SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you're really interested in building long, long-term wealth, you want to build your share value. When I left school during the summer, I wanted to start a business before I went to uni. Saw a couple of people offering email marketing services, and I just thought I could do a better job than them.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

You've now be gone to over a hundred employees. What do you think is the one thing that most of our agencies get wrong about scaling?

SPEAKER_00 0:20

I think from the get-go, it was like this isn't going to be a small business. In three years, we're going to sell this for $10 million.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Talk about building sales systems. Like, what did that look like for you? Like, what was the main acquisition channel? When we started, after about a year, we got really into it.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

You go from having underground economy now and supergroup. What happens at that point? There's a play to merge all of the companies under one brand name. At the moment, we're seeing the planet as strategic partnerships. What's been your strategy on that side of things? Our favourite strategy, but it's hard to pull off, is to find everyone in our company only does and we still win so many pitches for being deep specialists in one thing.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

What would you say to one of those agencies right now who want to build towards potentially exiting to a company? James, welcome to Agency Giants. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Cool, man. So you founded Underground Ecom whilst in university. What was it that gave you the confidence to start an agency before you had even graduated? What gave you that idea?

SPEAKER_00 1:20

So when I left school in uh thank you for having me. Um when we left, when I left school during the summer, I wanted to start a business before I went to uni. I didn't really want to go to uni. I was only going to uni to, I guess, to get a degree to try and make money. I was doing accounting and finance, which really wasn't my bag, but it was the kind of like I was good at maths at school, so I was like, okay, I'll do that. And then during the summer, I really wanted to start like any business. And I thought over that summer period, if I could get something going when I when I joined uni, then that could be interesting. Um, and I started by looking at e-com brands, you know, Shopify, all of that. Back then there was tons of Facebook groups going, all of that jazz. And I didn't it didn't really fit with my skill sets, but then I started seeing the agency side, people offering services, and I saw a couple of people offering email marketing services, and I just thought I could do a better job than them. Not necessarily in the service because I hadn't done it yet, but in the way they were presenting themselves and they were still getting traction, you know, the way they were posting, the way they were talking about what they were doing. I just thought I could do a much better job. So when I started uni, fresh's year is a great year to actually start a business. It's actually probably the best time to have a go because the the the year doesn't count. Uh the it doesn't count towards your end thing. So it's kind of a free year, and you've got so much extra time. You come out of school where you're I was uh I was nine to five, you know, out of school, all those lessons, and then I had like two seminars a day or something like that, and you don't even have to go to them. So I basically just started looking for clients right from the get-go. It probably took me about three or four weeks to find my first client, which I found through Instagram and Instagram DMing brands. Uh just found one really small fashion drop ship brand. And I said, Can I do your email marketing? I'll do it for free for 30 days. Uh and the guy said, Yeah. So that's that's how I started. That's how I got going on the first business. And I kept it completely stealth. I didn't tell anyone, I didn't tell any of my uni housemates, I didn't want to be like that weird guy or anything like that. So for six, seven, well, until the end of my first year, I kept it completely stealth, didn't tell anyone what I was doing. Uh, and then when I got to the end of the year, I had built it quite a lot by then, and I just told them all I was dropping out. Then they were like, what, you've been doing this for the last year? And I was like, Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

That's amazing. I admire that a lot. What do you think made you keep it stealth? Because so many people in that position, probably me included, actually, definitely me included, would I just I'd be telling everyone in the uni, I'm like, I'm doing this business and I'm starting this thing and I'm going to build it there. So, what made you want to keep it stealth?

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Looking back, I I completely agree. That's and I've had friends who've done other businesses where they start talking about it before they've even done anything. That's the first thing it's like on Instagram. And arguably that is the better way to build a business because you build connections and all of that. For me, I think I was self-conscious about it. I didn't want to be the weird guy starting a business. What now that I'm in the business world and I know loads of cool agency owners, I know loads of people, it's a cool thing to do. And I also think five years on, it's even cooler. Like everyone talking about on TikTok, Instagram, it's a cool thing to be a founder. Back then, it didn't really feel like that, at least in my world. You know, I didn't know anyone else who had been a founder. I knew all these guys online who I'd met online, but they were all like from America, so it just felt completely different. I didn't know anyone my age in the UK who was a founder. So I felt completely alone in it. So I thought, and I was just starting my union, I'm meeting all these guys for the first time. They haven't known me for five years. I don't want to be the guy who's like talking about a business. So I was like, I'm just gonna keep this massively under wraps. And maybe I thought, you know, if it doesn't work, no harm, no foul. I haven't told anyone, I haven't gone and told everyone I'm gonna be the next thing, and it hasn't worked out. So for me, I was like, let's just keep it stealth. I ended up telling one of my housemates because I can't remember why, but like I was literally like people coming into my room and I was like closing my tabs because I was like, I don't want you to see me working on clavier or whatever I was doing. So uh yeah, that that I ended up telling my one housemate about it, and then at the end of the year, I just yeah, I said, I'm not actually coming back to uni anymore. I'm gonna still live with you guys, but I'm not coming back to my degree. I'm not for now.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

How do people react to that?

SPEAKER_00 5:27

They were really shocked, yeah. They're really shocked, and it was cool because we had eight or nine people in our house, so I told all of them, and you know, seven of the eight were like, Oh, that's really cool, and then that's it. And then the eighth person was Jamie, who's my now co-founder, and he was like, Oh, that's so cool. Like, tell me more about it. How are you doing that? And I was like, started showing, and then he was like, Show me more. Like, he was just like mind-blown by it, and he was so interested by it. And then he was really relentless. He was like, I'm gonna start doing this, and he started working on it himself, not even actually with me, but I just let him like to see if he had the grit. He was like, So he started going for it. He wanted to start a business, he wanted to get into it, and then like three months into him doing that, I was like, Okay, now you can you come work for me and we'll kind of run this business together. And then he finished off his second year whilst working with me, and then he dropped dropped out and came full time with us as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

That's so cool. Can you remember what point you were at when you dropped out, like from like a revenue perspective?

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Yeah, so it was a bumpy ride. So yeah, I got that first client, fifty nothing for the first month, paid me $50 for the second month. Wow, and I remember being like, this is sick, and I've got a photo somewhere in my PayPal account, and I was like, that's $50. And I just made $50 online from a random guy. I was like, that is really, really cool. And I've actually never had a job, so that was the first time in my life I've earned money for doing something. Um, just from being at like I was at boarding school, and you know, I never had time for a job, so uh yeah, that was the first time I'd earned money doing anything, so that was really cool. And then that was in September. I got my first big client in December, paying me $2,000 a month, and I that was another big moment. I was like, geez, like that's a lot of money, and it kept going, and then I ended up winning one really big client who was paying me on a performance basis, and one month it was just going bonkers. This the econ brand was going bonkers. That meant the CRM and the email and everything was going crazy, and they paid me 10 grand for one month's work, and I was like, wow, this is really cool. And so, and then it was like 10 and then it was 12, and then actually just before I dropped out, the guy was like, Do you want to work for me on the e com brand? And I'll also help you with the agency. So that kind of gave me the confidence to drop out and you know, go for it full time. So that actually, funnily enough, didn't end up working out. So I dropped out, and then two months later, he kind of pulled back, was like, I'm actually gonna stop running this brand, I'm gonna pull it back to just a small thing, completely dropped me, and then I was left at like nothing, and I've dropped out. But I had all these connections. I'd I'd been doing the work, but the the revenue dropped to like like one or two clients paying me like two, three grand. So then I was really freaked out because I had dropped out, but then I got down to it and we got it really pumping again. Um, and within six months it was kind of up to like maybe 20, 30 grand a month.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Nice, nice. You so you went from these the student house, you've now been gone to over a hundred employees in the agency. Yeah. So what do you think is the one thing that most other agencies get wrong about scaling?

SPEAKER_00 8:31

I think a couple of things. One, when we started, for better or for worse, I said to Jamie, we're gonna sell this business for $10 million. We we we haven't done that, we ended up going a different journey with Supergroup and stuff, and arguably that's gonna work out even better. But when we started, I was like, in three years, we're gonna sell this for $10 million. So I think from the get-go, it was like, this isn't gonna be a small business. We're not gonna scale it to 10 clients and then have a lifestyle business. We're not really lifestyle guys, you know, we don't want to go traveling and run that kind of that's just not for us. So, right from the get-go, the mindset was build a big business. And so I think everything we did was thinking about that. So we started hiring team as soon as we had clients, even though it kind of cut down the profit margin probably a little bit. But we're like, if we're gonna build a big business, we're gonna need a big team. And then, like when I was thinking about outbound or sales or whatever, I wasn't thinking how do I win one client a month? I was thinking, how do I build a system that's gonna win me five, six, seven, eight clients a month? Because if I'm gonna get to 10 million, I'm gonna need a system like that. So I think everything we thought about was with scale, like how do we build a team that can manage a hundred clients? And so all the structures, everything we tried to think about was with scale. Uh and then I think the other thing that really worked was separating roles. So I think being Jamie was just operations and growing the team, and I was just sales and marketing. So I was so focused on bringing in the next client. I didn't have to worry about servicing that client or the results of that client or anything. I was gonna win that client and hand it over to Jamie, and then I was gonna go win the next one the next day. And so that kind of relentless approach, and then he didn't have to worry where's the next client coming from. I can just focus on building the team and delivering for these clients. And so that relentless, almost pushing against each other, him saying, No, we can't take on more clients. I'm like, no, we have to take on more clients. And I think that that relentless pushing against each other helped it scale past, you know, where some people I think get stuck, either as solo founders, is like, I've got 10 clients. If I focus on winning the 11th one, one's gonna drop off, and then they just stay there and it just, you know, and so having that separation helped us push through those boundaries, I think.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

It's crazy how many agencies overrely on referrals, they think that sales systems are just to get themselves off the ground, like to find immediate momentum, and then the minute they've got themselves off the ground, they get referrals in, they're like, okay, this is us now, and we just grow like fruit, and it's crazy at all levels of scale. You will have experienced this. You talk about building sales systems, like what did that look like for you? Like, what was the main acquisition channel?

