SPEAKER_02 0:00

I was crap at interviews. I hung up the phone mid-interview, turned my phone off, fell to my knees, and just cried loads. So we thought, let's start an agency.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

You've now worked with global brands like BBC and Marvel. What is it about you guys? So the secret that we found is we've got different layers to the campaign.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

So a lot of our kind of top of funnel content doesn't have a call to action. It's mainly just getting us in front of these people. The bigger brands have the budget, the bigger brands tend to be happier. That's been our secret source. It's all about like delivering great work for a client and then doing everything possible to squeeze the marketing juice out of it across all platforms, create case studies, add loads of content telling that journey and that story. It works better than anything we'd ever done in the past. We've now got a really strong track record of delivering millions in revenue for some of the world's leading brands. Now our motto is let's build a really strong core team who are highly skilled, they know all the numbers, all financial transparencies, so they know absolutely everything. Now everything we do, everyone's warmed up, or it's been on our website or it's been on our newsletter for us then to do outreach, it's never like completely cold. I've completely optimised our sales process with AI. It picked out in the earlier conversation some of the key pain points from the key decision makers that I would have missed. If you took human A, who has no experience in marketing, and human B who has a whole world of experience, and they both used AI, human B would have a much better outcome. I think the agencies that understand this stuff are going to so surpass the ones that don't.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Dan, welcome to Agency Giants. Thanks for having me. So you started Knowlton from your parents' bedroom. Or spare room. Spare room, get it. Just in the corner somewhere. With your brother Lloyd. Yeah. You've now worked with global brands like BBC and Marvel. What is it about you guys do you think that has allowed you to outcompete some of the bigger London agencies? Because you guys are based in a small town in Kent.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Yeah. I I think it's been um a lot of hard work, making a lot of mistakes over a long period of time. That's compounded to get to where we are now. Um you know, listening to some of your other guests, there's been some really impressive stories of really quick growth. Um, ours hasn't been. It's been 10 years to get to this point. And um yeah, it's taken a long time, but over the years we've continued to work on improving what we're doing, learning. Um, I guess to give a bit of context, our agency wasn't started with some grand plan, it was really built out of desperation. Because I basically did a uh business management and marketing degree at the University of Brighton. And then after that, I knew I had to get a job and I applied to tons of jobs and no one would hire me. And on reflection, I was crap at interviews. Like I would basically over-prepare, try and tell them the answers they wanted to hear rather than being myself. So no one would hire me. Eventually, I got frustrated and went to this job interview, and I was like, I didn't even prepare for it. I was like, I'm just gonna be myself. Funny enough, got the job, and it was at Enterprise Rent A Car, it was a graduate scheme. So started there, worked my way up the ranks. I got promoted really quickly. Within seven months, I was promoted twice. The reason I was promoted was because I was good at sales, I was rubbish at everything else. Operations, managing a team, finances, I really wasn't good at. Um, so I got promoted really quickly, was doing really well, but I remember this week from hell, I literally get PTSD thinking about it, where my branch manager went away and he was like, right, you're assistant branch manager, you you manage the business. And there was nine staff, 250 cars. I was way out of my depth. And um he went away and I just crumbled, like it went terribly. I was starting to work at like five in the morning trying to plan all the logistics of where the cars are going, finishing at 9 pm at night. And at that point, I was applying for other jobs because I was like, love the sales element, really don't like the other elements. And um, I remember having this phone interview um for a big finance company in London, and I was like, this is my get out of jail card, I can get out of this. So I had the phone interview at like 9 pm at night because it was it was in the week from hell. I had that phone interview, and I remember the guy um calling me for the phone interview. I was my brain was frazzled, like not in any place to have an interview. And he called me and he asked one question, like a simple question. I just fumbled some really bad answer, and I hung up the phone mid-interview, turned my phone off, fell to my knees, and just cried loads. It's embarrassing saying it now, but I was I was so like needed to get out of this job. So I did what any kind of childish kid would do, and I rang up my parents, they knew I was in a bad place, and they were like, come home, and we'll figure it out. So I quit the job, came home, and that put me off ever working for anyone ever again. And at the time, um Lloyd, my brother, also was in a job he didn't like, and he didn't get on with his boss, so we thought, let's start an agency. Um, so really it was built out of that desperation, not wanting to work for anyone again, and that's where we started. Um, and there's a whole journey from there onwards into how we've built these stepping stone clients and stuff that we can get into.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

An agency is obviously a sales-driven industry, but there's there's still like a jump there between you know sales and enterprise doing a little bit of management to then like let's start an agency. Where does where does that gap?

