Most leaders in professional services are making decisions every day that come back to the finance – but no one ever actually taught them the numbers.

In this episode, we're pulling back the curtain on the financial foundations that every leader needs to get a handle on, whether you're running a team, managing projects, or sitting in the hot seat at the top.

Rich Brett is a FinOps consultant with 15 years in finance, working with professional services businesses to close the gap between finance and operations – and answer that nagging question: why is everyone busy, but we're not making any money?

This episode is pulled directly from The Missing Finance Course – a free FinOps course Rich and Harv built to level up everyone from founders to individual contributors at agencies and consultancies.

Here's what they get into:

• Why cashflow forecasting isn't an advanced topic – it's a survival skill
• What the P&L is really for, and why most senior leaders struggle to explain it to their own teams
• How a knowledge gap becomes a credibility gap – and why that erodes trust across the whole business
• Why so many businesses are pricing based on what they think something costs – not what it actually costs
• Why comparing your rates to competitors is a trap, and what to do instead

If you've ever sat in a finance presentation and felt a bit lost, or if you've been winging parts of your pricing strategy, this one's for you.

The Missing Finance Course is free, self-paced, and built for three audiences: leadership, delivery teams, and individual contributors. Head to https://learn.scoro.com to get started.

Additional Resources:
👉🏽 Follow Rich Brett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rich-brett-36903590/
👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/

➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.

Most businesses will go through some kind of change management challenge – a new tool, a restructure, a rebrand. But what does it look like when you're doing that across eight acquired businesses, each with their own people, systems, culture, and way of doing things?

Jonathan Healey is Group Technology Director at IDHL, a 500-person UK digital agency group that has grown through eight acquisitions. He's been at the center of every integration – aligning systems, consolidating brands, and figuring out what actually has to happen, and in what order, before any of it can work.

This is a conversation about what M&A integration really looks like on the ground – and why, at its core, it's a change management problem more than a technology one.

Here's what we get into:

• Why the back office has to move first – and what happens when it doesn't

• The "us vs them" dynamic that can derail an integration before it starts

• How to decide what to standardize and what to leave alone

• Why process is poison – and what good process actually looks like

• Build vs buy: when in-house systems become a liability

• AI adoption as a change management challenge – and the federated model IDHL is using to scale it

Whether you're navigating an acquisition, thinking about one, or just trying to get a new way of working to stick across your team – this one's got something for you.

Additional Resources:

👉🏽 Follow Jonathan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanhealey1/

👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/

➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.

Most professional services firms are generating revenue. But somewhere between producing a quote and issuing the final invoice, profit gets eroded. And more often than not, the root cause runs deeper than you'd expect – it's that nobody in the business ever properly understood the numbers in the first place.

In this special episode, Harv is joined by FinOps expert Rich Brett to introduce The Missing Finance Course – a completely free resource built for everyone in your firm, from the leadership team, to delivery teams, right down to individual contributors.

This conversation, taken straight from inside the course, sets the scene for why financial understanding isn't just a finance team problem. It's everyone's problem.

Here's what they get into:

• Why most firms don't bother with financial education – and why that's a mistake
• How finance and operations working in silos creates blind spots that erode profit
• Why storytelling, not spreadsheets, is the real skill your finance team needs
• How commercial awareness at every level – yes, including junior staff – changes the way a business performs
• Why understanding the numbers is one of the fastest ways to accelerate your career in professional services

The Missing Finance Course is free, self-paced, and built for three audiences: leadership, delivery teams, and individual contributors. Head to https://learn.scoro.com to get started.

Additional Resources:

👉🏽 Follow Rich Brett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rich-brett-36903590/

👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/

➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.

The data is in – and it's not pretty.

After surveying 303 agencies and consultancies through the Business Maturity Quiz, we've launched The Maturity Gap Report, revealing just how wide the gap really is between the firms where operations is a strength and everyone else.

In this episode, Harv is joined by operations consultant Manish Kapur and FinOps expert Rich Brett to walk through the headline findings – and what they actually mean for the way your business is run.

Here are a few of the headlines they discuss:

• Role clarity is rarer than you think – only 35% of firms have clearly defined roles, and the knock-on effects reach everything from project delivery to decision-making bottlenecks
• Most operational knowledge lives in people's heads – just 21% of firms have documented their best practices, leaving businesses one resignation away from losing it all
• Automation remains an untapped opportunity – only one in eight firms have automated any meaningful part of how they work, in 2026
• Time tracking data is being wasted – 41% of firms track time accurately, but only 13% are using that data to make decisions or course-correct mid-project
• Forecasting with confidence is the exception, not the rule – only one in four firms can forecast margins, revenue, and capacity with any real certainty
• Scale readiness is a widespread concern – just 13% of firms believe their operating model is ready for what's ahead

If you want to know where your business sits against the 303 firms in the report – and what separates the top performers from the rest – this is the episode to start with.

This was originally recorded as a live webinar – if you'd prefer to watch with the presentation slides, head to YouTube here: https://youtu.be/GfQ-raYcGQg

Ready to take action to level up?

