SPEAKER_01 0:00

But your people are your product and people are complex and you can't control that. I'd always said to Jack, when you've had enough of the nightclubs, you should start a social agency called the Social Shepherd.

SPEAKER_02 0:10

I believe co-founders are great thing, but when it's like matched up in life as well, there's a bigger purpose to what we're working towards.

SPEAKER_03 0:17

You've gone from two to 60 plus people in the last six years. If you start a social media agency, you'll probably see us number one or two. You're defined as a social agency, but there's a huge element of creative into it. Every single social agency needs a huge how have you managed to work with multi-billion dollar companies now?

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Your job as you know it will not stand in a year to two years' time.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

What is the long-term vision? Are you building to ride the way forever, and or are you working towards an exit at some point? Cool. Sorry. Jack? Welcome to Agency Giants. Thank you. Thanks for having us. So congratulations on getting married last year. It took me some time, yeah. It did.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

A very long time.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

Yeah, six years of running the business.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

And ten years together.

SPEAKER_03 1:11

Well, there we go. So you were four years together before you even started the company.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Yeah, I'll buy that. Yeah. We spent we met whenever I was 19 and we started the agency when I was 23.

SPEAKER_03 1:20

What was the catalyst to you starting a business together?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Oh, I mean, that's a horse.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Well, do you want to go into it?

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Go on then. So I yeah, I had um an events business before. I think you did a similar thing in nightclubs. Um I did I ran a uh a freshest bar crawl in 25 cities um through sort of like 2013 to 2017. So our first few clients were actually a number of the nightclubs and bars. As a part the the sort of I guess I was a freelancer back then when we first started and I transitioned from the nightclub stuff. Zoe was working in uh two agencies in Bristol.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Um not at the same time, just to clarify it.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

Um and then so I sort of had the that initial grounding from the social side from selling tickets, you know, building hype, anticipation um through that, and then Zoe's more oh a two-year agency background from there that she had.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

And I had always said to Jack when he was doing the event stuff, um, he knew social better. And I and I'd spent, you know, a couple years now working with like digital marketing professionals in agencies, and I worked in a new business role. But because they knew what Jack did, I would consistently get inform like requests from the tech team, like, Oh, can you show me how to upload a CSV to Facebook ads managers? Like, we need we've sold this into like this huge automotive brand, but we don't know how to do it type thing. And I was like, What is going on? So I'd always said to Jack, when you've had enough of the nightclubs, you should start a social agency called the Social Shepherd because of your last name and it works really well. So then when he was like, I'm 25, I've had enough, get me out of these clubs. Um, and he was like, I'm gonna do it, and I was like, No, I'm really jealous, I want to do it. And then it was coming to the end of I had a six-month probation at the second agency job I was working at, and it was coming to the end of that. And I knew that I was gonna pass it, but then I was gonna be on a three-month notice period, which is a really long notice period for a junior role. But um, I remember being like, I'm I have to quit. So I I literally just quit one day and was like, I don't really care what happens. You were a bit like, no, don't quit until we have more clients. Um, and I don't I think back then it was just like my youth and naivety, like I don't think I'd necessarily be that rash uh at this age. Um, but yeah, and then we just kind of started from there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:33

Amazing. Was it challenging working together as transitioning from partners to business partners?

SPEAKER_02 3:40

I think genuinely it's been the most powerful thing that we've had um as business partners, if I look at it from that perspective. Um, because we're working towards one goal. You know, there's no disagreements about where our future is, where we're heading, what we want to achieve. Um and I I I believe co-founders are a great thing anyway, but when it's like matched up in life as well, I think there's there's a bigger purpose to what we're working towards and everything else like that. So I think it's only really helped us. Um and I guess on this flip side, from like co-founders, we have very different skill sets in what we bring to it as well.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

I think for us it's it's aided the business in the sense that um if if one of us is working at the weekend, the other one's working at the weekend. So it's like we've because we've been doing it together, and I think owning a business can be quite lonely in some ways, but we've because we've done it together, it's helped us push through those difficult times a little bit better. I mean, I'm not gonna lie, like it, you know, we we've maybe had a handful of arguments through the process of, you know, where one person maybe feels like they're giving more or or vice versa at certain points in time, but that's always gonna happen. Um and I think to be honest, like we've grown a really good rhythm and have been for the last couple of years. Like it takes you a little bit of time. But as Jack said, and our team always say they're like Jack and I are like night and day in terms of our personality. Um so people kind of know, oh, that's a Jack thing, that's a Zoe thing, and they and it it works quite well there. But I always say, like, I wouldn't I wouldn't want to own an agency on my own. I think that would just terrify me.

SPEAKER_03 5:16

A lot of the bigger guys do have business partners. It's like most of the guys that I know have got a partner because it is a it's a stressful business model dealing with people every day, not just clients, but team and and all the complexities of that. And if not, you just said end up venting to senior management and then killing them around, and you know, you're down the pan. But you two obviously have these polarizing skill sets from day one. Were you working? How long was it just you two? And what were you doing inside of the company? How long does it take to then be like, shit, we need to bring people in?

SPEAKER_01 5:46

For the first 18 months, it was just the two of us, and I think I'd never actually worked in social before. Like I loved social and I always wanted to, um, but I hadn't. I'd worked in a new business team and then as a strategic planner at an independent media agency. So I had to build up my skill set quite a lot. Um, so for the first 18 months, it was just the two of us. I think we brought in uh Martin, who was our first ever finance manager, m maybe after like the first year actually.

SPEAKER_02 6:12

But he was on a um He was in bookkeeping.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

He was doing bookkeeping for us on a part-time basis. Um but our proper first employee was Izzy, who actually left the business and came back. So she's still with us today. Um but after 18 months. And I think we when we look at our um trajectory of growth, it's a moment that we started making that hiring decision that we just shot up straight away. Um and I think like some people might say we should have made that decision quicker to hire someone. We could have done, but I don't think we would have been as prepared to train, as prepared to um handle what we were gonna need to do if we'd done it any earlier. I think that the first 18 months are quite important for us, and we were able to think about, you know, when we first did it, we were like, well, we could just be freelancers and we could travel and that would be a lovely life. Um, but we got to sort of the six, seven month mark, and we were like, no, we actually really want to build something of value, like we we really want to go on this journey together. So it gave us that time to to figure it out. But to answer your question in short, it took 18 months.

SPEAKER_03 7:16

Was it a well, I mean, first of all, what position can you remember financially you were in on on that at the point of hiring someone?

SPEAKER_02 7:24

We were at about £12k pounds a month, 12 to 14k a month. Yeah. Um, so not like anything crazy, and we could certainly continue servicing what we were already doing as a pair. Um yeah, we kind of took our time with it, but I think it was definitely the best thing I do. I know and when I speak to sort of um young agency founders and stuff, like one of my things is as soon as you can try and hire and build a team, um, that will give you the m the momentum, the motivation to continue pushing on. Yeah. I know it's the most daunting thing, but like it is so worthwhile.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

But I also think, like, as Jack said, it's such a huge responsibility that I think some people take too lightly, maybe in terms of supporting someone, supporting a household. So it is a it is a decision that needs to be taken really carefully. And equally, we were sat at that sort of 12 to 14 mark when we started bringing people in to do more of the doing. Naturally, it meant that we could focus on making what we could offer a better, a better like I remember looking at one of our first proposals. It was like 800 pounds a month to do someone's email, build their website, like do everything, which is ridiculous, and yeah, not something we do now, but we needed that time to do that.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

On a Word doc.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Yeah, it's awful, horrific.

SPEAKER_03 8:39

Still got it somewhere. Yeah, that was even there for memory. That's nice. Yeah, I mean my first client was less than that, I'm sure. And so you were offering like a full stack from from day one, you're kind of doing everything?

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Well, we were supposed to we were social, but like naturally, as you're taking on small businesses and they have needs and stuff, they're like, Oh, you could could you do our email for us? Could you do this? And you kind of were in that fight mode, so you're kind of taking on everything that you can to get revenue in the door. Um so yeah, we we don't do that anymore.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

I would say quite quickly after that, though, it did really focus into social overall, but more so I guess organic, unpaid was the sort of core focuses.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

But I will say that that time period of doing a bit more than that was also really good for us because I think we now have a very good understanding of like well, maybe it's slightly outdated now, but like the back end of Shopify sites, like how we would look at that data, um, more DTC skill sets than you might traditionally see in in more of a creative social media agency. And it has served us really, really well. Like I think from a strategic perspective, when we're speaking with clients, we're able to really tailor because we know more than just the skill set that we sell.

