How do you know it's time to leave a business you helped name?

Emily Cousins was employee number one at Realtime. She joined when it was two people planning in a café, stayed almost nine years, and helped take it to nearly 90 people and an acquisition in 2024. She describes herself as the risk-averse one in a partnership with a visionary founder, and says she still felt accountable for a business that wasn't hers. This conversation on That Moment is about what comes after the goal you built towards is achieved.

Employee Number One

Emily helped name the company. Day one was planning sessions in a café near her boss's house, and then straight into client work. With two people there was no such thing as a job description. She did whatever needed doing.

”You're kind of doing everything. Anything and everything that needs to be done.”

The pressure of that role is unusual. You feel accountable for the success of the business, but ultimately it isn't yours. What made it work was that she and the founder had opposite strengths. He was visionary and confident, she was more risk averse and prioritised differently, and she challenged him on it. She says it felt more like a partnership than a boss-and-employee relationship, and that's why it lasted.

Family, Tribe, Village

Emily describes growth in three stages. In the early days it was a family, with no silos, everyone round one table and no ”that's your job, not mine”. Somewhere around ten to fifteen people it became a tribe. New external hires arrived, the founders stepped back from work they'd been doing hands-on, and structure and process started to replace chasing their tails.

Each stage asks something different of the people in charge. The habits that hold a family together don't scale, and the trick is knowing when to build structure without losing the culture that made the business worth building. Emily's view is that the earlier you build that visibility, the cheaper it is to fix problems.

The People Side of AI

Emily now works with agency and service business founders on the same challenges she lived through. Founders are keeping the lights on while reinventing their businesses from the ground up, in a difficult economy, and it can be lonely. Her support comes in three parts: defining the value proposition, redesigning the operating model around AI rather than bolting AI onto old processes, and scaling people and culture.

”You're fundamentally selling people. You're selling relationships.”

Her view runs against much of the noise. Everyone will be efficient with AI, she argues, so the value in a services business shifts even further towards people. Businesses may hire fewer people in some areas, but each hire matters more. She also thinks how we define scale will change. Headcount used to be the benchmark for a successful agency, and that's unlikely to hold. Most founders, she says, are feeling a little behind, and she expects the practical reality to catch up with the hype within the next 12 to 24 months.

About Supo:

Supo provides people-first intelligence software for professional services firms, helping businesses maximize profit and motivate their people through powerful, AI-enabled business intelligence dashboards. By connecting over 500+ platforms and providing real-time data analysis, Supo helps firms make better data-driven decisions about their profit, projects, and people.

For more information about Supo: ⁠www.supo.co.uk

About Realtime:

Realtime is a global digital marketing agency that began in performance and social advertising and grew into a full-service agency with teams across the UK, US and Asia. Emily Cousins was its first employee and helped scale it from a two-person start-up to nearly 90 people.

For more information about Realtime: https://realtimeagency.com/