SPEAKER_00 11:09

So we've never, yeah, we never really relied on referrals. We've obviously got them a lot, but that was never our our thing. So we've had a couple of big channels that have worked for us. When we started, after about a year, we got really into cold email, and that worked super, super well for us. We were winning, at one point, we were winning maybe 10 clients a month from cold email, and we were just doing super big scale, and almost before AI, before automation, before instantly, you had a competitive advantage if you could bring it together. Because we had like five or six VAs researching, choosing the custom lines, building this, and the inboxes weren't swamped, so we were getting really good hit rates, and no one was doing it at the scale we were doing. You know, for every hundred emails, we'd get five or six positive replies. Those would convert into a couple of meetings, and we were probably winning a client like every hundred emails. So that worked really, really well for probably three or four years, and we ended up having like four SDRs on that. And then we ended up scaling it back about two years ago because it's it's got harder with that cold email stuff. We're still doing it and we're still finding different winnings, but it was it couldn't be the only channel for us. And as we've gone upstream as well into like more bigger clients, you don't win those clients as much through cold email. So we still win a lot of clients through it, but the bigger ones do tend to come from other activities, and for us, it's been partnerships, it's been really big for us over the last two or three years. That's been huge.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Nice. Yeah, I remember the six percent positive response or eight days on email.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Yeah, incredible. I almost wish I'd been in like if I could have been in like I always think of been in like can't blame myself because I started young anyway, but I was like, if I could have been in three three years earlier on that, like what a hack. It was just so easy. And double the email sends that you're doing it.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

Just double the email sends, buy another domain, keep going. Yeah, people grossly underestimate estimate these days how many emails you've got. You've got to be sending in the thousands on a daily basis, and people are still sending a couple of hundred and hoping for the best. Yeah. Um, strategic partnerships. What's been your strategy on that side of things? Are we talking partnerships with other agencies, with tech partners? Like, what does that look like for you?

SPEAKER_00 13:18

So we've had a couple that have worked really well. Our favorite strategy, but it's hard to pull off, is to find someone or a group with big influence. So, and then prove to them that we can deliver for their group. So we've had a couple of times, especially back in more of the drop shipping days, where we would win one or two key members in a big group, and then they would keep talking about us, they'd keep referring us, they would put us into the course, they would put us into the trainings, we would get super embedded. So that strategy worked like amazing for us. We also had a couple of amazing uh agency partnerships. So we had one with uh a content creation agency that was creating video ads, but with those guys, they've got no MRR. So they bring in a client, they charge them 2K, 3K, they deliver the ads, and then the client's gone. And they were still doing massive numbers, you know, 200k a month, but it's all fresh clients. And I was like, if you can just refer that client to me at the end, then I'll pay you an ongoing commission so you can get you know another four or five hundred dollars out of that client every month rather than just it coming in. So that worked super well for them. We were paying them, you know, 10 grand a month, but I think that one agency partnership brought us 100k in MRR, which is really cool. Yeah, um, it was awesome, and it just worked so well for them as well. Like they were so happy. The guy who was running it was so happy, it was like, this is just pure profit onto my bottom line. All I've got to do at the end of every every um you know, every shoot or whatever is introduce them to you guys, and it just worked super, super well. So that that worked really well. And then the last two years has been a lot more UK-based uh partnerships events, working with tech agencies. We obviously get a lot of referrals from Clavio as well, um, but trying to spread across a lot of things as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Yeah, because you're a Clavio elite partner, um and you obviously decided to build this agency and specialise in one pillar being the CRMPs. Yeah. Now what do you think that I mean, I suppose it's a pretty obvious question. You're that really has played a huge part in a competitive advantage when it comes to building these strategic partnerships. But there there are so many agencies that get pulled into the temptation of being full stack and offering lots of things. That actually then means they can't do that. Um, so was it very tactical and specific that decision to stay in one specific pillar rather than to branch out? Did you teeter around dancing with that idea? And what did that look like?

SPEAKER_00 15:46

We actually didn't, maybe through lack of creativity. For us, we were super, super strict on revenue generating activities. And I think we probably missed some opportunities in that, but it was like we're just gonna this is working, just keep doing this. And sometimes you get that shiny object syndrome, you see something else working, but we were just like, stay on this, it's working. Win more clients, win more, it win more CRM clients, deliver for those clients. And it was our whole pitch. We're CRM focused only. We know this, you know, we specialize in this. Everyone in our company only does CRM, and we won uh and we still win so many pitches for being deep specialist in one thing. And I love that strategy because you just brand all around it, you find yeah, the tech, so we're closely embedded with Clavio because all we do is CRM. And even with the cold email, the whole pitch is like everything around that was where the CRM guys. If we were reaching out being like, yeah, we do PPC, CRM, SEO, and paid ads. If you need any of those, let us know. It's like everyone does that. I don't know how other people have grown that. I get that there's that land and expand strategy, but also like building a team, like once you know how to do CRM, don't underestimate how hard it is to learn how to do video ads or PPC or whatever. And we were just not interested in starting from scratch on a new service when we knew we could just win the next 10 clients in this service. So um, that worked really, really well for us, and it was awesome timing because Clavio was just starting to pump. We went to their first ever partnerships meetup in London. They didn't even have an office, there was like 20 people there, they'd brought over two people from Boston, uh, two of their team over from Boston. There were like, yeah, maybe like 20, 30 people there, considering now they just had Clavio London this week, and it's like, I don't know, a couple of thousand people, they've got a huge office, all that jazz. So we we we got in at the right time with them for sure, and that's worked really well.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

At a point, you obviously made the decision to branch out from you know, scaling this agency to 10 mil as the original dream, to now like building a group of agencies, supergroup. Can you bring us through that transition? Like, what was the thought process that was there like a trigger point or a moment in time where you were like, ah, I think we're actually focused on the wrong thing right now, and we could be doing this instead, and that would have more leverage for us long term.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Yeah, so it was a double thing. So the first thing going back to that we're gonna sell this business for 10 million, after a couple of good years of and also being completely fresh faced, knowing absolutely nothing about what businesses are worth or when you should sell them or anything. But we were like, right, like let's go talk to some people, let's see what happens. And this was years ago, and so I started talking to some people and I got introduced to this guy called Jim, who was angel investing in marketing agencies, and he basically said to me, I'm not gonna buy your business for 10 million, but I'll invest in it and I'll buy some some shares in it. And that money doesn't have to go into the business, you can take that off the table. Like, I'll just buy shares off you. So he ended up buying him and three or four other angels, bought some shares off us, and that was awesome for for me for a couple of reasons. One was like, cool, like I get to sell some shares, it's like a really cool moment. Uh, and we had lots of money in the bank account, so we could have like dividended anyway, and but we'd never taken any money out of the bank account. It didn't really feel like ours because we were like, we're gonna need that, or like we're really, really conservative. So to like have some money hit your account was really cool. So that for me was like, yeah, I want to do that. That's cool. And then alongside that, I was really into the idea of good mentors. I had one already, it was a guy called John who had helped us scale massively. He's the guy who taught me all of the outbound stuff. Without him, we wouldn't have got anywhere. And so I was like, guys who know what who have been there done that help. And this is a really, really rich guy as well. He's sold it, he had sold his agency in 2017. Um, he's made a lot, a lot of money. And I was like, this is a really rich guy. And if I'm gonna be in business for a long time, I want to get close to people like that. Because even if it's not for this venture, for the next venture, having super rich people who have who have been there, done that around you and believing in you, that can't go wrong. So that was the and then the third bit was we get to join this thing Blue 14, which is the community of the businesses that have been angel invested in. Up until then, because of COVID, because of living at uni, I'd never met any other agency owners. So I was like, this is cool. I get to see what all these other agency owners are, learn from them, talk to them. So felt like a no-brainer, um, and we did that. And then sort of maybe six, eight months into that, it was all going really well. And one thing I've been so lucky with is having good people the whole way through. And that it is a bit of luck, but I think being a good, you know, trying to do the right thing throughout your journey does attract the right people. But I remember my now father-in-law saying to me, like, when I was doing that investment, he was like, make sure this guy's not screwing you over. And that had never even occurred to me. I I had always thought everyone's a good person because everyone I had encountered on this journey had been so helpful, and I was like, Oh yeah, maybe I should think about that. But they're amazing people and they've shown that the whole way through. And so I felt really comfortable, confident, and trusting in these people around me, and particularly Jim. So when he said to me, I've got this idea, we've got all these Blue 14 agencies. If we put a couple of them together, merge them into one group, the valuation of the business goes up because you're merging more e-bit together, and also you create an MA vehicle because you can use the profits of the businesses to buy more businesses. And if we do that, that's gonna work out really well. So we that's really where the idea started. And the idea was to like merge five or six, but actually it's all passing ships. Everyone's at different stages in their business, different timings. So we couldn't merge five or six, and I'm glad we didn't. But we we took two, us and a company called Version 2, and the co-fo the founder of that's called Joe. And so we agreed to put those two companies together to launch what's now Supergroup. And I became the CEO of Supergroup, and Jamie became the CEO now of running underground e com. And the idea now is that we've now got this group and we can use our agency profits to continue to buy more agencies. And the whole pitch was, and our pitch to agency owners now is you know, selling your business is a really tough thing, and finding the right acquirer is is a really tough thing. And Supergroup is run by founders of marketing agencies. It's not run by finance guys. We're all younger guys, you know, we're all running our businesses, we're very entrepreneurial. And so coming and joining Supergroup, get being acquired by Supergroup is a rewarding experience. And our whole idea for us, because it works out for us, is create an environment where after the founders sell, they actually want to stick around. Even if it's not full-time, but they want to help the business because they like us, they like what they've been part of, and they've had a really, really great experience. So either they stay on full-time because they're enjoying it, or they leave, but they still want to be involved, they still want to help. And we believe founder value is so intrinsic to agency value that these people, these other MA groups that are acquiring agencies, having horrible earnout terms that work out for them financially, but leave the founder, you know, disheartened, disinterested, and sometimes angry, you're destroying so much agency value along the way. So our whole thing was that if we can create situations where founders can join, be part of something bigger, you know, achieve their financial goals, but also you know, be engaged with what we're doing, it's going to intrinsically create more value in the group. So that's that's kind of our pitch at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Nice. Yeah, agencies are people businesses. So if the founder isn't born in, then whatever you got, you've you've got a service and people which will just deteriorate slowly over a period of time. Exactly. You there's a couple of follow-ups I've got off the back of that. Um, the first thing is you mentioned about like one of your original mentors, um, and like I'm a huge testament to that, having a good mentor. But what was your strategy to finding that person? How did you say it was John? How did you find John like stumble across a really rich guy that happens to have sold an agency and now he's mentoring you? Like, what did that look like?

