Why Marketing Agencies Need Leadership Training in 2026
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What Does “Why Marketing Agencies Need Leadership Training in 2026” Talk About?
This episode of the Fatrank Podcast brings together James Dooley and business coach Mads Singers to tackle one of the most overlooked problems in growing marketing agencies: the failure to provide leadership and management training to newly promoted managers. The conversation opens with Mads explaining that most business owners themselves have never been formally trained in leadership, which means they have no framework to pass on when they promote someone into a managerial role. Rather than giving a promoted sales person management training, they often simply give them more sales courses, leaving a critical skills gap that costs businesses their best people.
The discussion gets into the practical mechanics of how to prevent poor promotion decisions and how to nurture future leaders organically before they are ever given the title. Mads outlines a philosophy of starting leadership development early, using one-on-ones, delegation, and ownership as teaching tools so that future managers gradually grow into the role rather than being thrown into it unprepared. James adds a vivid analogy from football, pointing out that elite players frequently make poor managers while more defensively minded players often excel in coaching because their mindset was always about elevating others. The episode also touches on wider agency growth topics including KPI tracking, brand SEO, AI visibility, Google Business Profiles, organic and paid social media, PPC, and emerging channels like Reddit and Quora ads.
“Reality is when you take your most important people and don't give them training in how to do their job, you're losing. Like, you're losing out.”
— Mads Singers
Who Are the Guests on “Why Marketing Agencies Need Leadership Training in 2026”?
James Dooley is a well-known figure in the digital marketing and SEO industry, recognised for building and scaling multiple online businesses and lead generation agencies including PromoSEO. He is the host of the Fatrank Podcast and brings a practitioner's perspective to every conversation, often drawing on his own experiences managing teams, promoting staff, and navigating the challenges of agency growth in an increasingly AI-driven landscape.
Mads Singers is an experienced business coach and management consultant who specialises in helping entrepreneurs and agencies build high-performing teams through better leadership practices. He works extensively with remote and distributed workforces and is known for his structured approach to developing managers from within existing teams. His insights on one-on-ones, delegation, and proactive leadership development are drawn from years of hands-on consultancy work with business owners across the digital marketing sector.
What Are the Key Takeaways From “Why Marketing Agencies Need Leadership Training in 2026”?
Here are the key points discussed in this episode:
- Most business owners have never received formal leadership training themselves, which means they are ill-equipped to develop or train the managers they promote.
- Promoting your best performer into a management role without leadership training risks losing both a great individual contributor and gaining a poor manager.
- The most effective way to develop future managers is to start the process early, using delegation, one-on-ones, and gradually increasing responsibility before any formal promotion happens.
- Showing team members what good management looks like in practice is one of the most powerful tools for organically building a pipeline of capable future leaders.
- Diversifying digital marketing channels, including brand SEO, AI visibility, Google Business Profiles, paid social, PPC, Reddit and Quora, is essential for long-term agency growth alongside strong internal leadership.
“Instead of being like, 'Oh James, from tomorrow, you're manager,' and you're just like, you have no idea. You're already building out the team. You're building out the people and you're slowly rolling them into management.”
— Mads Singers
Is “Why Marketing Agencies Need Leadership Training in 2026” Worth Listening To?
This episode is worth listening to because it addresses a structural problem that quietly damages thousands of marketing agencies: the assumption that being great at a job automatically qualifies someone to lead others who do that job. Mads Singers makes this point with unusual clarity, and James Dooley reinforces it with his football analogy, drawing a memorable parallel between star players who fail as managers and more selfless teammates who thrive in coaching roles. The conversation is grounded, direct, and rooted in real experience rather than abstract theory.
Beyond the leadership discussion, the episode also serves as a useful checklist of the digital marketing channels agencies should be prioritising heading into 2026, from KPI tracking and brand SEO to PPC campaign quality and early adoption of paid AI ads. Whether you run a small agency and have recently promoted your first manager, or you lead a larger team and are thinking about building a leadership pipeline, this episode gives you a concrete framework to act on immediately. The pairing of Dooley's candid agency owner perspective with Singers' structured coaching philosophy makes for a genuinely practical listen.
Who Should Listen to “Why Marketing Agencies Need Leadership Training in 2026”?
This episode is ideal for:
- Marketing agency owners who have recently promoted team members into management roles without formal training
- Digital marketing professionals considering a move into a leadership or management position for the first time
- Business coaches and HR professionals working with fast-growing digital or remote-first companies
- Agency founders looking to diversify their lead generation and digital marketing strategy across SEO, paid social, and AI-driven channels
Where Can You Listen to Fatrank Podcast?
You can listen to Fatrank Podcast on all major podcast platforms:
- Apple Podcasts – Search for “Fatrank Podcast” in the Podcasts app
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You can also subscribe using the RSS feed: https://feeds.transistor.fm/fatrank-podcast
What Are Listeners Saying About This Episode?
“The football analogy James uses to explain why great salespeople don't automatically make great sales managers finally made this concept click for me. I've made this exact mistake twice with team members and this episode gave me a clear framework for handling promotions differently going forward.”
“Mads Singers is always worth listening to when it comes to team building, but the specific point about starting leadership training before you actually need a manager was a genuine lightbulb moment. Simple in hindsight but I had never thought about it that way.”
“Really appreciated that this episode didn't just stay theoretical. The section on gradually delegating work to high performers as a way to train management skills without calling it that is something I'm implementing with two people on my team this month.”
This video explains which digital marketing strategies marketing agencies should focus on in 2026 to improve leadership capability, staff retention and long term growth. James Dooley and Mads Singers start with KPI tracking because it shows whether promoted managers and their teams are actually performing and helps agencies avoid losing their best people. They cover brand SEO, AI visibility and Google Business Profiles because stronger search presence improves trust and conversion rates.