SPEAKER_02 5:17

It's a very logical question. Um the honest answer is I think I did a marketing degree. Um, also, I guess, in the end point of that job, I had a real passion for like growing a Twitter following. So in my spare time, I started to build up my personal brand on Twitter. I was reading all these tutorials and articles and applying everything I'd learnt and I'd start to get some traction with that. So a combination of I've done a marketing degree, I've started to grow this audience on Twitter. I also at the time was like a big Gary V fan and started to read all of his books and stuff. So there wasn't like a logical, this is a logical idea. It was like those things together kind of made me think, and I guess, yeah, it it there was no kind of master plan. It was like, we'll start a marketing business that that we can help people do what we've learned to do so far. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

Did the sales experience you had help you in the agency and the other side?

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Yes, massively. So that's so the way our business is set up is Lloyd is CEO, he manages the team, the projects, big picture thinking. I'm a new business. So I manage all of our sales and marketing, and I guess that that's where I do shine. I don't shine at a lot of things, but that is the one thing I'm really good at. That um that that sales experience really helped me. Definitely help.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

You mentioned it took you longer than some of the other guests to get to where you wanted to get to. And what do you think the limitations were in that?

SPEAKER_02 6:42

The limitations were never having any agency experience, so not really knowing how agencies work, never having any experience of running a business. So we made every mistake you can possibly make. Um, sometimes people who start agencies have started something in the past, learnt all those mistakes, made, you know, sorry, learnt all those lessons, made the mistakes, and they go into an agency like, oh, we've learned like we were really starting from nothing. So it took longer to make those mistakes, learn those lessons. Um, and I guess also things like hiring people and stuff, like we had no experience, so that you know, agencies are built around people's time and who you hire, and we made so many mistakes with that, and that pushed us back. What would you say are some of the bigger mistakes that you made in the early stages? Oh I've got some embarrassing ones, I'll tell you. Um, like again, take into account we had no experience with understanding business. So there's things like I remember we went to a pitch without realizing it was a pitch. So this really cool um company that makes cardboard furniture in Brighton asked us to come and meet them. We thought it was just a meeting to chat, so we got there and uh they were like, right, where's your pitch? And we were like, what pitch? There's things like that that it makes me feel stupid now, but you like look back on it. Also, like things like qualify qualifying customers. We didn't do anything to qualify customers. So anyone that wanted to work with us would be like, yeah, great. I remember this this bouncy castle rental company contacted us and I was like, Oh, great, we've got a great opportunity here. Spent a week developing this whole plan, drove an hour and a half to go and meet them to present this, got there, presented it, and they were like, We've literally got a £50 budget. What are you doing? You know, these stupid lessons that then teach you, right? We need a qualification framework. Um, other mistakes we've made in the past. Uh one big mistake is, and this was probably a bit further into the journey, was not improving our website and our brand to the level of work we were delivering. Like I had self-taught to build this WordPress website, built a crappy logo that we kept for like a number of years, but we were working with big, well-known brands, and we so and when we had a lot of attention and across different platforms, so we were getting all this attention, great work. People obviously going to our website and thinking, these guys aren't credible. That was a massive mistake that I wish we would have because when we updated our website and our brand to the level we were actually operating at, that was like a pivotal moment for us because then all this attention we were building was funneling into let's have a look at their website and see what they do, and and then it's actually credible and looks good. So that's one I always kick myself about. I wish we'd have done that sooner. There's always those.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

It's always those. Ours is review collection. It took us way too long to really be pushing testimonials and reviews. And you're like all of those customers, all of those clients that we missed out on.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

