SPEAKER_03 0:00

Meta said it last week. The leading DC agency in the UK. On both platforms. What's the secret to doing that in just seven years? Constantly building brand, constantly putting out content, constantly building our position in the market and then nurturing and keeping really good people. That's what separates like a good agency from like great agency business because people is everything.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

We both had very successful agencies. How did the conversation even start to bring things together?

SPEAKER_03 0:22

We were servicing brands on TikTok, we couldn't get it to work with the same creative from Meta. We knew Lucas, so we took that proposition to him from there and we moved in together.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Chaos.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

What do you think is the biggest mindset shift you've had to go through when it comes to scaling? Always being. How do you combat when the business is changing so quickly? Or do you think you're now at a point where, because you're so large, there's a lot more stability in that? But that feels like a problem that many agencies deal with. You've managed to hold over some of the biggest brands in the UK. What do you think has allowed you to do that over other D2C agencies? Most of just a big believer. Would you say you're the leading D2C agency in the UK?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Yeah, Meta said it last week. Did they? Yeah, it's independent, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

On both platforms, TikTok and Windows. Interesting. Well, that seemed to be the intro. So you are the leading now. Meta have agreed that you are the leading D2C agency in the UK. Yeah. Start seven years ago. Got almost a hundred team members now. Yeah. Yeah. Got the whole group. Um, what's the secret to doing that in just seven years? We're straight in. That is the intro. Alright.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Oh, we're in.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Yeah, we're in. We're in. We started. Yeah, you've given me the meat. Meta certified you are the leading UK P2C agency. How do you do that in seven years?

SPEAKER_03 1:55

God. That's a good question. People and marketing. There you go. People, people and marketing, I think it all comes down to positioning. Um positioning, constantly building brand, constantly putting out content, constantly building our position in the market, and then finding nurturing and keeping really good people.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

If I was to distill it down to two fundamentals, yeah, I think that like marketing piece is yeah, it's definitely both sides, because as you say, like acquisition isn't anything without retention. But I do think that marketing engine is something that's quite we do in quite a unique way. Like there's there's a lot of investment, there's a whole marketing department. Um, doing one lead magnet a week, you know, the podcast that we do weekly, doing that, the newsletter, doing all of the the content marketing side so consistently over the last two years has really like helped solidify our position in the UK market, um, which has been a massive driver. And I think a lot of agencies shy away from that because it does take time, it does take effort, um, but it's it it builds momentum, it's like a snowball.

SPEAKER_03 3:10

Yeah, I well, I think the frame that we've always used on business development is like you don't have a sales problem, you've got a marketing problem. I can't remember who said that to me, but it was like four or five years ago, and it reframed the way I think about client acquisition in our industry, and I think it's almost moved more and more towards that over time, especially as you start to progress up a market in terms of client value. It's harder and harder to sign high-value retainers through outbound or direct sale methods. I think maybe in-person's an exception to that, but you I think you really need to build reputation, you need to and another thing we also embed in that process is like the concepts which Alex Samozzi says is like give away the strategy, sell the implementation. Those two frames have built the pipeline we have, and I always believe pipeline solves problems is another saying. It's like it gives you headspace to not be going through not make bad decisions, not just go deal to deal, not close bad fits, and then that translates to better strategy and better client delivery.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

I feel like you've always grown almost with the D2C industry in the UK, and you always it always at least perceptionally feels like you've managed to have a hold over some of the biggest brands in the UK. Um what do you think has allowed you to do that over the mass of other D2C agencies that are in the exact same market here?

SPEAKER_03 4:38

I I think we've I think we've I think I s I come from a background before doing the the agency of starting a brand and then I've always like been involved in or been involved in a number of brands throughout the journey as well. I think we always we talk about a product which for our product which is our service like just internally and we think about product development in a way that like a in a way that any any b other business would. So it's like how are we innovating? So we started by just doing media buying that worked really well for a few years. We then started to build like a forecast model because a lot of brands were needing more help with the intersection of marketing and finance, that became a new iteration of our service. iOS 14 hit, the way to get success changed again. Now it's all creative. We merged with Hambi. It's like we've always been, I think, really close to the forefront of what's like Meta. We went we had a meeting with Meta the other week, and they were like, You're the ones in the in the UK that are always pushing the boundaries, pushing that innovation forward in terms of how we're actually delivering, like on the cutting edge of the how to deliver results, which I think is how we've got there.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Yeah, I think it's a timing thing as well, like especially on the creative side. Like you obviously I've known you for years, and you knew the first two years of Ham Imedia, our creative agency was we were doing completely different services to what we were doing now, and it was being able to have that agility to pivot when needed. Um, when the wave was coming in for you know iOS uh 14 happen, and then as a result of that, the emphasis was put on creative, and I saw that happen, and that's where we just essentially went all in on performance creative, niched into that, and we were able to hit the wave. I'm also just a big believer of like leaning into your unfair advantages, what's going to make you stand out over other agencies, and I think the one advantage that we could lean into was the fact that we were doing high production ads, which not many in the UK were at that point in time. It was all about UGC and statics. So being able to like create a solution and a product that lent into our unfair advantages, but also was doing something that others weren't, it gave us that unique value prop.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

You two have obviously gone through this acquisition side of the business and the and the merger, and obviously I know there's other co-founders inside of the business, but for the context of the people that don't know you, how did you cross paths? And you both had very successful agencies. Um, but how did the conversation even start to look to bring things together? Was there a weakness that you identified in the source side that made you think, well, Hamba, you've filled this gap? Like, what did that look like?

SPEAKER_03 7:26

It was pretty organic. Yeah, that was the word I was. I was literally about to say organic. I we actually started working together because Lucas and the team started doing our organic socials, so we brought them on as a to service us as a business and make like because we wanted to build a organic social presence to help us with hiring and client acquisition. So they started running like the Instagram and socials, then we started to just send a bit of work over. Um, and at the time I don't think that work was necessarily like exactly ideal client profile for you guys, really. Was it a little bit outside of probably what the usual scope would look like?

SPEAKER_01 8:00

It was strategic, yeah, to because we knew that you would would be able to get clients through you as well.

SPEAKER_03 8:07

Yeah, I think the thing with like performance marketing is like it's such a sticky creative offer because you need repeat, it's like you can't just turn it off. It's like as soon as it it's why we whenever we like um we were finding whenever we worked with the performance creative agency, it just made our results so much better, our ability to deliver creative so much better. So we started referring some bits. Then we started for you because um, which is our TikTok proposition off the back of that because we we we noticed when we we were servicing brands on TikTok, we couldn't get it to work with the same creative from Meta. Mine and Joe's skill set is not creative. We'd obviously knew Lucas, so we took that proposition to him and were like, let's do it, let's do this TikTok agency to capitalise on the wave that was TikTok paid, and then from there it kind of branched out to becoming mates, and then we moved in together, and then and then we chaos the chaos issues.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Um yeah, I think it's it's it's it happened in the best way possible. Like if it can happen organically, that's so much better. Because especially, you know, if you can enjoy working with the people that you're um gonna be you know merging into the same group of, it's it's fireworks, you know, it can be so much better as a result of that. And I think the TikTok proposition came around where an Ollie approached me and said, We want to set up a new agency which is just TikTok first. Um, you know, we we have all of these skills, you have those skills, why don't you come in with us and and do it? And what's what was that we I've laughed about this sentiment? What's so funny was like he was talking about this thing called UGC, and I don't really know what UGC was then, like we were very organic first, like brand focused content marketing on social at the time. Um, and I was like, Yeah, we we can do UGC, that's fine. 100% know that I've kind of like had the outlook of if someone if you need to do something that's gonna like m drive the needle forward, you say yes and work it out. I genuinely think it's like the biggest hack to like learn something quickly is is to pressure is pressure, or especially when you're ADHD, like if you don't have that pressure and like you need to do something by this point, like you just don't do it. Um that, but then also um having the having that ability to actually run with it um and teach, I think that is actually the best way you can learn a topic is to actually teach it. So if I if there's ever something that I know is going to really benefit the team, but also myself, I will I will t I will put a training session in on it and double down on it and become an expert in it in a couple of weeks. Nice.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

It's Richard Branson that says if you ever get off an opportunity you don't know how to fulfill, say yes and then learn later. Um I feel like you were the first or one of the first UGC agencies in the UK.

