Meet Matt Rowlands, the founder of Your Mate Agency. Based in Mallacoota in far East Gippsland, Your Mate Agency is a regional digital agency helping small business owners get found online, present their work professionally, and compete with city agencies without paying city prices. Eighteen months ago, Matt started by building a website for a local property manager. Today the agency works with clients in multiple industries across regional Victoria and southern New South Wales, and is currently working with one of the country’s largest seafood exporters.

Meet Matt

Matt Rowlands runs Your Mate Agency from Mallacoota, on the far eastern edge of Victoria where the bushland meets the sea. The agency is a sole-operator practice serving small business owners across East Gippsland and regional Victoria.

Eighteen months ago, Matt had no agency work experience. He taught himself from scratch and now manages every part of the work himself: websites, Google Business Profile management and search visibility, brand and content, and an increasingly AI-augmented approach to creative production and repetitive business admin. The model is deliberately personal.

“When you ring, I answer the phone. There is no team, no account manager, no escalation path. It is just me, and that’s the whole point.”

About the business

Your Mate Agency’s positioning is deliberately anti-agency. He charges for outcomes, not retainers. And he writes in plain English because most of his clients are first-time agency buyers who have been burned by jargon-heavy proposals from larger metro-based firms and one-and-done website builders.

The agency works exclusively with regional and small-town businesses. Recent results include a Mallacoota motel where search clicks grew 142% over six months and the business now ranks in the top three Google results for every brand keyword. Other current clients include businesses in accommodation, hospitality, trade, property management, real estate, beauty services, and seafood retail across East Gippsland and southern New South Wales.

In the press

Matt also writes a fortnightly column for the Gippsland Weekend, “What The Tech? with Your Mate Matt”, translating practical digital topics into plain English for small business owners across the region.

Working with Many Rivers

Matt was connected with Many Rivers business coach Alex Masut in 2025. What began as a sounding board for navigating the next stage of agency growth has become an ongoing partnership shaping how Your Mate Agency builds, prices, and delivers its services.

“Alex has been the difference between thinking I am growing a business and actually growing one. When you are a sole operator in a regional town, it is easy to confuse activity with progress. Alex has helped me get clear on what I am actually building and who I am building it for.”

That coaching has changed how Matt approaches the work. He is more deliberate about which clients to take on, clearer about how to price work that matters, and starting to plan beyond the next invoice.

Biggest Challenge

“The hardest part of running a one-person agency in a small town is not winning work. It is saying no. You are hungry, you want to help everyone, but the moment you take on the wrong client you cannot deliver for the right ones. Saying no to wrong-fit work has cost me work in the short term. It is also what has let me actually deliver real results for the clients who do say yes.”

Biggest Success

“The single thing I am most proud of so far is what has happened at Scallywags. It is a seafood restaurant here in Mallacoota that opened just over two years ago. They now rank number one on Google for Mallacoota restaurants, averaging a 4.6 star rating. That is the kind of result city agencies charge five figures a month for. We did it on a regional budget.”

Alongside client work, Matt recently ran a five-week Digital Foundations workshop series in Mallacoota with Wilderness Collective, Paynesville Neighbourhood House, and Learn Local. The series produced measurable confidence gains across every attendee and surfaced strong demand for follow-up support. Several attendees are taking up the free one-hour follow-up sessions and Free Digital Health Checks Matt is offering post-series. 

Biggest Change

“Working with Alex has shifted me from doing the work to building the business. For the first year and a half I was just delivering. Heads-down, building sites, fixing problems, taking on too much. The coaching has helped me lift my head, see the bigger pattern, and start building something repeatable, like the workshop series, instead of just billing hours.”

Future Goals

Longer-term, Matt wants to keep developing the Digital Foundations workshop series and find ways to deliver it to more small business owners across Australia. The series is designed to run in person locally or online for broader reach, with the long-term aim of making professional digital skills training accessible to regional and remote business owners who cannot easily travel to capital cities for development opportunities.

“The story I want to tell is that regional business owners can build a serious, professional, high-quality digital presence without paying big-city prices. Regional clients should not have to settle for amateur work just because they are not in Melbourne or Sydney.”

Website and Social Media Links

Get in touch with Matt to learn more:

• Website: yourmateagency.com.au
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/matthew-rowlands
• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: 0478 101 521

At Many Rivers, we’re here to help you take the first step towards building your business.

Find out if you’re eligible for support and start your business journey today.

CLICK HERE to see if Many Rivers is right for you

B0021059