Case study · Marketing agency · 50 employees
£277k to £500k a month.
Inc. 5000 #442.
In twelve months.
April 2025: 25 people, no operating system, founder buried in every decision. March 2026: 50 people, four-strong exec team, revenue and profit both up 80%, 442nd on America's Fastest-Growing Private Companies list. Twelve months as Revenue Partner.
“Josh is an absolute killer.”
Monthly revenue
+80%
£277k → £500k
Engagement
12 months
Role
Revenue Partner
Team
25 → 50
Inc. 5000
#442 of 5,000
Watch the testimonial.
25 people. £277k/month. No operating system.
TNT Growth was 25 talented people doing strong client work. Not a company in the operating sense. A group of highly skilled individuals, closer in shape to a collective of freelancers than to a business with a growth engine. The work was good. The systems didn't exist.
Adam Treboutat, the founder, had 11 direct reports. He was the face of every client relationship. He was on every sales call. He was managing the finances. He was in every weed. Nothing moved unless he moved it. The agency had grown to £277k a month on the strength of his judgement and his hours. Both were finite.
The pipeline was £10k of visible opportunity. New business was almost entirely referral-driven. Roles were undefined. Accountability for revenue, margin, or client outcomes had no specific owner. The agency was a high-trust team without a structure to grow into.
“Adam was a genius with 11 helpers. The business needed a leader with a team.”
Org chart · April 2025
Founder at the centre of everything
Adam had 11 direct reports. Nothing in the agency moved without him in the room.
It wasn't a marketing problem.
The lazy read would have been “more leads, more ads, more channels.” That diagnosis would have failed. TNT didn't lack demand. It lacked the structure to absorb growth without breaking under it.
The real constraint was operational. As long as Adam sat at the centre of every decision, every channel investment would compound back into his calendar. Hiring a sales lead wouldn't fix it. Buying more ads wouldn't fix it. The first move had to be rebuilding the org so the founder could lead instead of operate.
The lazy diagnosis
“Run more ads. Add more channels. Hire more sellers.”
Would have made TNT bigger. Not better. Margin would have collapsed.
The real constraint
The founder was the bottleneck. Until that broke, no growth lever could compound.
Specific owners. Specific numbers. Operating system before strategy.
What we built, in order.
Operating system first. Strategy second. Growth third. Any other sequence would have built a bigger agency, not a better one.
The build sequence
Four phases. Twelve months. One outcome.
Apr 2025 — Mar 2026
Exec team
Free the founder
11 → 3
Direct reports
Commercial
+ 8-channel strategy
8
Growth channels live
Cadence
Weekly exec · Monthly strategy
100%
Function ownership
Compound
Cost controls + scale
+80%
Revenue & profit
Phase 1
Months 1–2
Build the exec team. Free the founder.
- ›Appointed a Director of Operations to absorb the operational noise that was eating Adam's week.
- ›Appointed a Director of Client Success to own client performance and retention as a distinct number.
- ›Appointed a CFO to own the finance function so the founder stopped being the bookkeeper of last resort.
Outcome
Adam: 11 direct reports → 3. First time he could lead instead of operate.
Phase 2
Months 3–5
Appoint the Commercial Director. Build vertical-by-vertical strategy.
- ›Appointed a Commercial Director to own all sales and marketing, with direct ownership of pipeline and revenue.
- ›Trained the new exec personally on the operating model, the scorecards, and the cadence.
- ›Built the growth strategy vertical-by-vertical: Meta paid, Meta organic, X, YouTube, Google Ads, SEO, GEO.
Outcome
Adam stepped out of sales and marketing. The leadership team was operating it.
Phase 3
Months 4–6
Install the operational cadence.
- ›Weekly exec meeting with a defined agenda, reporting pack, and accountability rhythm.
- ›Monthly strategy session with each executive function to surface the constraint and the working levers.
- ›Reporting standardised across the agency so every level saw the same truth on the same day.
Outcome
Operational constraints surfaced fast and got solved at the right altitude.
Phase 4
Months 6–12
Compound. Protect the margin.
- ›Cost controls and sales forecasting installed before the team scaled. Cost creep is the silent agency killer.
- ›Internal talent identified and elevated into the new revenue-driving positions as the org grew 25 → 50.
- ›Monthly strategy reviews surfaced what was working and what to kill before it ate margin.
Outcome
Revenue and profit grew 80% together. Growth without margin erosion is the only growth that compounds.
Phase 2 detail
Eight growth channels. One strategy each.