SPEAKER_00 24:00

So, John is he's an American guy, and I we still talk about now, I've got a screenshot of it, but I posted in in a group, a marketing agency group, just asking a question, and he commented on that question like an answer. And then I like straight away messaged him and was like, Can you like help me with that a little bit more? And he was like, Yeah, sure. Do you want to jump on a call? And I jumped straight on, and he was he then the first thing he was doing was just showing me how he was doing outbound for his agency, and I was like, Oh, that's really cool. He showed me what what what he was doing, and he said, This is what you do. And so then I took it away and I did it. I did it, and I came back to him like the next day and was like, I've done it now, what do I do? And then again, again, again. And I've asked him that. I was like, why? And he's been so, so, so generous with his time, you know, and now we're really, really great friends. Um, but he he was like, Why? I was like, why did you take an interest in me? And he was like, the fact that you came back after I told you was the biggest thing. He was like, I've done that same, I I'm happy to show people. I've shown 20 people how to do the outbound thing. And they say, Yeah, yeah, I'll do it. And then either they don't come back at all, or they come back in like a month, you were back the next day, and then you were back the next day, and you were back the next day. And I think that, like, if you it's it's it's hard to just know where to find the mentors. Sometimes they just come up in life. None of them, I don't have a strategy for finding them, but when you do find them, show your worth to them really quickly. Show them that you're engaged in them, show them that you're interested in them, and do you know, action their advice and show them that you're doing that because and now being on the other side, and I'm sure you're on that other side as well, like it's so it's it is rewarding when you show someone what to do and they actually do it, but it's so disheartening, you lose interest super, super quickly. If someone says, Yeah, I'll do whatever I have to do, and then they don't do it, you're like, whatever. I've got I've got lots of other stuff to do.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

That is the single best piece of advice I've heard someone say on on getting a mentor. And I had goosebumps that uh uh as you were saying that because I resonate with with it so hard because I've mentored lots of agencies. And someone said to me at one of our awards evening a couple weeks ago, they said, Why me? Why? Because we've given someone a scholarship and they're like, Why me? Why why that? And I gave them an exact answer because you go away, you implement stuff, you come back with a new problem next time. And that is the most it's enough proof that you could ever need that that person is going to win because you see that in yourself. You know that's what you do. Yeah, you implement and you you put in the work. So that's such for anyone who's listening to this that doesn't yet have a mentor, that is the best advice you could hear. Like, take the advice, do the thing. Don't think you know better than that person. Do it, come with bigger problems, and don't don't be afraid to come with new problems because people who are successful love to see other people win. They see as an entrepreneur, you know, you you get to a certain point and you you begin to miss those early stages where it really was gritty, where you really work on a struggling, and you you live that experience through other people that are willing to put in the work. That's powerful, man. For sure.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

And I also think you know, you might, as people build wealth, they lose time. And if they come across a really energetic person who wants to do what that you say, it's like that's actually also an opportunity for them because they might be able to invest in you, they might be able to back you or whatever, and they might be able to, you know, build their wealth through you. And John has ended up having shares in Underground Ecom and then Supergroup, and it's worked out really well for him. And so you can bring something to the relationship with these mentors, which is energy dedication and willing to do all the stuff that they might not even be willing to do anymore because they've got money, they don't want to get down and dirty as much. So you actually can bring something to the relationship, and you know, then they get interested in you.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

I got that leads me on nicely to the second follow-up I had, uh, which was you mentioned that James from Blue 14 had kind of said, Oh, we've got this idea we can start this group. Like, why wouldn't they just start the group themselves independently? Why fuel you to do that?

SPEAKER_00 27:57

I think Jim's a really smart guy. He he he knew he didn't want to, he didn't, he, you know, he knows his role now, which is he's he is a mentor, he's the chairman of the group, he's got the strategy, he's got the advice, he's got all the soft touch, but he doesn't want to work, you know, five days a week at all, you know. And something he is really smart about is he's made a lot of money and he uses his capital, not his time. Like he's and he's brave, like he's invested a lot of money into agencies. I can't remember, but it's multi-millions that he's put into startups in the last two or three years. And some of those haven't worked, but he's up, he's up massively. But instead of going to those startups, like a lot of extent agency owners would be, and like being like, Yeah, I'll give you sweat equity. You know, you can pay me $2,000 a month to be your mentor. And that's what I liked about Blue 14. He didn't ask for any money from us. You know, there's a little fee to be part of the angel syndicate, but it's it's meaningless. He actually put his money in. So it's the complete opposite. It's like instead of saying, you pay me and I'll give you advice, he's he's gone and said, I'm gonna pump money into you because I believe in you. And I'm and that's working for him because he's got a lot of capital and not a lot of time, or he doesn't want to give away a lot of his time. And so he's putting that to work. And I think with Supergroup, he saw young guys who can carry the carry the burden because it is hard running agencies, it's not easy. Um, he saw young guys who can carry the burden, who can drive it forward, and a place that he can park more capital into. And when we launched Supergroup, we did sell some more shares and he actually put more money in. So he had invested in the two companies individually, and then at the launch, he put in even more money. So he's using his capital and he's working that. I think that that's smart, you know, when you've got a lot of it, you know, to do it that way. And you know, use your time effectively, and you know, and he just doesn't he doesn't want to do that the whole time anymore. Understandable.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

I completely completely can see that. So you you go from having an underground e-commerce now on supergroup, you've just brought in another agency version too. Yeah, like what happens at that point? Are you like, well, do we merge teams? Do we run independently? Like, what happens there?

SPEAKER_00 30:12

So our thesis at the moment and when we launched was once again, removing founders destroys value. Removing brands also destroys value, especially at the SME to mid-market client level. If you're working with enterprise clients, there's a play to merge all of the companies under one brand name. At the moment, we're seeing the plan as keeping those brands separate. So we kept the brand separate, we kept the teams separate, we kept the culture separate. There's a unification in terms of we share skills, we we cross, we cross-sell, we do, you know, we do events together, we get the teams together, everyone gets on really well, but they run as separate businesses. And that's because everything that's made that company great, we don't want to destroy. And that's the strategy with the acquisitions as well. So version two and underground e-com launched. We merged all our shares into one entity. So now a pound in version two and a and a pound in underground e-com makes the same difference to me. I'm just a shareholder in supergroup. So everyone wants everyone to win, but we operate as separate companies. And when we when we brought in ConversionWise, sort of a year and a half later, when we acquired them, same thing. They're running as a separate business. Ollie and Andy are still running that agency. I meet with them every week, we work together. Underground Ecom and ConversionWise work together a lot because they share a lot of e-com D2C clients. So there's a lot of strategy cross-sell and everything that can happen there. But ConversionWise has an amazing brand name and amazing brand presence as being the specialist CRO guys. Same with Underground Ecom, putting them together just destroys a lot of that value. So at this stage and where we are now, we're keeping all those brands separate because people want specialists, I think, at the SME size, and I think that that works really well.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

I I imagine deal structure is different across the board, but do most founders come and join the group, be acquired, take one bite where they sell the majority of their equity and then retain some in the larger group?

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Is that the Yeah. So it it's gonna it's gonna vary, and I think what we try and be honest with is what is the intention here for both us and the founder. If the founder wants to leave in two years' time and we're okay with that because we've got a strategy to integrate their company or whatever, then we're not gonna roll a ton of equity in because they don't want the equity, and we don't want to give away the equity to someone who who's not gonna be there, you know, for the long time. If they're looking like they're gonna be more of part of the long-term vision of Supergroup, then there's gonna be more equity in that. But it's exactly that. There's there's an element of day one cash, normally an element of an earnout, so performance over like one or two years. And we're actually one thing that a lot of MA groups do is they set fate earnouts that can fail. So it's like you need to hit this target in two years to get the rest of your cash. If you miss the target, you get nothing. We don't do that, we just do it on a ratcheted thing. So if you miss it by, you know, there's no target. It's it's if your business does better, you get more cash. If your business does slightly less less good, you get slightly less. And I think people have really liked that because they can visualize it. It's like, okay, I did this this year. If I do this over the next two years, this is how much I'm gonna get. But if I do it a little bit worse, I'll do a little bit less. But it's not that like stress of like, if I miss by a pound, I get nothing. So I think that has been big, and we call it no failed earnouts. You know, we we don't want to because that's gonna that's another way you're creating resentment. If someone fails their earnout, are they really gonna want to stay around? You know, they've they were promised whatever X amount, they missed it by um, you know, a couple of thousand pounds and they get nothing. That you know, that's not maybe that's financially great for the MA platform, but it doesn't create an environment, you know, where you're building, you know, reciprocity and working well with them. So there's an element of that and then an element of share merger, you know, depending on really what what we see their role is and what they see their role is going forward.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

Interesting. I think MA is like in many ways, for people that want to build massive capital, it's the ultimate evolution of kind of the model and many models. You kind of even if you have an exit on your own business, you're kind of like, well, what do I do with this money now? And you naturally start investing and acquiring. But it's also really intimidating. Like it's one of those things that we don't get taught anywhere and we have to fail forward and learn. What would you say are like some of the best ways that people can begin to learn this stuff? And like, how did you learn specifically?