SPEAKER_03 9:47

When you talk about social, we're talking about uh initially, I suppose, running the organic socials on behalf of businesses. Um, that's um, at least from my experience, sort of the smaller businesses, quite a low-ticket service. How have you managed to evolve through you know the client caliber over time? Um, because you have worked with you know multi-billion dollar companies now, um, which is of course a gradual process. But yeah, I think lots of people hear organic social, at least newer agencies, and think, oh, incredibly time-intensive, very low ticket. Um, so how did you pave that early on?

SPEAKER_02 10:23

That's a good question.

SPEAKER_03 10:24

It is time, it's definitely time intensive.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Um and doesn't get the respect that it deserves either. And I think like as an industry, we've kind of done that to ourselves because you do have people that will say, Oh, well, manage all of your socials for 800 pounds a month. But actually, whenever the skill that you know we may not have within our team can quite often get disregarded. So, okay, yes, someone could manage it for 800 pounds a month. We probably are gonna cost at least 10 times that, to be entirely honest. But there is gonna be much more strategic thinking and a and a better plethora of skills there.

SPEAKER_02 10:57

But I think it's it's really come from the early days, that constant sort of like building of confidence um and sort of going, you know, in the early days we'd go, okay, the next person we speak to, our price is just gonna rise. Price are gonna rise every every you know, time we spoke to uh a new or won a new client thereafter. And I think it was just sort of a continuous you know evolution of increasing our prices, increasing our skill set, um, building our brand as an agency, develop you know who we are and what we can offer so that when we do have those bigger clients that come in, we actually have the capability to do so and then stand on our own two feet in terms of being able to proudly say this is how much it is to do exactly what you need.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Um Yeah, and I think over time, like all of our leads, we don't do any outbound as an agency. We never really have. It's all been inbound.

SPEAKER_03 11:50

From day one?

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Uh d at the very start, we used like some um intermediary site, intermediary sites.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

It's a site called Bark.com. Have you been? So we that was very late.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

We use that a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

You know those type of sites to begin with. Did a bit of that, but then we transitioned um to we didn't have a website at that stage. Then we built a website or just a landing page. Then I was like, right, Google Ads makes sense, high-intent users searching social media agency, Facebook Ads Agency, worked out customer acquisition costs for that, um, proved that to be successful, and then I was like kind of fed up of giving Google my money here. Um so then we lent into the SEO side of things um to a place now where we've got our site up to being sort of 80,000 a month in organic traffic. That's good. Um, which is not bad for an agency site, and a lot of that is commercial intent. Um you know, people searching for if you search social media agency, you'll probably see us number one or two. Um so that obviously gives a lot us a lot of leads per day, and it's is now a case of truly vetting, truly making sure we're speaking to the right people, not just everyone and anyone.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

So it so it all came, like all of the leads have come organically, particularly I we had a bit of a at a pivotal point when we brought on um uh one of the largest hotel chains in the UK, basically. And I remember get you sending me the thing, and I was in a taxi bag from a client meeting or something, and I was like, oh my god, if we nail this, like send me to heaven, like, oh my god. And it was like it was only like a 15k a month or something budget, and we were so excited. And this was this is only like three four years ago now, three or three.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Yeah, three to four years ago.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Um but we we pitched it, won it, and I and I think back then we were probably one of the smallest agencies that that that brand was speaking to. Um and then it's it's honestly just kind of gone on like that. And then, you know, we had a team strategy day the other the other um month, and I was like, you know, our 15k retainers used to be our biggest retainers, not even that long ago, but now we're up into like your 35 and your 40 retainers, not always, and I think there is absolutely a place, and we do very much still work with some small to medium-sized businesses, and the main thing for us is can the team get behind it and can they get excited by the product that they're gonna be selling? Um, but yeah, there has been a been a huge shift, and we're very lucky for Jack's SEO skills that it's all been in bind.

SPEAKER_03 14:20

Yeah, it's amazing. But you must have so many leads that you have to, you know, just let go. Because it's like early on, as you described, your you know, I always describe it as opportunity is scarce in the early days, and so you're saying yes to everything, and you're like, you come on and give it to me, and then opportunity is suddenly abundant, you've got all this opportunity, and you have to really painfully say no to everything. Yeah. Um, and so what are you doing do you have a system for that? Are you referring to smaller agencies? Do you have like a low ticket that you get people onto? We probably should.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

But um no, um, we don't refer them to anyone. Um they just fall into the bis a bit. We do sometimes. We do sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Yeah, we've got like a couple in independent smaller agencies in Bath where our headquarters is that we will we will pass leads on to.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Um yeah, a lot of it just goes somewhere else, I guess, really. Um But no, it's yeah, there's it's like hundreds a month. Um so yeah, we can definitely pick and choose and be selective. And I think that's really the the the challenge now is focusing our attention and energy on the right uh opportunities. It's easy to get carried away, like you said. Um but it's it's and then sometimes it can get very overwhelming in terms of the velocity and volume of pitches that we're doing, and not you know, just me and Zoe that are doing them. There's multiple multiple team members across the team that get involved in pitches and they're laborious. We go into, we spend a lot of time on pitches. Um it's not like a you don't we don't have like a standardized product or service that we're selling, it's very bespoke. We you know put a lot of time into creative um as a part of that. It's you know some serious hours and energy that goes into it.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

And you can't go for everything because like Jack said, you know, in the early days it was very much Jack and I owned the new business process and and we did a lot of that. But now there'll be pitches that will go out the door that okay, we'll one of us will probably have an eyeball on, but we've got a very talented team that are much better at a lot of things than we are. So they're managing that. So we've got to be really careful of their capacity and what their availability is. Um and and they're all generally really, really excited about new business, but we can't we can't say yes to everything. But I will say that you know, there'll be certain things, you know, we had like a really exciting lead come in. Um, and that the team's busy, like they're a busy team at the minute. They're like, we can't say no to that. So I think it's really good that we have a team behind us that they're like, if an opportunity comes in, they have so much pride and integrity as marketers themselves that they'll be like, I'm not gonna turn down the opportunity to work on that, no matter how busy I am.

SPEAKER_03 16:55

What's the what's the the criteria of that? How are you defining like, okay, this person is this company is worth us reaching out to or going for tender ones in some cases?

SPEAKER_02 17:05

I guess it's sometimes one, it you know, it doesn't always have to be a sexy, exciting brand. I think what gets us going is the challenge that or the transformation that they're looking to go on. Um obviously the sexy and cool brands uh you know get you excited when you first see it as well. But sometimes it might be, you know, um a brand that on paper looks quite boring, but actually when you start asking the questions and getting behind it, there's so much that can you know, creativity that can actually be applied to that. And that's almost the challenge to the team is like, how can we take this boring brand and make it the best in its industry?

SPEAKER_01 17:45

Yeah, like we recently pitched for um an internet privacy brand. Sounds really boring on paper, but the pitch was insane. Like the ideas the team came up with, I was like, I was blown away with, and they absolutely smashed it. Um, but yeah, it's I I I do genuinely believe that the unsexy brands are the funnest. And it the biggest thing is appetite to be balled by the brand team themselves. Um I I don't think on social you can really get the couple, you you can get to a point, but if you're if your client isn't willing to have their boundaries pushed a little bit, you're kind of gonna be stuck in this same cycle and there's gonna be a limit to what social can do for you. Um and you know, we quite often have situations where we'll be speaking to maybe a social team or a digital team, and they're like, we this is what we want to be doing, but we're gonna have to warm the rest of the business up to this. And that's a journey we've taken a lot of brands on, and we're still on those journeys with them. Um, so I I would say it's like a yes, the sexy brand name. But if you get a sexy brand name and they're not willing to do anything different, or they just want you to just plug into what they're currently doing and just be the hands behind it, that's that's gonna be fun for a while, but the team still wanna be challenged and they want to be consistently getting better. So a lot of it actually has to do with the chemistry of the brand and those initial intro calls. So for us to decide to take a lead, which of which we get hundreds a month, to intro call that Jack or Jacob, who's in our new business call, might take. Um, it will tend to be around the brand. Um, if we feel like they're gonna have the budget to be able to work with us, and we might have some questions that we email over, so and then they'll take that intro call. But if the vibes aren't there in the intro call and we don't think that we're gonna be able to do a strong enough job for it, then we won't take it forward because it's just not worth doing and it's a waste of everyone's time.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

Because of the amount of time spent per pitch, we have to be going in like we can make a difference and we've got a good chance of winning that. If we don't get those feelings, then we're setting ourselves up for failure, to be fair.