1) Take the business maturity quiz – https://bit.ly/assess-business-maturity

2) Read The Maturity Gap Report – https://scoro.com/blog/maturity-gap

3) Subscribe to The Handbook: The Ops Podcast for the upcoming maturity series – https://linktr.ee/handbookpodcast

Additional Resources:

👉🏽 Follow Manish Kapur on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manishkapur/

👉🏽 Follow Rich Brett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rich-brett-36903590/

👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/

➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.

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 they could attract bigger clients, better talent, and more ambitious opportunities.

They walk through the operational shifts that helped Spin move from “proper scrappy” to a more mature organization – and the cultural tensions that inevitably come with that transition.

Here’s what we dive into:

• Why bringing in a proper finance director changed far more than reporting – from pricing and scoping to forecasting and recovery
• The role HR played in moving from informal “touchy-feely” people management to structured career paths, policies, and development
• How hiring experienced specialists elevated the quality of work – even if not every senior hire worked out
• Why investing in senior-level marketing helped Spin build credibility and compete for bigger clients
• What a chairman can bring to a founder-led business – accountability, perspective, and bigger strategic thinking
• The trade-offs between the fun, chaotic “old Spin” culture and the more structured, scalable “new Spin”

Alex is refreshingly honest about the reality of transformation. Some hires didn’t work out. Cultural change created tension. And the journey took far longer than expected.

But the result is a business with stronger foundations – one that’s now scaling through acquisitions and positioning itself for the next stage of growth.

If you’re navigating that transition from scrappy startup to grown-up, mature organization, there’s a lot in Alex’s story that will feel very familiar.

Additional Resources:

👉🏽 Follow Alex on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-bodini/

🌐 Spin Brands: http://spinbrands.com/

👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/

📈 Measure your business maturity and find out how to get to the next level: https://bit.ly/assess-business-maturity

📬 Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter: https://www.scoro.com/podcast/#handbook

➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.

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 creative teams quickly expands into something bigger: how operations leaders create the environment where great work can actually happen.

Here’s what we dive into:

• What creative operations actually is – and why it’s becoming a strategic role inside agencies, brands, and consultancies
• Why ops is fundamentally about culture – not just processes, workflows, and systems
• Why happiness and psychological safety matter more than most leaders realise when it comes to producing great work
• How creative ops and business ops are converging as technology and AI reshape how work gets done
• How learning to speak the language of different stakeholders is often the key to unlocking real influence.

Whether you work in a creative environment or not, the themes in this conversation will resonate with any ops leader trying to build a healthier, more effective organisation.

Additional Resources:

👉🏽 Follow Nicky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicky-russell-989a4719/

🌐 WDC London: https://wdc-london.com/

🌐 In-House Agency Leaders Club: https://www.ihalc.com/

🗓️ Henry Stewart Creative Ops Summit London, 19th March 2026: https://henrystewartconferences.com/creative-operations/

👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/

📈 Measure your business maturity and find out how to get to the next level: https://bit.ly/assess-business-maturity

📬 Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter: https://www.scoro.com/podcast/#handbook

➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.

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 surviving and thriving.

Here’s what we dive into:

📉 The financial red flags leaders consistently overlook – especially around forecasting, cash flow, and margin erosion

📊 Why revenue is a vanity metric if your gross profit assumptions are wrong

🧐 How to turn project postmortems into a pricing engine that actually improves over time

🔄 The link between operational maturity and financial performance – and why finance and ops can’t sit in silos

🧩 How data fragmentation creates “business whack-a-mole” and makes AI harder, not easier

🤖 Why AI will increase pricing pressure – and how to get ahead of it before the market catches up

This conversation is a practical look at how to level up your maturity across finance, systems, and decision-making – so you can scale with confidence instead of guesswork.

Additional Resources:

👉🏽 Follow Robert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/creative-agency-success

🌐 Robert’s resources for The Handbook listeners: https://creativeagencysuccess.com/handbook

👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/

📈 Measure your business maturity and find out how to get to the next level: https://bit.ly/assess-business-maturity

📬 Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter: https://www.scoro.com/podcast/#handbook

➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.

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 business

Here’s what they dive into:

📄 What actually happens to IP when work is human-created, AI-assisted, or fully AI-generated
🔐 The data privacy risks agencies and consultancies often underestimate
🧭 Sharon’s five-step framework for building an AI-ready workplace
📝 How contracts, policies, and client conversations need to evolve as AI becomes operational

If you’re an ops leader trying to balance innovation with risk, this episode is a practical reminder that AI governance isn’t a legal edge case anymore – it’s part of running a mature, well-managed operation.

Additional Resources:
👉🏽 Follow Sharon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharontoerek/
🌐 Check out Sharon’s website: https://legalandcreative.com/

👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/

📈 Measure your business maturity and find out how to get to the next level: https://bit.ly/assess-business-maturity

📬 Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter: https://www.scoro.com/podcast/#handbook

➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.