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PODCAST

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast

Running a serviced based business, an agency or consultancy isn’t just about great client work. It’s about keeping everything behind the scenes running smoothly.That’s where The Handbook comes in. Our goal? To help you take your business to the next level of business maturity.This podcast is for operations and service-business leaders who are juggling it all – people, processes, finance, tech, and everything in between.Every other week, we dive deep into a specific challenge that businesses face as

business marketing

All Episodes

2:14

5 ops events. 8 weeks. Zero excuses. RSVP now!

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2026/04/09

Five events. Eight weeks. Zero excuses.If you're in ops, finance, or senior leadership at an agency or consulting firm – Harv runs through five upcoming events worth getting in your calendar right now.From the Maturity Gap Webinar (where the findings from the business maturity quiz finally get revealed) to the FinOps Conference, two intimate Handbook Breakfast Sessions in London, and – for the first time ever – a Breakfast Session in Manchester.Register as follows:1️⃣ The Maturity Gap Webinar,

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51:22

6 Ops Changes That Took This Business from Scrappy to...

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2026/03/31

Growing a professional services business often starts the same way: scrappy teams, generalists wearing multiple hats, and a lot of momentum driven by energy rather than structure.In this episode of The Handbook, Harv sits down with Alex Bodini, CEO of Spin Brands, to unpack how Spin evolved from a grassroots social media shop into a multi-entity group of 100+ people. Rather than waiting for a crisis to force change, Alex and his co-founder made a conscious decision to professionalize the business so

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27:36

Why Ops Is Really About Culture (Not Just Process)...

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2026/03/10

The work we produce gets all the attention.But the real question is: what’s happening behind the scenes that makes that work possible?In this episode of The Handbook, Harv sits down with creative operations expert Nicky Russell, co-founder of WDC, We Deliver Change, and chair of the Creative Operations Summit in London. Together they explore the discipline of creative ops – the systems, culture, and leadership required to help creative teams do their best work. What starts as a conversation about

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1:19

Live event: Run like you're looking to sell, 19 March

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2026/03/04

Have you heard of The Handbook: Breakfast Sessions?These are intimate breakfast roundtables where we dive into big operational topics with leaders from forward-thinking agencies and consultancies.The next one is coming up on 19 March in London, and the theme is:Run like you’re looking to sell. Even if you’re not.I’ll be joined by Dom Hawes. Dom has led 11 acquisitions and scaled his marketing services group to £22m in just 30 months, so he’s seen first-hand what makes a business attractive when

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42:44

From 11% to 43% Net Profit – Fixing the Fundamentals...

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2026/02/24

Your numbers might look healthy.Revenue’s up. Projects are flowing. The pipeline feels… fine.But underneath? Margins are eroding. Cash is tighter than you’d like. And no one’s totally confident in the data they’re using to make decisions.In this episode of The Handbook, Harv Nagra sat down with finance and business ops advisor Robert Patin to unpack what’s really going on beneath the surface of many professional service businesses right now – and why operational maturity is the difference between

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39:05

5 AI Guardrails COOs Need to Put in Place Today with...

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2026/02/03

AI is moving fast in professional services firms. And while most conversations focus on efficiency gains and new tools, the harder questions are around risk – ownership, liability, and what happens when AI use goes wrong.In this episode of The Handbook, Harv Nagra is joined by Sharon Toerek, a leading expert on IP and legal risk in the creative and consulting space, to unpack what AI really changes for operations leaders – and what needs to be in place to protect your businessHere’s what they dive

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42:41

The 8 Systems Every COO Needs to Scale with Jason Swenk

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2026/01/13

Most service businesses don’t stall because of a lack of talent or ambition. They stall because the business quietly outgrows the systems it was built on.In this episode of The Handbook, Harv Nagra sits down with Jason Swenk – agency founder turned advisor who’s spent two decades helping agencies and consultancies scale with more confidence and less chaos. After building and selling his own eight-figure agency, Jason codified the patterns he kept seeing into an eight-system framework for predictable

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2:02

One Question Before the Break – What Should We Tackle...

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2025/12/17

A short one to close out the year! 🎁No frameworks. No deep dives. Just a genuine thank you.Whether you found The Handbook last week or you’ve been listening since episode one, I wanted to reflect on the year and say how much I appreciate you making time for the show.This year I’ve had the chance to sit down with brilliant operators and leaders across agencies and consultancies, covering people, process, tools, data, and growth – all anchored by one belief: operational maturity is what lets

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2:52

Ops Quickie: Fixing the Sales-to-Delivery 'Black Hole'

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2025/12/09

Ops Quickies – snackable episodes on tech, tools, and systems. 🍿"Ballpark" is a dangerous word.Especially when Sales sells the dream, and Delivery is left living the nightmare.In this Quickie, Harv shares a real story from a consulting session with a 100+ person agency. They had the headcount and the revenue, but behind the scenes? It was pure chaos.We're talking manual spreadsheet reconciliation, "remembering" to log expenses, and invoicing based on memory rather than

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35:19

Scaling Effort, Not Results? This is your wake-up...

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2025/12/02

When your business feels busy but the numbers don’t back it up, something’s off.Agencies and consultancies often confuse effort with progress – and today’s guest has the data to prove it.In this episode of The Handbook, Harv Nagra sits down with fractional CFO and Trimline founder Michael Wark to unpack why so many service businesses hit revenue ceilings, run on thin margins, and stay stuck in that exhausting cycle of over-servicing.If you’ve ever wondered why more clients and more staff don’t

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2:23

Ops Quickie: AI isn't the threat. Flying blind is.