SPEAKER_03 19:44

It sounds to me like you're I mean you're defined as a s as a social agency, but like it there's a huge element of creative into the you're really a you know creative, the performance creative agency to an extent.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Well, I guess what what we do is like we creative is kind of at the center of the business because everything needs creative, and then we've got our organic social and we've got our paid social side of it. And I think actually every single social agency needs a huge creative selection. Without content, there's nothing to post on organic social, so it's it's literally the heart of it from a paid perspective as well. I think that's that is a bit of a USP for us as a social agency because our paid media team are true trained performance marketers, like they get more heavier into the technical detail than you would traditionally find a social agency, and we also offer paid search, so we're managing everyone's sort of full digital media mix within reason there. Um, but with the recent changes on Meta and other platforms, creative is just coming becoming so much bigger. So all of your targeting is becoming automated, that's kind of gonna go away, and the role of a traditional media buyer won't exist in a couple years' time. So the creative is your targeting. So we've kind of recognized that creative is where we need to be growing, both from that brand awareness perspective and that D2C performance perspective as well. So that we have made a huge investment in that over the last 12 months. And I think creativity and how we plug AI into the business, as well as that lower funnel of commerce activity, those are kind of our three pillars of focus at the minute.

SPEAKER_03 21:19

Nice. Do you see? I mean, it sounds like you are very you're like social first, paid second in a and because lots of people would it's together, it's intertwined. Because lots of agencies are, I mean, many agencies are let's say they're paid media first and foremost, and like kind of social comes secondary and so on, and it's like almost an afterthought. Um, you've worked with a lot of clients, and and so how much of an impact do you see that or as not as an individual entity but as a direct impact on paid? How much of an impact do you see good socials having? Because we've we've always gone around this debate many times of like you could have a great ad account with great creative in it, and it's ran properly and it'll perform. Incredibly well, and it doesn't actually matter if there's not a crazy amount of content on the page and the strategy isn't as well thought out. Now, I would imagine you would disagree with that statement. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

I think it can work in the early days of having a brand. Like if you're starting, cash is going to be tight, paid is going to be where you're going to be able to pick up the lowest hanging fruit to then be able to reinvest in brand marketing. However, in the early days, actually paid was probably our largest service offering for a couple of years because that was the easiest thing to sell into people because they were able to attribute the most business experience.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

When our clients are smaller as well. I think that ties up to that.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

But then we grew all of those clients to a certain point, significantly grew them through paid. And we saw that the brands that didn't invest in organic social just hit a point with just diminishing, well not diminishing return, but they hit a ceiling with what they could do with paid and they couldn't scale it any further. And there is a lot to say, like you know, we know for a fact that well, they used to at least they change their mind all the time, but meta penalizes you if you're not posting consistent content and you haven't got um uh trust signals. Yes, trust signals, that's the right term. Um and I think the way the algorithms have changed from back then as well. So if we look at something like TikTok, the reach that you can get on organic social isn't dependent on how much brand awareness you have or how many followers you have. It's going, you know, you could get a page that has zero or two followers that could get a video that goes to two million. So I th I don't necessarily know if if we're really looking at it in the right way by kind of splitting them out separately. I I do feel like they are much more conjoint. And I think we've got a couple of really large brands that we work with where we manage both their paid and organic. And and yes, they're different skill sets. You know, to understand how to optimize an organic account for social is a very different, it is more creative. Not to say that paid isn't creative, but it's it's a different type of creative. You've got to be tapping into culture, you've got to be able to read SEO signals, you need to know what you're doing there. And on the paid side of things, it's a more technical role. You know, you have a better understanding of D2C principles. But the content that works in organic is also the content that performs the best from a paid perspective. And there is a complete um correlation between the two of them. So I think they they can be looked at separately, but they win better together.

SPEAKER_04 24:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Um but I do think it also depends what stage of business you're at and the type of brand that you're talking to. Like some brands will come to us and we'll go, the full service social, and we'll go, you need paid. Or we'll go, you need paid, but you need a lot of organic up here first, because we're not gonna be able to make an impact there if we haven't got it there. So it depends on the business, what the audience is gonna be looking at when you're getting into it, and you're kind of pairing those two together, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 24:49

That makes absolute sense. So as far as the paid, the relationship between, as you see it, the relationship between organic and paid. The paid is really what's mainly driving sales, but the organic is driving brand, community retention, yeah, uh, trust. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

And it can be and search as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Like search on TikTok is a huge thing now. So or organic drives demand. Paid can obviously drive demand as well. But from um organic can also capture demand. And particularly when we look at things like TikTok shop and other commerce channels, we can see organic actually making a difference in a lot of clients' bottom line because of that. And even for clients that don't have a TikTok shop or haven't got the ability to check out on social, we can see the impact that that's having on the traffic to site and the revenue that it's bringing when organic is done properly.

SPEAKER_02 25:37

And even retail sales like footfaller stores and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 25:40

Um Do you find that if you're offering social in absence of paid, uh, it's hard to then quantify results because it's then normally based on vanity metrics like views and followers and so on?

SPEAKER_02 25:52

Yeah, we're definitely reporting in a different way. And I think it it has to be just understood by us and the brand that this is not like a a pure revenue generating exercise. Um but often I guess when we're doing organic social for brands, they probably have they'll have a media agency that are running their paid as well. So we would still connect with their media agency to understand how they're performing, how what content we can work with them on as well.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

And I think because because the team are all trained performance marketers as well, even if we're just looking at organic, they'll be looking at things like um brand search volumes, for example, to look at the impact that we're having there. We might do some uplift studies to see what's happening. Um dependent on the price point of the item, like we've got a large fashion retailer that we work with, and we can actually directly attribute a significant amount of revenue that's coming from organic social, TikTok in particular, actually. So we're getting to a different place now. And we actually um have been doing a lot of work internally, and it and it's really exciting for us to be in social because we're now getting to a place where organic can actually be seen as a revenue driver, and I think it has kind of been undervalued for a very long time. For good reason, we haven't had access to the data to be able to prove it, and the tools and products haven't been in place from the platforms. We're moving into a new space now, which is what we're finding really exciting.

SPEAKER_03 27:15

Yeah. It do you work with many clients that are like founder-led as far as content is concerned, or is it mainly No, but we use we do a lot where it's like there's like the employee-generated content.

SPEAKER_02 27:28

So we'll go into store or into their site and actually build almost like a creator pool of their employees that are happy and confident being in front of camera for TikTok, for example, and then we'll we'll ideate, brief, and and and shoot the content alongside their team. But there's none that we have that are like founder on.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

And I I don't know if like I think well, it it would depend on the type of founder, but I think now that you've kind of got the rise of these um, you know, TikTok first brands where founders are very comfortable on camera and stuff, they're probably gonna have their social team in-house because that's part of their skill set natively. And I think this next, this last wave of founders that we've had because they are digitally native from just how they've grown up with social in front of them. I don't, I don't know if necessarily I think an agency like ours can absolutely help them, but I think it's more so the larger brands that don't have that face in front of them. We have to create a personality for people to be able to connect with. And that's kind of what we do from an organic perspective. Um, and we we actually have a process that we take brands through whenever we onboard them is we have to define your personality. And that's like, you know, thinking about creating a person. And every time the team is deciding should they hop on a trend, how should they respond to something, they're going, okay, well, what would this person do? And that really helps you refine down on what you should be doing. And that goes as far to say what TV shows would they be watching, what social channels would they be on? And I think when bigger brands maybe don't have that face that can represent them do that, that's whenever they really nail it and whenever you see the best social work happening.

SPEAKER_03 29:03

Nice, love that. So you've got a whole your entire company is optimized around social and paid. There's no secondary services like web and and so on. It's just amazing. But and then in doing that, then you've gone from you know two to sixty plus people in the last six years?

SPEAKER_00 29:20

Uh we're by just about 79. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:24

Which is quite, I mean, it's incredibly impressive, optimized around those two core services. Because it's not uncommon to hear 60 team members in a full stack agency who are, you know, juggling around a f a number of different departments. Um, how has that process been? Because that's that's a lot of hires in a very small amount of time. Did you screw anything up along the way? Have you been pretty blessed in that process?

SPEAKER_00 29:45

We've messed up so much stuff. Like we've made so many mistakes.

SPEAKER_03 29:49

It's okay to make sure.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, do you learn from it? Um but lots of like, I mean, great, loads of great decisions, yeah, and and some and poor ones. I think I think you said, Zoe, um, people are the hardest part of running an agency. Um, we are the service we deliver, how everyone collaborates together, it is the hardest part. And for us, this is our first time doing this right. So obviously had the events business before, but it wasn't really managing people. Um, this is our first time, and I think we we've learned a lot through the process of doing that as well.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Yeah, I think um look like there's been a couple sort of key learnings for us, and like one for me has been like this the structure of the business is so important. I was like, that feels like such a stupid thing to say now, but looking back at it, like we got to a point where I think at one point I was managing somewhere between like 12 to 15 direct reports, which is just not possible.