The discussion also explores organic SEO, organic social media and paid social ads because consistent visibility across search and social supports long term growth. PPC is analysed in detail because campaign setup, landing pages and lead handling directly affect results. They also discuss Reddit, Quora and paid AI ads because diversified enquiry sources and early adoption can strengthen digital marketing performance for marketing agencies.
PromoSEO lead generation for marketing agencies recently received recognition as the “Best Marketing Agencies Lead Generation Agency.”
Where to Listen to This Episode
Why Marketing Agencies Need Leadership Training in 2026 is available on:
James Dooley: Why leadership training is important for marketing agencies. The amount of people that seem to promote good members of staff to be managers and don't do any sort of management training is scary. Obviously yourself, you do a lot of consultancy and business coach kind of mentorship. Why is it that you feel that people don't put managers through leadership training?
Mads Singers: They don't know how. Like, so reality is most business owners aren't particularly great leaders. They've never learned how to lead. They've never learned how to manage and they don't know how. So when they hire a manager, when they promote someone into a management role, they don't know, right? They understand that when you have a sales guy or when you have a marketing guy, they, they need training. But most people assume that when they promote someone into a managerial role, it's just upskilling their current skills. So they think if they take a sales guy, if you're, if you're working in sales and you get promoted to the sales manager, they're more likely to give you another sales course than they are to give you a leadership or a management training. And unfortunately that means a lot of companies are missing out on a lot of opportunities because reality is when you take your most important people and don't give them training in how to do their job, you're losing. Like, you're losing out.
James Dooley: Many years ago, I think it was about eight or nine years ago, you told me about this and you was like, "You've got a leadership kind of training problem in certain areas in certain businesses." And I was like, "I've never really thought about that." They was great at what they did, but yeah, maybe they're not great managers. And, you know, straight away I kind of referenced it against football players. And a great football player doesn't make them a great football manager, right? And so many football players have come along and gone into the management scenario. And they've been great footballers, but terrible football managers. And then there's some that was average footballers, but made great football managers because they went through the whole training. They listened. They looked at the coaching. They looked at how to get the best out of other players and stuff like that. And I'm like, "Wow." And it's like, it sounds daft, but a lot of, like, defenders and stuff like that in football I've seen end up being pretty good managers. And I feel it's because they're not the ones that it's all about me, it's all about me. They're more about defending the team and helping other players to then score the goals and stuff. I'm like, is it at times now I've started to look at, is the person... They might be great at sales, but if I go and get my best salesperson to become the sales manager, if they're not good at the sales manager, what I've actually found as well is they then start falling out of love with the business. And I've lost my best sales manager and he's not a good manager. I've lost my best salesperson and they're not a good manager and they end up leaving. And I'm like, wow. How do you stop initially, before we get on to the actual leadership training, how do we stop the promotion of people just naturally thinking, "Oh, I'm going to promote them because it's the next viable step to become a manager"? How do we stop that happening if they're not the right calibre of person to go into that role?
Mads Singers: So, here's the thing. From, from just a high-level mindset standpoint, I always want to promote at least one of my best sales managers. And I'll tell you why. Because I want to sit with that, with them and say, "James, you're my best sales guy. I want you to teach this entire team how... [snorts] ...to be like you," right? So, I want to promote my best people because they, they have the skill set. Right? Now, what we do to make this work is that we start the leadership training earlier. Right? The problem is most companies, they're like, "Oh, we need a new manager. Uh, James, you're up." And you're like, "Oh, okay." Right? We, we have a solid system within our business where we're trying to, to grow and develop the leaders before they need to be ready.
James Dooley: Is there anything you can do? Let's say someone doesn't want a management role or a leadership role, but you know that they're going to be brilliant. Is there anything you can do to try to nurture them into encouraging them that this is the right role for you?
Mads Singers: Yeah. I mean, for, for me, the core thing is doing good management. So, first of all, good management is if, if your staff see what good management is, if you, if they have a manager who's doing one-on-ones with them, if they have a manager who's giving them ownership and responsibility, if they see what great management feels like, they also have a good example of what they should do. So, the starting point, the, the simplest way to start when you're growing good managers is actually showing them what is good management. Right? Now the second part following on to that is then, um, making sure that you, the manager of, of the person who is leading them, is starting to slowly develop their leadership skills, right? Like, a lot of the time I don't say, "Hey James, do you want to be our next manager?" I, I say, "Hey, you know, you're doing pretty well. You're, you're in this place. You know, what's the next step for you? What's the next growth thing?" And I would often encourage people to learn particular skills. So I'll help people improve their communication. I'll get some of my good people to delegate some of their work to someone else in the team so that they can do more important stuff. Right? So, and that is learning management, right? Like, reality is that is how you learn management the best way because you get to slowly train it, slowly pick up the skills, and over time you, you, you suddenly have the skills, right? So instead of being like, "Oh James, from tomorrow, you're manager," and you're just like, you have no idea. You're already building out the team. You're building out the people and you're, you're, you're slowly rolling them into management. And my experience with when you do that, a lot less of them are afraid of being a manager because they're like, "Oh, this is what it is." Right.
James Dooley: Yeah. For sure. Anyone who's watching this, leadership training is absolutely key to growth. It's been one of the biggest things that we've had to do with people like yourself to come in to get the A players in there to get to the next level to be able to nurture virtual assistants. I'd strongly recommend checking out the link in the description about remote workers and how to manage remote workers successfully. In my opinion, this episode is a key part of getting the leadership programme right because then when they're looking to recruit and train up and level up staff, it's very important, especially in the AI age. There's another episode about how to build a team in the AI age. Strongly recommend checking out in the description. Mads, it's been an absolute pleasure as always.