SPEAKER_00 34:31

So I learned from mentors. Again, Jim had bought two companies before, a couple of the other guys on the board. We've got some guys who have invested who are from Publicis, so that's obviously the biggest agency in the world. We've got two of those guys invested, one of them is on the board, so he's and he was a CFO, so he's he's been involved in like a thousand MA transactions or something, some something ridiculous. He told me at one point, not all of these are MA transactions, but at one point in Publicis, they had like 2,000 LTDs, and they had to do this whole like unification to get it down. But I was like, I love that. He tells us like at our board meetings, and we were joking about like he was like, Yeah, Publicist had a meetup where they brought the top 1% of the business, like the top managers and directors, and it was 600 people. I was like, that's outrageous. But it gets me psyched because I'm like, geez, that is really cool. Um, so I learned a lot from them, and I think that you know, that has been big for me, but also there's a lot the annoying thing with MA is they keep a lot of it behind closed doors. When a deal gets announced, you don't see any of the the workings. They just say, Oh yeah, we've been acquired, but you don't get to see what's happened, you know, or how how it's happened. But yeah, MA is is the ultimate for value creation because you're reinvesting your cash into a business that can you're reinvesting your cash into a new business that can come in, they can accelerate the growth rate of the group. And you're also not paying any tax on taking that cash out. Because if I'm a founder, say I was just running underground e-commerce I'm a founder, I've got to pay my corporation tax, then I've got to pay my dividend tax 40%, and then I take what that's 60% left and I invest it into an agency. We're just doing that without the dividend. We get to we get to finish the year with how much cash we've got after paying our corporation tax and then buy an agency without paying that that intermediary. So for the shareholders, it's a great way to build shareholder value. And I'm basically trade, we're basically trading cash flow and dividends for capital gains, which is also at a better tax rate as well. So if you're really interested in building long, long-term wealth, you want to build your share value, not necessarily as much a cash flow. And I think that's you know, that's where the strategy comes into play. And it's always like that's where it's like the right time in the right place. Like I'd already had a couple of years of underground e-commer cash flow, and we then sold some shares to Blue 14, we then sold sold a little bit when we joined Supergroup. So I'd got myself into a comfortable position to then bet big on the rest. And that's what we're doing with the founders who joined Supergroup as well. They're selling a lot of cash on day one and they're getting that cash. They feel comfortable, they can pay off their mortgage or whatever. And you know, they've they've had that exit. But the shares that they roll in, they're betting big on. You know, they're like, okay, this last bit that I put in, that could three, four, five X over the next couple of years, and that could be basically another whole exit in itself.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

Where does the capital come from? Are we talking banks? Are we talking there's a VC firm back in? Is it Blue 14? Like, what happens there? Like to just for an agency to come in, you've you've suddenly emerged into this group, and then all of a sudden you're doing acquisition deals for presumably millions. So it's like, where does that money come from?

SPEAKER_00 37:40

So a couple of things. One great thing about being agencies is they cash flow. Like, I can't imagine being in like uh I know there are some like the brand MA vehicles because those brands need so much cash to operate, and they're not even necessarily cash flowing positively. So they have to raise every time they buy something. Luckily for us, you know, we've got two companies already in underground e-common version two, because they rolled all their shares, all the profit that those companies make can be used to buy businesses. People like the other ones that we've bought, obviously the profit that they're making is being used to pay for themselves almost, plus more. That's where we're the sub, you know, your sub. So to kind of answer it shortly, the first two deals that we've done, we've cash flowed ourselves and we've been able to. It depends on the rate. If we keep buying at a fast rate, we will just start putting in some bank, bank borrowing along that. Um, if we buy at a slower rate, then we can cash flow it ourselves. And that's just a balance. We're not afraid of the bank bank stuff, but it's like you just don't need to do it until until you need to. And I think that was the beauty of starting with two big companies, you know. So we we merged version two and underground e-com. That's already a lot of cash flow for these for these deals now. And so having a solid rock of cash flow that that meant, and we didn't buy a company for a year and a half, so we we merged in 20 beginning of 2023, and we only acquired conversion-wise in mid-2024. So we had a year and a half of basically cash build-up. We also rolled cash into the group. So we built up quite a lot, a bit of a war chest, uh, and depends on the rate going forward. But there's e you know, bank facilities are easy, interest rates aren't amazing, but we'd rather borrow than at this stage, probably, than you know, sell equity to get to get more funding. But that's just a stage. Once you've run out of borrowing facility, then you either get a P Fermin or someone who can pump more money in that way as well. So that's a that's a play you can do.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

Makes sense. Makes sense. So if there's an agency that's listening to this right now thinking, I wonder what my agency would sell for. Like I wonder if what what kind of exit I could get. People throw around numbers online, it's hard to know what is correct. You've lived and breathed this. Like what kind of epidemic multiples do can agencies expect? And what are the things that impact that multiple?

SPEAKER_00 39:54

So I think size is one. Yeah, size is what size is like the biggest one. You know, I think if you're sub 500k eBit, it's quite hard to sell your business. There's not that many people are gonna buy it because it's it's pretty reliant on like one founder, you know, it's probably like a five to ten man team. And so the only people I think who are gonna jump on that necessarily are people who are trying to buy a specialism. So it's like they're not necessarily buying you because they need an influence agency to complete their stack and by putting in the influence. And so they're basically buying your team, you know, they want to buy the the five or six specialists that you have in that. Um once you get above 500, I think you enter a new realm, and then once you get uh above a million, you're into a new realm as well, um, because you've proven over a period you know how you could that your business can grow sustainably. I the obvious, but growth rate is is huge, you know. That's gonna be really important. And then I mean for us once again, and I think others look at differently, is like, what does the management team look like below the founder? And also what's the founder like? Because you know, if we once again going back to their people, businesses, if you buy a company where the founder is as solid as a rock, and yeah, he's not gonna be there forever, but you know he's gonna do the two years or the three years or whatever that the deal's gonna be. You know that he's gonna help you transition the business. You can see that he's already started developing a leadership team below him, and you can see how that would work. There's so much more value in that than if you've got like a bit of a flight risk in that founder as well. So I think that's really important. And the other thing we, the last thing we say is like and I'll come on to the multiples and stuff, but the last thing that impacts it is when you sell. So we want to buy companies before their sell by date. And I think something that's really cool, and that's another part of our strategy for Supergroup, is like we want to buy companies that are still growing, that everyone's still got energy, everyone's still excited about this business. We've caught it at the right time, so it's gonna keep going, and they're not on their last legs, you know. And so as a business, you should sell when you've still got you've still got gas in the tank. Like we have up until now, and we've looked at a lot of companies, we have not looked, we haven't even looked at a single company that is for sale. Because we're not interested in companies that are for sale. Because if they're found, you know, they they want to get out. What's wrong? Why do you want to sell your business? You know, if you're for sale, like why? You know, we want to look at companies that aren't for sale and then show you what we've got. And it's a hardest sale, but like like you're not for sale, but look at this great thing we could do together, and then everyone gets excited about there's a lot of energy in the room, you know, and that's part of the whole Blue 14 thing. It's like we invest in them at Blue 14, they come into Blue 14, they get to know us, we get to know them, the synergies are there, and then we, you know, they roll into supergroup, and that's the right timing for them. And then there's a lot of energy. We're just not going to look at a company at the moment, you know, or we might, but you know, it would be for a very strategic reason. We're not really looking at the for sale companies as much. And I think, yeah, people want to know why you're for sale if you're for sale, you know. So I think it's kind of counterintuitive, but I think that's why, like that's why being part of things like either Blue 14 or any of these things, where everyone in Blue 14 is technically, you know, that they're they're showing their cards a bit to supergroups. So they're kind of like showing their cards because they're like, we get to watch them, they get to know us, but they're not saying they're for sale because they're not for sale. And so it's a great way to get close to acquirers without being for sale. And so if you want to sell your business and you're not part of like something like that, but go and meet some people you think could be future acquirers. And then, same with the mental thing, start keeping them in the loop, you know. But meet them like two or three years before. First, you'll find the right people, and then you won't sell to someone that you'll regret. But also, then they will probably be like, wow, you guys have been growing so much. Like maybe we should have a conversation about acquiring you. And then you're like, Yeah, that sounds great, rather than being like, we want to sell by December, you know. So I think those things are kind of impacting it. Um Valuations-wise, unless you've got something super, super special, I'd say most of it, most of the range. If you're a solid company, you're growing, you've got a good leadership team, you've got a good founding team, is in like four to six X multiple range. That's where we've seen a lot of it. You can buy a lot of things below four, and I think a lot of deals do happen, you know, in like threes, twos, ones. And sometimes for strategic reasons, they're great, but they're more the for sale companies. They're more the ones where someone wants to do a deal and leave. You know, they don't want to do an earnout. They want to be like, we'll sell it to you for cheap, for cheap, but you know, we'll sell it for you for a bit less, but that's because I want to leave, or you know, I'm at the end of my run. So I think those deals do happen and they make sense. I think that sweet spot is in that like four to six. And then if you're breaking into much bigger numbers, that's where you start getting into like the sevens, eights, nines. Um, so I think those are the kind of ranges that that that we're seeing, sort of, I guess, across the board.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

Yeah, that makes a huge amount of sense, like buying people that are not for sale because they need to have that bite to drive it forward. Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's so interesting. What are you looking for in the brands? Because from what you're saying, it kind of sounds like the process is somewhat like, okay, do the financials make sense? Then I imagine imagine there's like a mid-tier KPI piece, is there? And I'd like to understand what those things are, like, what are the main numbers people should optimize their agency for to make them attractive? And then obviously we've got the culture, the founder, the team, and so on. Um, so I'd like to explore the numbers, the data piece. And then I'd also like to understand like how are you determining what the middle management are like? Like, how are you getting involved in that business to understand that?

