Introduction
Meet Milk & Honey PR and Founder Kirsty Leighton
On a recent episode of “Behind the Workflow,” our Enterprise Business Consultant Robbie Perris sat down with Kirsty Leighton, founder of Milk & Honey PR. Kirsty’s agency began with a clear mission: Create a different kind of agency where everyone’s voice is heard and the focus is on working with companies “doing good.” Eight years on, Milk & Honey has grown from a solo endeavour in the UK to a 54-strong, multi-award-winning, B Corp-certified team spanning London, New York, Munich, and Singapore.
For agencies and growing businesses grappling with how to maintain quality and culture while scaling, this conversation is packed with real-world wisdom about digital transformation, process improvement, and leveraging the right digital workflow platform, in this case, monday.com CRM, to support sustainable growth.
The Growth Story – From One Person to a Global Team
Building an Agency on Values and Best Practice
Kirsty’s background in communications, alongside a strong foundation in ISO 9001, drove a desire to build scalable processes and a culture of best practice from day one. Rather than chase rapid expansion, Milk & Honey PR focused on growing well, embedding systems early to protect both client experience and company culture.
To benchmark their infrastructure, they looked to external frameworks and accreditations, joining the PRCA, becoming a B Corp, and being accredited by investors and people. Each step was about ensuring their systems were robust, flexible, and values-led.
Scaling with Purpose, Not Just Speed
As Milk & Honey expanded internationally, their approach was always methodical: build strong foundations first, then scale with precision. Processes weren’t an afterthought; they were at the heart of growth, preventing fragmentation and enabling seamless collaboration across borders.
Digital Transformation at the Core
Early Tech Stacks: From Spreadsheets to Microsoft Suite
Like many startups, Milk & Honey PR began with spreadsheets: flexible, accessible, but ultimately difficult to scale. Pain points quickly emerged: lack of visibility, duplicated efforts, and over-reliance on individuals’ memory or siloed knowledge.
As teams and client portfolios grew, so too did the need for consistency and transparent operations. The agency leaned on Microsoft Suite and added QuickBooks as their accountancy backbone, ensuring resilience as they expanded.
The Tipping Point for Change
Despite these tools, one area lagged behind: CRM. Milk & Honey was “late to CRM evolution,” only introducing monday.com CRM within the last year. Until then, client and sales tracking still relied heavily on spreadsheets, which led to the familiar issues of data disconnected from action.
The Journey to monday.com CRM
Pain Points of Scaling with Spreadsheets
Managing a growing, international client base on spreadsheets became unsustainable. The lack of a single source of truth and connected workflows hampered visibility and accountability. Recognising these bottlenecks forced the team to reconsider their toolkit.
What Milk & Honey Looked For In a CRM
Kirsty describes their requirements for a digital workflow platform with four main parts:
- Ease of Use: The tool needed to be intuitive for all users, regardless of technical background, and integrate seamlessly with other solutions.
- Compliance: As a B Corp operating internationally, the system needed to support GDPR alignment and strong data security in every jurisdiction.
- Scalable and Modular: With a vision for ongoing growth, they wanted a solution adaptable enough to evolve in step with the business, adopting features as needed, one territory at a time.
- Integrations: Full connectivity with Microsoft tools, Slack, reporting dashboards, and more was non-negotiable.
monday.com met all these requirements, offering not just a CRM but a flexible platform that could support project management, client service, and people management alongside new business workflows.
Involving the Team in the CRM Decision
Importantly, Milk & Honey PR didn’t force a solution from the top down. True to their values-led culture, they formed a self-appointed, cross-functional team to “sprint” on the CRM rollout, solving the challenge in a focused four-to-six week period. This team scoped requirements, explored the market, and made concrete recommendations, securing buy-in and business case approval from all levels.
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Results & Impact of Adopting monday.com
Gaining Visibility and Efficiency
The impact of monday.com CRM was immediate and positive. Instead of relying on scattered spreadsheets, teams could now:
- Check dashboards for deal pipelines, conversion times, stage progress, and action owners
- Visualise data through accessible charts
- Benchmark progress across sectors and geographies, learning from performance insights company-wide
What once required advanced, often inaccessible reporting in Excel, monday.com made routine and collaborative.
Empowering Team Collaboration and Learning
With transparent, up-to-date information available to everyone, accountability improved, and team learning accelerated. As Kirsty put it: “You either win or you learn, we never lose.” The platform created a culture of sharing insights without pitting teams against each other.
Reducing Admin, Enabling Creativity
Perhaps most importantly, monday.com reduced the administrative burden across the business. The result? Teams spent less time on process and more on the creative, high-impact work that defines their agency. As Kirsty summarised, “Nobody got into PR and marketing to do admin,” and monday.com enabled people to focus on what they do best, while still providing them with the insights and data needed to be effective.
Advice for Other Growing Businesses
When to Invest in New Systems
Kirsty’s top tip for other founders: “Don’t wait until you’re overwhelmed to invest in your systems.” Embedding smart, flexible processes early makes growth more resilient and gives everyone time to adapt.
How to Ensure CRM Adoption Succeeds
Get your people involved from the beginning. Milk & Honey PR’s successful monday.com rollout was due in large part to its team-driven approach, removing barriers to change and ensuring adoption felt like a collective choice rather than another item on the to-do list.
Small Steps, Big Impact
Digital transformation doesn’t have to be a huge, costly event. Start with your biggest bottlenecks, then expand. Monday.com’s modular, scalable platform allowed Milk & Honey PR to grow at their own pace, testing, learning, and adding features where they had the greatest need.
What’s Next for Milk & Honey PR and monday.com?
Expanding Adoption Internationally
Having seen strong results in the UK, Milk & Honey PR plans to roll out monday.com CRM to teams across their international offices, helping every region realise the same benefits of visibility and efficiency.
Deepening Automation and Use Cases
There’s also plenty of opportunity ahead: integrating more automation, refining processes even further, and harnessing new features as the agency continues to evolve. The ultimate goal? Concentrate on areas of expertise, reduce admin to an absolute minimum, and share insights more effectively.
Conclusion: Key Takeaways for Agencies Ready to Scale
Kirsty Leighton’s story is a masterclass in intentional, values-led agency growth and a testament to how the right digital workflow platform can support both culture and commercial success. Her advice is clear: invest in scalable systems before you’re in crisis, involve your team in the process, and look for a platform, like monday.com, that can grow and adapt with you.
Ready to take the next step in your digital workflow journey? At Omnitas, we help ambitious companies like yours design and implement a digital workflow platform that drive sustainable growth. Book a free discovery call with our consultants to explore if monday.com is the right fit for your business.
