In a new piece for 9AM Business, our Founder & Chairman, Julian Stubbs, shares how a simple goal, to pick his 7-year-old son up from school, sparked the idea for a new kind of global agency.
One without fixed offices. Without rigid hours. One built in the cloud, designed for life.
This is a call to business leaders: The world of work has changed, and it’s not going back. But most business models haven’t caught up. Leaders today have an opportunity, even a responsibility, to rethink the systems they’ve inherited.
What would your business look like if you redesigned it from scratch? If you aligned it with how people actually want to live and work?
The below article was first published in 9AM Business. Written by Julian Stubbs, Founder & Chairman, UP THERE, EVERYWHERE
In 2010, I had a simple but deeply personal goal: to be able to pick my 7-year-old son, Jools, up from school at 3pm, kick a football around with him, and then return to work later in the evening. It wasn’t about working less, it was about working smarter, more flexibly, and on my own terms.
At the time, I was head of global branding at a leading marketing agency based in Chelsea Harbour, London. I had a rewarding role, a great team, and a solid salary. But like so many agency leaders then, and still today, I was bound to a system that hadn’t evolved. Flexibility was scarce, and traditional structures ruled. The rigidity of the agency world simply didn’t align with the life I wanted to lead.
That’s when a colleague from our New York office and I made a pivotal decision: to build something new. Something better. We set out to reimagine what a global agency could look like if we removed all the legacy constraints. We didn’t just want to improve the agency model, we wanted to reinvent it entirely.
Designing a business for the future of work
The vision was clear – a fully Cloud-based, global agency designed from the ground up to enable flexibility, collaboration, and work-life balance. We called it UP THERE, EVERYWHERE, a name that reflects both our distributed model and our aspirational mindset.
From day one, we embraced remote work. Not as a perk, but as the foundation. We built our business around the idea that the digital revolution had flattened the world. Geography was no longer a barrier. The tools were there. Cloud-based communication, collaboration, and content platforms were emerging at pace. All that was missing was a business model that took them seriously.
We also questioned the value of traditional offices. Why spend hours commuting across London or anywhere else just to be productive? Instead, we introduced Creative Hubs: agile, shared spaces in key cities like London, Stockholm, and New York. These were not status-symbol headquarters but places for connection, creativity, and occasional collaboration.
This was 2010, ten years before the pandemic forced the world to work this way. But for us, this wasn’t a temporary fix. It was the future.
Pioneering the fractional work revolution
Another major innovation was in how we approached talent. We saw the rise of the independent, digital-first professional, highly skilled, highly mobile, and uninterested in the traditional employment model. We didn’t want to simply hire full-time staff or manage a roster of freelancers. We wanted to create a new way of working.
So, we developed a membership model, what we now call E-ployment™ that gave professionals the freedom to work with other organisations, while still being part of a cohesive, values-led business. At the time, we didn’t have a name for it. Today, it’s called fractional working, and it’s transforming the world of work.
Fractional work empowers both professionals and companies. For individuals, it offers autonomy, variety, and a more sustainable work-life blend. For organisations, it delivers access to world-class talent without the overheads of traditional employment.
To maintain quality and cohesion, we built in rigorous standards. All new UP Members must be referred by existing members, go through multiple interviews, sign contracts, and complete a structured induction process. This ensures cultural alignment, not just competence.
Building a business engine in the Cloud
To support this new model, we also had to create the right infrastructure. Off-the-shelf software didn’t meet our needs, so we built our own: SUPER System, a Cloud-based platform that manages everything from project planning and time tracking to estimates, invoicing, and member onboarding. It’s the operational backbone of UP, enabling us to scale globally without losing control or cohesion.
Our single global profit centre structure is another strategic innovation. It allows us to mirror the structures of multinational clients, assign resources fluidly across borders, and keep internal competition to a minimum. Everyone is aligned around shared goals.
Outcomes that prove the model
What started as a desire for personal flexibility became a catalyst for a global business transformation. Today, UP THERE, EVERYWHERE includes over 150 members working across continents. We’ve grown from two founders to a business generating over €10 million in revenue (2024), all without traditional offices or employment structures.
More importantly, we’ve built a sustainable, human-centric business that puts people first while delivering world-class results for our clients. Our talent stays with us longer. Our teams are happier, and our clients benefit from the agility, diversity, and deep expertise of a truly global, cloud-native organisation.
A call to business leaders
The world of work has changed, and it’s not going back. But most business models haven’t caught up. Leaders today have an opportunity, even a responsibility, to rethink the systems they’ve inherited. What would your business look like if you redesigned it from scratch? If you aligned it with how people actually want to live and work?
The answers aren’t theoretical, they’re real, and they’re possible. We’re living proof.