SPEAKER_00 45:34

So, yeah, numbers first. I think growth rate, especially for the smaller companies, if they're like below a million, you know, we want to see them growing at like 50% a year because it's harder to grow a big company because if you're at a million to grow at 50%, you've got to put 500k on to your your bottom line. It's a lot. But if you're at you know two, three hundred, you know, we want to see you growing at you know 50% a year, um, you know, because you've got a you're you're you're you're starting on a rocket. So I'd say that's the growth rate. Margin-wise, we like things above 25%. There's not a lot of agencies that are above 205%, and that fits into a couple of other things. So for example, we like yeah, lean teams, specialized teams, because that tends to mean better margin as well. Um, global clients. So if they've got UK and US clients, then you can obviously often charge more and you're a bit more diversified. So cool thing at Supergroup is like across, I don't know what the percentage is, but across them, that's probably like 50-60% outside the US clients. Really cool. So you're showing that you can win clients across across the world, and um a lot of the time also global teams as well. So we've got a South African team now for a lot of our companies. We're building South African teams there as well. And that's for you know, for the right roles. We have we have head offices in the UK for a lot of roles, and then we we're building, you know, that secondary office there as well. So I think those things all feed into it. But yeah, good margins and uh good growth rate are obviously the top numbers that you're gonna look at. So that yeah, 50% growth rate, 25% margin, I think are two good things to be shooting for. Um, and then on a culture side, the first level of culture is always gonna be measured on the founder because they set the culture for the rest of the company. And this company that we acquired, email club, this year. I started because we wanted to buy another CRM agency. Underground e-commerce going great. We really like the CRM space. Let's let's look at can we buy another CRM agency and grow that more? So I just went through Clavier Agency Directory, all the companies. Then I got all their headcounts, estimated like what size they were, or whatever. So I started talking to them. I spoke to maybe about 10. And email club is a is a French agency, and the first guy I met, this guy, Thomas. Just so nice when I met him. Uh connected with him on LinkedIn. Yeah, I'd love to have that conversation. Came over to London, met me. I was like, well, that's that's a great sign. Like he's making the effort, came over to London, met me. Just really engaging, really interested. He didn't have his guard up at all. You know, I think when you're entering an MA conversation, you can rock up like, I don't want to give too much away. I don't want to, you know, he was he he let it out. He said the things they were good at, said the things they were bad at, said, you know, yeah, just just you know, cards on the table. And I think compared that with the others I spoke to, I was like, okay, this is the one we're gonna pursue. So it's I would say the reason, a good portion of the reason we bought that company is his personality, because it just gave us so much confidence. And then we were like, okay, now we need to meet your leadership team. So he brought his leadership team and we went for a dinner. Um, and it wasn't under the guise of an MA dinner, you know, it was under the guise of like a partnership or collaboration. So we got to meet the team. And you could see that the culture he had set had carried through to them. You know, they were so engaging, they were so collaborative, they were wanting to work with Underground e-com, talking about ways they could work together. And so that just was like, okay, this is so great. And then we ended up, you know, we then did the deal, and even across the deal, really easy to work with, engaging, wanting to get it done, interested in, you know, and and and you know, we try and bring openness and fairness from our side, but if they get their their guard up right from the get-go, it's like, geez, it's gonna be a really long deal if it even happens, you know what I mean? Like if you're pulling a lawyer into the first conversation, even before you know we're talking about it's like this is gonna take forever and it probably won't happen, you know. So I think if you can match, and it obviously depends if the M and if the people are buying you come with their guard up than you are, but if you can make it more open, it's so much more likely to happen. Um, and then we did the deal, and then we went and met the rest of the email club team, and we were just so, so impressed. And we didn't know necessarily because we hadn't met all of them, because you can't really always meet everyone, but like we could see what we had seen had carried on through everyone, and we were just so impressed with that culture. So that's awesome. Going back to the other side, that was a great situation where we bought them not through Blue 14, but the great thing with Blue 14 is we're getting to know them over years. We got, you know, we we were just in Spain two weeks ago with all the Blue 14 companies and all the supergroup companies. So I already know all the founders in Blue 14 well. Like a lot of them are my good friends, and I now know a lot of their leadership team pretty well. We've spent, you know, a lot, we've had a lot, we've had Christmas parties, you know, we do this Brighton Beach Ball thing. We went out to Spain, yeah, for like a couple of days. So I already know their leadership team well. So when and if that they want to join Supergroup and we want to buy them, it's a really, really easy conversation because it's like I already know who you are, I already know what your team is. Now let's talk, let's look at numbers and let's see if we can make it like let's see if we can find something that fits. But thumbs up on both sides for like all the things that you would normally be worried about coming into a deal where you didn't know that person, if you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_01 50:55

Yeah, 100%. You mentioned the fact that you've obviously brought in this French agency. Like, what's the play with it? What's the international play? Is it is it is there a difference between the way agencies are run internationally to what you've seen on US, UK markets? Like, have you had to pave that? And yeah, what's the the international vision?

SPEAKER_00 51:14

Yeah, so UK, so part of the reason we're doing the French agency was like, yeah, we want to keep expanding um underground e-com in this case, the CRM agency. So we've already got a lot of UK clients. So buying another UK agency doesn't feel very additive because it's like we're already buying a space that we're conquering. We've got a lot of reach in the US, and we may do a US agency because that would then extend our reach, but we're still deciding how we approach that. Do we build a team there? You know, instead of instead of buying a company, do we sort of build a team in the US? So that's an option. Uh with France, Germany, Italy, all those countries, there's no way they're gonna buy from us. They don't like buying from from us, you know, they don't like buying from a UK team. We don't speak French, we're not in that market. And so when I weighed up, it's like, okay, buy versus build in US, either could work. Buy versus build in France, it's never gonna happen. The build the build is never gonna happen. It's gonna take us years. And so it felt like a really additive buyer. I was like, wow, we get to buy our way into a market that we would not be able to enter. And the cool thing with the French market is it's smaller than the UK market in terms of e-com, but it's growing faster. And it's less competitive because there's a moat around it. UK market is flooded with UK agencies, it's also flooded with US agencies, and it's flooded with international agencies that can speak English. The French market is French agencies. There's no there's no American agencies in the world, there's very few American agencies penetrating the French market. So I think those ones are quite interesting because yeah, they're almost closed off. And so if you can get a foothold there, there's a bit of a competitive advantage. So we're quite excited about that, and then some of the other European ones as well. Uh, but we do want to make a play at the US, it's just a bigger play, so we've got to figure out and time it right and figure find the right company there. And also, I guess it's like time zones or things, but like getting to know Thomas and the team that that that work in France, it was easy, I think, culturally. It was almost closer culturally than buying a US company. I feel like culturally that's gonna be a bit of a challenge, so I'm looking forward to it, but it does feel like a stretch, you know, they are quite different to us culturally. Finding the right team there is gonna be hard, and so I think that's gonna take a little bit of time, but yeah, we'll keep working at it.

SPEAKER_01 53:41

It's very cool. You've obviously got, as you said, the the South African team going on as well, um, which we've got a South African team too, just an amazing talent pool. You mentioned that like you have certain roles out in South Africa. Um, just peeling back the hood a little bit, I'd love to understand which which key roles that in business in the agency industry you've you've decided to Yeah, it firstly it is an amazing talent pool.

SPEAKER_00 54:04

I've got a lot of family in South Africa. Uh I was saying I was born in Zimbabwe, so I know know it well, and it's an amazing talent talent pool and culturally very similar to the pretty similar to the UK on the same time zone as well. Um, and so it's a great place to build, and a lot of agencies building there now. I think right now, for us, we're pretty much finding that you can hire a lot of like-for-like roles there, and you're getting better talent in a lot of cases because hiring in the UK, you know, we could hire someone who's a graduate in the UK and train them, uh, which is which is an option, but also you're often getting pre-trained in South Africa. They've worked with another agency there, so that's you know, that's really great. And you can hire, yeah, really great roles there. And to be honest, like pretty much underground e-com, pretty much every role has a a UK and a South African counterpart. So uh we're doing it across everything. Account management's great there, the technical side is great there as well. Um, I'd say we maybe do a little bit more technical, either in Eastern Europe, because those guys are awesome at it. So a little bit more there, but in general, we're we're we're kind of going across the board in South Africa. We're betting big. We've literally just uh actually launched a company there. So we've set up a company there, we've got an office there, it's an amazing office. It looks out, it's made, I don't know if it's an active or an old cricket ground, but they've turned the stadium into an office, so it's like a glass wall, and then it just looks out on the cricket ground. It's really cool. Um just in Cape Town? In Cape Town, yeah. A lot of people do Joe Burg because there's a lot of talent there as well. But Cape Town's so nice. I spent six months of the year in Cape Town. So nice. And when we looked at our team, we already had a lot in Cape Town, so we could have gone Job, but we like Cape Town, and it's just a really, really cool place. So yeah, I'm looking forward to going out there a bit more. Yeah, it's so cool.