SPEAKER_04 30:45

It's a full-time job.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Exactly. And I think I calculated that like 80% of my time should be spent in month in one-to-ones, um, which is is not great. But I think then and I think most founder-led agencies are gonna get to a point like that. And it tends to be around the 15 to 20 person mark that you do that because you haven't built up enough revenue to be able to start bringing in non-billable people necessarily outside of maybe a finance team. So the weight of the management of the business does fall on the founders at that point. Um, and when we got to that point, that was pretty exhausting. And also, there's only you want to be giving as much as you can to the team members that you're managing, and and you can't if you're just exhausted all the time. Um, so so then we made decisions and started investing. We brought in Kelly, who's our amazing people and internal ops director. Um, and and another challenge that we really had was a creative side of things, actually. That was very difficult.

SPEAKER_02 31:41

It's a it's a tricky one, I think, especially in social, because more senior creatives have come from a more traditional group. And obviously, the rise of social creatives, people have only been doing it for six, eight years properly. Um, so actually finding someone, the right person to be able to lead that team, nurture them, and actually understand, truly understand social creative was really tricky. Yeah. Luckily, we've got there now, and she's uh Mel is absolutely fantastic, but it that was one of the hardest roles, like a creative director.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

And we we messed, we we did met, like we we brought some people in, and like I I think like because we were we were quite young, like I'm about to turn 30. We started this whenever I was 23. Jack's a couple years older than me, but not very much. We got into this habit where we would interview people that had these amazing um I've worked at the BBC, they've worked at all these huge brands and stuff, and we would kind of be like, oh my god, like think of what they could bring to our business. But no, a big name on a CV and years of experience behind you doesn't necessarily mean that you're gonna get it. And we learned that lesson quite hard, and so our interview process is quite rigorous now at this point. Um, but we we did try to bring in a creative director like more times than I would like to admit, and have had to be very honest with the team about the struggles that we've been through trying to find those people and also had their very honest feedback, and we've always had a very transparent nature of is are people the right fit? Like, is this gonna happen? Is this gonna work for us? Um, because people need to feel like they can learn from people in the business as well. Um, so yeah, we've we've messed up a lot of things, but like I think you're gonna do that. I think that's okay.

SPEAKER_03 33:23

I mean, it's I would be shocked if you had read about it. Um have you self-hired or have you always gone through agents to as a recruitment agent to provide roles?

SPEAKER_02 33:35

97% self-hired. Um we've used recruitment agencies in moments of sheer shit. We need someone in ASAP. Uh we're struggling. Um, so we have used, we've probably used them like on five occasions or something like that. Yeah. Um, but for the most part, LinkedIn um is where we found everyone. I've not used anywhere else other than LinkedIn job posts. I'm so glad that you said that.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

I'm a huge advocate of LinkedIn jobs. So people normally say like, all LinkedIn jobs, and they're like, Oh no, we get everyone from there, literally.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

I don't even know where to go to find anyone.

SPEAKER_03 34:10

So so then in now refining your process over a long time, um, selfishly, what is how what's your post LinkedIn process? Like, where are you sending traffic through to? And then what does that look like? Is it a you know a form they fill in? Is it two interviews that wants the system?

SPEAKER_01 34:25

Well, we've we've briefly had a bit of a debate about this internally. So, like the process is that the the jobs will go out on LinkedIn, we will then have an intake of applicants. We normally have quite a high intake of applicants. Um where we can, we actually get the heads of departments to manage the process, but when they're really busy, Jack will take on that process of shortlisting everyone down. Then there'll be an intro call. Traditionally, actually, Jack takes a lot of the intro calls to vet people from a cultural perspective, make sure that they are. I think being at the level that they're applying for as well, like I don't know what's going on. Like everyone just coming out of uni seems to want to just apply for like a director role. And I don't I don't know what's going on. Um, but we're we're pretty good at at kind of spotting that. Um and then once that vetting has happened, we'll have a short list of normally between like three to five people. After after intro call one, interview one technically.

SPEAKER_02 35:21

Yeah, max five, I would say. I don't wanna don't wanna overflow the team with too many second stage interviews as well. I think it's being targeted in that so yeah, typically three, I would say, from like a second stage interview where it's you know a task presented back to the team, further in-depth QA. And depending on the seniority, if they're more of a senior um hire, then there'd be a third stage, which should be more of like again, almost like a secondary intro call, but with some of the wider team. Yeah. Um, or you know, go for coffee, lunch, whatever that might be as well.

SPEAKER_03 35:54

Why did you make the decision to retain that first interview yourself? Because that must be a huge amount of your time that you're spending doing that.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

Yeah, so there was a time where we got the LinkedIn uh recruiter tool for like a six-month period, which allowed it to be a lot more enabled the the department leads to be able to manage that. But I think we're still at a stage where I think it's really important. I know who everyone that's come, what you know, one of us knows who's who's coming through the business. Um you know, we've got a culture that we have to uphold. I think that's you know, a big reason why people, you know, stay with us and like to work at the Social Shepherd is you know, the number one thing they say is like the people that are in this organization is what I love so much about being here. Um so making sure that you know, whilst it's really important to have variety and diversity in who you're bringing in, they still need to have similar degree of morals and and and way about how they you know go about life and stuff like that. So once it's past that point, I at least know and can give the team set the team up with this the final stage interviews to give the decision in their hands. Um, but at least I know you know I'm yeah, whoever these you pick from the selection here, I'm happy. And now I just now it's for you guys to know who's gonna best fit and serve the clients that they're gonna be a part of and fit in within your team. Makes perfect sense.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

And I think when so sometimes the heads of departments do step in and take those intro calls, but actually from a management perspective, sometimes it makes like they're specialists in their skills, their time is probably better spent managing their existing team and spending time with clients. So it kind of does make sense for us to manage that intro and like really focus their attention on the interview process.

SPEAKER_02 37:42

And I still know plenty about the service that you know, the delivery of what they'd be working on. So I can ask them technical questions on that each area. Obviously, the team that then is at the second stage will really dig into that, but at least know and I'm confident in their ability on that specific, you know, whether it's paid, for example, or organic. I know that they're not just straight up lying or like and sometimes we have to go again.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

Like sometimes, you know, you do a batch of seconds and the team will go, they're not strong enough. They'll be like, Jack, go again, come on, bring me someone better. And that it is so important. I think I think one of the other mistakes we've maybe made at times is we haven't stuck to our guns with who we need to hire or the standards, and now we really do. Um don't don't always rush to don't rush a hire because six months down the line you're gonna be in a really awkward situation with a probation, for example, or it's just it's just not worth it. And I know that's really tricky when you're running an agency and resources tight and you need people in for projects, but you would you would genuinely be better investing in some level of freelance resource whilst you take your time with that hiring process and make the right decision because it's not worth it.

SPEAKER_02 38:54

That's definitely something that we've learned as well and taken forward with us at the moment is you know, in the early years we won one, one, one, one everything that we were pitching for, and the level of the calibre of client that we're now pitching for is so competitive. You don't just win 100% of your pitches. Unfortunately, I'd love to love to say that we do. Um and before we would sort of hire in anticipation, you know, we have a um a capac, you know, forecasting capacity looking at you know scheduled and booked work, whether, you know, from a retainer's perspective plus projects, then we'd also look at our new bizipine and forecast out, you know, percentage of that figure that's gone to pitch, or we then forecast into that to understand where we need that additional resource, um, what pod within each department it may sit as well. Whereas so before we would actually go and hire, before I'd we'd signed that contract. Um, you know, but the economy's more challenging now. Things are taking longer than they ever have to sign a client. You might get a yes, but then you only start the work two months later because you know, loads of various factors. So we've definitely become more cautious in terms of the speed of which we people bring people in on. Um just so we're not like screwing ourselves over from a profitability perspective, or people twiddling thumbs for a few months as well.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

It's also different because we opened our US office just over a year ago, and they have just a completely different hiring economy over there. So people start within two weeks of you giving them a job offer, which does not happen here in the UK unless someone isn't has unfortunately been made redundant or laid off and and they're out of work at that time period. So we've had to like learn different ways of managing things. But I think definitely in the early days, whenever you get that initial spike um where you're probably cheaper than a lot of people you're going after, um our win rate was so high, we couldn't keep up with it. We were chasing our tails consistently, and so the hiring decisions maybe weren't as weren't as careful in some areas as they could have been, and now we are very, very strict about who we are.