SPEAKER_03 11:05

Yeah, we were. I think we were the we were definitely uh yeah, we were probably the first performance creative agency just for for D2C, um, especially for TikTok, and then moved over to Meta obviously over the last sort of two years. Um, and we're the biggest for TikTok. The biggest for Meta as well for D2C for sure.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

I think like just a key thing to mention here as well, like if agency owners are listening and they're thinking of merging, acquiring, you know, or even just looking for a business partner, because that was actually something I just always wanted. And I looked at Joe and Ollie and I was just jealous that I couldn't build with someone else, like and I was a solo founder, and I didn't actually want to be a solo founder because I know what I'm really good at, but then I know where what the things I'm not so good at. So I think like the key there is the reason it's worked so well is because Ollie and I have very, very different skill sets that very much complement each other, so it still needs to be strategic to some degree. It can't just be you get on really well, so let's do something together. I think that's really important. What are the complexities that came with that?

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Like, did you think what did you expect to happen? And then what actually happened when because did you get rid of the creative team inside of Saw? Like, did you have the merge teams? Are they run as independent entities? Like, what did that look like?

SPEAKER_03 12:22

I've been thinking, I've been reflecting on this a lot recently, because I'm thinking I think we're gonna probably look at doing another acquisition at some point. So it's like I think it's important to look back and be like, what would we do differently? I think it it had so we we've we've we've we've completed the acquisition in like January, I think, officially, but we'd started to sort of work together more directly for like six to eight months before that, because it just takes a long time to finish anything like that. Um especially if you get dodgy lawyers.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Um we're already like co-founded for you at that point for about a year. So we'd know it was like proven that it worked.

SPEAKER_03 13:02

But what we started to do was we started to like merge the service together, but we probably didn't if I was to do it again, I would probably do that more aggressively quicker because even now with not fully not everything is like fully connected. There's still parts of the business that feel like slightly siloed, and it's just way more complex than you think, especially as you're trying to grow fast at the same time. Because what it all what it what it allowed us to do is we got even better product market fit, and I've spent a lot of time over the last 12 to 18 months building that marketing engine that has just got better and better and better and better over that time. So we just had more deal flow, more pipeline, more demand for the service. We get getting better case studies, but yeah, we we should have I think we should have just c like re-orged the whole business in one go rather than try to phase it over because it's just it's complex, and um I think what you don't appreciate is like when you m make a change in a business, it has a very big impact on efficiency, and it's a hard you can't really see that impact, but it just does. It has a lagging impact on like team output, process output, because it's just people just find it hard to to adopt new process or change.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Um we only like we only just merged notion, which is pretty mental because we've been uninteresting. We've merged a while ago now, and but again, that came with its complexities and uh inefficiencies, and it does disrupt the day-to-day. Um, but I think the things we should have definitely done sooner is like have that much faster alignment to culture pillars, values, mission. We reworked our mission and values recently, and we did it with the whole team. So we we got everyone together at an off-site and um did a whole session where each group had to come together, come up with a mission and values based on a brief, and then everyone pitched them, and then we kind of merged them all into what we felt were the best ones. Because in that book, Seven Habits of Highly Affected People, he talks about you know a great mission and values that an organization can get behind are the ones that are created from within the bowels of an organization, not by the C-suite behind their wooden desks. Um, but again, that only happened at the start of this year, I think it was when it had been 12 months since we'd merged, so there were almost like inconsistencies across the way that both teams were working until that point. Um, and we felt the right thing at the time was to kind of very slowly transition everything across because we didn't want to create this disruption amongst the team, but it almost did more harm than good in the long term.

SPEAKER_03 15:48

I think the difference with this acquisition to probably other acquisitions that we would explore, maybe other acquisitions that other agency groups would do, is like we committed to merging the teams together because we needed to do it for a product perspective. Because we believe that that intersection between creative and paid media, those two, those things need to work together. So we had like all of the paid growth on SOAR and then all of the creative on Hambi. So we've completely merged the org charts, which if we were to buy like a CRM agency, for example, which we maybe would do it at some point, it's like we'd just have that as a department, it's a much simpler process. Whereas like re-orging the business, we should have just committed to doing it in one big build, I think, is a reflection. But it's gone really well still, but it's just like lots of lessons out of that.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

Is the main issue communication through team to team communication and and and then does uh are there any client-facing issues that present themselves?

SPEAKER_03 16:49

There's definitely like well, there's definitely churn, like you get you get higher churn through like and why do you think that is? Process people, uh just like just like I said, like process chur change, there's just so much going on, like there's so many moving parts to that process.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

I think the biggest confusion for the clients is that they're they get confused with or not it's pitched as a as a joint service, paid in creative, but then they're like ha there's Hambi, there's Saw, like what's what, and I think there's confusion around the brand, and you know the fact that there are two entities but they are the same team, and it's you know, great great marketing and great positioning should be extremely simple, and that does confuse things.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

That's the final piece of the puzzle. Is just merge it all together, which we'll do probably before the end of the year. Under one central brand? Just for simplicity, I think. Yeah. Will you rebrand when you do that? Probably not. Probably keep it's too much equity in the in the saw brand, I think. In com like of the two, that's where most of the deals come from. So we'd keep it as one. But yeah, I think just like I think we have we had a plan, but I think the plan in hindsight, I would I would have changed the way we approached it. I would have been more bullish on how fast we moved to to just merge fully and commit conviction and commitment to it, I guess. But it still went really well.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

There's a lot of learnings though. Like I think we've learned a lot even this year, just in terms of how to best communicate with a team at scale. Like, there's we've gone through a lot of process changes that needed to happen just because of again the market changes, Meta's Andromeda. A lot of the service had to adapt and evolve because of that, which normally I feel like that happens every two years, where the service does just need to very much evolve and change, or you will just die and get left behind. Um, but I think some great feedback we've actually had from the team is, and this is useful for any what any agency owner, whether you're small, you know, small agency or a bigger agency, is bring the team in to those decisions. I mean, and that it's never going to be them, you know, that it's never going to be to the point where we all collaboratively with the team come to that decision. But getting them getting buy-in before you roll that out is good is really important, especially if it's something that's going to disrupt their day-to-day. And sometimes we just kind of threw in, okay, we're um we're changing this process and this is what's happening now, without actually getting that full buy-in before doing so. So I think that's a really useful insight that we've learned through the process and something we're definitely going to take forward.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

Yeah, the two parts of agency that nobody speaks about, because I just think they're pretty like unsexy in comparison to marketing, sales, service delivery is business operations and and commute and internal communication and culture. I think people talk about culture, but like the actually like how do you turn that into a process? How do you measure its impact? How do you measure like team churn and risk of churn like you would measure your pipeline? Something I'm thinking about a lot right now, because it as you get to like the size we are, it's so important, so important for so many reasons. And then BizOps, like HR development, employee career progression plans, how that layers into KPI measurement all the way through the org that backs into a PL. It's like just very boring, but like it's I think that's what separates like a good agency from like a great agency business, is if you can excel at that, because people is everything.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Yeah, and it's probably the biggest reason we haven't been able to like because deal flow has never been an issue, but like the reason we haven't been able to scale even more in the last two years is is is people, and like if people leave a business and you can't replace them quick enough and train that person up, it completely throws everything off and s and s and slows down you know the rate at which you can you can bring on clients. So I think that's a massive one. Like we were talking about this, like that idea of agencies are so obsessed about churn rate for a for client, you know, it client churn, but they never look at like employee churn. And so I think that's just like a really interesting KPI.