You've done the hard work, like you've you've delivered good work. That's actually another thing I can relate to that, because we've got this approach that we call milking the top 10%, which has been massive for us growing over the years, and we still use it today. And it's all about like delivering great work for a client and then doing everything possible to squeeze the marketing juice out of it across all platforms. That's our approach. Like, we win these stepping stone clients, then squeeze the marketing juice out of them, create case studies, ads, um, loads of content telling that journey and that story, and then kind of blast it out everywhere. And that helps us then win that next sort of stepping stone client. And it's that's been the and we still do it today. Like any, any we we tend to now the top 10%, we tend to do it with the top 10% of our customers that people know. So we work with tons of customers you would have never heard of, but the ones you would have heard of, we really shout about those because we position ourselves as that agency that works with these big global brands.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

How do you distribute what's like the main channels for you?

SPEAKER_02 10:27

Whole variety of things. So it's evolved over the years, but there's things like creating a case study on our website, creating LinkedIn optimized ads, we create a load of behind-the-scenes content, shot on a phone, professionally shot content. Um we talk about that on podcasts like this, talk about at events. Um yeah, I guess LinkedIn is a is a core platform because I've built my sort of personal brand up on there. So that's where we get probably the most attention. Um that's what we do.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

LinkedIn ads is interesting. You I I I don't often hear people talking about the great results they've generated on LinkedIn. It's a very expensive platform. Talk to me about that.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

So the secret is that we found is running LinkedIn thought leader ads. So we've done a whole lot of testing in the past where we've run ads from our Knowlton company page, and yes, they're expensive. But I guess it's like you say they're expensive, but it's relative. Yeah, if you've got if the lifetime value of your customers is high, expensive isn't expensive. So, and our ten our customers, we tend to be like low volume, high value. So it's not that expensive. But the secret is thought leader ads. Thought leader ads um are where you amplify content from a personal account, like my personal account. So when those ads are getting in front of a potential CMO, a big brand, it doesn't look like a company advertising to me. It looks like Dan Knowlton is just in my feed sharing some value. That's been our secret source. And and like not many people are using them.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Thought leader through the message of a case study specifically? Well, they they're called thought leadership ads. That's just what LinkedIn calls. Oh, it's a LinkedIn native function.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

Yes, it's a LinkedIn, it's a LinkedIn ad format where you you create the campaign, and when it comes to the ad creative, you basically type in the put the account name and then you can choose the content that they've posted natively on their personality. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Is it kind of like a boosted post from Yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

You can and they've now bought the functionality where you can boost stuff. Wouldn't necessarily recommend that. Uh but I recommend doing it in the campaign.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

But you can just click boost and then call to action goes through to a LinkedIn page, or is it like an external book of call funnel of sorts?

SPEAKER_02 12:38

We've got different layers to the campaign. So a lot of our kind of top all topper funnel content doesn't have a call to action. It's mainly just getting us in front of these people. That then filters down into them going to my um profile. That's fully optimised to drive traffic to the website. We use tools like DealFront to track the companies that are visiting the website and then have a whole outreach follow-up strategy where we get in touch with them.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Nice. Obviously, this is on the more sophisticated side, presumably at the start, it was a lot more scrappy than this. Oh, yeah. What did it look like in the beginning?

SPEAKER_02 13:09

At the start, it was just um running ads from uh like our Knolton company page and not entirely knowing what we were doing. This is like the process we've been through with everything, kind of testing everything on our own business, figuring it out, and then when we've got a model that works, then taking that to market and offering offering it to our customers.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

No cold outreach at all?

