Owner-managed. Founder-led. Five sectors we know cold.

Industries we work in

Specialism · Segment A

Independent recruitment agencies

Independently owned, typically 3–40 consultants, placing across any sector. Owner-director still in the day-to-day. Trading well, but profit isn’t matching revenue.

• Margin given away through over-servicing or under-pricing
• BD that’s inconsistent and dependent on one or two people
• Consultants leaving before they become profitable
• Operations that worked at five breaking at fifteen
• No clean view of which clients and roles drive profit

Read the recruitment perspective

Specialism · Segment B

Independent letting & estate agencies

Independently owned, typically one to five branches, residential sales and/or lettings. Competing against online disruptors and a rising legislative burden with limited time to respond strategically.

• Fee structures unreviewed for years — money left on every instruction
• Over-reliance on word of mouth, no owned digital presence
• Staff incentives that reward activity, not profit
• No clear differentiation from online agents — competing on price by default
• Compliance and legislation eating management time

Read the lettings perspective

Adjacent · Long-cycle

Property

For owner-operators of property portfolios: optimisation, capital allocation, asset efficiency, and the operating cadence that turns a collection of buildings into a coherent business. MAGE has supported a £10m portfolio over four years.

• Asset-by-asset performance review and optimisation plan
• Tenant strategy, rent positioning and yield protection
• Capital allocation across improvement, hold and disposal
• Reporting that matches how owners actually make decisions
• Operating model so the portfolio doesn’t depend on the owner’s diary

Read the property perspective

Adjacent · Owner-managed

Professional services

For founder-led services firms — agencies, consultancies, specialist studios — where the work is good but the operating system has fallen behind it. The classic owner-managed problem: great delivery, fragile economics.

• Pricing and packaging that protects margin under pressure
• Utilisation and revenue mix — what actually pays for everything else
• Hiring, onboarding and the route from junior to fee-earner
• Operating cadence: weekly, monthly, quarterly rhythms that hold
• Reducing the dependency on the founder doing everything important

Read the services perspective

Adjacent · Early-stage

SaaS

For early-stage SaaS — pre-Series A through early scale — where the question is which market to chase and which to politely decline. MAGE has advised a technology start-up on identifying valuable niches and focusing resource on the most commercially attractive ones.

• Niche identification — the markets where the product actually wins
• Positioning, messaging and pricing for the chosen niche
• GTM cadence and pipeline discipline before headcount
• Operating reviews that founders can run without an analyst team
• When to industrialise, when to keep the speed

Read the SaaS perspective

The same operator. The same operating disciplines.

Different industries reward different surface tactics — landlord acquisition in lettings, BD cadence in recruitment, capital allocation in property, utilisation in services, niche selection in SaaS. Underneath, the disciplines that make the business durable are the same: pricing held, people developed, operations that don’t need the owner to function, and a clear weekly rhythm of decisions made on numbers rather than feel.