SPEAKER_01 55:57

Yeah, it's such an awesome place in Cape Town. The the leadership teams in agencies, obviously, you've you say you meet lots of the leadership teams in the agencies within Supergroup. Who are, because I think again, one of those things that many agency owners come into this position and then hire the wrong people and you know build departments that they might not need, maybe get become too ops heavy and so on. Who are like the the core leaders that you see that most agencies need at a certain level of scale? Like, what does that leadership team look like?

SPEAKER_00 56:28

Yeah, so head of sales or head of growth depends on your sales channels, but uh someone who's closing and winning the business, but also is working with uh you know outbound teams, you know, either externally or internally. So we have an outbound manager, but also some of our agencies use external outbound teams, but ahead of a head of sales in that role, really, really important because you need someone who's just really, really focused in on just that, you know, so dialed on winning new business. And it it you know, it makes or breaks a company if that head of sales is is doggered and getting after it and finding, you know. So I think that's really important. Uh we then are seeing a lot having ahead of partnerships or ahead of marketing slash growth, because that they kind of fold into each other. But either, you know, people who are working things like live events, webinars, partner relationships, um, all of that. So I think that's quite a big piece. Um and so that's the sort of marketing growth side. And then on the on the ops side, ahead of client success, we like uh because they work slightly externally from the ops team, but they're really important in building the relationships with the clients, and they're almost like your internal auditor because your ops team which is complete effect, they don't want to they don't want to say what they're doing is wrong because they've built it. Whereas a client success person team talk to the clients a lot, so they're getting all the feedback, they take that feedback, some of it with a pinch of salt, and then they look at okay, feed that back to the CEO and say, look, we need to change these things. It's coming up again and again and again, you know, copywriting or dev or whatever is just coming up again and again and again as a problem. So we there's normally small teams, one, two, three people, but client success is a really, really great role, and they often help you save and win a lot of clients, and they also tend to manage like the upselling of clients as well. So if you've got a second service or your multi-service agency, then they can help you with that as well. Um, and then uh a head of operations, who then tends to have like different titles, but like client directors below them. So you have you'd have like a head of ops, and then say you've got 10, 10 on operational delivery teams. Each delivery team has its own account manager. Maybe five of those teams then have like a director above them, the other five have another director, and then a head of ops above those two directors. A head of ops is working more on overall ops for the whole business, whereas the client directors are really focused on their team of account managers and like solving individual issues with those clients, etc. So that's pretty similar structure across three of the four companies. And then you have version two, which is a performance lead gen company, and it runs completely differently. There's like none of that, and uh, because they're all performance-based, um, they're like a flat structure of just performance marketers basically doing loads of different cool stuff, um, which is really cool. I like that as well. But yeah, so like three of the four companies run really similarly, and then you have one that runs very differently.

SPEAKER_01 59:31

How much are you getting involved in when a company comes in and you're acquiring new business and like auditing them and be like, okay, we need to change this stuff? Or do you let them run pretty independently because they've been running well for a long time?

SPEAKER_00 59:42

Yeah, and pretty independently. We don't want to be buying companies that that we think have a lot of problems. So pretty independently, but looking at a roadmap of fixing things and normally advancing things because it's what's next for them. So uh if we look at like email club, for example, they didn't have that growth or that head of sales role. They just started to solve that um because Thomas had been doing a lot of that himself. So building those roles, building those functions, and I think we're going to put a lot of effort into that side. Um, so we kind of highlight different areas in each company and look at how we fix or develop those areas for the future growth. Um, because a lot of these companies are on fantastic trajectories, they're growing so fast, and that has been where it's been useful is like you know, you acquire a company that you can see is very similar to a company you own, but it's just two years behind. So you just take the playbook from the company that you own already and apply it to the company that's two years behind and say, okay, you don't have client success, you don't have this, you don't have that. I think these are the things that you should hire, and these are when you should hire them, you know, to then emulate getting to the same stage as the company we already own. So it's really great to now have, and the more companies, great companies we buy, the more we have playbooks for the future ones. Like, so it's really awesome having four companies, actually, all now of a similar-ish size. There's variation, but not huge. And so we've got a lot of learnings and playbooks to apply to the fifth company that comes in or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:16

Fine. Does it rock the boat in the businesses that are getting acquired from the team? Like, what advice have you got for leaders who do want to get acquired, who want to jump into something like this, but are like, well, what do I say to the team? How do I get them behind this?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:32

Yeah. I think uh once again, if you know the people who are acquiring you first, it just makes everyone so much happier about it. Like the conversion-wise team, I mean, they can speak for themselves, you know, they might have a completely different story, but they knew who I was and they'd met quite a lot of people already, and they've been part of Blue 14, and I knew them all. And, you know, as these things happen, you your team aren't dumb. Like they know if conversations are happening and stuff like that. And so almost keeping them too much in the dark, I don't think, is that good. Like not letting them meet the acquire, you know. And so for us, like we had met them all through Blue 14, and so like they got what was going on. I, you know, we had had chats about like Supergroup, what's happening all there, like, and so it was cool. They had a we had a big party. And I think the same with the email club team, slightly less, but I had met their management before. And on the day or a couple of days afterwards, we had a big call with a with their whole team, which is like 70 people. Um, and I jumped on. And me and Thomas just did a presentation, and just the easiest way that I do it is what's gonna change, what's not gonna change. And normally the what's not gonna change is a much bigger list. It's like your job's still the same, you're reporting to the same person. Thomas is still here, the business is still running the same, the brand is staying the same, nothing's changing there. What is changing? You're gonna get to come to some supergroup events, that's gonna be cool. You're gonna get to new people, you're gonna get to cross-sell with other companies, you're gonna get to learn from other companies, you're gonna get resources from other companies, you're gonna get to carry the clout from being as part of supergroup, and now you can say, as supergroup, we work with X hundred number of brands or whatever. Um, and this is all the cool stuff that's gonna happen. And then try and make something fun happen really early on. So, like as soon as we did, I can't remember, as soon as we did the conversion-wise deal, we will have gone out for like a meal with the whole with their whole team. But the email club deal, which was awesome. Thomas lives in Andorra, some of the team are based in Andorra. All the all the team managers came to Andorra and we had a two, we went skiing for three days. Me, Jamie, because Jamie's the head CEO of Underground Ecom, so he's actually the one who's gonna be working a lot with them because Underground Ecom and Email Club are gonna be sort of one big CRM thing with sort of sub-brands. Uh, and we went out and we just went skiing with them. And Jamie had never skied, so they taught him how to ski. We just had such fun time. We had dinners out, part, you know, parties, skiing. Then we went to Barcelona for a night. So it's like three or four nights, and we just came over. It just felt like that just eases the tension because acquirers sound scary because they sound like guys who wear suits, you know, they sound like they're going to be miserable, you know. This you you've heard the stories of things changing. And so at least when you then meet them and they're just guys, or you know, they're just a you know, they're just they're just people and you have a great time with them and they chat to you and you chat to them. And I think that eases the tension really quickly. So yeah, don't don't wait too long before or afterwards, you know, you've got to get them, everyone together. You've got to show them that these are good people, you've got to show them that it's gonna be a fun journey ahead and not a and not a bad one. And I think that helps because I feel so confident when we when we acquire a business or one rolls in, I feel so confident that they're gonna be happy. Because I know we're not we're not screwing them over. I know we're fun people. I know we have, you know, we have a great time. And Jim, you know, our chair chairman, he's very big on the culture and the fun. And actually, with his, you know, his ver his his couple of days a month, that he he, you know, a lot of what he does is thinking about like, let's do this thing. And it sounds like fun, but we talk about it a lot that like the fun is is the glue. Like you have to keep it fun, you have to keep it engaging for the founders and for the rest, you know. So it is actually a strategy. Yeah, you don't measure on a KPI, but it is a strategy to make it a wholesome, you know, you know, fun experience joining this group and feeling positive about being in this group. It cuts through the energy, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:24

Yeah, amazing. Have you made any big mistakes as a leader in making the transition from agency to yeah, I'm sure I have.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:33

I'm trying to think off the off the bat. Yeah, I think the big one that we made, and we probably still make is as a bigger group now, you've got the day to day activity, and then you've got the big dream and the big future. You can get stuck up in the big thing and drop the day to day activity, and something we always say to all the companies, and this is just true for every agency, no matter how big you are, don't lose sight of like. Of of this week, this month, you know, it's so easy to be like, okay, I've got all this work to do, and in six months it's all gonna work out. But in that six months, you lose sight of just like doing your outbound. And so you don't have any, you don't win any clients or you win fewer clients. And every single time that we go back to basics and just grow the business, everything else works out. You don't have to worry about anything else if you're growing the business. All the things that you're worried about are not problems if your business is growing. And that's what we joke like for if if the business is growing, it doesn't matter if you're going, no offense, but there's no, it doesn't matter if you're going on a podcast. It doesn't matter what your PR looks like. It doesn't matter. Nothing else matters as much as keeping all the businesses growing and doing what needs to be done to grow those. And every now and then you lose sight of that, you know, you worry about, oh, I want to do this thing, I want to, which they're important, but you know, I want to, I don't know, I want to redesign the website to make it look amazing. And that's fine, but don't lose track on that. And I think we've made that mistake again and again and again. And really early on, right back to the beginning when we were still at university, we won a bunch of clients, maybe at like 20, 20k MR. And we were like, okay, we need to build the best op system ever so that we can scale to 100. And so we just did that and we just forgot about selling. Uh, this is very hard, we just completely forgot. We like and we we even said we're not gonna bring on any more clients because the demand will be there when we're ready. So I turned away clients. I was like, no, sorry, sorry, sorry. And then like your 20k drops to 10k because a couple churn and you're like, shit. And then I try and start selling, and the pipeline's cold again, and it's like, oh gosh. So we did that. We dropped all the way down to like, and this is a horror story that that that keep that you know reminds me of this. We dropped all the way down to maybe three, three, four KR, and we're losing money every month. And we had a call with an Australian client who was one of our biggest, and so we had to take the call at 1 a.m. because it was an Australian guy, and we were trying to re-sign them to stay on. So I had to stay up till 1 a.m. in my really depressing uni bedroom, and they then they didn't even show up to the call, they just said, sorry, we're not staying. And I was just like, shit. Like, we're now down to basically zero. I've squandered everything. And from that, we then had a call the next day, and I was like, we're not gonna worry about the big picture. I'm gonna worry about winning clients every single day. You're gonna worry about servicing them and delivering great service for them. And we went from that was in January, and I remember by Valentine's Day, uh, because I was considering skipping Valentine's Day with my missus if it wasn't going well. By Valentine's Day, we were back up to like 20k MRR, and it was all good again. But at that remote, me and Jamie laugh about that all the time, reminds us is like, don't lose sight of the day-to-day and the sales and the business and just the operational excellence. The rest will come, you know. So I think that's a big one.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:07