SPEAKER_02 13:31

Uh no, we do outreach, but it's all warm. So um, and this I guess this this ties in with our our kind of whole ethos around marketing. I personally hate being sold to, and could be controversial. I'm sure cold works for lots of people, but anytime anyone calls our office trying to sell us stuff, I'm very polite, but it's like I it it frustrates me, and that that's applied to everything we do with marketing, and it actually helped us accidentally discover this approach we call advertainment or entertaining advertising, where we we always focus, you know, when when a brand has an end goal of like driving revenue, a lot of the time everything is focused around that final thing of we want to sell you something. We flipped it on its head and think, what does that person you're selling something to actually want to consume? And how can you cleverly turn that piece of content into something that does sell, but they also enjoy consuming it? And that's where our kind of advertisement approach works. Obviously, it's there's a lot more complexity to that that we can get into, but that's our kind of ethos around marketing, and it probably came from that early stage of being a massive Gary V fan is jab jab jab right hook, like provide value and then ask for the sale. Um, but now everything we do, every everyone's warmed up, or it's been on our website, or it's been on our newsletter for us then to do outreach, it's never like completely cold. What was the point in which you came up with that advertisement? So, a bit of a story. So 2017, um, we'd spent the first couple of years testing lots of things, we're building websites, we're writing blogs, stuff like that. And then in 2017, we wanted to create this testimonials video. We we'd worked with some small local businesses and we were like, now's an opportunity to get them on camera saying nice things about working with us. However, testimonials videos are boring. So we came up with this idea where we shot interviews with our actual customers, so we got the credibility of them saying Nolton are great to work with. But also, my brother and I dressed up as different characters with fake mustaches and wigs, pretending to be our own customers, talking about like how brilliant it is to work with Danalloyd. It was very comedic and witty, and we cut the fake interviews in between the real interviews, and we created this like five-minute testimonials video. And at the end of the video, some text popped up on screen that said, Um, you've literally been watching an advert for our agency for five minutes. Imagine what we could do for you. And the idea was like the proof is in the pudding, they'd get to the end. I've just watched a five-minute advert, and we posted it on social, and it worked better than anything we'd ever done in the past. Like, that was a real moment for us that like we've done something a bit unique that works. Um, and then we thought, like, this this has drove more new business for us. We can do this for brands. So I remember the first brand we did it for was like this gym brand, and we came up with this whole like gym bro campaign, really fun, entertaining sketches and skits, and then a load of content that promoted the gym, and we ran this meta campaign, and it it just did so well, it drove so many new members, and we were like, this works for other people too. And I guess that was the moment, and it's just that was probably 2018. We've just kept doing that for bigger and better brands, and now we are where we are.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

That's very cool. I've forgotten the name of the the agency. Um something brothers or bros, and they I think they did the doc the Dr. Swatch ads, um and um and also there's that t-shirt company that have some excellent, there's some really great um forget the brand. But see that throughout a lot of brands, especially in the D to C space. Those really entertaining pieces of advertisement.

SPEAKER_02 17:03

One one mistake we made though was before we discovered that we'd tried loads of funny content and we created all these sketches and stuff that were basically coming from experiences we'd had from going to local networking events, like prodding fun at them, and like one of them, my some lady tried sort of um cleansing my brother with crystals and stuff. We had all these weird and wonderful experiences at networking events. We created these sketches, got loads of views, and we're like, This is working, but drove no new business. So that was just before that testimony. Then we were like, right, how do we integrate fun, entertaining people love this with actually getting our sales messages across? And we've done it since then with loads of cool brands. Like we relaunched Sunny D in the UK, we did this really entertaining campaign with Barry from EastEnders, um, where it's really nostalgic, comedic, achieved some insane results there, and we've like kept doing that for brands, and it's it's just fun as well. Like it's fun coming up with ideas with the team that aren't just like how do we sell more stuff, but like how do we get people to actually enjoy what they're consuming and then buy.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

So, what's the the source and the distinction between comedic ads that don't convert and then that advertisement style where people do actually buy?

SPEAKER_02 18:19

Yeah, so it's all about cleverly tying in sales messages, um, relating to the customer pain as well in it in a fun way. So, like getting someone on camera that looks like the person you're trying to convince to buy something, show them in a fun, entertaining way, feeling that pain that they have, and then showing your product or service solving that pain. That's just one example of like a whole lot of different styles and levers that you can pull on. But that's the ethos, like, yeah, understanding who is the decision maker I'm trying to convince to do something, what challenges, what what keeps them up at night, and then working backwards from there to design a campaign content that really feeds into that.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Love that. You've worked or you've gone from working with like local restaurants, local businesses and so on to BBC, Sunny D, like you mentioned. What was the transitional piece? Like at what point, like what was the catalyst that took you out of local and into international?