SPEAKER_03 41:02

Fine. And you've but you've just made the decision very early on in the business that you don't want to be a virtual agency. You you want to be in person. Um what was the talk me through the conversation at that point? And then I just want to unpack that a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 41:16

I don't think we knew anything different, to be fair, from the early stage. Um we were working in sort of like a co-working space to begin with, got a like a private office. Uh, you know, think of we work, but but then you move to a private area within private office within that space. Um so we didn't really know anything different, and that was before, just before COVID really happened. I think that was the big transition for a lot of agencies going more remote um than once they were. So yeah, I think for my it's we were before COVID five days a week in the office. Um it was a small team, but we were five days a week, and then ever since that it was just sort of remained at that three days in, two days at home. But I think we were speaking about this earlier, because our you know, average age um in the agency is like 27, 28. People really value that social side of it and um you know, building connections, friendships within that, collaborating in person. So we definitely believe in that hybrid model. I know it has its downsides, it costs more. Uh, absolutely, you don't get potentially the talent that are at elsewhere as well. So it definitely has its downsides, but there's lots of upsides to it as well.

SPEAKER_01 42:28

Well, I also think from like a personal progression perspective, particularly for junior team members, like whenever I first started in the industry, again, it was pre-COVID, so I was in the office five days a week, and I just soaked up everything around me like a little sponge, um, like literally like a fly on the wall with any every single conversation I could be on. And I I I do think that without being in office one, I don't think you soak up as much knowledge because you are kind of working in silos a little bit, and there are other ways to do it, but I I do believe in that. And I also think you get to a point in your career where you're gonna need to um level up and start leading the business or driving a vision on behalf of a board if you're gonna be a member of an SLT. And it's really hard to get to that point if people can't see how you interact, how you lead a team physically in person. Um so I I think it's just a tricky one. And we've also got to bear in mind that we do still have in-person client meetings. So we need to be able to build up that those softer skills with our team, that they know how to do that. Um, and we actually see like such a huge discrepancy. It was really clear for a while of the the team members that maybe studied partly in COVID and um they didn't have the same soft skills as people going into entry level roles had before that point.

SPEAKER_03 43:48

That's interesting. You you mentioned in-person client meetings. Is that why you had or just opened like that physical presence up in the US as well?

SPEAKER_00 43:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

So the US was an interesting one. Um firstly we we were able to go there because one of our uh European clients um they wanted us over in the US. But we also had a couple of other things going on at the same time and we had team members who were moving over there by for personal needs. Um but because we shoot a lot of content on site with clients, um, particularly in New York for quite a few of them, we needed to have a team in New York. They need somewhere to keep their kit. When you're working on creative, as I'm sure a lot of creatives listen to this will know, it is so much easier to get a quick edit done in person than it is virtually. Um and it just matched what we were doing in the UK as well. Um, so it was important. And actually, quite a lot of candidates now come through and they want you to have a physical office space because they find it quite draining or quite lonely being at home for someone. Don't get me wrong, they want it hybrid, like they don't want to be in the office five days a week, but they're happy that there is an office for them to go to.

SPEAKER_03 44:55

Where do you find that balance with the hybrid side? Like, what's the what's the rule? What's the the allocation?

SPEAKER_02 45:00

Yeah, uh, three days in, two days at home. Um, we have we have some people that come in five days. Me and Zoe go in five days. Um, but to be fair, we do live three minutes' walk to the office. Uh we've kind of set up um, but yeah, no, I think that yeah, that three, two split. But like for much larger network agencies, uh, we've seen WPP recently doing a return to office mandate five days a week or four days a week, and there's yeah, not people aren't happy with that. So funny.

SPEAKER_01 45:30

Have you seen all the memes from it?

SPEAKER_02 45:31

No.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

Oh my goodness, like people like they overstocked the fridge with milk, and people like sat at ping pong tables for their dads. Like, no, if you don't follow, there's an account on Instagram called digital chat advertising. Yeah, you must follow it. It's so interesting. Just an agency.

SPEAKER_03 45:48

Fine. Nice. The um it's always the challenge, isn't it? When you've given people the freedom to to work from home, it's different if they've always had the opportunity to work from home. Do you find um I mean presumably no, but have you found in the past a discrepancy between what is achieved in office versus not?

SPEAKER_02 46:06

In terms of actual like quality of work and volume. Output, volume, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

I don't think so, actually.

SPEAKER_02 46:12

I mean, we've Because the only time we've been fully remote is when it was like COVID. And the business was so much smaller then.

SPEAKER_01 46:18

Like it was it was a bit it was a bit of B.

SPEAKER_02 46:21

Um I think I mean some people definitely would say that they do more at home and they've got the you know the quietness of their own space. The the office can get noisy, you know, um, less distraction at home. So I think there is an element of of that. Um, but it's hard to say, we've not measured it to a place where we could say for sure.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

I don't I don't yeah, I'm I'm not sure on that. The interesting one is we we do an annual staff survey every single year, and and we always ask the team, well, what do you think about the physical office environment? And you get some people that are like, our office is it's it's really pleasant, there's a nice buzz around it, there's different places you can go to to focus if you want to. Um and you know, you've got some people who are like, um, we want it really quiet, we want to be able to focus, this is what we want. And then we've got other people that are like, give me the vibes, like, where's the Friday music? Where's the beers? And like we have all of that at different times and stuff, but I think it's just really interesting because finding one space that's gonna please everyone, and particularly in our agency where you've got a team over TikToking in the corner, like being crazy, and then you've got paid media team members, not all of which, but some of which are very much like analytical, maybe slightly more introverted, heads down in some ways. Like finding a space that everyone is gonna be happy with is gonna be tricky. Um I think we've got a pretty good mix though.

SPEAKER_03 47:43

Yeah, we can fairly balance. Would you say that's the part of the business you enjoy the most is is is the team and the culture that you've created there?

SPEAKER_01 47:52

It's the part we enjoy the most and the part that is the hardest at the same time. Um I was actually just speaking to someone about this, and an agency is hard, and it because and this is really tacky to say, but it is the truth, your people are your product at the end of the day, unless you're an agency with some type of bespoke tech model, which to be honest, most of the time when agencies have bespoke tech models, it's just a form of regurgitation or something that not all the time, but quite often. Um, but but your people are your product, and people are complex and you can't control that. And if someone is unhappy, whether that's in work, outside of work, or whatever, or they're not getting enough rest, for example, they're not going to be able to do their best work, and therefore your product isn't performing in such an optimized way. So that's a really difficult thing to get your head around because that's almost a view of people that's very objective and doesn't take into consideration how unique everyone is. And I think that's one thing that we are very good at as a business, is we know our team well, and we really encourage honesty and we're able to really bring an empathetic side to it. And and sometimes too much we have been criticized in the past before, but I think I think it is really important to keep that weight of empathy because people are people at the end of the day, and we need to be kind to them. Um it's the part that is the most rewarding watching people grow in their career and seeing someone go from an exec up to a director. The best, the best. And like we have a management structure in place, so I don't get to do all the promotions anymore. They get to be told by their directors as they should be. Um, but that's the funnest part of it and the most rewarding part. And then the other side of it is people are naturally complex and they're gonna come with challenges. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:35

What do your roles look like now? You start. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 49:41

It's been a bit of a shake up. So I I initially kind of started as MD and then did that for the first four or five years, four, four and a half years of the business. Um then I full transparently did become and I I don't like the use of this term because it gets misused often, but did get quite burnt out from that, just just because the business had been through so many different stages and I'd gone through like high flux of line management building, structuring a team with multiple levers and levels underneath it. And it really took me away from the craft. And like I that's one thing I'm so passionate about social and what we do, and I love getting involved in it. Sometimes the teams are like, go away and get out of it, but I I love it. So then I was like, I want to move on to something new. So then I I I hate the title, but I'm technically the CEO on paper. Um, but my role, I'm very heavily involved in actually delivering of pitches and strategic work. Um Jack handles more of the upper part of that. Um, and then I also um our managing director for the UK and our managing partner for the US report into me as well. So I help them focus on operational elements of the business, and then we'll decide: do we need to invest in a service offering? Do we need to change the way we're currently doing something and then and work with them to kind of roll that out across the business?

