About Iain Russell & Project Wow
Fractional & Interim COO for Digital, Creative & Marketing Agencies
I’m Iain Russell, founder of Project Wow, a hands-on operational leader who helps agencies stabilise, scale, and rediscover confidence in how they work.
I partner with founders and leadership teams who need senior operational leadership without the commitment or delay of a full-time hire. My work focuses on rebuilding clarity, strengthening delivery, aligning leadership, and creating a modern operating model that helps agencies grow without chaos.
My Background
I bring over 20 years of leadership experience across Managing Director, COO, and CTO roles within digital, creative, ecommerce, and technology-driven organisations.
I started my career as a multimedia designer and grew into senior positions leading agencies, cross-functional teams, and large-scale transformation programmes. Because my background spans creative, operational, and technical disciplines, I understand the unique pressures agency environments face and what it takes to run them successfully.
Over the years, I’ve led organisations through operational redesigns, digital transformation, restructures, growth phases, and turnaround situations. That blend of creativity, pragmatism, and leadership is what underpins Project Wow.
Why I Set Up Project Wow
After decades inside agencies and digital businesses, I saw a recurring truth:
Agencies rarely fail for lack of talent or ambition — they struggle because their operating model stops evolving.
Project Wow exists to help fix that. I built Project Wow to give founders a trusted partner who can step inside the business, steady the system, and build a way of working that actually supports growth. My goal is simple: make operational change feel clearer, calmer, more human, and far more effective.
I help agencies rediscover the “wow” in what they do by:
- Removing operational friction
- Strengthening teams
- Redesigning delivery
- Improving profitabilit
- Creating a model that scales sustainably
Change shouldn’t feel overwhelming. With the right leadership, it becomes energising and empowering.
Track Record & Expertise
Throughout my career, I’ve delivered measurable improvements in:
- Profitability, margin, and commercial performance
- Leadership alignment and operating model clarity
- Delivery predictability and project flow
- Digital, tech, and AI strategy that accelerates teams
- Culture, engagement, and collaboration across functions
- Scaling agencies through growth or transition phases
- 20+ years of lived operational leadership in agineies as in Managing Direcor, COO, and CTO positions
How I Work
I describe myself as a meta-practitioner, someone who blends the strongest elements of proven frameworks into one practical, adaptable approach. Project Wow’s WoW Framework draws from:
- The First 90 Days - establishing clarity, alignment, and momentum quickly
- The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) - creating rhythm, accountability, and focus
- Unmanaged - empowering teams to take ownership and self-organise effectively
- Dual Transformation - balancing today’s operations with tomorrow’s opportunities