SPEAKER_03 21:05

Yeah, I'd rather I'd rather lose a client than a team member like tenfold. And it's like, but nobody measures like where you're saying you you've got a pipeline waiting for a for a possible client of maybe like 10% to 100%, 100% sign, 10% like very doubtful. I feel like you've kind of got the same for a team member. Like you've got like someone who is like sober into the mission, massive advocate of the business, mm, progression, like moving up the organization, zero risk of them leaving, and you've got like a middle 50% of people, and then you've got a you've got like a detractor, people who are like probably actively looking for other roles, or like maybe like have a bit of a negative sentiment building around elements of the business. It's like we're I think that's like important to measure as you get bigger. What are you benchmarking like client like employee churn at? We uh we we want it as low as possible. There's like a linear relationship between revenue growth and employee churn. Sorry, is that right? Yeah, like linear employee churn goes up, revenue growth goes down, like black black and white as that. So it's like the lower the better. It's not impossible to keep headcount, like it's impossible to probably keep it at zero, but like we want to be keeping it as low as possible. Um but yeah, we do a lot around like MPS surveys internally. We do a lot about around like really improving our review process, development plans, etc., to to minimize that.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

I think that's the that's so important, especially if you're at a point where you're doing at least 30k a month in revenue, is when you really need to start doubling down on those HR processes. Because I I I I I'd say one of the most common reasons like people leave a business is because they don't know what the line of progression looks like because it hasn't been they they haven't been bought into that. They don't know where they can grow into.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

How do you how do you combat that when the business is changing so quickly? So in some senses you don't even know where you're going. Do you have you ever found yourself in positions where you create like a line of progression that isn't actually possible anymore because the business's director direction has changed somewhat? Or do you think you're at now at a point where because you're so large, there's a lot more stability in that?

SPEAKER_03 23:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

But that feels like a problem that many agencies deal with is like they don't know yet where they're going. So it's hard to create that progression path.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

It needs to be tied to business impact. I think that's the key. Like people approach pay reviews and say, I need I I need to be on this amount of money because that's what the market rates are, or whatever it is. And one thing we are like obsessing over with our team is flipping it to this is the business impact I've created, and that's why I should be on this salary. That's nice. Um, and that the way you do that is obviously tying progression to their KPIs that feed up to a forecast. So, you know, you can directly see the impact of you know, the business impact that they are contributing to, so it's tied to the commercials as well as their own impact on the commercials. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 24:00

I think thinking through businesses at that earlier phase where you've got less predictability and you've got less headcount, it's like I think you can keep the incentive and progression fairly simple at that stage. You can probably do it very like tied to just direct business output. Obviously, as you get past like 20 people, you start to have to build an org chart structure that's scalable, which is repeatable, and back to like gross margin profile that produces the right EBITDA outcome. So it's like at that point it becomes a lot more benchmarkable, a lot more formulaic, I think. But we we've we've had like I think the first six people we hired still are in the business. First one was uh was a friend of mine I went to school with who's our MD. The employee five and six were two guys we hired at like 20 and 19 who are our CMO and COO. So they've been through like probably six, seven, eight rounds of progression over the course of the business, and it's I think I've always just approached it with like proactivity in mind. Like you never want someone coming to you to ask you where their next step is, you want to lead because you that's that you want to be on if they're good, if they're really good people, it's like you want to proactively put dangle the carrot like almost of like this is where you're gonna go next, but this is what we need to see to get there. That's also what we I think in like when you're building career progression frameworks, it's like I think when you've got a really big team and there's people progressing and there's others that aren't, that comparison becomes quite an issue. It's like, why am I not getting that? Because I think I'm producing the same output. So you need to make it quite objective and quite rooted and remove the subjectivity, provide the comparison points, provide the clarity so that it removes that as well, because that can create quite negative sentiment, I think.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

I was just gonna bring up the fact that you've got like many of your like senior team members have been people that have been with you for a long time and friends and so on. Have you hired many people inside of the business from a senior perspective that have come straight into the business in a place of seniority, or have you always like you know, enabled people to grow inside of the business? What's your general mindset surrounding that?

SPEAKER_01 26:08

I think we're what one big learning is that we've waited too long to be bringing in senior members from externally that can teach us things and have one thing that we will never have, which is an additional 10 plus years experience in the game. And I think because the business is very much operationalized now and we're kind of from that start up to scale up, that's something we should have brought in sooner because I think the risk when and it you know, there are lots of cases where progressing people through an organization is amazing, but then if your whole senior management team are people that are, you know, between the ages of 25 and 30, there's not enough um context almost that that can be applied to drive that. So we've we've literally just hired a uh a director of creative arts who's like a a really real first real senior head that has probably like 15, 20 years experience on all of us, um, which we're really, really excited for. But we should have done that sooner. Um, because I think it's it's one of the best investments you can make as you're starting to to get to that point.

SPEAKER_03 27:17

Yeah, we well we've engineered it in certain ways. I still think we should have done it sooner, but we've got a we've got a CFO who's brought a lot, we call it grey hair, like grey hair had been around the block. Uh he's actually bald. Um, but we call it yeah, like grey hair. It's like getting someone who's just walked the path in and shared that learning learned experience. Um, I think a lot of what they provide, and I've actually in talks with another one at the moment who used to be a CEO of one of the biggest agencies in the country to get her to do some like day rate consultancy as well. Um, a lot of the places they help, like a lot of the places I think they add a lot of value is in like really top-line stuff, like stuff like commercial strategy. Like we should have raised our prices earlier at the start of this year, and that had so many downstream effects on us because our margin compression pay bans we couldn't raise, talent, like therefore talent wasn't as as high quality as maybe what we were looking for to provide the outcome we were selling. So we had a few rocky months of that, and all we needed to do was raise prices. But when you don't have that benchmark, and then like you've come from like a bootstrap business back like background, it's like to have the conviction, you almost need someone to like give you the conviction to do that. And now we've we've gone through a few pitching processes where I've asked for feedback and they've been like, Yeah, you were like 40% cheaper than everybody else in the room. It's like and and we're like as good if not better than than they are. It's just like stupid things like that. Like she would just take one look at our pitch deck and be like, you you should charge five, ten pay more than that per month. Um so I think they provide like very big unlocks in in in in areas like that. It's excited to get more of that into the business over the next 12 to 18 months. Nice.

SPEAKER_01 29:02

See, I think it's like very much about like leaving your ego at the door as well, because I think a lot of young founders, they you know, young, hungry, they don't want to bring someone in that could potentially um damage their own ego or come across more senior than them. But it's like the you know, Ben Francis thing where growing Gymshark, he realised it got to a certain scale where he literally wasn't experienced enough to be the CEO of that business anymore, and he brought in this brought in a seasoned CEO. I think he went into product for a few years to learn from this guy and then step back in as CEO.

SPEAKER_03 29:39

And I think that is a growth mindset as a founder making the right decisions for the business rather than yourself, especially once you get past a certain level of a headcount, I think. Like just get past a certain stage where it's just a absolute machine, like that's now that's how it needs to operate, but it is, and it's like you can make like two or three decisions a year that like really make the massive difference. So, yeah, I think we definitely would have done that sooner.

SPEAKER_02 30:08

But so is every single person in the company incentivised to a KPI to a degree?

SPEAKER_03 30:14

Yeah, yeah, everybody's measured to a KPI that backs into s either someone else's KPI that ladders to the PL or is a direct PL. Um so it's very, very measured.

SPEAKER_02 30:24

Media buyers, for example, what what what do you benchmark them on? What's the KPI?

SPEAKER_03 30:29

G well growth strategists would you call them, but those would be like uh ad spend client ad spend growth. Creative strategists would be percentage of ad spend through our creative assets. Um yeah, so that it's it's it's very very measured all the way through. Because again, I think you need objectivity in in that process. Um for for so many different reasons.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Yeah, yeah. So like an account like an accountant director who's head of the account management department would own um blended churn rate, and then all of her direct reports would own churn rate for each of their pods individually. So she is incentivized to be driving them to achieve their KPIs because it back it feeds up into her KPIs, which then feed up into the forecast. Um, because obviously, we as part of that forecast, you're predicting a certain amount of churn. Um, so yeah, and I think that's how you get very black and white with those reviews, because it's that was the issue previously, like looking at our reviews pre um like a year ago or whatever, they just too subjective. And when something is so subjective, like people can quite easily argue with you why they deserve something, and you can't actually give them the proof as to why that they can't. But if you create that objectivity and it's more quantitative, it's it's it's very black and white, and it almost motivates them more because there's more clarity around exactly what they need to do to unlock that next stage of growth. So we've just redone our career progression frameworks. Every role has a career progression framework, so you'd have a level, which is your job title. Um, so a creative strategist would be level one, senior strat would be level two, but then it in under each level there's bands, um, which obviously you can you can grow within within the bands as well as part of that. And there's there's real clarity in under those those career progression frameworks, like what you need to do, what you need to be achieving to reach the next band.

SPEAKER_03 32:30

How often are you reviewing like the quarterly? Yeah. 30 day, 60 day, 90 day when they join, and then quarterly after that.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

And their manager their direct manager is responsible for tracking?

