Fractional CFO & Business Coach to AMBITIOUS software dev agency owners | Build your dream business without selling your soul to VCs | I offer a course for beginners to learn DIY bookkeeping | 😎 Girl dad

Digital agencies are brutal 😩




What other business deals with as many feast & famine cycles?

🙅‍♂️None🙅‍♂️

It is an easy model to start…
…but requires balls of steel to endure.


Here are THREE questions to ponder:

1️⃣ Does my accountant know how to keep me in the game?

2️⃣ Are they giving me the advice I need to grow without dying of revenue indigestion?

3️⃣ Have they helped me plan my exit?



Be real with yourself.

If you answered “no” to all three…
you’re playing with fire. 🔥 

Agency work is tough as it is.

Get the right advisor in your corner.


There is a light at the end of this tunnel.

It’s up to you whether it’s
blue sunny skies ☀️ 
or a train 🚂 

Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA

Owen McGrann

The bite of Big Law mobilized for good | Entrepreneur & Troublemaker | Startup Sherpa | Estates Maven

"Yeah, and who the hell are you?"

I'm Batm…Er – hi, I'm Owen. I help small businesses (and the people who run them) navigate legal stuff without feeling like they've accidentally wandered into a Kafka novel. I'm technically a lawyer, yes, but I got out of Biglaw before the molting was complete—before I started talking in passive voice and billing people for my own confusion.

So, I run a law firm. I know. That's not the kind of sentence that usually gets people excited. But hear me out.

I started Seed Counsel because, somewhere along the way, I realized that most law firms are...well, they're kind of the worst. They charge by the minute, they act like they're doing you a favor, and they treat "being a human being" as a sign of weakness. It's like going to a haunted house where every room has another invoice in it.

I didn't want to be that guy. So I became this guy instead.

I work with startups and early-stage businesses and most of my time goes toward helping business owners feel less alone. I give advice without dressing it up in Latin words. I explain things like a person. I don't bill by the hour, because time is imaginary. And I meet on Zoom so you never have to put on pants with buttons.

I used to work at Very Serious Law Firms™. The kind where people talk about "synergies" and bill clients just for thinking about their names. I left when I realized the business of law had stopped being about helping people and started being about winning at bonuses.

Now? Now I try to do things differently.

I live in Pittsburgh. I'm married to a woman much smarter than me. We had two Airedales; now we have one, who's either a genius or just very committed to the bit. I used to be pretty good at guitar but get worse every year. I read too much. I've nearly died a few times, which isn't even a joke, and probably explains why I care so much about doing something that matters and not wasting time on nonsense.

Also: I write novels. And essays. I run a Substack where I talk about law, business, literature, music, politics, and my occasional existential spirals. It's all part of the same project: making sense of this weird, beautiful mess of a world and maybe, just maybe, helping a few people along the way.

If you're building something, protecting something, or just tired of wondering whether lawyers are a real species or just a trick of capitalism—let's talk.

Founder & Resident Troublemaker

Seed Counsel by McGrannLAW LLC is a firm dedicated to working with startups, early-stage, and small businesses exclusively.

Although technically a law firm, I have made damned sure Seed Counsel doesn't do business like any firm you've worked with before. With an offering of three levels of subscriptions and flat fee packages, your startup has access to an experienced startup attorney without any of those heartstopping surprise invoices.

I've designed the operations of the business to align and partner with our customers' businesses, allowing us to empower true startups and to embed with established startups and small businesses to provide ongoing, consistent counsel.

Just imagine an attorney who understands your business, can sit in on executive meanings and competently discuss product lines (while understanding the politics of the team), and understands that, "No, we can't do that" is a last resort rather than an opening pitch.

Let's not allow ourselves fall into the complacency of "here we go again..."

Eyes open. This is happening. Now.

“Insubordinate, even if usually correct” | Troublemaker & Gentleman

This one has been brewing for a while. Came pouring out this afternoon. Not many photos. Lots of text. I hope you'll read.

We’re into the new year, so everyone is focused on goals and learning and growth. 

All good. Respect the hustle. 

But it is so easy to fool ourselves into thinking there’s a right way or an answer—and if we’d just plan harder or think better, we’d find the one and truth path to all our little hearts desire. 

Don’t set yourself up to be the fool. 

There’s no right way. There is no answer. 

You’re on your own, kid. (Thank god.)

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Starting 2026 fresh for Accountability Friday. Partially because I can’t be bothered to go look up the last list of goals I posted and partially because I have been thinking about what this is for in the first place. 

So, a brief word about why I find this exercise useful for me: I’m good at setting long-term goals and then floating from one thing in front of me to the next, then being shocked that the big goal due date has arrived without me having done any work on it. 

(This is one of the problems with EOS. Having 90 days to complete a rock enables—you might say incentivizes—delay. You have another three months to do it! Then with two weeks left, lots of panic as four rocks remain to complete and they’re completed half-assed to meet deadline.)

Anyway. I began using Accountability Friday as a way to focus me on short-term goals that align with long-term projects, with the needed (for me) public accountability to those short term goals. Lately, I’ve been just making some shit up on Friday morning to get a post out. 

So, moving forward, I’m going to try to be more consistent about tying these weekly goals to the larger projects that are core to what I’m hoping to do in 2026, or more simply, Q1.

With that throat clearing, my goals for this week:

📬 Finalize the mostly-finished first tranche of agent queries for Pennhollow, to be sent out 1/27 and 1/28. (Anyone know Bill Clegg, PJ Mark, or Julie Barer? 😅 kidding, not kidding)
👨🏼‍💻 Actually shut down work for next week’s annual planning retreat
🌱 Get new Seed Counsel website launched, as McGrannLAW is subsumed into the Seed Counsel brand. 
📚 Have some books to read to ensure comps I’m using in queries are strictly accurate

Friends! You survived the holidays. We’ve made it through 2025. 2026 is off to a…hell…of a start. How does life find you as we barrel back into normal patterns? How come your projects? What new projects do you have?

Kant famously wrote, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, nothing straight was ever made.”

And yet. 

And yet we fail to see the loveliness of those imperfections. 

And yet we fail to remember that “utopia” literally means “nowhere.”

And yet we get into feral moods where we feel compelled to tear down cultures and institutions because they are not perfect. 

And yet we fall for charletons who promise only they can fix it. 

With the same crooked timber out of which nothing straight can be built.

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The Battle

Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA

Owen McGrann

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taplio

The Battle

Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA

Owen McGrann

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Owen McGrann's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreOwen McGrann's LinkedIn Performance