SPEAKER_02 19:14

So there was there was no one defining moment, it was really stepping stones over a period of a decade. So just to give you give you an idea of how that journey looked, so we started working with like small local restaurants and stuff, mainly picked those up through local networking events. I remember convincing um our first customer to become a customer. It was like at a local networking event, it was probably the hardest sale I've ever done, and we were charging them £100 for a whole day of training, right? And it was so difficult, and because I didn't hadn't done it before, and it went terribly. Like I did I delivered this training day prepared, way over prepared. I tried to like cram everything I'd ever learnt about Twitter and growing Twitter and meta and stuff into one day, could tell they were all completely overwhelmed, and they were paying us £100. There were six people in the room, £600 quid. Probably spent weeks preparing this thing. But but that we got some good testimonials that gave us that first stepping stone client an opportunity to milk the top 10%, and we create a case study, we create ads, we shouted about that and and gave put a good spin on it. Then from that, we managed to win a contract with Thanet Council, their tourism board. So they wanted to deliver a load of training to local tourism businesses. They'd seen that we'd done that training, we won that. From there, there was a local hotel there that really liked the training. We got our first retainer that was like 500 quid a month. Um, and then the next one up from that, which was like a crazy moment for us, we got contacted by Euro Tunnel, like the underground train system, and Lloyd and I were like, What on earth? This is like a company that people actually know, a brand that people actually know. And we went through this whole process of doing a proposal, and I remember um Lloyd was at a garage getting petrol, I was in the office, and I got a phone call from Eurotunnel, and they said, Yep, we'd like to go ahead with the your idea. We came up with this idea to ski down a mountain with a kitchen sink because it's like everything in your kitchen sink. Um, and on the phone, like I honestly get goosebumps now thinking about it. The feeling of them saying they wanted to go with us. I instantly called Lloyd, and it sounds sad, but I remember we both jumped for joy.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Clicked your heels together.

SPEAKER_02 21:26

Literally, like we were jumping, oh my days, like so excited. And from that day, I was hooked, like working hard to understand a uh a brand's goals, coming up with a cool idea, and them saying we want to go with you. I've been hooked ever since. Now it's obviously on a much bigger scale, but um then from Eurotunnel, our next stepping stone client, we got contacted by this company, Dubai, and they're like, We want you to deliver some training. And um, I I ignored it because I thought it was spam initially. They kept following up. So I had a call, it was legit. I ended Up flying out to Dubai to deliver this training. They didn't tell me much detail about who was in the room. So got in the room on the first day of Dubai and this training day, and everyone's introducing themselves. So I was like, Oh, hello, nice to meet you. Everyone introduce yourself. First guy, hi there, I'm so and so, I'm the head of digital at FIFA. I was like, What? Next person, hi there, I'm the head of marketing at Nestle. Hi there, Citibank, Boston Consulting Group, these big hitters in this room with me. What was I doing there? What was it? You know, why did they hire me? But we'd obviously built a good um reputation building my personal brand. Did that, that went really well, opened the doors to other opportunities. Then we won Wall the Clipper brand. Then COVID hit, and obviously the demand for hair clippers when COVID hit went through the roof. So we had this campaign to capture all of that demand, create some insane case study that opened the door to other brands that we work with Sunny D, Hastings Direct, Catfootwear, like, and every one of these times that we win these brands, I still feel euphoric now because it's so much like pictures now take so much more effort. But when they say yes, that feeling you must know it, like nothing better. And I'm just hooked on that feeling.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Nice, nice, that's awesome, man. It's always such a gradual process of earning the right to pay to play and with the big with the with the big players. Like some so many people actually on the podcast come from an agency background, worked in a big agency, already got access to those guys. And so when they start an agency, it's like they've got a bit of a network, but first client Aviva. And it's like, okay, okay, fine, now I'm in, you know. Whereas um, you know, other agencies like myself, same story. Second client in a local networking event, first client, local restaurant went door to door. You know, you're eating shit for a long time and you're earning your way to bigger and better brands.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