SPEAKER_03 32:44

Yeah, it's quite awesome. We've got like loads of automations there that tracks all that, a lot of that, to be honest.

SPEAKER_02 32:49

But we what's the tech backend behind it?

SPEAKER_03 32:52

Just look at studio and look at the data reports, yeah, into an ocean dashboard. Nice.

SPEAKER_02 32:57

How do you guys personally handle the pressure of having so many team members?

SPEAKER_03 33:03

Um that's a good question. I don't I don't really feel pressure's maybe not the word. I I guess there's pressure, but it's like it feels like we've got really good alignment and r really good people uh at the at a leadership level, and therefore I don't feel like it's necessarily like direct pressure on me as an individual. Maybe Lucas would have a different view, but um I generally enjoy running a people business when and there's nothing better than working with loads of great people that are very aligned to producing an outcome and the and the way you're producing amazing work. I think it you can go through patches where like you have a couple of months that are very stressful, but again, I think as long as you've got the right mindset, the right growth mindset, like I just think we're all very receptive to feedback. I think we're all very adaptable, we're very willing to pivot, we're very willing to admit mistakes. I did an all-hands talk the other day where we literally went through how we'd got communication wrong in the business for the first six months of this year and how we're gonna do it differently moving forward. So, yeah, I don't really feel pressure as such. Um I think what one thing that helps with pressure is having a decent amount of cash flow in the bank, like give it runway, which takes the which then removes stress. I think that's like one thing, and like um not focusing too much on the monetary outcome and focusing very much on like the process and like what you're actually just trying to build and who you're trying to build it with. What's your thoughts?

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Yeah, I think um I've definitely had periods where there yeah, you you where you just you you feel more pressure because naturally when you're like I think we hired near 30 people in last year, that's a lot of people, a lot of upskilling, a lot of management time, and you when you're bringing that many people into a a culture, it's very hard to like keep that culture how it was previously, um, because naturally you need to align people to certain values that when you're bringing people in at such scale, it's it's very hard to do that. So that as a result, it can come with politics, and that's the one part that can be tricky, but I genuinely think now because those HR processes are such a focus for us, and people are getting the support they need, the mission is at the forefront of every single huddle that we do with the team. The value we're shouting out culture pillar alignment almost every day now, um, as well as on a weekly basis through our uh all hands huddles.

SPEAKER_02 35:53

What does that look like when you do that?

SPEAKER_01 35:55

They we we we do we do them around different things, but in every single like a different topics, but every single all hands will have a section where we go through our culture pillars, um, which is extreme ownership, client centricity, uh radical curiosity, and kind candor. Kind candor. I forgot the best one. Yeah, the best well the one we won't stop banging on about. Um but kind candor.

SPEAKER_03 36:21

Yeah, the concept of just like candid feedback. I think it's like Up and down, yeah, and and to to those you work closest with. I think if you can get a team aligned to an objective who are willing and able to give each other direct feedback, I think you've you everything else will take care of itself. Because they hold each other to a standard and then you don't need to manage them.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Like they're all managing them each other. In a way of and it's it's like the idea of being kind, not nice. Um you're nice to someone if you're not telling them, if you're not giving them the feedback that they deserve to hear, because you're being a people pleaser, you're saying what you think is going to make them happy in the short term, but that's not gonna help in the long term. Being kind is being direct, honest, but constructive and empathetic in what they can do to grow and improve. Um, and that's like something we're we're driving through the whole business now on a team level because what it creates is even in management, you'll get one manager that sees something that someone else is direct report has done, they'll go to the manager and give the manager that feedback and it won't then get raised for another 30, 40 days until their next review. Or alternatively, you'll get an individual go to their manager about a problem with someone they work with. That manager will tell the other person's manager, and then the other person's manager will feedback to them, and then they have resentment because they're like, Well, I work right next to this person, and that's clearly gone up, you know, behind my back. Yeah, so by doing it, it actually creates a more honest open culture where because a players challenge A players, that's like the mentality of being an A player. Um, you you know, you expect high standards, and that's what it really helps drill into the business, and it's it's probably the best culture pillar change that we've made. Um but yeah, it's uh it's it's really important. It's hard to build as well, it's a muscle. It takes time, that's the thing. It's like it's we've had it now for what five, six months, yeah, and it's only now that I'm really start starting to see the impact of it. Um, because it's it is a muscle that you need to flex, and that's why we keep it at the forefront of reviews and give people training on how they can be better at being candid because it's very, very difficult, even for managers to be direct sometimes. It's like very hard to learn that skill.

SPEAKER_03 38:45

Yeah, and you have to change it, especially a junior, junior staff. Like it's it's it's it's an unnatural thing to give someone, especially in today's society, I think, to give someone direct feedback one-to-one to their face about something that you think they haven't done well enough, but it's it's just powerful.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

No rules rules, the book about Netflix, they talk about it a lot. Like that was a massive part of Netflix's culture. Um there's that other book that's good to read, that radical candor as well.

SPEAKER_02 39:12

So I think a lot a lot of agencies have like their values. A lot of agencies create their mission, their vision, their values, they create them once they sit on a spreadsheet or on a presentation and never do anything again. And then maybe on a Monday morning meeting they'll read them out again. But like tangibly, like, how are you reinforcing this in the team without just every day being like, oh, these are our values? Are you using real-world examples where people have slipped up to re-educate?

SPEAKER_01 39:36

Every single week they'll get shouted out in Slack.

SPEAKER_03 39:39

Um, here's an example where this person demonstrated this value and how it's never on the negative, and how it translated to you know, you always put praise in public, criticizing private, right? So it's all anything negative is done on a review setting or one-to-one setting, and you'll anchor the feedback again to the culture pillar. Um, but and then yeah, but we we think of that culture through like it's it's internal and external in an agency. It's like we also want that culture to be embodied in how we interact with clients. So we want our people to challenge clients when it needs to happen. We don't want them to be just yes men, because that's not what they pay us to do. Like, we're there to guide them, and Canda's effective in a product, in our products as well. It's like we want to be challenging. If they say there's something that's stupid, we don't just do it because they say we're like, no, that's a stupid idea. We should do this instead.

SPEAKER_01 40:29

Yeah, we've also got that matter app that we said about, which is like a Slack connection where people give kudos to each other every week that they can then turn into vouchers and things, but they can only give them based on culture pillars. Um, so they're in in alignment with that, they're getting rewarded for aligning with culture pillars. But then I think what Ollie was kind of gonna go on to is one of the most impactful ways that you can bring that to the forefront is almost like an employee case study. Here's how this person demonstrated these values, which then resulted in business impact for us, which meant they progressed to this job title. Nice. Um, so it's like tar it's not just like some fluffy culture thing, it's like this is by demonstrating these values, this is what's going to help you grow in this organisation. Love that.

SPEAKER_03 41:19

Yeah. I think I think the final thing is like you have to embody them first, and it has to like because I've seen examples, especially when people do what you said where they just set it and they just like touch on it. Half the time the leadership team don't embody the embody it, so it's like how can you expect something from someone that you aren't willing to demonstrate yourself? Like you lead by example first, and you do it, and you you also welcome the feedback back, like it has to come up the chain as well as down.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

That's the biggest cancer in a business, I think. Like you have a someone in a leadership team who doesn't embody the values of a company or is scatty, and that then creates a scatty team below them. Um, so that's you know, if you're looking at the source, usually if there's a bad culture, you can look up to someone who's in a leadership position that is is creating and instilling that, um, and that's a really important thing that you need to kill because it's very hard to stop that if there's someone in your leadership team who doesn't embody those things because the team are just gonna build resentment. It's like, why would I do this and why am I being penalised for this when the person above me is doing that as well?

SPEAKER_02 42:31

What have been some useful resources for you guys in like improving your leadership skills?

SPEAKER_03 42:35

Loads. Um that that's that's something that like I think I I think even I think I'm personally quite good at this. Is like I'm like just an absorber, and you are as well, but like I'm just an absorber of content and I'm a big sharer to the team, and and I just like every day I'll put things in Slack that I'm consuming, and whether it's leadership, whether it's team. So it's it's been through I've got a note in my phone that's just called amazing content, and every time I listen to something business-wise, I'll just put a title, what it is, what it relates to, and just a link to it. And it's just like probably got about a thousand things in there now. Nice. I think the best places that we've looked, like I think the obvious ones, like everyone talks about Alex Samosi. I think if I think Layla Hermose is arguably better in terms of content output when you're running a business. I think Alex Samosi's really good at strategy, commercial, offer, marketing. Layla Hermose is incredible at internal ops, people, culture, and building teams and building high performance teams. So I think she's like, if you're gonna start somewhere, start with her.