SPEAKER_02 51:01

And then for the first four year, four or five years when Zoe's that managing director, I was sort of like new biz leads, growth leads. So both doing the marketing side, so generating the leads and then also having the intro, taking calls through to pitch as well. Then when Zoe um realized she needed to step away from sort of that managing director uh role, I then went in there for a year, but very much realised it wasn't what gets me going. So I've very much come back to new business and marketing again, which is sort of you know, I love sales, I love growth, I love seeing weirdly just numbers on a screen go up, right? So um, yeah, that's what gets me going and um just really, you know, and it's always I also love hearing from different brands the challenges they're going through and then how we can actually best support them through that as well. And you know, having those like business level conversations of is it just social? Is that one component? How what is the deeper part of this challenge that we can really help you with? Um obviously social is going to play a part of that, but understanding that is something I love. Just speaking to like business owners, you know, head of marketing, uh CMOs, whatever they might their title might be, I think is yeah, a great part of the role.

SPEAKER_01 52:16

And it was so interesting because we've our um FD Sarah has stepped into the MD role now, which is amazing, and and she's perfect for that role. But I hope you don't mind me saying this. Um, but when Jack was in the MD role, obviously he was doing a great job of it and everything, but you kind of lost your sparkle a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 52:35

And like people in the office will be like, is Jack okay? Because Jack's like known in the office as like everyone's like, Jack is just so nice, like he's always just like good vibes, like as we all are.

SPEAKER_01 52:45

And like, not that you weren't good vibes, but it you get so excited by a new business, and he did lose a bit of that sparkle. And then as soon as he goes back on new business, everyone's like, whoa, Jack's back.

SPEAKER_03 52:57

Nice, nice. It must be really hard getting the right people into a managing director role. And do you have have those positions been like incubated through the company, or did you hire any of the man of the MDs?

SPEAKER_01 53:10

Uh so the the the only external MD we had is Sarah, who we currently have in place. That role has been shared between Jack and I thus far. And it's a really interesting story because Sarah was actually the first FD at the first ever agency I worked at when I was 21. So my first recollection of working with Sarah was I was in like my finance induction or something. And she was like, Okay, so do you want to opt in to the the pet the company pension scheme or something like that? And I was like, Sarah, what's a pension scheme? Um, but but yeah, uh she was she was there, and then what basically happened was we were struggling to find a finance director that had worked in agencies before and really understood how to work in a creative space, and we and we really wanted someone to come in that was gonna be embedded into the business and that finance wasn't gonna be sat in a silo, which it often is. Um so I I said to Jack, I was like, Well, let me reach out to Sarah. I worked with her for a year and a half. Obviously, she was very senior and I was very junior at that time, and maybe she knows someone that she could help that could help us with it. So I reached out to her on LinkedIn and she was like, Oh my goodness, I've been following you. Like, you're doing amazing. I'd love to have a call. So we had a call with her, and I was really nervous for the call. And she was like, I mean, I could send some people your way, but I would also really like to do it myself. And I was like, Oh, I'm I feel privileged. Um, so anyway, Sarah came and interviewed, she came into the FD role, and then she also came and sat on our board. Um, and and through that, and and I guess finance and operations often tend to go hand in hand, particularly in smaller agencies, because you haven't got the headroom to have two separate entities for it. So then she slowly took on our operations team, and then we were kind of sat down thinking about it. Jack was a bit like, oh, I'm not really vibing with this role type thing. And we were just like, like Sarah, what what Jack and I need from someone in this role you have, and she was like, I would I would love to do it. Um, so that's how that was kind of born, and it was it wasn't necessarily that we raised Sarah through the ranks because she came in as an FD, like a super senior role within the business, but it was that we saw something in her and then and then moved her into that role because it felt like the right place for her. It was something that she wanted to do. But we have done a lot of raising other people through the ranks to more senior roles. So Katie, who is our um senior social media director, leads our organic social team and our content team actually. She started in the business as a social manager, social media manager four years ago, and she's leveled up four different times throughout that time period. Same with Joey. He came in as a senior when he came out.

SPEAKER_02 55:47

Potentially.

SPEAKER_01 55:48

Yeah, he came in as a senior, I get my I think it might have been a paid media manager, senior paid media manager or a paid media manager, and he is a senior paid media director leading our paid team. So I think where we've been so young and have been afforded the very privileged opportunity to have titles that we wouldn't be able to back then wouldn't have necessarily been able to get because we didn't have the qualifications on paper for them. We f felt it's really important for us to afford our teams the same opportunity in that.

SPEAKER_03 56:19

That's awesome. I and I imagine it's so amazing seeing someone that joins the company that to get into a role like that.

SPEAKER_02 56:26

Bought in and they yeah, they really take a lot of pride of that as well.

SPEAKER_01 56:29

You do have to be really careful though not to overpromote because you what you don't want is sometimes people think that and I've done it before where you think that you can you can what is it, bite off more than you can chew? Is that the saying?

SPEAKER_02 56:40

Um or just slapping a title on someone that's like head off, uh head of paid young agency.

SPEAKER_03 56:48

Yeah, they gotta be.

SPEAKER_01 56:49

We heard ahead of paid media in the early days. We did hire a head of paid media, and there wasn't anyone in the paid media team. So who were they the head of?

SPEAKER_03 56:58

Nice. Yeah, you have got it's I mean, it sounds like you've got a I d I don't know if you'd associate like this, but it sounds like you're at least moving towards a very corporate structure in the business. Yeah. Um how do you feel about that?

SPEAKER_00 57:10

It's needed.

SPEAKER_02 57:12

I think it's all about the next stage of growth. And that's what you know is sort of required to be able to do that. We could run the business very differently if we yeah wanted it to be like a lifestyle business, if we wanted to like really squeeze it from like a profitability perspective. Um, there'll be many agencies out there that are more profitable than us at a smaller size, but they're gonna if they try and push past where they where they are, they're just gonna break. Um having that structure, you know, from our for our people, for our finance, for our operations and delivery, if we don't have that, if we want to get to, which we do want to get to sort of like a hundred people headcount, it will just fall apart and it'll be a whole bigger mess to sort of catch up on. So it's really an investment for us of the long term. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:02

Yeah. And I and I think sometimes like we have fallen into the past in the trap, and it's really easy to get into this where you make sh decisions that are going to be positive in the short term, but they're gonna cause you pain in the long term. And I think we're really focused on long-term gains.

SPEAKER_03 58:16

What is the long-term vision? Like, are you building to you know ride the wave forever and just see how big you can take, social shepherd, or are you you know working towards an exit at some point?

SPEAKER_02 58:28

It's it's a really tricky question because we do love what we do so much. Um, we do speak to people that are interested in buying us and inquiring us, but for me it's more about building the relationship with them. So if one day that is something we want to explore, um, then I have those sort of connections built up and know who's sort of in the market to do so. Um, but for us, like you know, the US side of it is just over 12 months in. We there's so much opportunity there for us to continue growing. And I guess what would we do if we didn't have this? Yeah. Um, that's always like the question, I think. Sometimes, you know, I'm 32, you're almost 30, Zoe. Sorry. Um, but you know, like we're not gonna just yeah, same for all of us, we're not just gonna retire and uh it sounds nice, I think, in the chaos and the moment of like, God, I'm stressed, I'm anxious, what's happening here? I can't sleep. But then so retirement sounds great at that moment, doesn't it? But then when you look at it, we're all driven people, we want to build things and and grow things, so it would ultimately be the thing that I would then want to then create again has to be so much more than what I have now, which can be hard to be. Yeah, um, so I think even if you know, uh with with agencies, it's very rare that anyone goes, sells, and then steps away day one. There's always an earn-out um clause and an exit plan, which go on two, three years anyway. Um, so even if you were to do that and go into a larger group, then we could still be very much running the social shepherd. Because I our thought is you know, we want to be, you know, the best, you know, the largest, most respected social agency. Um, obviously in the UK and US right now, but is their opportunity later down the road more globally?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:20

Yeah, I I think that's it. Like we want to go back to the like promise that we've made ourselves at that like seven-month mark when we had that conversation. We want to build something of true value. And I believe that like we have done that with what we have, but I just feel like social as like a marketing medium has like so much more potential than we've even necessarily grown to at this point in time. So whether that's us doing that just purely the social shepherd with organic growth, whether that's partnering with someone else, we don't know what that looks like. It's very much dependent on like what is the right, the right sort of point and uh and stuff. But for now, our our focus is really just to continue growing, continue being profitable, which we always have done.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:00

Creating opportunities, yeah. But social, like we say this some all the time, it's like social is like now everything. That's how people consume everything.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:09

If like a brand doesn't have it's not even social thirds, it's just social needs to be the core of your strategy. Like, yes, you a hundred percent, there's so many opportunities for things off the back of that, but even just creative cues for email, creative cues for everything can come off as social because social is a representative of the culture that the everyday person wants to see. It's it's their thoughts and their feelings. So I think that's what's so exciting for us because even if it's we're not hands-on doing the doing, there's so much data that we have access to that we can help people drive really exciting campaigns and and initiatives with.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:48