That's why it's taken ten years. Like, that's why our growth has been slow, slow, slow. Now we're like hitting that hockey stick moment. But it make it makes you feel like I almost feel like prouder, because we've like, we've done so much hard work to get this point. We've stuck through, like the first few years, we were losing loads of money, we're barely like, but we've stuck through it, and you know, by no means have we hit the point we want to hit, there's so much further to go, but it gives me confidence that we've got the resilience to like keep going through those tough times.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

How do you feel about like sustaining on referrals in general? Like, do you feel like growth is somewhat the victim of referral flow, or have you got an abundance of opportunity and you don't know where to turn?

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Um I guess referrals, referrals we've won some of our biggest, most exciting campaigns. Um, but we do have a whole stream of other activity that that is bringing in opportunities. Um, and we're I guess we're also learning, like, in terms of referrals, last year we won this insane campaign. We we went out and shot a global TV social and out of home campaign in the Bahamas. And again, like you always look back and reflect and think, why didn't we do more of the things that helped us win that? We realized that that came from a referral from another agency owner who is in this network we're part of. Um, and we've never done anything proactive to get referral. So now we've got a whole referral plan where we're building relationships with other agency owners. So I think for us it's just having multiple streams of activity, the referral stream, um, also like growing accounts now. We never used to do anything. This is how ridiculous it is. We used to win a project, deliver it, do an okay job, never speak to the people again or the brand again. And now we've got this whole like process of winning an account, growing it, demonstrating value, and that building that account to grow further. The Friday Club, we've got we started a podcast called Business Anchors, there's all these things we're constantly trying and testing new things because that helps us find the winners that we can then do more of and do less of what's not working.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Nice, nice. I realise that we haven't really unpacked the actual core service of nonsense, which would probably help a bit of context for the people. It's just me, not you. Um but uh can you give us an idea of service, how it started, and then how it's an evolved today? Obviously, I know you're you're clearly doing advertisement as well with the advertisement stuff, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:14

Totally. So it has been a journey and it's evolved. Started out, we positioned ourselves as like a video and social media marketing agency. Mainly did video production, social media content, social media management, a bit of paid social, that kind of thing. Over the years, as we've built our skill team and sort of uh expanded what we're doing, we now offer a whole range of things. So now we sort of position ourselves as a creative marketing agency. A brand comes to us with a goal, and we come up with a plan to figure out that goal using multiple channels, whatever's suitable. But the main things we kind of specialise in still anything video, social, content related, a lot of what we do is still on social media as one kind of distribution platform, a lot of paid social. We also do a lot of work with creators and influencers. We um also now do a lot more like in-person activations. So last year we did this really cool activation where we relaunched this email marketing software in the UK. We did um it with Mr. Motivator in London, Victoria, did a big flash mob. It was really cool. Um, so they're the kind of I guess mainstreams of activity that we focus on now. Um and we've also got partner agencies for other elements like Google and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Nice, nice. And are you kind of pod structure or are you kind of head of department?

SPEAKER_02 27:29

So we've really got two core teams in our business. Um, and then also I guess we're set up slightly different to the traditional agency setup, probably because we've never done this before and we figured it out. But we really have two core teams. We have a production team and we have a marketing team. Um, they're all fee earning, they all um we don't have account managers. Um they all uh we have a primary and secondary account man account holders who are actually doing delivery, so it's part of their job, the team doing delivery who are also managing the account. Um so they're our kind of two core teams, and then we've got Lloyd and myself and a PA as well.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Nice. You've been building with Lloyd for like 10 years now, as a as a partnership, but also brotherhood, which I mentioned off camera, is you know, it's uh some people can do that and do it incredibly well, others can't. Uh, how has that been, working with your brother in business?

