Beyond the Chaos: Which Operating Model Will Actually Scale Your Agency?
Kristen De Lay is the founder of Operating Clarity, a fractional COO practice for marketing agencies of roughly 10 to 50 people. She works with agency owners to develop profitability visibility, usable delivery workflows, capacity and utilization, and teams that rely on systems to scale their growth.
Before starting her own company, she spent more than 20 years in digital marketing building strategy and campaigns, working in analytics, and managing martech systems as an in-house marketer and agency side. Six years ago she moved into operations and stayed, because she found she could make more of a difference there for owners, for teams, and for clients.
Along the way, she started looking at the work the way operators do: not just what needs to happen, but whether the business is built to sustain it, and whether it’s making money as a result. She starts with diagnosis rather than a predetermined answer, understanding what is actually happening before building the structure around it.
Kristen is based in Lakewood, Colorado. Outside of work, she can be found building native landscapes and previously owned a sustainable garden design business on the side. She is currently working toward her Native Plant Master certification.
