Driving real results for agency leaders
I’ve spent fifteen years doing hands-on agency work — building operations, restructuring teams, sitting in the leadership meetings where the real decisions get made. My advisory practice builds on that foundation. Here’s what the people I’ve worked with have to say.
Case Studies
From Stuck to Strategic - Dale Bertrand, President, Fire&Spark
WHERE THEY STARTED
A 10-person SEO agency doing $1M–2M in revenue, with a founder who was stuck. He was burning out, couldn’t step away from the business without things falling apart, and had a major decision he couldn’t think clearly about.
Internal strategic projects kept stalling — the ones he knew mattered most. Meanwhile, a key operations leader needed to be replaced, leaving a gap nobody was filling.
He’d tried forcing himself through it, but the problem wasn’t discipline. It was direction.
WHERE THEY LANDED
Over five years of working together, Fire&Spark more than doubled — from 10 to 25 people, from $1M–2M to $2M–5M in revenue. Gross margins, net profit, and staff retention all improved.
The biggest shift was a confident decision to focus on digital health brands. That clarity didn’t come from a single breakthrough. It was built one conversation at a time.
Dale restructured his team, stepped back from daily operations, and developed a real AI strategy. And along the way, he rediscovered what he actually enjoys about the work.
“Katie calls me out when I make a hasty decision or ignore important input from my team. She helped me have a healthy journey, not just build a successful business.”
Testimonials
“Katie has been invaluable to Reason One and has helped move our agency operations and strategy forward. Her role as COO is fractional, but her impact and presence has felt like a full time, proactive colleague who is invested in our success. She’s asks smart questions, solves problems independently, and raises the quality of the conversations in our leadership team. If you’re considering hiring her, do it.”
“You likely won’t meet many folks who can offer such a valuable opinion or insight on just about anything you can ask. She has the ability to break down huge problems and then start to solve them in priority. She is extremely fair, but she’s also not afraid to hold people accountable. I would highly recommend her to any team that is looking for a plug and play awesome human and expert level problem solver. ”
“Katie is someone who is able to confidently and directly articulate what needs to happen for someone or something to be successful, which for me is a breath of fresh air. ”
“I can’t recommend Katie enough. She supported us a few years ago with Project Management cover and based on that experience it was a no-brainer for us to reach out to her when looking for operations support. She’s helped us level up our internal processes and established regular cadences which have become foundational to our workflow. She’s also been a great support for our project managers, stepping in to provide guidance as we were hiring new team members.”
“Scriptorium reached out to Katie to help us improve critical project management processes. Her keen understanding of process and template development played an important role as Scriptorium grew and hardened processes. I highly recommend Katie Bedford for growing organizations that need to take a fresh look at established processes. Katie offered valuable insights to help us build out new processes and templates that were compatible with our organization’s culture and have served us well as we grow.”
Want to find out what a different kind of conversation looks like?