SPEAKER_01 43:37

Very digestible, like 15-minute um podcast that just are so actionable, like every single one of them, which is yeah, so that's a great place to start.

SPEAKER_03 43:47

When you're thinking about like really starting from like what is culture, how do you build it? And there's a there's a cut there's a um lecture series called Blitz Scaling on YouTube. It's by Stanford, and it's Blitz Scaling was a concept in the early 2000s of like Rapid head ground count account growth in tech companies to support rapid revenue growth. So like Google, LinkedIn, I think one of them, I can't remember which, went from 2,000 to 20,000 people in six months.

SPEAKER_02 44:11

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 44:11

That will never happen again, especially with AI, that will never happen again. But that is a business that that environment required such obsession with culture and management process. So there's a there's a couple of episodes, one with Reed Hoffman from Google, one with a guy who I've forgotten the name of, which I actually think is the best, is the guy who went into LinkedIn when it was about 5,000 people and turned it round before he got acquired by Microsoft. And he goes through in that video how he went in, how he rebuilt culture, how he reset expectations and rebuilt the business towards where it was ended up. So that's an incredible resource. I'd recommend reading that. And then things like Netflix, Deck, like some of those more like little tactical bits. Um, but I reckon if you just did that blitz scale lecture series and loads of later MOSE, you'd get enough value. Nice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

Yeah, what one thing I do as well is like I'll any any of these videos, I'll literally just transcribe them, put everything into a custom GPT bot and just share it with the management team. So if they've ever got any questions around like HR management, um, you know, building progression, it's it's a great place to to you know build that context within within like a GPT bot. Um but yeah, I mean we can I'm like I've got a database, I'm happy to share it with the audience. Like, comment down below. Uh what should the word be? Leadership, leadership comment leadership down below, and uh yeah, I'll share it with you because there's loads in there. Hacking the engagement now. It's our biggest, it's our biggest hack on our podcast giving away lead mags. Great resources, but if if you comment, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:47

Still learning though, like by no means like uh even close to being perfect. I'd say like the last six months I've been a pretty bad like communicator in that business, and it's like something I've really obsessed over in the last 60 days, and I just think I've gotten way better at it already. Because I just didn't appreciate like how much the cadence I should have been doing it on, or how inten how intentional you have to be about the process, but yeah. Nice client acquisition then. This is yeah, um client acquisition, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

I mean, you first of all, I mean, you you've got three businesses or free agencies under this group, they have their own individual acquisition strategies. Is it centralized? Like, what does that look like?

SPEAKER_03 46:31

It's centralized because they all operate to the same or very similar ICP. So the businesses we sell to are very similar, so it's yeah, centralized in terms of resource and structure.

SPEAKER_02 46:43

Can you give like a high-level overview of what the funnel looks like at the moment?

SPEAKER_03 46:47

Yeah. Um yeah, I I I I use like the mental model of like our attention or eyeballs, capture and conversion, like those are the three stages, just because I think it's simple. It's like how do you get in front of as many people as possible with good content? How do you capture their information and then how do you use that information to nurture them down a sales process? So, like, and we've kind of got a strategy at each stage. So, like the sales process I'm not gonna really touch on, but that's like um hub spot flows, like all that stuff, follow-up sequences, which I think you can get incrementally better over time. But once they're set up, it's kind of the setup, you can you can't make them better, but you can do like it's like 80-20, right? Get them set up and optimise them, make them tailored to the entry point, pain point that they download the resource off, etc. And then we've laid in like events, which are another really good way to convert people who are like quite far down the funnel. Um but what we focused heavily on for like two years is eyeballs and capture. So like I so like eyeballs just been personal brand, so LinkedIn, Twitter, um podcast kind of sort of surfs between the two, but podcast. And then we're gonna start doing short form a lot more. Um and just like daily posts on those.

SPEAKER_01 48:07

Then we've got a we've got someone in-house that we will give all of the content ideas to. It will be all it will be us, but then she will write the content into posts that can we can put through LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. So there's more of like a formulaic strategy or way of that that that's being scheduled and posted.

SPEAKER_03 48:26

Yeah, she's like plugged into us but also the team. So she's plugged into like the departments. Because it's like once you get to a certain size, it's like I'm not the the best in our business at Creative, right? The people who are doing it every day have the insights. So she's very plugged in and she does daily posting for all three of the founders. Um and we do that across Twitter, LinkedIn, and then we obviously do the podcast every week. Um, and then the the thing that's just ripped for us over the last two years is lead magnets, lead magnet giveaways. Um we started them about two and a half years ago, and we were doing one a month, and then we got to like September last year, had a look at where all our deals were coming from, and it was like all lead magnets, and they were driving loads of impressions as well. So we just do one a week now, and we and we the thing that I think I have to credit our team with is like they're all like really fucking good and quality. Yeah, it's like great lead magnets. I've had people like I've speaking to a head of growth of one of our brands, and he was like, Yeah, I'll eat you I use your lead magnet in the interview process to get this job. It's like people taking the lead, like they they do they are so valuable, but what that does is is it creates a flywheel effect because people who downloaded the last one download the next one, but you to do that you have to comment, which puts it in front of their audience, and it's like that flywheel, and then we push them from the lead magnet to a newsletter, and then that's just like a nurture sequence, and they also get tagged into HubSpot.

SPEAKER_02 49:49

Nice. Do you then call through all the leads? Lead magnet, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:53

Uh, we so you get first lead magnet, and then you get a like a prompt to download more, but you give me a phone number for the second one because I'm like, we just want to get you in for the first one, phone number if you're willing to give us it, and then we'll have a I've got a setter that calls. Nice. We've got one salesperson across three agencies. He's a bit of a freak though, he does like 12 hours of phone calls a day. Very lucky to have him, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 50:14

He's an absolute weapon, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:16

And he's been with us four years, so he understands e-com as well as we do, which helps, and he speaks the languages like that founders want to hear. And just loves cash. Just like he always has. Literally at the most money motivated in a good way. I'm so money motivated. Yeah, that's what you want to do. He'll just go for it. He doesn't want to do anything else other than phone calls and follow-up.

SPEAKER_01 50:37

Yeah. And he's incentivized by that in the business. He will literally send me a message like pounding me for an answer at like 8 pm on a Saturday. And he'll get pissed off if you never play. That's when you want the next time. Sometimes it feels like he's yeah, he manages us. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:55

I think it's too obliged to him sometimes. Like, I have other things to do in this business other than sort of shit out for you.

SPEAKER_02 51:01

But it's like, do you want the money or not?

SPEAKER_03 51:04

It's like a few minutes at the moment, but then I'm like, yeah, fair enough. He's like he's killing it right here. So um, but that shows what you can do with if you have the really good pipeline. You just you don't need a massive sales team, you need one really good closer, and you maybe don't even need that at the start, you just do it yourself. But yeah, um yeah, we just had this snowball effect though, it's just been a massive snowball.

SPEAKER_01 51:24

I am just so bullish on the idea that even if you're a small agency, if you're wanting to grow, like I just think the best thing you can do is become a media company, like flip the model on its head. You it's like the Red Bull model, they're a media company first and a product second, and that's how they've been able to scale to where they are. And I think we definitely have that philosophy, you know, everything through the social content, the lead magnets, the YouTube channel, um, you know, the newsletter. Like, I think if you can position content at the forefront of what you do and education and value, you you're gonna win long term. It takes more time and it is time consuming, but I think that is what what builds the best brands. I think some people look at this like you might be an agency that just works with like dental practices, and you think, well, what's the point? Because I'm gonna get 100 views of video. Yeah, but what you've got to remember is like though though if you get 100 people that are highly engaged in your content in your niche, that is ridiculously valuable. It's quality of a quantity, right?

SPEAKER_02 52:28

Exactly. Dominate that space.