You mentioned earlier that you think that AI is gonna make like media buying obsolete and so on, um, and which means you've you've given that a lot of thought and and and are obviously so bullish on social because and I agree, we're only going to that place, like brand is gonna be more important than ever, and story especially. Um what are your predictions for where the industry is gonna go in that sense?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:13

Um I I'm I'm not I'm not it's not just I guess marketing overall, but I think it it takes over pretty much everything in every industry um to some description. I think social though, more specifically on the creative side, I feel it is more protected than maybe the media buying side. You know, we go into store, shoot content with um the employees of that business to create that personality and voice. I don't see how we're gonna necessarily replicate that with AI and that experience, but um yeah, media buying definitely getting much more automated. Um, they're gonna become creative strategists, not media buyers, ultimately. Um, there's tools out there now that we're playing around with that do bulk ad uploads for Facebook. So it's taking that tedious and painful process of building campaigns that you might have launching 30 ads at a time in different countries that can you know speed up that process as well. So not only AI from a meeting buying perspective, but other tools that are automating stuff. So I think like head count, you know, there's gonna be, but there's with it, there's gonna be more expectation from clients. I don't, you know, I think AI is gonna make them expect more output for the same money. Do they try and do clients actually pay uh agencies less because they still only want that volume of output that they've always been receiving and now because you're AI enabled, do they expect you now to charge them less? Or do they do the prices stay similar, but the expectation of volume of content probably more that one, especially for paid where you know Meta are saying you need creative depth, creative volume in your ad account. You know, AI is definitely going to help that. So I think that's where it goes tricky.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:05

I think so. I mean, we we um did our old company strategy day in February and March for the US, and we said to the team, like really honestly, we were like, the your jobs as you know it will not stand in a year to two years' time. Two years if we're lucky. And so and it wasn't to scare them, you know, it was it was to say like we all have to get really comfortable with change. Um and I I think the thing with AI is it will it will create jobs that we can't even conceive of in our mind at this point in time. Um so I think it will reduce the need for headcount in in terms of um headcount to revenue sort of ratio that we've traditionally known because some of the budget that you would have traditionally invested there, you'll invest in tech, for example. Um but I I and I do agree with Jack, I think it will be more of a more of a creative role. But I think what you'll need is the best thinkers and the best creative strategists. Uh I don't and this is like such a weird statement to say, but I there's no like room for mediocracy. And like you will you will want the best possible people, the best thinkers. So I guess my my bigger um query around is what does it do to entry-level roles where people are still learning those skill sets? Um and we actually filmed a podcast ourselves about this yesterday because I was like, well, the curriculums of what people get taught at like universities and schools are gonna completely change because they're not gonna need to know how to do the doing, they're just gonna need to know how to do the thinking. So then what does that look like? There's just so many unknowns, but I think in the short term, it's we're really focused on getting the team building really concrete strategies, even from those more junior olds where they are traditionally more executionally focused.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:50

It's a really interesting thing to think about, and I and I completely agree with everything you've said, but I I even think like going a step beyond that. I think like ultimately we will be in a place. Where even the thinking side of things, because of the assets that you've built over years and years and the knowledge that you have, like you just upload all the campaigns that you've ever had into its own engine and you create your own. And I ultimately think that the best agencies will end up rolling themselves into some kind of AI model themselves initially, and then eventually there'll be big scale roll-ups, and then at some point everything will just be ran by a free, you know, centralized businesses. Um but but in the in the in the short term, like a company like yours is in such a I mean, you must be exhilarated about the prospect of AI because you're in s it's your ticket to accelerate and and really cut out the whole bottom end of the market, which you probably don't concern yourself with because you're getting you know a couple of hundred inbound leads a month, but it's uh it's an exciting thing to explore.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:47

Yeah. I guess the thing is when you s uh from an AI perspective, when you say you can upload your best ad creatives um and then it will create you more. It certainly will, but I guess the where the original thinking come from is whether AI I'm sure it will be.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:03

Eventually it would be sophisticated enough to you would afford to to to examine the four patterns across the whole thing. Because you've got it would just be volume of data, wouldn't it, really, at that.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:13

And so much data points and so yeah, a click-through rate, a hold rate, you know, how far people watched certain understands the cues of that. It's already like obviously transcribing a lot of the creative analysis tools for Facebook ads, uh transcribing a UGC and then rewriting it as if you're that brand, understanding the you know, the visual identity of it, the hook, the offer, breaking all of those data points down, and then you're able to plug that in and create fresh assets from it.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:43

Aaron Powell The thing that I find interesting about it is though, is like I kind of liken it to best practice. If everyone follows best practice, then everyone is at the same level because best practice tells everyone to do the same thing. There is gonna have to be a level of either people have more sophisticated AI, one agency has this over another agency, or they have better thinking, better skill set, better people, because if everyone just uses AI in the exact same way, then we're all gonna be on the same level.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:10

Well, it'll come down to brand in that sense. And I think that you know you have seen obviously personal brand be so powerful the last few years and only going to continue to go that way. If everyone's delivering which in in some cases largely are, there's thousands of paid agencies out there, thousands of social agencies out there. You know, we absolutely believe we do things better than other social agencies and things like that, but the service is largely the the same. It's it's your ability, your brand, your your the way you communicate, how you do things, and you know, how you sell that in. So like personal brands are going to become more important, I think, as agency founders, um, and how you communicate your value versus someone else. Because if we're all doing the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:59

Do you think we're at a danger of over reliance on AI and therefore loss of individual thought and that creativity that makes you so good?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:07

Yes, 100%. And and we we um we're doing some work on this internally with our team because I think we've seen some people maybe take AI for like internal emails and stuff like that, and you can spot it from a mile off, and we're like, guys, okay, come on, let's talk about how we do this here. And and it's yes, 100%. And and I think it's about training people like the right way to think about it. Um because then it does the opposite of what's it's what we're intending it to do.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:35

Which is okay for internal team right now, but then it's gonna make hiring a difficult thing in the future.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:40

Well, it it does, and and it um that but that's not even just like to our industry, that's like universities. Like, how does how does anyone know that anything is authentic at this point in time?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:51

Well, I'm hiring a new copywriter at the moment, and uh and I'm deliberately hiring that role as it's uh it's copywriter slash creative strategist, and it's like this is for the copywriter that as a copywriter and now knows that AI is really a big problem for them. So I want them at that mid-transitional stage. But my god, the trial tasks we're getting through, like most things are just like just not even like rehashed AI, just like AI all the way through. It's like copy the it's like they've put uploaded our Instagram page, they've got the tonality and the and the formatting, right? But then it's just like it's flashing it out, and that's a problem.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:23

We actually um so we've recently brought in a copywriter into the business, but they're a copywriter by trade, naturally a sort of script writer, but more of a creative, and that's been the best mix for we've seen such a level up of our creative since we brought him into the business. Um, so I think I think you're completely right in the sense of it has to be that creative thinking first, like that's where the value is in. Um, but yeah, it's you can spot AI stuff a mile away. And I also interviewed someone in the US the other week, and I was like, this deck is entirely like there's not a single piece of original copy in this.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:59

It's like lost its soul. Yeah. Soul, heart.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:02

And also like M-dashes, I know that they are grammatically correct, but they are a telltale.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:07

Yeah, agree. Yeah, there are some very fundamental formatting things. That's exactly yeah, yeah, 100%. Um, so bringing it out of the business and coming back to you guys for a minute, work-life balance must be quite a difficult thing for you guys, or is it?