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2025/11/18

Ops Quickies – snackable episodes on tech, tools, and systems. 🍿Flat demand, tighter budgets, squeezed margins. And AI is adding uncertainty on top of it all. But the real risk? It’s flying blind. If you don’t know what’s profitable, where time’s going, or what’s around the corner, every decision is a gamble.In this Quickie, Harv lays out how visibility and control de-risk your business – and why data beats gut feel when markets wobble. When the foundations are tight, AI becomes an amplifier, not a

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35:16

How to Run Annual Planning Like a CFO (Even If You’re...

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2025/11/11

Most teams treat annual planning like a spreadsheet exercise.Finance builds the numbers. Everyone else nods along. Then the plan gets filed away until next year.But real planning isn’t about producing a static budget – it’s about creating a rhythm that connects finance, operations, and delivery all year round.In this episode of The Handbook: The Ops Podcast, Harv sits down with Adam Cooper, founder of ACC Finance Solutions and host of The Fractional CFO Show, to unpack how finance can become your

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1:23

Ops Quickie: PSA vs ERP – Same Same...or Totally...

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2025/10/28

Ops Quickies – snackable episodes on tech, tools, and systems. 🍿So many acronyms, but what do they mean!? This one’s for anyone wondering: what’s the difference between a PSA and an ERP? And which one does your business actually need?Harv breaks down how both systems bring your operations together – but are built for completely different worlds. ERPs power product-based businesses with inventory, supply chains, and manufacturing. PSAs, like Scoro, are built for service businesses that sell time and

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56:30

Beyond Experiments: What It Really Takes to...

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2025/10/21

AI has stopped being a side project – it’s rewriting the rules of how professional services businesses operate – and – stay competitive.Luke Alexander, Chief Digital & AI Officer at Four, has led an ambitious AI transformation in his business. From rolling out Microsoft Copilot across 300+ staff to launching client-facing AI services, Luke’s approach to embedding AI is bold, practical, and refreshingly human.In this episode, Luke and Harv unpack what it really takes to move from AI experiments

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3:13

Ops Quickie: MCP – the Missing Link Between Ops & AI?

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2025/10/07

Ops Quickies – snackable episodes on tech, tools, and systems. 🍿This one’s for anyone curious about the next big shift in how AI connects with the tools you already use: MCP. Model context protocol.Harv breaks down what it is (a universal connector for AI), why it matters for ops leaders, and how it could turn your favourite LLM into the control center for your business systems.He also shares how Scoro’s new MCP server unlocks practical (and pretty mind-blowing) use cases – like summarising client

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30:31

Becoming Better Ops Leaders: Lessons from Operations...

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2025/09/30

Ops isn’t just about keeping the lights on anymore.As Aušrinė Keršanskaitė, co-founder of Operations Nation, puts it – today’s ops leaders are expected to drive growth, protect culture, and build resilience. And if you’ve ever felt like the “glue” holding everything together without always getting recognition, this one will hit home.In this episode of The Handbook: The Operations Podcast, Aušrinė joins Harv to talk about the evolution of operations, the community she’s built for ops leaders

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2:32

Ops Quickie: When your stack starts to crack 😬

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2025/09/16

Ops Quickies – snackable episodes on tech, tools, and systems. 🍿This one’s for anyone who’s ever looked at their jumble of spreadsheets and apps and thought: “Is this normal?”Harv explains why the state of your tech stack is actually a mirror of your business maturity – from The Chaotic Era where everything’s buried in spreadsheets and copy-paste is your main 'process', through The Stable Era where processes click into place, and up to The Data-Driven Era where your systems finally give

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39:41

Lessons From Scaling $750k to $25m with Lindsey Head

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2025/09/09

Touch the same piece of information more than twice – fix the workflow. That’s the kind of CFO-meets-COO thinking we get into in this episode of The Handbook, where Harv sits down with Lindsey Head to connect the dots between finance, ops, tech, and people – and what really changes when you standardise how the business runs. Lindsey helped scale a PR agency from 5 to 125 people and $750k to $25m in revenue, leading finance, ops, HR, tech, legal and M&A along the way – so she’s seen where the

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2:30

Ops Quickie: What ERA is your business in? Find out...

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2025/08/26

Ops Quickies – we're back with another snackable episode. 🍿This one’s for anyone who’s ever wondered: Is my business actually set up to scale – or are we just surviving?Harv breaks down:👉🏽 Why business maturity matters👉🏽 What it really means (hint: it’s not about headcount or revenue)👉🏽 Why most service businesses get stuck at the early stages👉🏽 And how you can quickly benchmark where you stand today...Harv's launched a business maturity quiz to help you see where your business

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47:50

How to Scale Smarter: Productizing Value with Brian...

The Handbook: The Operations Podcast ·

2025/08/19

When businesses talk about “productizing,” they often picture cookie-cutter scopes and rigid templates. But according to Brian Kessman, that’s missing the point.Brian is the founder of Lodestar Consulting, and he’s spent 25 years helping agencies and consultancies scale without burning out teams or eroding margins. His approach isn’t about productizing services – it’s about productizing value.In this episode of The Handbook: The Operations Podcast, Brian and Harv dig into what that really means, and

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