So I think every no matter how often you're told that, it's like every agency has to go through that. So try and build something that you just think is incredible, and then your revenue just drops. My my one of my sales mentors once said, like, always keep your uh bubbling pool of leads, like always just have the pipeline full. And it's not until you put all your eggs in something else that you're like, it's a good lesson. It's a great lesson. It's a really good lesson. You don't want to have it, you don't want to have it later on.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:35

Yeah, you don't want to have it later on.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:37

Yeah, that would be horrendous. And I'm sure many people have and just put them in a really tricky spot for sure. How uh has your role changed now? Like, what are you spending your time? Because you've only still got the same amount of hours as you you did in the day. Uh, have you been able to to cherry pick the things you enjoy the most in the company?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:54

Yeah, so I think the my new role in being sort of in the supergroup suits me really well because I'm not a heavy, I'm not a heavy ops guy. That's why Jamie was the ops guy, and I also tend to do bursts of creative energy and thinking, but I can't do the same thing every day. I need every day to be a bit different. So this role suits me well. So most of what I do is if it's not working on an MA deal, which is bursts of energy, because you have like three months to do a deal, and then it's like, okay, basically do a deal, think about who the next one's gonna be, but that might be in like six months' time. So then that that whole thing kind of slows down. Um, and what I try my best to do is meet with the founders and the CEOs of each company, see where maybe they need help, keep my eye on all of the companies, and then do bursts of energy on each one. So, for example, you know, if one of them is struggling with sales or one of them's really struggling with churn, you know, with one of the companies there was this problem, there was this churn problem, and it came down to a particular um subsector of the business. And we actually John helped us, but we needed to strip out that team and rebuild it, replace it, rehire. So that was like a three-week project. So I burst and then I'm done with that. It's like okay, what's next? Where else can I do something? And then I'm also trying to do the external thinking, that a bit of that shiny objects thinking so that the others don't have to. It's like you guys are really focused. So, for example, like the one at the big one at the moment is obviously AI, and it's freaking everyone out a little bit. And I'm like, how do we get onto the right side of history? So, right now, where we're gonna be hiring an AI team, which is gonna be really cool. It's gonna sit in supergroup as well. This is really cool because for most agencies, they can't really afford to hire an AI team. But as a group, we can build an AI team that can service each of the agencies, and each agency can have individual projects with this team, where this team can do audits of the agency, find the operational opportunities, find the opportunities to you know increase performance, all that kind of stuff. So that's like, for example, a project I'm working on, and I'm interviewing people this week, and I've been doing that for the last sort of week or so. And so I'd say like I do bursts of energy with each company and specialized, like try and do like specialized projects that could pay off, could not pay off, but you know, someone needs to look at that opportunity in the group, you know. So that's that's a lot of what I'm doing. And then I've got a fantastic FD, Sam, who's like my right hand man. So we obviously deal with a lot of the legal finance HR, all the stuff of bringing companies together, and that is a bit of a job, but you know, just things like setting up this company in South Africa. We needed to find an accounting firm and a law firm that could do that for us, go through all the costs, and we're really setting that up once it's kind of like another specialized project because Underground Ecom, Jamie probably he wants that company, and actually a couple of the other agencies are probably gonna use that same company to hire in South Africa, but none of them have the time or the energy to go find it. So that's a great thing that they can say, James and Sam, can you set up a supergroup South African company? And once that's set up, they can hire through it. So it's things like that. That's like, okay, is this going to be beneficial to a lot of companies? But no one person company can really take it on right now because they're really focused on what they should be focused on, which is growing the business. So those are that's what my role at the moment encompasses. But it's very varied.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:20

Sounds like the dream role, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:22

It's cool, but yeah, it is the only thing is like making sure you're thinking of like because it's not one job, it's like I do have to think every week, okay. What am I gonna do this, what am I gonna try and achieve this week? Because it's a lot of self self-building of the role, if you know what I mean. It's like, where can I help the most? Where can I be the most useful? And also, I'm sure they would say I do, but like try also, don't just be useful by just don't just have a job by getting in the way. Like, don't just like, oh, I'm gonna jump onto their sales call because I want to feel useful, but that's not helpful. I'm just jumping in with no context and trying to help, or yeah, probably making it worse.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:56

So um, yeah. How often do you do you go down a rabbit hole of a certain project and it not materialized in the software?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:04

A lot, a lot on both projects and MA stuff as well. It's like, ooh, this could be a really interesting thing, and we go down that rabbit hole and it doesn't really work out. And even like specialized things, like earlier this year, it may pan out, but like we were trying to launch a specialized service inside Underground E-com where we work with YouTubers to build up their newsletters. And I spent like two or three weeks on that, and I didn't want I didn't want anyone at Underground Ecom to work on it because I was like, don't get distracted by this. So we'll have a go at it. And John actually is normally my specialized right-hand man for these little things. So we had a go at that. We've got a couple of YouTubers on. We're actually still working with one and we've kind of pivoted it a bit, and it could actually be quite cool where we've ended up um building, building like almost building more of a product for him that he can sell to his audience. And so we might take that strategy and use that to build, help them build like info and specialized products. But we went down this newsletter rabbit hole. It kind of did work, but the problem is it as you can imagine, like if they don't have a newsletter, there's so much lag time for it to actually generate any profit. Like, even though they'll grow it, it's gonna take six months until and it's like, is that really worth the resource for us to work almost for free for six months? That didn't really work, but like that was like that's like two months.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:17

If you were to speculate, like to give people a measure, because I think people always they hold we all hold ourselves to incredibly high standard. We all want to make sure that we're really productive at all times. If you were to speculate like a percentage split on like time into things that end up being ROI positive, ROI being money, whatever, yeah. Uh yeah, and not, what would you say?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:39

I'd say one in three things, like 30% of the time for myself, because it is a bit more which way 30% of the time it is ROI positive, probably, 70% probably not, realistically. It's still important things, but that's because of this role of doing different things. You know, I think if I go back to when when I was running like the sales marketing, I would say one thing we were great at is I was like 80% ROI positive. I just didn't do anything that wasn't. Um, and because this role is a bit more long term, it's a bit, you know, the MA and all of that, some of that's gonna pay off, but you can also spend two months talking to a company or like figuring out an opportunity, and then that opportunity doesn't materialize. So that's just you know, that bit that is the game. Um, so in that case, you know, a lot of those things don't pay off. But I think the ones that do are really big moves, you know. Every a good acquisition puts you a year ahead of your plan. A bad one probably puts you two back. So it's worth getting it really right, you know. And I think we've done a great job so far on everything that we've everyone that we've brought in, and it's why it's our well.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:48

I think probably one thing you do very well and that lots of people struggle with is investing a lot of time into something and then being too emotionally attached to that thing, so let's go ahead with it regardless, and uh you know afraid to cut the ties.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you have to be willing to to just abandon or recategorize or and and I think the one thing that has been good and something that Jim's good at is like you can normally find something out of it, but it doesn't have to be exactly what you thought it was gonna be, you know, and you can normally find some sort of positive out of it, you know. And for example, we've been doing these D2C marketing events, so the idea was let's do events under a sub-brand for all of our e-com agencies so we can bring together clients of all of them, and then we can that will help with cross-selling and also meeting new brands and educating them and stuff like that. And so I put a lot of time and energy into that. Uh, ultimately, it has worked, but we just did too way too many events, like we tried to do way too many. And so you could say, okay, scrap that, that didn't work. Or you could be emotionally attached and be like, no, I'm just gonna keep delivering this at the same rate when it's not working. It's like, no, it hasn't worked at that scale, but it is still a really great tool for just a few, just a fewer, more considered, you know, spread out events because what you know, doing too many was distracting the management teams, where a couple is actually additive because you do a couple of events and they get a couple of pipelines and it's not distracting for them. So that's an example where we could have abandoned it, we could have pushed on when it was the wrong thing to do, but instead we took and were like, let's rework this thing. There's some really great essence in this, it's working well from uh at some level, but it needs it needs re-honing. So that's an example of some of a project where a lot of time went in but needed to reconfigure.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:39

Yeah, there's a silver lining still.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:42

I bet you're excited about, or correct me if I'm wrong, working on the AI project at the moment, building that team. How are you looking at that? What are you seeing as like the biggest tangible benefit for agencies right now?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:51

