What the summer holidays reveal about agency resilience

The summer holidays don't create founder burnout, but they often expose the systems, habits and dependencies that have been building all year. Drawing on recent wellbeing research and the experiences of Agency Guide Claire Hutchings, this article explores why some agencies cope better than others – and what founders can do to build more resilient businesses.

For many agency founders, the school summer holidays expose one of the biggest tensions in agency life.

The business doesn't slow down simply because schools break up. Clients still expect the same level of service, projects continue to move forward and colleagues take well-earned annual leave. At the same time, family routines change overnight. For founders with children, the challenge becomes balancing the demands of the agency with a desire to be more present at home.

Some founders seem able to step away for a fortnight without worrying that everything will grind to a halt. Others spend much of the summer checking emails between family activities, taking calls from the side of the football pitch or quietly hoping nothing unexpected lands in their inbox while they're away.

It's easy to assume that's simply part of running an agency.

Yet, after years of working alongside agency founders, we've noticed a pattern. The founders who are able to take meaningful time away from the business aren't necessarily running smaller agencies or carrying fewer responsibilities. In many cases, they're leading larger, more complex organisations. The difference is often that they've invested time in reducing the number of decisions, relationships and processes that depend entirely on them.

The summer holidays don't usually create new problems. More often, they expose the ones that have been developing all year.

A challenge shared by many founders

If this feels familiar, you're certainly not alone.

Recent research paints a remarkably consistent picture. High levels of stress, poor work-life boundaries and burnout continue to affect people across the marketing and communications industry, particularly those in leadership roles. State of Us found that 64% of us have experienced extreme stress or burnout, while other industry research suggests founders who maintain healthier boundaries between work and personal life are significantly less likely to worry about their businesses. The Agency Wellbeing Census also highlights the extent to which many business owners continue to work during family time, illustrating how difficult it can be to create genuine separation between work and home.

None of this should be interpreted as a lack of resilience. If anything, it reflects the breadth of responsibility agency founders carry. They're responsible for winning work, maintaining client relationships, supporting their teams, making strategic decisions and ensuring the business remains commercially healthy. Unlike many leadership roles, those responsibilities don't pause when the working day ends.

The challenge is rarely the volume of work alone. It's the accumulation of responsibility over time, particularly when the founder gradually becomes the person every important decision passes through.

That isn't something most founders set out to create.

In the early stages of building an agency, being closely involved in everything makes sense. Founders know the clients best, understand the work inside out and can often solve problems more quickly than anyone else. As the business grows, though, habits that once supported growth can quietly become constraints.

Without noticing, the founder becomes the default.

• The person who signs off every proposal.

• The person clients want to speak to.

• The person who approves every decision.

• The person everyone turns to when something unexpected happens.
  

During most of the year, that way of working can feel manageable, but the summer holidays have a habit of revealing when it no longer is.

When one person becomes the business

In a recent episode of Lifestyle is a Plan, agency Founder Claire Hutchings reflected on her experience of building and leading Chime.

From the outside, the agency was thriving. The business had grown successfully, Claire had built a respected profile within the industry and opportunities continued to emerge. Alongside that, she was raising two young children, both with additional health needs, while balancing client delivery, networking, business development and the many competing demands that come with leading an agency.

Looking back, one observation stands out.

When life was relatively predictable, it was possible to keep everything moving. The difficulty came when life inevitably became less predictable.

Claire describes how it often felt as though every part of her world was interconnected. If one element shifted, everything else required adjustment. That experience will resonate with many founders, even if the circumstances are very different. A key team member leaves. A client project becomes more demanding than expected. A family member needs additional support. School holidays arrive…

None of these events are unusual in themselves.

What they expose is how much of the business depends on one person being constantly available.

At The Agency Adventure, we've heard similar stories from founders at very different stages of growth. Whether an agency employs five people or fifty, the underlying challenge is often the same: over time, knowledge, relationships and decision-making have become increasingly concentrated around the founder.

When too much knowledge, too many relationships and too many decisions sit with one person, stepping away becomes increasingly difficult—not because founders don't trust their teams, but because the business has gradually evolved around their constant availability.

That kind of dependency doesn’t develop overnight. It builds gradually, often as a by-product of good intentions. Founders want to support their team, protect client relationships and maintain quality. Over time, those decisions can unintentionally create a business that struggles to function confidently without them.

Looking beyond burnout

Conversations about founder wellbeing often focus on resilience, stress management or finding better ways to switch off. Those are all important, but they don't tell the whole story.

The World Health Organization defines burnout as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. Increasingly, research and industry commentary are encouraging agencies to look beyond individual wellbeing initiatives and consider the way businesses themselves are designed.

That shift in thinking is important.

By the time founders begin to recognise the signs of burnout, the underlying causes have often been developing for months or even years. Responsibilities become increasingly centralised. Decision-making narrows. The founder becomes involved in more conversations, more approvals and more day-to-day problem solving than anyone ever intended.

Burnout, in that context, isn't simply about working long hours.

It's often the consequence of carrying responsibility that the business has never learned to share.

That's one of the reasons the summer holidays can feel so challenging. They don't create founder dependency; they reveal it.

And while that realisation can feel uncomfortable, it is also encouraging. Because if dependency has been built over time, it can also be reduced over time.

Building resilience into the business

Many founders assume they'll build better systems once they have more time, but in reality it doesn’t work that way.