SPEAKER_03 52:29

Yeah, I also think it aligns with the mission, like it aligns with what we're trying to do in the industry. Like we want to be the gold standard of e-commerce, like, and that's what the brand needs to be that as well. I think again, I think it's Alex Famosi who says that you always want to look at the end state in every industry as a model. Like, people like where do where does where does an agency get to over like when like 20 years in, they all go up market and they all go enterprise, and that's because it's less cyclical because the businesses you're servicing are less cyclical, so therefore your revenue model is less cyclical. There's less your churn rate's more predictable, it's less like um volatile, is the word, not cyclical, sorry. Um, to do that, you have to build brand and positioning, which I think content is like the driver of that, yeah. And that's why we've kind of committed on that journey and built a brand around our business in the way that we would build a brand for a client.

SPEAKER_02 53:27

How have you found the uh D2C Diaries, the podcast that's like come into the mix?

SPEAKER_01 53:31

Is it is it too early to see the fruits of that, or have you it's crucial massive now, just in terms of like the value of it? I think just you just can't beat that site you get on a call with a potential client and they tell you that they've listened to like 50 hours of you speaking already. Free sell. No, you just can't like they already know you, and like we I was on a 30-minute call with a brand, they're doing 35 mil a year, and um within like they were talking to me like we were mates from the outset just because they'd listened to all of our podcast episodes, and we closed them on a massive deal within 30 minutes, contract sent over, signed, and it's like just that that I just think like long form is just ridiculous when when you start building that momentum, and like I think the key here to say is like that it did, it has taken time to get to that point, like it wasn't like instant, like it had it meant it we had to be posting consistently on a weekly basis for six months to really see the impact of it, but now it's like it is a snowball and it's really nowhere near its true potential, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:35

Still still getting started, getting sponsors for it though. It's like we're we're in a position where yeah, like triple whale, like stuff like that. But I think like we're in a position, and I think we'll achieve this probably maybe maybe not this year, but definitely next. I think we can achieve negative cack on our business through sponsorship, and like that's just mm-hmm. That's like the holy grail of acquisition. It's like we're getting paid to acquire customers because we've got this media arm that people want to get in front of our audience.

SPEAKER_01 55:08

Well, I think we should be next year like easily doing six figures a year just on the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 55:12

Yeah, yeah. It's like there's so much cash in like SaaS sponsorships and like the ecosystem. So try to try to get towards that goal. But yeah, I've had a few in interactions like that. It's like it's like the same as having 50 long-form VSLs in a way, it's not not quite the same, but it's like it's very low, it's quite lower funnel. It's not it's it's upper funnel in terms of distribution, but it's lower funnel in terms of someone spending so much time with you that they build so much trust and conviction.

SPEAKER_01 55:38

I think the key to that as well, like if you're going to do that, is we have not once pitched our service on the podcast in you know, probably over what a hundred hours of content. Not once. Like, we you know, you occasionally talk about the agency, but there's there's never a pitch, and I think that's key. Do it for the sake of education, because I think what's what's the the worst thing about content from a service provider is when they're creating it with the intention of selling their service, because that is what that is what kind of comes to the to the forefront. Whereas if you're doing it for the purpose of educate first, and then if something happens off the back of this, great, if not, great. If you go into it with that mindset, like that is way more powerful. Agree. Agree.

SPEAKER_02 56:27

So with the pod, allocating time to it every week whilst also doing everything else. Is that easy? Are you enjoying the process, or has it been a I do all the admin?

SPEAKER_03 56:39

He just turns up, he's just the face. Um yeah, I I enjoy it, it's not that hard. Like we book a podcast. We've got a team as well, yeah. Yeah, around us. Everything post-production. Studio at office? No, but we're gonna hopefully solve that.

SPEAKER_01 56:54

Which is stupid because we've got two studios, don't do it in our own studios, but with us, we're shooting almost every day in them, so it's hard. Um, but I I I love it, I enjoy it. I think it's great because it's forced me closer to our product so I can give the best possible value on the pot on the podcast. Um, like when I rem I remember when we started it, like going that's the problem when you're growing, you become so disconnected from the product. But I think as a founder or CEO, you'd need to be like the chief product officer as well. Like, you need to be so close to the product to know how to continuously be improving it. I think it's forced me to get closer to our service so I can give the best possible value on the pod.

SPEAKER_02 57:37

It's such an opportunity magnet as well. Like, remember when I first started this, like it felt like a chore coming down to London onto market it. Now I like the days come and I'm like, this is I'd love this. Get a sit and get a talk, have the conversations you want to have with people that you respect. And then you open you you I know you do guest episodes as well. Now you've done many episodes when you've you've done it just the two of you, but those have you have you had people guests that you haven't met before? They've just knew the relationship you can build in one to two hours is insane on a podcast. The connections that you can open in that time period. But a lot of people just sign as well after meeting all the boss, which is which works well.

SPEAKER_01 58:17

Awesome. Um I mean you do like asking us, but like you're you you do more content than we do. Like you you've got the YouTube channel and the podcast. Long form, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:27

Long form videos. I think you're put you're bashing out more podcast episodes than I am, though.

SPEAKER_03 58:31

Long form videos next, I think, for us. I think that's the if I if it's one area of marketing that I know we need to do, but I just can't we don't need to do it now because pipeline isn't a problem. So we're not demand constrained, we're supply constrained, so we focus on that for now. But young form YouTube would be next. I think we just don't we don't do it. Don't you think you could just increase the output of the podcast though? We're doing that actually.

SPEAKER_02 58:53

Because then because then you're getting into like tutorial.

SPEAKER_01 58:55

I do kind of agree, yeah. Because like, for example, we're yeah I did like a massive training the other week with a team on like scripting and storytelling, and we're just like, well, why why don't we just why don't we just run a mastermind on the podcast where it's just me sharing screen, doing, you know, teaching people about the topic.

SPEAKER_02 59:10

I think you've got to really love it to do like the pure long form sit there face to cam. Like it's so natural and fluid to sit in front of someone and have a conversation. It's yeah, it's like how do we do it without it being a chore? That's what's always been the thing. Well, I've been trying to figure that out for a decade. Let me know when you let me know when you figure it out. Hey, I'll hear you back with another video.

SPEAKER_01 59:30

Yeah, I think looking like comment subscribing. Like, I think I don't think I think with that it's like literally like a loom share screen. Like it's uh what going through the presentation, obviously, just as long as you're spitting value, I don't think people care if you're purposefully.

SPEAKER_02 59:46

Some of the internal trainings that you've created. Yeah, that's literally what we're doing. Exactly. Yeah, that's it. Interesting. Yeah. Where do you see the future of the agencies as they stand at the moment? Like what are you what are you working towards in the businesses?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:01

Um That's a good question. Um I think at a higher level the next step is to bring the other the other agencies closer to the Sore Hambi in terms of culture mission. So they're a little bit separated right now and it makes it more complex to run. So we'll try to do that over the next three to six months. And then bring it in to the group. Yeah, and I think um the next like six six months, and I was I was speaking to someone about this the other day. It's always tempting in a business when it's going well to start doing more stuff, new stuff. That's been our biggest problem, and it's everyone's problem. And it's like, but a lot of the time you just need to let shit happen for like 12 months, you just need to do the same thing for 12 months and like not just keep getting better at it, just get better at it, not introduce anything new, not introduce any new services. Like, so like I I actually just think for the next six months we're just gonna stick to exactly what we're doing, just add headcount at the right rate, continue to get better at what we offer, and then trying trying to start thinking as we go into next year about building like a bit of a three-year plan to the view of if if we wanted to exit at the end of that point. Um, I think the problem with agency right now is it's so especially in our category, the AI innovation and the speed and rate of change makes it really, really hard to plan a five three to five year strategy because it's it's just like what is the landscape going to look like by then?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:33

No one knew that VO3 was coming this year, like you know, um text to video, like it no one thought that was coming this year, and then it's just there, and that in itself has bred agencies that just do VO3 production as an example.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:48

What what do you think is the biggest threat for us to with regards to I mean actually the agency in general, but when you think about AI like what keeps you up thinking about I don't I don't think it's a a threat as such, I think it's a threat long term, but I think the next I think we're actually uh gonna enter like a golden era of gross margin and profit. Um how that's gonna be realized is is hard. Like I I think I know I think we're gonna basically we're gonna be able to drive our unitary cost per creative down and our volume up, and we're going to be able to use our unique context because we work with so many clients to produce like really high volume of really good assets, and that's gonna allow us to build more. We're gonna need to we're gonna be able to do it with the same or less people, so their unitary output on a people level is gonna go up, so our gross margins are gonna get better, and our eBid DAR is gonna get better.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:44