SPEAKER_00 1:11:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:25

I would say it's pretty much I feel it was like six days a week on, one day a week off, I would say. Um even though on on the weekends, both days we might, you know, on a Sunday we might do a few out, like a few hours. Um, but you're you're already thinking, aren't you? You wake up on Sunday, you're already thinking of the next day. So you're in that mindset of sort of work. Saturday's definitely my most of our downtime. Yeah. And I think, yeah, Monday to Friday is just full on from the moment you wake up till you go to sleep at 10 o'clock, basically.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:56

So it's been a bit of a journey for all of us.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:00

Does does it does that matter? I don't know. I don't think it does in a minute.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:04

So you you're working in the day in the office of coming home and still continuing to work at night? Quite often, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:12

Both.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:13

Um because I think like when we first started, there was like three years where like we genuinely did not stop working. And I actually don't have the stamina. Do that anymore. Like, I need my AR sleep. I don't I'm cranky if I'm not on, I've already been patient enough. Like, I need it. Um, so really for us, we prioritize work and sleep. Like those are two, well, for me anyway. Um, those are those are the most important things. And like I would say that we have definitely this is why it's so good we've done it together, because we have sacrifice is the wrong word because we've chosen to do it and we love what we've done, but we haven't understanding basically. We yeah, we we haven't done some of the things people would have traditionally done in their early 20s whenever we started the the agency and stuff. We have prioritized work, but we're happy that we've done that, like we're reaping the rewards of that. Yeah, we're not sad to say that we've done it in a way, and we're so privileged to be able to do this anyway. Um, but I think there was like a point, I think, because last year when we we got engaged and planned a wedding in 12 months, that I think that was the only time that I ever got really frustrated at the business because it was so busy, we had so much going on, it's quite a stressful period to go through. And we had tried to take the week before the wedding off, and I ended up working for more than half of that week because we had so much stuff going on, and I was really frustrated that I didn't feel like I had been able to enjoy that period of planning a wedding because of the business.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:38

And I think that's the first time I was like, Oh, this this is a bit frustrating, but that passes quickly, and and there's been and you wouldn't have been able to have that wedding that you had as well if we didn't have the business, you know, that enabled us to pay for it. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:54

So, like work-life balance, uh to me personally, I don't think they're separate. And like, I I talk to the team about this sometimes, and some people disagree with you. I'm like, that's okay. Like, everyone's allowed their own view on what they want their life to be, but I love what I'm doing, therefore it's my life. And like I work when I need to work. Sometimes I have to work more than I necessarily want to, but that not really, actually. It's more than maybe I should because I need to get rest, for example. But it's I don't see them as separate things. Um, to me, it's all combined, and I think to you as well, like it's all combined.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:28

I agree with that. Yeah. How do you deal with confrontation between the two of you when it relates to the business? Do you see eye to eye all the time on business decisions?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:37

There's I would say largely very little confrontation, um, but definitely don't always see eye to eye in that. And I think you know, sometimes, you know, we have somewhat you know separate roles, so you might not s see or speak to each other in the office for the whole day. I'll then say something on the way home and Zoe be like, I need 30 minutes and we can chat about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:00

Yeah, we have to be quite like um because I I for me, whenever I go into the office with the team, I give my soul to like, and when I come out of it, I'm like, I can breathe again. Even if I'm just like sat at my desk, like I'm it's so intense for me. Whereas I feel like you're a bit more balanced in your approach to things.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:17

Yeah, I'm probably like more level through the whole day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:20

Whereas like my energy really goes into those like eight, nine, ten hours that I'm in the office for it. So whenever we come out of it, and then Jack's. I'm like, I've got these ideas, I've got these ideas. I'm like, I'm like, sorry, brain needs to decompress. But we're quite honest with each other about that. And if I do it to you and you're just like, can we not talk about work right now? I really need to like get back into a different mindset because you have to rest. And like your your brain doesn't work, and like over the last couple of years, and you've been through it too, like our cognitive function is so important. Like, if we're not sleeping, like if we're not able to like, our brains aren't working, and everyone kind of knows that feeling of like when you're just you've done too much, your brains work too hard, and you're trying to do something that's really, really important, but your brain, like, sorry, does not compute, like it's not a good place to be in, and therefore you've got to really look after your mental and your physical health in order to be able to do that. We're better protecting our mental health, I would say, than our physical health, but it is really important.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:21

How do you find the balance with physical health? Because working six days a week, every every week is is is a a lot, especially if you're working evenings as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:29

We don't, we're currently in a trial with a gym that we've been to once.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:33

I I I think I was saying this to someone else the other day is just an excuse. Like if you don't go to the gym, you say I'm too too busy, too tired. That's just an excuse, I think. Which don't get me wrong, that's what we say as well to ourselves, right? Um, I think yeah, I've gone through waves of gym six times a week, you know, dialed in, focused, nutrition, everything like that. And then there's like now it's the last thing on my mind as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:03

So it's it's very that like am I connecting a motivation and a goal towards what that is, and if I don't have that in the gym, then do you not worry that in having such large goals in business, which you're undoubtedly gonna achieve much quicker than other people that have similar goals, um, but without a clear endpoint to that goal, because it's finite at the moment, if health isn't the number one priority in your life, then it might never be the priority, and then what's the point in doing the whole business in the first place?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:36

Yeah, fair, very good point.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:38

Yeah, tell me more. Tell me that again. I need some accountability.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:50

No, I mean that is a very, very, very fair point.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:53

Um I think we do have we do have a plan.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:56

It we just don't we we're very the planning could have many different routes to it, and I think we're we're quite fluid in that. So I think we're very focused on like we know what we need to do in order to get ourselves there, and then when the time is right, I don't know. I'm a bit hippie in that sense. I do genuinely feel like everything tends to work out. And then you you know you add you add other layers.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:18

You know, first and foremost, create a a great business. Um think of that as a priority, and then if you do want to exit, then it's the easiest bit, you know, it can be an easy process to go through. If not, you've got a management team structure, you've got the right people in place to to run it for you, and you have a great business that runs by itself. I think there's the options there. But yeah, fitness something we need to pick up on to.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:44

Do you think this is really bugging me?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:47

Away from your personal priorities, uh priorities, because it's just that business is the priority. Do you believe that you can have it all?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:53

No. You have to sacrifice something, and like that's the decision that you make. I I don't I don't uh maybe like if you've got to a point where you've maybe sold something, you're building something else, and you're able to bring in all of the talent that you need to take some of that pressure off you from the top. You're still gonna go through stressful periods. I think for us, you know, I think Jack invested like two grand and started the business and paid that back very quickly. So we're still in that, like we're rolling with it, if that makes sense. And I think it's a tricky thing. Like now we add like another layer onto it, and we don't need to go into it here, but like at some point we will probably want to start a family. What does that look like whenever I'm still very much involved in the business and what need to be after that? So I don't think you can have everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:33

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:34

And I think you always have to sacrifice something, and that's a very conscious decision that you need to make.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:38

Well, and like it's always people say like the you know, the grass is greener type of thing as well. There's always I think as entrepreneurs, there's always something else you want to do or achieve. There's there's always a goal to work towards. So that's probably the it was what keeps us going, but it's also the most frustrating challenging thing about it. Because you you may never achieve what you actually want to achieve.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:59

And it's a bit of like because we do it together as well, we're consistently like we know what we want together for our future. So, like if at one point one of us is like, oh, this is really hard, the other one will like pull us back up to it. So it it yeah, it kind of makes us keep going a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:15

Do you think it's it's it's an unfair unique advantage you to being business partners and life partners? Yeah. 100%.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:23

Um you weren't that quick to answer that, but uh I mean, unfair if you looked at it from a personal perspective, people would say no, because we've had we haven't had we've had a lot of stress in our personal life because of from a business perspective, probably yes. Yeah. Yeah, I'd say that. Yeah, could we have had a better relationship outside of work? Not that it's bad at obviously at all. This is not a uh therapy session, but um yeah, like you know, other people spend more time, more quality time, I guess they could they could argue with their partners. But I guess sometimes we think working together and ideating and coming up with new roots is is quality type.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:04

We have we have a lot of fun, yeah. Like it is really it's really bloody stressful at the same time. Please don't get me wrong, like it's not all rainbows and roses, but running an agency is all running any business is always going to be stressful. Like if it's not stressful, you're probably not doing it right. Um or not not necessarily trying to grow it as quickly, maybe. Like you can you can absolutely have businesses that are maybe easier, have a lesser level of stress if it's more of a lifestyle business from that perspective. And that is absolutely okay. Like one is not better than the other, they just suit different lifestyles and different goals, which again, everyone has different goals.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:40

Um, talking of doing something fun, and it's not being a therapy session, you might need one after this. I want to finish on something fun, I want to do a play a little game of uh Mr. and Mrs. Agency stuff. But in instead of instead of facing uh your backs to each other, I'd like you to both look left and right. And what you're gonna do, so you can look at me for now, is when if you if you're choosing yourself, you know, we understand the game, Mr. Miss, I'm gonna ask you a question and you're gonna choose one or the other. You're either gonna point at yourself or you're going to to point someone at possible. You're gonna have to be quite subtle with the way that we do this. And I'll ask you five questions. I won't give you the uh the answers until we until we finish, and we'll see how well you two understand each other's dynamics and conversation. First of all, who is the better people manager? Who's better at handling tough client conversations? Who comes up with the best ideas?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:56

Probably me.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:59

Who struggles more with shiny object syndrome? Who finds it harder to switch off from like that was a that you were that was a you got one wrong. And that was you there was one disagreement. That was who comes up with the best ideas.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:18

But I think it depends like creatively, me. He's better at like the probably business ideas.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:25

Amazing. Well, sorry, Jack. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for jumping on the story. Cheers, guys.