The agencies that cope best during periods of increased pressure have usually invested in resilience long before they needed it. That investment isn't simply about introducing new software or documenting processes. It's about thinking carefully about how decisions are made, where knowledge sits and how responsibility is shared.

At The Agency Adventure, we've found that founders often think about systems in terms of efficiency. Better processes save time, improve consistency and help teams work more effectively. Those are worthwhile outcomes, but they're rarely the biggest benefit.

Well-designed systems reduce dependency.

They make it easier for decisions to be shared, for work to continue in someone's absence and for founders to step away without feeling every issue will eventually find its way back to them.

That doesn't happen through one major change. More often, it's the result of dozens of smaller decisions made consistently over time: documenting how work is delivered, giving people confidence to make decisions, investing in leadership capability and creating clarity around roles and responsibilities.

None of these changes remove the founder from the business. They simply ensure the business doesn't rely on the founder's constant presence.

For many agency owners, that's the difference between taking annual leave and having an actual holiday.

Support matters just as much as systems

Systems are only one part of the picture.

One theme appears repeatedly across founder wellbeing research: the importance of having trusted people to turn to.

Claire has spoken openly about the role coaching, peer support and professional networks played during some of the most challenging periods of running her agency. Having space to talk through difficult decisions, share concerns and gain perspective helped her navigate challenges that would have been far harder to carry alone.

That reflects what we see in our own work with agency founders.

Running an agency can be surprisingly isolating. Founders are expected to provide confidence for their teams, reassurance for clients and direction for the business. It's easy to become the person everyone depends on, while feeling there are very few people you can depend on yourself.

Support doesn't always mean formal coaching, although it can. Sometimes it's a trusted peer group, a mentor, a non-executive advisor or simply another founder who understands the realities of agency life.

The important thing is recognising that leadership doesn't have to mean solving every problem in isolation.

Focusing on what you can influence

The WOW Company uses the Fried Egg model to encourage founders to distinguish between the things they can control and those they can't.

It's a deceptively simple idea, but one that's particularly relevant during the summer holidays.

There will always be external pressures that founders have little influence over. School calendars, client demands, economic uncertainty and unexpected family commitments all shape the way agencies operate. Worrying about those factors rarely changes the outcome.

The more productive question is where your attention can make a difference.

• Can responsibilities be shared more effectively?

• Are there decisions that still rely on the founder out of habit rather than necessity?

• Is knowledge concentrated in too few places?

• Have boundaries become blurred because nobody has stopped to redefine them?
  

These aren't questions that can be answered overnight, but they encourage founders to focus on changes that will have a lasting impact rather than reacting to circumstances they can't control.

A summer sense check

The school holidays can provide a useful opportunity to pause and reflect. If this summer has felt more demanding than expected, it may be worth asking:

• Which decisions still rely entirely on me?

• What would genuinely stop if I took two weeks away from the business?

• Where have I become the default solution when someone else could step in?

• What support would make next summer feel different?
  

These questions are key in identifying where the business may have become more dependent on one person than it needs to be and the first step towards building an agency that works for you.

Rethinking success

Claire's reflections also prompt a broader question about how success is defined.

Like many founders, she'd absorbed the familiar measures of agency success: growth, turnover, larger clients and bigger teams. Over time, she realised those ambitions had gradually overtaken the original reason for starting the business in the first place: creating stability and flexibility for her family.

It's a perspective that feels increasingly relevant as more founders begin to question what sustainable success really looks like.

Agency owners are often encouraged to think about growth as the natural measure of success, yet sustainable businesses are built on far more than revenue alone. They also depend on healthy leadership, resilient teams and an operating model that allows founders to step away without feeling the business is at risk.

Growth will always matter, but it's only one measure of a successful agency. An agency that performs well commercially while giving its founder the space to enjoy family life, take proper holidays and maintain their own wellbeing is likely to be in a stronger position over the long term.

What is this summer telling you?

The summer holidays are unlikely to become any less demanding for agency founders. Clients will continue to need support, family commitments will continue to compete for attention and there will rarely be a perfect moment to step away from the business.

What can change is the way the agency is built.

The conversations around founder wellbeing often focus on personal resilience, and rightly so. Looking after yourself matters. But resilience isn't only an individual characteristic. It can also be built into the business through better systems, shared responsibility, clear boundaries and the confidence to ask for support when it's needed.

Over the years, we've worked with founders who have transformed the way their agencies operate. Rarely has that happened through one dramatic change. More often, it's been the cumulative effect of improving systems, developing people and gradually reducing the number of things that depend on the founder alone.

The result isn't a business without pressure. Agency life will always have challenging periods.

Instead, it's a business that's better equipped to cope when life inevitably demands the founder's attention elsewhere.

Perhaps that's the real lesson the summer holidays offer.

Not whether you've managed to switch off completely, but whether your agency has given you the opportunity to.

And if the answer is "not yet", that's not a reason for self-criticism. It's an opportunity to start building an agency that's more resilient for everyone – including you.

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At The Agency Adventure, we believe agencies should create opportunities, not limitations, for the people who build them. If this article has prompted you to reflect on how your agency operates – or how it could better support the life you want to lead – we'd love to continue the conversation. 

Whether you're looking to strengthen your leadership team, improve the way your agency runs or reduce the pressure that comes with being the person everything depends on, we're here to help.