I think it's um yeah, it's like I think it's dependent on like legislation as well when it comes to ads. I think this is what we've spoken a lot about recently. You know, VO3 is gonna get to the point where you will have no idea that it's like a UGC creator or if it's real or not real, or you know, with a high production shoot, why would we need to bring people into a studio to to shoot a f a testimonial when we could just create it in 10 minutes with AI? That there's a risk to production because of that and the way that we people are producing creative, um, but legislation could change all of that, you know. Like there may be auto watermarks on on ads because they're they're created by AI, like it's still the Wild West out there in many ways, and it feels like, especially with all of the changes to AI, there's there's like a some form of correction that that will be coming in in the distant or near future.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:44

I feel like the watermark or like a stamp is very probable.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:47

Yeah, I just think there's a negative outcome for society if you can produce infinite ads that of people that don't exist sell your products as if they've used it. I just think that's just a not a world that people want to live in. Yeah. Terrible idea.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:00

Which then by default still means you'll be in an advantage because you have the ability, because most people won't be preparing to have the capacity to create real creative because they'll be leaning on AI and you still have that because you had it originally.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:12

I think that's the thing we're just trying to like. I think we're pretty far. I think we're quite it's hard to you never think you're that you never think you're as far. Well, we I certainly think internally we we think we're always critical around our AI adoption, but I actually think as a business we're pretty, pretty, pretty advanced in how we're fast we're moving with that. So as long as I think as long as we stay on the forefront and we stay in this position in the market and we continue to strive and focus on product, people, etc. I think we can go for a period of like just real substantial growth, uh both a top and bottom line perspective.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:48

Yeah, I think the key is like with where AI is moving to, like context is king, so data is king, so data s some form of internal data warehouse is gonna be like essential and be our unfair advantage um that we're gonna need to leverage in different areas, whether that be like through a SaaS, um you know, how we we build AI automations. Um, so I think that needs to be a big focus. I think as you were we were talking about this earlier, like it's gonna need to be some kind of SaaS integration into what we're doing for this to increase our multiples if we are to exit in a few years.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:29

So that's what I think the the the I think the service industry and SaaS industry are converging, and it's either over time, I think that's just gonna become completely and I think I think the next step for us is is to probably either build some this is to probably build something with the with the goal of the data, but also the goal of the efficiency. Because I think we're gonna hit a limitation when you're using a project management tool, and it and then it allows you to just plug in AI tools and etc, etc. Um so that's the that's that's the plan. I I think we'd we'd probably look at doing another acquisition of another agent. Before we then like we'd probably roll up or try and do another one, maybe even two before we eventually then went to sell. Because you've got to get to a pretty big top line number to make your age to make a service business really that valuable when you go to market, I think. Um yeah. Do you have a goal in mind? Not really. Um for what? In terms of Invaluation. No, not really. I never really put like a flag like a flag in the sand. I need to you need to think about it, right? But I think it's like there's multiple things to think about when you're selling a business, especially with the business we've built. It's like it's who you sell it to matters for me as much as how much money you get for it. Um you want to be in a position where you've got multiple people who want to buy it, which I think performance agencies right now, from from what I've from a few conversations I've had, are like a pretty shiny object for like bigger agencies to acquire. So hopefully that won't be a a challenge. But I think like when we're selling, like we're going to especially me, like I'm gonna need to stay in that business for two years. Like, probably it's it's almost impossible to sell an agency and just whip off into the sunset. So at that point, it's like who do you sell to? How autonomous are you gonna be after the point of that acquisition? What's their goal? How are they gonna treat the team? All of that stuff, like is really important to think about. I don't think we've got clear on that. I think we need to over the next six months and get really like clear on what we need to want to get to, but we've just been in build mode until now. Yeah, we do.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:38

We do, but then it's about like as you said, still having that agility to pivot if needed.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:46

Yeah. Um I also think there's a world where you could get like two years down and we could be at such high margin. It's like what's the point? As long as if everyone's taking a lot of cash off the table, like uh it's like obviously you probably would still sell it, but I don't know. There's so much change, it's really hard, I think.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:04

So is there like a broader threat to D2C in general with AI and just the with I don't know, let's say an example of like Triple Well, Moby, and the way that they're moving. Like, is there is there the threat that some companies will just be able to bring a lot of stuff in-house of a lot more ease?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:25

I think you're actually seeing people move slightly further away from in-house right now, to be honest. Because I think maybe, yeah. There's a there's a world where like you meta just owns everything at a clicker, you put you upload your product margin, you upload your cac, you press a button, and it goes and gets your customers. That's probably the threat.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:44

Yeah, yeah. Because they that's the ultimate data source as well. Like that's our um unfair advantage right now, is that we've got data from and context from multiple different business, like lots and lots of different businesses over a long period of time. Whereas it's not just even.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:00

I'm not sure they would be able to do that, but because like because then how do they determine who gets favourable CPMs and whatnot? It's then at that point a monopoly, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:10

Content's content's the thing that I sent stands the test of time. I I think our business becomes bigger and bigger content agency over time. Like that's where I would be going towards content and creative. But the in-house thing, I think more more brands are moving, like I think, to specialised agencies because even if you take a creative strategist, like I think it's really hard to hire a really good creative strategist internally because they don't have the benefit of context, yeah. They can't see another 20, 30, 50 brands.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:36

I also think like a lot of a lot of brand owners are just not very good operators. Um, and obviously I can't generalize, but in terms of even just like managing people and supporting, upskilling, growing individuals in a company, HR, they're they're very they're more scrappy in many ways. Um and should be product focused, really.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:03

Yeah. Yeah, you don't need to think about it as much, not as big a problem. But if you're gonna try and build a massive team, like you need to that's that's what you need to become. Or someone in your business needs to become that. So but yeah, there's there's obviously yeah, there's threats with AI. I think 20 years, do I think our businesses it exists? Probably not. Or it looks very, very, very, very different to what it does now.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:26

I don't want to be in this thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:27

Everything I'm saying, like theoretically, like everything just rolls, a service rolls into SaaS, SAS rolls into like a gentic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Agentic, and then they and then there's there'll be a few companies left, and then eventually that'll just you know, autonomize and online business won't exist, and we'll be selling pickaxes.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:47

Yeah, um, but yeah, it does make it like hard to it makes it really hard to part of strategy, but but you are you kind of have to control what you can control.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:56

Um but at least for the next three years it's a monumental opportunity, and you're sat in the you're in the most advantageous position that you could possibly be in.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:04

There's never been a better opportunity, but I think it's like one thing that agency owners need to try and avoid doing is like try and avoid looking getting distracted by too many of the shiny medals and the because there's literally so many AI tools now that are popping up, especially in like obviously I'm very focused on the our creative agency and the amount of creative SaaS tools that are AI SaaS tools that are popping up that all do slightly different things and loads of you know, loads of different kinds of types of creative and AI and automations and research and strategy and whatever it might be. The problem is it's like you can't you you have to be very selective of the tech stack that you you're working with. And I think um the thing I'm seeing a lot happen a lot is there's just so much noise that people are getting distracted, and as a result, they're doing trying to use so many different tools as part of their tech stack, but nothing well, and there's no like use case for why they're they're using something. Um, and I think we try and we try and like simplify our tech stack as much as possible and do less better. Um, and it doesn't mean we're not utilising AI and there's not high adoption of AI, but we're trying to keep it as simple as we can to drive as much impact.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:29

Yeah, I think that focus is so it's it's hard as an agency owner, I think. You are by default exposed to just so much more opportunity because you get you just meet all these it's that's that's like the key. I think that's just that restraint and yeah, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:48

Got a few quick quiet quick fire questions for you guys. Very simple ones though. Not testing ones. Um what's your favourite thing about what do you love the most about running an agency?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:59

I thought you were gonna say what do you love most about each other then? All right, sounds like couples therapy.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:05

