You started your agency for freedom, profit, and work you love. Somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like that. I help you get back to why you started, grow without losing what matters, and build a business that fuels your life and that you can sell someday if you want to.
John Doherty is an agency coach based in Denver, Colorado — he's built and sold two agencies, worked with 450+ agency owners, and helps digital agency founders grow revenue, fix margins, and build something worth selling.
I've built agencies to $250k, $550k, and $433k a year — and made almost every mistake along the way. I tried to hire and lost all my freedom and profit. My agencies almost went under multiple times. I learned the lessons the hard way so you don't have to.
My background spans working for agencies (Distilled in New York City), in-house at Zillow (HotPads and Trulia Rentals), building multiple agencies of my own, selling one to private equity in 2022 and one to our largest competitor in 2025, selling over $5M of digital services personally, and working with 450+ agencies over my career.
I know the grind of low profit, high overhead, working on stuff I hated, juggling messy delivery, and feeling like growth was capped. More importantly, I know how to fix it, because I've done it for myself and alongside dozens of agency owners as their coach.
One client told me a few weeks in: "I feel much more focused. Ideas had been bouncing around in my head, but I hadn't brought them out." That's the real value of coaching. I pull the clarity out of you that's already there, and I help you act on it.
Outside of business, I'm a husband, dad of two, skier, hiker, and bourbon fan living in Colorado with my family.
Find the bottlenecks. Fix the offer. Build the pipeline. Build the business.
We don’t start by throwing more leads at your agency. We start by figuring out what’s actually holding you back, then fix the right things in the right order.
First, we get into your numbers so we’re making decisions based on what’s actually happening in your business, not guesswork.
We’ll review your last six months of leads and sales, assess your existing clients, run the Ideal Client Finder, and calculate your hourly yield to see where you’re making money and where you’re leaking it.
We bring everything together in August, my proprietary agency growth platform, to identify your biggest bottlenecks and build a clear plan for what to fix first.
Before we worry about getting more leads, we make sure you’re selling the right services to the right people, at prices that actually make sense.
We’ll clarify your ideal client, package your services so they’re easier to buy and deliver, remove work that isn’t adding value, and fix your pricing so you’re building healthy margins.
The tools:
The goal: Better clients, better prices, and more profit from the work you’re already doing.
Once your offer is right, we build a repeatable way to get it in front of the people who actually want to buy it.
We’ll sharpen your messaging, focus your marketing on a channel you can consistently execute, and improve your sales process so more of the right prospects become paying clients.
No chasing every new marketing tactic. No relying entirely on referrals. And no custom pitch for every person who comes through the door.
The tools:
Most agency owners never set out to build an agency. You were good at the work, people kept asking, and one day you had a business that only runs when you do.
We’ll get delivery out of your head and into systems, build the team and roles so the work doesn’t need you in every room, and set up the few numbers you check each week so you run the business on purpose instead of reacting to it.
This is where you stop being an accidental agency owner and become a business owner.
The goal: An agency that grows, pays you well, and runs without you in every room. You can take two weeks off and nothing breaks.
Where you are in the journey determines which track makes sense. Both are hands-on and both get results — the difference is where you’re headed.
Agency Breakthrough is my 16-week group coaching program. You get 1:1 attention, group momentum, and the frameworks to double your income, alongside a small cohort of agency owners working on the same problems. The next cohort starts in January.
You’ve grown, but more revenue hasn’t meant more money in your pocket. Margins are thin, delivery eats your time, and there’s never enough left over to invest in growth. Advisory is ongoing 1:1 work to get profit back into the business so you can fund the next stage of growth — and build something you could sell someday if you want to. Enrollment is rolling, so you can start any time.
My coaching works best for a specific kind of agency owner. Read these carefully before reaching out.
Since 2010, I've worked for two agencies, ran marketing and growth for two of Zillow's rentals brands (HotPads and Trulia Rentals), and consulted on SEO with some of the world's largest brands — Vevo, The New York Times, Dribbble, Creative Market, Homelight, Hipcamp, and many more.
My first agency generated leads for marketing agencies. I worked with 300+ agencies over 7 years and coached some of them to significant growth. I've applied the same principles to my own businesses, with great success. I'm an entrepreneur at heart, and there's nothing I love more than helping agency owners grow.
I work with a small, intentional number of agency owners at a time. Here's how to get on the list.
Grab a time on my calendar. Takes about 30 seconds. No forms, no gatekeeping — just pick a slot that works.
A focused 30-minute conversation about what's capping your growth and whether I can help. No pitch — if it's not a fit, I'll tell you and point you somewhere useful.
If it's a fit for both of us, I'll invite you to work with me. Simple as that.
