.
  2. 02 Pricing starts to reflect the value of the work.
  3. 03 Margins grow, not just hold.
  4. 04 Accountability settles across teams.
  5. 05 The founder stops being in every conversation.
  6. 06 The picture of where the business wins gets clearer.
  7. 07 Space opens up for people, innovation, purpose, sustainability, growth.
The investment
Month One · Discovery
From £3,250 + VAT

A clear blueprint to create the most impact as quickly as possible.

Ongoing retainer
From £2,500 / month + VAT

Three-month minimum, incl. Discovery. One-month rolling notice after that.

Transformational work

Scoped separately as it emerges.

If a deeper project surfaces through the retainer e.g. a restructure, a business model transformation, large scale AI integrations, it is scoped & priced on its own terms.

In perspective

A full-time Commercial Director or COO is £120-£150k+.

tare. exists in the space between that hire and none at all.

FAQ

Founder-led, independent creative companies. Agencies, production companies, creative studios. Typical turnover £1m to £10m. The kind of business that can't quite justify a full-time COO or commercial director, but has outgrown the stage where the founder can hold everything themselves.
tare. is led by Thomas Dore. Thomas works directly on all retainers. Where deeper project work calls for specialist input, whether that's specific sales training, a workshop facilitator, or a specific technical lens, we work with trusted collaborators on a named basis. You will always know who's doing what.
A coach asks questions. A consultant delivers advice before leaving. A NED reviews decisions at board level. We work inside the business with you and help to drive action. In the numbers, in the team dynamics, in the room when a decision matters. This is closer to a fractional senior hire and so the relationship and value compounds, month on month.
A healthy working partnership isn't built on counting hours. It's built on trust and creating impact. That said, a typical month would be roughly two to three days of focused attention, spread across the rhythm we agree. Some months it's more, when something bigger is happening. We'll work together to align the retainer with what the business needs. What you're paying for is access and continuity. Someone who knows the business well enough to answer in ten minutes what would take a stranger a week.
Yes, and often better for it. If you already have operational leadership in place, we work alongside them, not above or below. We'll shape a working rhythm around what the existing team already covers, rather than duplicating roles or overlapping accountability.
This doesn't cover pipeline creation, project delivery or managing your people directly. We're not the people who run the pitch, produce the work, or deliver the creative. We work with the business, not inside the org chart. The retainer is strategic and structural. Shaping, advising, holding accountability and building the commercial and operational layer with your team. The delivery always sits with your team.
Mostly remote, with in-person time built in when it adds value. Board meetings, team sessions, the harder conversations. We shape it around what actually helps and build it into our working rhythm.
Start here

An honest conversation.

A free 25-minute Intro Call. We talk about what's going on in your business, where the pressure is and whether there's a fit.

Book an Intro Call →

Taking 2 new clients · Q2 2026