Yeah, back to back.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:10

Uh the people, I think. I gen I generally really enjoy working with very talented people. I and like it excites me. I've they've grown me as an individual a lot. Hopefully I've done the same to them. And it's like there's a mutual level of like respect and appreciation for the fact that they give have given me or our business so much time and their time and they're so bought into what we're doing. Then I also think that on the client side, like I really enjoy working with the right clients where we're getting great results because the relationships are always amazing. Um, I think it's a people business at the end of the day. Uh it comes that that would be my area.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:51

I agree, that's mine, definitely. Like, just the game of building with A players that all do different things really, really well. Like just building with people you like, I think is so fun. Like, we were talking about this the other day, but I think our C-suite, and also there's other people in my network, including yourself. Like, these are the I feel like no matter what business you're in, whether we sell this, whatever happens, I feel like there is a group of people that I will be building with for the rest of my life. Or net they'll never be there, it will never be siloed. Yeah, and I think that's what I enjoy. Nice. What do you hate the most about running an agency? It's what's what's it's probably can gonna completely contradict what Ollie just said, but like just and to be honest, it's like it doesn't need to be like this, and we're moving away from it being growing outwards, um but probably just the the sheer volume of people in the business versus like a D to C brand where you can be much more lean. I love people and I love working with people, and I absolutely love our team, but we've definitely grown out outwards instead of upwards, and that we've made that switch now, and that comes with its challenges.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:14

Yeah, definitely definitely does. Um I think like the un the the the in the unpredictable nature of it, right? So like there's nothing worse than getting up getting up at 8 30 clients like need to jump on a call with you today. It's like emotional, just like just like in the impact that it has on your days, like what's it gonna be? It's like what's it gonna be? It's like it's like just I don't like that feeling. I think like I there's not that much much else in the business I don't enjoy. Like, I think it it's like there's hard things, but it's like you just have to be better, it's a skill issue, as they say. Um but like I think the the um we have to make better decisions, we have to learn, we have to just progress. But that that like unpredictable emotional element to it when you're dealing with people, it's like those difficult conversations because they happen, are just like there's never nice.

unknown 1:16:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:08

I expect the people to be the answer to both of those. So it's the best and it's the worst. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, 100%. What about you? The same. Yeah, the same. Yeah, people on both sides. Just you love seeing people grow inside of the business and love building those relationships and so on. But then it's also dealing with the fallout of that when it when it doesn't go to plan and learning and forcing to change. But it's all positive either side.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:33

But even then it's like extreme ownership. It's like it's if it doesn't go well, it's our fault. It's our fault. Yeah, it's like we hired the wrong person, we weren't clear on the reason, we weren't clear on what we needed that person to do. So even when I'm trying, even when we're like, oh, we oh we made the wrong strategic decision, so we hired too many people to like it all comes back to like ultimate ownership of like it's our fault, we need to just fix it.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:54

Yeah. What do you think is the like personal biggest mindset shift you've had to go through when it comes to scaling, like to enable the business to grow?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:06

I think I think for me in terms of scaling specifically, what in terms of growing the business and enabling its success. I would say like always being in an uncomfortable position is like important part of growth. Like I think whenever the business hasn't grown is when I've become too comfortable because it's going so well, and then as a result, round the corner, you because you haven't been react uh proactive enough to to what's in front of you, you become stagnant, you lose a load of clients, you know, the the your competitors chased you and created a better product. So the best times that and I've had that harsh reality and harsh wake-up call a couple of times now in business, like the first time during COVID, but I was just relying on uh referrals, there was no sales mechanism because it was working and I was getting referrals, and I wasn't pushing myself and then lost a lot of clients through that. The second time was that we before we really doubled down on our performance creative service, I didn't see that what we were doing just like was it it reached the end of its course, and then I had to spend a lot of time re going back to the drawing board and like what are the next steps, like where what how do we need to evolve our service to to win in this market? Um, and again, like almost went under during that period, it was when we were first living together, like it was and that was the that was where what bred the performance creative service as a whole, but they were both times where I was very comfortable. I think that's a risk because you get comfortable and you get cocky when things are going really well.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:56

Agree. I was trying to think of a good answer while she's going through that for my side. I I I I see mindset shifts as like cyclical. I think you have to shift your mindset every six months, or you have to like you have to level up as an operator every six months. I think I've just gone through this process again because I think there was a period at the start of this year where because we had such a good leadership team and we we've got to this like there was loads of challenges in the business, but we have a lot of people who take a lot of stuff off my plate. It was like I kind of lost like the the view of like what my responsibility or like what I should be spending all my time my time on to create like high impact in the company. And that's an example, and now I've got a much better clarity on that now, more structure, but that's an example of just like needing to break through a barrier and just like be a bit more like like the idea of being like really effective and not busy, which I think you can get caught up in quite a lot in a big fast like a fast-growing business, especially when you've kind of been on the full growth journey. Don't know if that was even a good answer.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:05

I think like yeah, I think a big part of that is like prioritization. I think I think a lot of founders just aren't good at prioritizing and forward planning. And I think the the best leaders are the ones that plan the week, the week before, like plan before Monday. They plan their week and they bucket it into things like how much time am I spending on innovation, management, admin, um, you know, operations in the next seven uh in the next week, and what what are those priorities? Use a decision matrix to decide what you prioritize and then blocking out your calendar accordingly, but doing that on the Sunday or the Friday before you go into the Monday, because otherwise you're borrowing time from later on in that week, and you're you get into like a reactive play where you become a slave of your own business because you're not dictating your calendar, your calendar's dictating you. You get pulled into meetings, um, you know, an issue comes up, a fire comes up, and you go and have to have to put out that fire. But when you're forward planning, sometimes actually you realize that the biggest unlock and the biggest needle mover is to work on that thing that's going to help grow the business in the next six months rather than actually leave the fire burning because sometimes you have to leave a fire burning because you have to prioritize things that that are going to create the biggest impact.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:29

For me, I think the the biggest thing is being being able to be fluid in reversing decisions that I've made inside of the business. Yeah. Sometimes I think in early stages of business would make decisions and stick to them because I believe that was the right thing to do, and then you know, and then the more team members are involved, the more fallout there is, and then like too much time goes, and so on.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:51

So I think it's like being fluid. I'd agree on that as well. Pivoting strategically, we've just we probably haven't done that quick enough in the business that we've we're right now, we've just started to do it. It's just like I can already tell it, it's just gonna be such an easier business to run.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:04

Some of our biggest mistakes last year came from that, just like making quick decisions without like even thinking things through because you think you have to make that decision then. So, like, we're this is just something we're going to start doing. But like, if anyone in C-suite thinks we need to do something, it's like create a business case for it.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:21

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:21

Because then by doing that, um, it's like the same thing with like Jeff Bezos and like memos before meetings. Like, if you want a meeting, you have to create a memo because it's like otherwise it's there's no what's the point of the meeting um to prove that there is a need for this, and I think sometimes you know it's it's important to be quick but calculated, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:41

Nice final thing. Looking into the short term, like the next three to six months. What are you the most excited for in the company?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:51

Q4, man. What does that mean? It's just Q4 is like the big period for e-com where everyone makes most of the revenue and profit in the year. So like we're on a lot of variable billing, so we'll we'll follow that trajectory. What we're most excited for kind of ties to what I said earlier about like just doing nothing new, and just how I just think we're gonna get to the end of this year, and we're just gonna be a well-oiled machine of what we're trying to do well, and it's gonna produce the right, really good outcome for us. But we're gonna have a really good team, I think we're gonna have a really clear plan for next year, so kind of really yeah, excited to just see that play out for the rest of this year, and then um and I think the culture that we've we've we've as I said, we've got some feedback that we'd kind of let that slip at the start of this year, but we've started to get some real momentum around that over the last month, which I've been leading, and it I can already just feel how like how the buy-in and conviction in the team like growing again and being like super aligned, which I think you could is just a real momentum, is just like such a great feeling in a business. So I think those two things, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:02

I I would agree, I think long term, like six plus months, definitely VO3 for me as a creative. I just think there's just so much potential there, and it's really exciting, and I think it is going, it's never gonna replace what we're doing in terms of production and creative, but it's gonna be there next to it. Um, and I'm really excited to see how that evolves and is integrated into the service and what we're doing. Because I just I want to be the best at it. I love spending some more on one time with the robot. Um so yeah, think that.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:36

Nice, yeah, gent. Pleasure, pleasure, yeah. Thank you. Enjoyed that, yeah. Really enjoyed that conversation. Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:42

Cool.