Building a Solid Financial Foundation for Your Agency with Adam Rundle

Gray MacKenzie sits down with Adam Rundle, co-founder of CleverProfits, to talk about the financial foundations that agencies need to build sustainable, profitable businesses. Adam brings a unique perspective - a South African native who studied accounting at the University of Cape Town, worked as a financial manager at a law firm, and eventually co-founded CleverProfits with tax specialist Bryan Nguyen in mid-2018. The company has since grown to 35 employees serving agencies and service businesses with accounting, tax, and CFO-level advisory.

The Perfect P&L Framework

The centerpiece of Adam’s approach is the Perfect P&L - a framework that reorganizes traditional financial statements around how agencies actually operate. Instead of alphabetical expense lists that obscure the real story, the Perfect P&L groups costs into three categories that map directly to business fundamentals.

The first category is acquisition - the cost of getting clients. This includes marketing spend, sales team compensation, and business development expenses. Adam benchmarks this at approximately 10% of revenue for a healthy agency.

The second category is fulfillment - the cost of delivering the work. This covers team salaries, contractor costs, tools, and everything else required to serve clients. The benchmark is roughly 45% of revenue.

The third category is overhead - the cost of keeping the lights on. Rent, insurance, administrative staff, and other expenses that do not directly generate revenue or deliver client work. The target is around 15% of revenue.

That math leaves approximately 30% pre-tax profit. Most agencies are nowhere near that benchmark, which is exactly the point. The Perfect P&L gives owners a clear framework for identifying where their numbers diverge from healthy targets and what to fix first.

Simplicity Over Complexity

A recurring theme in the conversation is Adam’s insistence that finances do not need to be complicated. He points out that most business owners make financial management harder than it needs to be - either by ignoring it entirely or by drowning in overly complex reporting that obscures rather than clarifies.

His philosophy is straightforward: identify the most important constraint, solve it, and move on to the next one. An agency running at 5% margins does not need a sophisticated financial dashboard. It needs to figure out whether the problem is pricing, scope management, team utilization, or overhead - and fix that one thing.

Adam also pushes back on the outsized role that taxes play in most business owners’ financial thinking. He argues that taxes are “a 100% byproduct of your business decisions” - not a primary concern to optimize around. Agencies that make operational decisions based on tax implications rather than business fundamentals end up with structures that minimize taxes but also minimize growth and profitability.

The Profit Accelerator Onboarding

CleverProfits brings new clients through a six-week program called the Profit Accelerator. The program addresses three problems simultaneously: historical financial catch-up (cleaning up messy books and back-filings), strategic growth planning (building a forward-looking financial framework), and tax optimization (creating a personalized tax strategy based on the business’s actual situation).

What makes the approach distinctive is what happens after the initial engagement. Adam intentionally avoids long-term contracts upfront. Instead of locking clients into annual agreements, he prefers to let the results of the Profit Accelerator speak for themselves. Clients who see the value of organized finances and clear strategic guidance almost always convert to ongoing retainer relationships - and they do so because they want to, not because a contract requires it.

The service tiers scale with the client’s needs. A Compliance Officer tier handles bookkeeping and tax preparation. The Strategic Growth tier focuses on team expansion and financial planning. The Executive Level tier provides CFO-level involvement in strategic decisions.

Communication as a Differentiator

One of the most actionable insights from the conversation is how CleverProfits approaches client communication. Adam recognized early that the traditional accounting model - quarterly meetings and dense PDF reports - does not serve agency owners well. They need accessible, timely information delivered in formats they actually consume.

The solution was meeting clients where they already work. CleverProfits uses Slack for day-to-day communication, joining the client’s existing workspace rather than forcing them into a separate portal. Weekly and monthly financial reports are accompanied by Loom video walkthroughs that explain what the numbers mean and what actions to consider.

Interestingly, the Loom video approach was not originally designed for clients. Adam created the videos internally to track client progress across his team. When he realized the format was also valuable for clients, he turned it into a core part of the service delivery model. That willingness to share internal tools externally is a pattern worth noting - often the most valuable client-facing resources start as internal processes.

Partnership and Business Building

Adam closes with reflections on his partnership with Bryan Nguyen. Their complementary skill sets - Adam’s accounting expertise and Bryan’s tax specialization - made the merger straightforward. More importantly, their alignment on vision and values meant that the partnership required minimal negotiation. Adam emphasizes that this kind of natural fit is rare and that founders considering partnerships should prioritize alignment over capability.

Resources Mentioned

• Adam Rundle on LinkedIn - Co-founder, CleverProfits
• CleverProfits - Accounting and financial advisory for agencies
• The Perfect P&L - Adam’s financial framework
• Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits by Greg Crabtree - Recommended reading
• Profit First by Mike Michalowicz - Influential financial framework