The Commercial Director and Josh built a dedicated strategy and owner for every vertical. Channel mix went from undefined to deliberate.
Vertical
Meta Paid
Budget allocation + creative cadence
Vertical
Meta Organic
Founder-led brand presence
Vertical
B2B authority + founder presence
Vertical
X
Real-time authority signal
Vertical
YouTube
Long-form authority engine
Vertical
Google Ads
Intent capture across verticals
Vertical
SEO
Topical authority + inbound
Vertical
GEO
AI-search citation strategy
Cost creep was the silent threat.
The honest read on the engagement: pushing the pedal too hard on growth is how agencies kill their own margin. New hires, new tools, new channels, new clients all arrive with cost. If revenue grows 80% and cost grows 90%, the founder ends up with a bigger payroll and a smaller bank balance. That was the trap we walked carefully around for six months.
The fix was unglamorous and went in before the growth ambition did. Strong cost controls. Real sales forecasting. A weekly view of margin alongside revenue, not after it. The CFO appointment in Phase 1 paid for itself a dozen times by the end. Profit grew with revenue, not in spite of it.
Revenue without margin is just a bigger payroll. The cost controls went in before the growth ambition did.
Inc. 5000 #442.
Team 25 to 50.
Revenue and profit +80%.
918% three-year growth. 442nd fastest-growing private company in the United States. Twelve months as Revenue Partner.
£277k → £500k
Monthly revenue
+80% in 12 months
+80%
Profit growth
Margin held
25 → 50
Team size
Doubled without breaking
#442
Inc. 5000
918% three-year growth
Chart 1 · Monthly revenue
£277k to £500k, plotted month by month
Source: TNT Growth internal · 2025–2026
Chart 2 · Team headcount
25 to 50, without breaking the culture
Direct hires + internal promotions
Inc. 5000 · 2025
TNT Growth — Rank #442 of 5,000
3-year growth: 918% · Advertising, Marketing & PR · Miami, FL
From geniuses who did everything to geniuses who lead a team to greatness.
The org chart on the left was the constraint. The org chart on the right was the unlock. Twelve months between them.
Before · April 2025
The founder at the centre of everything
After · March 2026
The founder leading an exec team
The hardest part of the engagement wasn't the org chart. It wasn't the hiring. It wasn't the strategy across eight channels. It was Adam's own transition.
His comfort zone, the place that had built TNT Growth in the first place, was in the detail. In the client conversation. In the campaign decision. In the room when the numbers got read. That instinct is what makes a founder. It is also, past a certain scale, what caps a founder. The very thing that built the agency to £277k a month was the very thing capping it from going to £500k.
Giving his new exec team the tools, the direction, the strategy, and the support, and then letting them run, was the unlock. Not easy. Not natural for an operator at his level. The shift was deliberate, supported week by week, and it compounded into everything the agency achieved over the next twelve months.
Not a consultant. A partner.
Inside the business. Decisions made in the room. Trust built through proximity, not through monthly reports.
Twelve months together
Working dinner in Miami, beside Adam's public announcement on LinkedIn.
When something broke at 4pm on a Thursday, the response wasn't “raise a ticket.” It was “let's fix it.” The engagement model was Revenue Partner, not consultant. Skin in the game, week by week, for twelve months.
The Revenue Engine here was three things stacked. Build the operating system. Hire and train the team to run it. Hand off so the agency runs without the Revenue Partner in the seat. Each phase had its own ambition and its own end. The engagement was time-bound by design.
Trust got built through proximity and shared ownership of the number, not through monthly reports. Adam describes it in the testimonial above: the level of care and the depth of investment in TNT's success, beyond what any contracted engagement would have explained.
“I wanted TNT's success beyond anything. That's what a Revenue Partner means.”
We could have grown faster.
We deliberately didn't.
The two factors we kept acutely in mind alongside the revenue number were cost control and team wellbeing. Topline alone is a vanity metric.
Throttle 1 · Cost control
Growth without margin is a bigger payroll.
We could have hired faster, spent harder, and pushed top-line growth past 80%. The cost of doing it would have shown up in profit two quarters later. The throttle protected the agency's economics.
Throttle 2 · Team wellbeing
The team is the asset that compounds.
Doubling from 25 to 50 without breaking the culture was as important as doubling revenue. A burned-out team is a future client-retention crisis. The pace was deliberate and protective.
Success isn't defined by topline alone. It's defined by what compounds when the engagement ends.
Want this for your business?
Two to three partners at a time. The Revenue Engine is the same playbook that took TNT Growth from £277k to £500k a month. Yours could be next.
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