So yeah, I've got a presentation on this next week, so um for our team. So I've done it this week, so I can tell you it's easy. I can rattle off the rattle off the slides. But um, I separated it into three buckets, uh, and I've also separated the benefits out. But the three buckets of where we can use AI is train internal trainings. So that means don't build anything, just teach your team how to use the products on the market because you don't, there's a lot of times, you know, we don't need to build an AI design software. There's a better one on the market that we could build. So just train your graphic designers to be AI native so that they can get more output, you know, and they can they can be better. So team training is the one. It's like, can we just AI enable this 300-man team that we've got across these companies? Um, that's the first one. The second one is internal tools and automation. So these are tools, automations maybe like a we've got a whole list of them that we're working on, but for example, one would be like a chat bot that sits connected to our learning hub so that people don't have to go through the whole learning hub. They can just ask the chatbot, you know, what should I do if a client does this? And then it'll try and find that within the learning hub. So those are like internal tools that make the companies better, and then external tools would be actually services that sit alongside our agency services. So, for example, conversion-wise, they could build something in AI that is like a CRO analyzer or an A-B test analyzer that clients can either buy separately or that fits within their service. So those are the three buckets that we've separated it into, just to get my head clear, because it's too much if you try and think, oh, we need to do AI. So I was like, okay, let's separate these out. Then let's go through each company and and and make a list of of these things that we want to do and which bucket they're in. And then let's put high to low value uh next to it. Being it's very hard to quantify, but like, will it either make could it make you more than 50k a year? That's a high value thing. You know, is it is it 50 to 20k? That's mid-value if it's less than 20k. And obviously, for example, that learning hub, it's hard, but you can still kind of be like, okay, if a hundred people are getting better output out of this, it's gonna be really valuable, X, Y, Z. So we've tried to categorize it like that. Um, and then now I'm basically hiring a head of AI who's gonna either work fractionally or full-time on these projects, and we'll probably start with one or two if they work out really well, then the person will just have more and more. We're just gonna have so many projects for this person to do. They'll probably they'll probably end up being full-time, you know. So that's how we're looking at it. Why are we doing it? I think obviously there's efficiencies, obviously, there's performance gain, I think there's obviously hype, which is no bad thing, you know, but we have to say that is what it is. Like there's hype here. People want to hear that you're doing stuff in AI, and that's important. You've got to be ahead of the curb. And I also just see it as hedging, which is like, I don't know where this is gonna go, but I want to be ready either way. If it turns out that the AI stuff isn't everything that everyone's saying, which I think is a there is some possibility that people are definitely overhyping it, but you know, that's fine. But also, if it does go that way, I want to be the guy who was in a year or two earlier, making their whole team AI enabled, building it in, having a really valuable AI team, because I could see that head of AI having a couple of developers and then that becoming a real value ad. So it's some of it's just hedge in, you know, it's like I don't know which way, but I'm not gonna end up on the wrong side of this. No, I feel the same way. I I've just hide that role as well in business.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:25

And also at the moment, you can get crazy talent for real cheap. And I think that role is gonna become, if it does go away, incredibly expensive. Get them in, get the culture. Like, yeah, that's very true. Yeah, completely behind that. What is the the mid and the long-term vision now for supergroup? Like, what are you what are you what are you working towards here? Like, what's going to happen?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:45

So the midterm vision at the moment is uh to build it into a specialized group. For the one thing we like we don't have is the the business in the middle, which we will hopefully acquire acquire or bring in soon, is someone who does search, social, all of that. So that becomes the specialized hub of the group, so that you've got this central agency so that you can win bigger clients because bigger clients, it's like this dichotomy, bigger clients want to work with one agency that does everything, smaller clients want to work with specialized. So the idea is with this hub in the middle, and then our sectors, CRM, CRO, maybe PR, SEO, lead gen, sitting as different things. When we pitch to a big client, it can all be fed through the central hub. But we can also keep those individual brands when we want to win, when we also want to win specialized work because big and small want to win, want to hire a specialized CRM agency. So the idea is having that, that that's really the picture for it. Um, and then we continue to expand each one of those sectors. And I, you know, I think what's really exciting, what we're telling the founders now, which is like, and once again, it's so cool having like someone like the Publicist Guard About is like we're in the fur we're in the formative years of this group of where it could go, you know. Like, look at how big some of these groups are. If you're joining at the beginning now, like you're coming in at the beginning, and these are the foundational companies, and so for example, you know, Underground Ecom or conversion-wise, like the CRO department in 10 years' time could be an enormous company, and all under that maybe that conversion-wise brand, and then this foundational. So, so we're building the foundations now for scale. Um and yeah, we'll see where it goes. I don't, you know, I think we've got some visions, you know, where we want to be by 2030 and stuff like that. But right now, I think the focus is just on building really, really, really solid foundations, really solid culture, a place that you want to be for a long time, you know, and yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:52

And is this is this something that you're gonna you see yourself doing for the rest of your life? And do you think you will exit within that time frame?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:02

Yeah, I think it's probably gonna be my whole career, I think. And yeah, at some point in there, partial or full exit in there. Um, but I see it as I see it as my whole thing, and I want it to be in terms of I want the bet to be big enough that like afterwards I can do something if I want to, but I probably, you know, I probably I probably won't want to. We'll see. But you know, I see it as as as that. And I think something that everyone buys into in supergroup is like there's different motivations for being in business. One of them is to make money, one of them is to do something big. And you can't really in you can, but in the agency world, it is hard to do something big in terms of like hundreds of millions. It is hard, but with this group, you actually can. This could be worth a billion one day. That's and so that separate that from oh, I want to make this much money, but like to be part of that, that is that's the ultimate career. Like, if this went to a billion and then floated, that's the ultimate career, and we couldn't have achieved that without without this structure, without doing this as a group. And so it's like there's there's the money you make and the money you make when you get acquired and stuff, but then there's also the opportunity to be part of and be part of the foundations of something that goes on to be bigger than you could be by yourself. And I know that if we had just stayed as underground e-com, we could never, we could never get to that scale. Just it's just not going to happen.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:31

You've you've already highlighted that you like at right at the start of this, that you're you're not particularly material driven. So, like, what is it about that idea, that concept of we could be a billion-dollar company or million of pounds, whatever? Like, what is it about that? What's the energy that you grasp onto that make that makes you tick, that makes you think I need to do this thing?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:52

I think for me, and is I think I can do it. I I I have that conversation with myself all the time. You know, why do I want to do this? Do I do I want to do this? Um, but for me, it's like I think I can. And you I've seen other you've seen other people do it who, you know, maybe you've got a maybe we've all got an inflated sense of self, but you see other people who do it, and you think, well, if they could do it, I think I could do it. And I just don't want to um miss out on maximizing my own potential. And you know, I think there's there's layers. There's there's getting your own self-security financially, but then there's getting self-security for you and your entire family. Then there's you and your entire, you know, I've got I've got brothers who I love dearly, I've got parents, and then there's your pet your kids and your kids' kids as well. And I think something which is really nice is to have someone you can emulate and then get to spend time with them. And I'll go back to this guy, Jim, because seeing a really rich person on TV, you don't know what their life's like, you don't know what it's like. And you kind of, because it's on TV or because it's online or because it's on social, you kind of don't see how you could be that. I look at this guy, Jim, he's very nice and Open about you know his career, what he's earned, what happened with his deal, all that kind of stuff. And I get to see it's like, okay, this guy did that. Like it it's possible. And he's set up himself and generational wealth. And I think I can do that as well. And so being close to that is so uh motivating. It's really motivating. I think that's another cool thing about supergroup is like, yeah, being close to high achievers and seeing their journey and then being very candid and honest about their journey, and then you're like, okay, wow, like that is actually possible, and it just brings it all into like a light where they're like, oh wow, we could actually it's not just a fantasy, it can happen.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:38

It's ironic because I have no doubt that there'll be agencies watching this right now having that exact emotion themselves in listening to this conversation, and this in many ways has been like almost a playbook to priming an agency to have this kind of an opportunity, um, which is awesome, and thank you for being so sharing with it. I suppose probably a really appropriate way to round this up would be to say what would you say to one of those agencies right now who has got a bit of momentum behind them, maybe doesn't have all their ducks in a row, but they want to build towards potentially exiting to a company like Supergroove and being part of this. What would you say to an agency like that?

SPEAKER_00 1:29:14

I think my most sort of best piece of advice would be double down on what's working. It's an it's a semi-obvious piece of advice, but I think that's where I've just seen them all fail. Like they you try and do too much, try and do, try and change. But like if something's working and it is scalable, do it. You know, try try it. Um, and I think be a bit, a little bit sort of dogged in your approach and being like, this is working for me. Don't read, and I everyone falls in says, read on LinkedIn, oh, this guy's doing that, this guy's doing that. Okay, I'm gonna change my strategy, I'm gonna do that. You know, I think being in a bubble when this launched, I wasn't on LinkedIn for the first, you know, three or four years of our business, and I didn't have any agency owner friends, and um, there's some negatives in that, but there was also some positives that we had no reference point to whether we were doing well or badly, whether what we were doing was a good strategy or a bad strategy, but it was working for us. So, you know, if you've got something that works, try, try get the noise out, double down on it, focus on that, and just repeat it because you can get so much scale in that. And I think going back to that point, if you can even separate the activity so that you can, you know, one of you can do one thing over and over and again, the other one can do the other thing. And if there's three of you, you know, great. But I think separate that activity so you can you can really, really focus in on doubling down on what's working.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:40

Such a great piece of advice. So many agencies, and it's increasingly harder in the online space that we're in, have something that works and get a shiny object on just something else and then make a change on the thing. Whereas if we could just ignore the outside world and just look at what is actually working and stick to that and keep focusing on that for sure and grow so much faster.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:01

And you find uh so many. I love seeing our supergroup companies because like going to the lead gen one, like it's not, it's not, it's not sexy. And like, but I can see the numbers they're doing and stuff, and I'm like, that's so cool. And it's like, don't get caught up with like having to be doing the sexy thing because if your thing is working, even if it's completely different, not sexy, whatever, if it's working, just do it because the world's massive and business is massive. You don't have to be in the shiny, sexy industry at all. James, pleasure, man. That's been great, thank you.