A Boutique Advisory
Positioning creative firms profitable in competitive markets.
ABOUT MARKO PFANN
Advice from lived experience—not AI
It took losing a succesful business and rebuild myself to fully understand the creative business side and the mental game we are all playing.
Press-Bio: Marko Pfann helps creative studios get out of execution and into the rooms where budgets are decided. He co-founded a broadcast design studio in 2012 that branded 60+ TV stations worldwide and won 20+ awards, then lost it to the model that built it. What he learned turning a 5-figure pitch into a 7-figure mandate became his life's work: 300+ students coached, 100+ studios, agencies and brands advised one-on-one, six taken from low six figures to beyond a million. He is now building Paradiso, a non-profit for the creative industry. He lives with his family in the German mountains.
Download Press-kitt >Hi, I'm Marko Pfann
I know how it feels to do great work, yet fail because I built a my business on the wrong model.
I've co-started a million-dollar studio myself. Then I lost it to the model that built it. Today I keep it lean. I advise creative studios from Munich to Barcelona to Londong to Los Angeles, all from my home in the German mountains.
And I teach founders everything I know about positioning, marketing and sales through my private programme, the Boutique Studio Accelerator.
I've done some cool stuff.
I spent a decade travelling the world as a freelance motion designer. Won 20+ awards. In 2012 I co-founded a broadcast design studio that branded 60+ TV stations worldwide, and grew to a team of 35 at the time I left. I once fired a client at a multi-billion-dollar company, wrote a letter to their second-in-command explaining why we should lead the project instead of their internal team, and got the lead. A 5-figure pitch became a 7-figure mandate to launch a first-of-its-kind TV station globally. From a two-person boutique studio.
One change. Everything flipped.
Since then I've coached 300+ students and advised 100+ studios, agencies and brands one-on-one. Six went from low six figures to beyond a million. One went to eight-figures.
I've been in this industry for over 25+ years and advising for 12. I thrive with studio owners and creative founders who make brilliant work and are done being treated like vendors. I get out of bed in the morning to get creatives into the rooms where the budgets are decided.
You don't have to lose your business like I did to get build it on your terms.
FUN FACTS
I live in a small mountain town in the German Alps, with a beautifully wife, an 11-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy. When I'm not travelling for work, I'm outside.
At twenty I left home for a country I didn't know. Mexico, without a word of Spanish. Pre-social-media — back then internet cafés were a thing. I've been travelling ever since.
Football is the family sport. My father made us take it seriously. And I had some success. Now I coach my son's team, which is harder than any client work I've ever done.
Today I'm building Paradiso.
A non-profit for the creative industry. I co-founded it with Héctor Ayuso and Beatriz Martínez Pazos. It's not an agency, not a school, not another networking conference. It's a room. A place where the people who built this industry get to sit at the same table, without a pitch attached. We run events and workshops across Europe and the US. The industry has spent decades to seperate creatives. Paradiso is how we get them back together.
Paradiso Institute >The tv-stations we served
We gave Marko and the team very little by way of a brief, and even less by way of time to complete the job. The job was done, exceeding our expectations.
Cyba Audi صبا عودة
News Anchor,
UAE
I met Marko at his previous company, which we had hired to do an overall brand review of our platform (and over 50 channels) in Malaysia. — My team and I were very impressed at how Marko seemed to get exactly what we were after right from the start.
Rob Middelton
VP Entertainment, Astro,
Malaysia
Markos attention to detail is only matched by his ability to get to the essence of ideas and organizing the work into a flawless delivery.
Samer Lahoud
Creative Director, TBWA
UAE