SPEAKER_02 28:22

Amazing. I would not be where I am today without Lloyd. Um, but it's been a journey. I remember when we started out working for my parents' bare room, we we had no idea how to work together. We'd been traditional brothers, like fighting, growing up and stuff. And I remember our way of dealing with uh having different opinions was to have an argument and not speak for three days. So we were terrible at communicating, didn't know how to work effectively together. This is 10 years ago. Um, and over the last 10 years, adding more process, um, learning how to work with each other, we're now in a really strong place where we we use the entrepreneur's operating system as part of our business to help us have structure. And every week Lloyd and I go on a walk and have a meeting and critique each other and give each other feedback. And part of that journey, I've traditionally been really bad at taking feedback. I always feel like it's a personal attack, just a personal trait of mine. Now we're at a place where we can both say, really honestly and openly, like you've you did this and it had that impact, what we're gonna do to solve it, and we come up with a solution together. Um, so that's really good. I also think it's such an unfair advantage to have a brother as a co-founder because we trust each other with our lives, and all we want for each other is to be as happy and successful as possible. There's no ulterior motive, there's no any of us thinking we're gonna go off and do our own thing or like you know, go behind your back. It's like we trust each other with our lives. So that's really helped. It's definitely been a journey. Nice, it's been a journey.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Did you divide roles very either uh easily, or did it take a while to figure that out?

SPEAKER_02 30:01

Well to figure it out. So again, originally not not doing this in the past, we were just doing a bits of everything. Um, I was I guess I was doing more sales-related activity, but nothing was defined. We're picking things up as and when. Like I was building websites, um, Lloyd is doing video work and and graphic design and that kind of thing. Then probably a couple of years in, we were like, we need to define our roles. Then we realized, like, right, you're it's funny, there was two of us, and he was CEO and I was CMO. You know, you give yourself I'm CMO, this company losing money. Um, but then that that that really helped us because that gave us clear clear structure. These are your responsibilities, these are mine, and yeah, that definitely helped early on.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

There must have been some difficult moments throughout that as well. Can you think back to some of the harder times that it's challenged the relationship?

SPEAKER_02 30:54

Definitely. I remember accidentally deleting our website. Wow. Wow. That's a big one. Oh man, I I've made some mistakes over the years. I guess so. I I yes, I accidentally deleting our website. That was a tough call when I called him and told him. Um but there's uh other other things that like looking at me personally, I'm very tunnel vision. If you point if you point me in one direction, I will do the work and achieve the thing. But sometimes I've been pointed in the wrong direction. Like I things like in the early days updating our website, I'd spend three days getting it to the perfect point, and Lloyd's like, Why have you spent three days doing that? We've got this other stuff we need to do, you've dropped the ball with everything else. So mistakes I've made are like not being pointed in the right direction, and Lloyd getting frustrated at that. Um and yeah, I guess similarly to him, like uh sometimes he hasn't been as responsive as I'd like. I am really work a lot and want to get stuff done. Sometimes he's a bit more chill, and that can cause strain in some areas, but yeah, I I like overall it just works incredibly well, but there's still we're still human, like we still have emotions, we still get tired, and like, but now we've got to a point where one of us can be kind of tired and shitty, but we can be like, Yeah, I'm in a rubbish mood, sorry. And we're like, you know, it happened yesterday. He sent me a message that was a bit like and he was like, Oh, sorry, I'm just tired. I'm like, Yeah, it's cool, man, all good. Let's chat when you're less tired.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

You've built a really nice or really good personal brand. Um have you taken that role or has Lloyd also built a brand as well?

SPEAKER_02 32:38

Good question. No, it's mainly been me. So I another thing that helped with that in the early days was I I went to this event, this this event in Kent, and I saw this speaker, and there's like 200 people in the room, and I I looked around the room, and everyone was was like in awe of this speaker, and I thought we're putting all this effort in online to build attention. They've got this captive audience in a room. So I was like, I need to learn how to do that. So that was like the first thing of me, I guess, be having a presence. So I I did my first talk, I asked to do a talk at my local networking event. Again, went terribly, so nervous, could barely speak, sweaty palms, went awful. But I was like, I need to do like training and muscle, I need to do this more to get better. And over the years I've I've trained that muscle and um actually did a lot more before COVID. After COVID, I've done less, I think. But um, but yeah, I guess I was originally that face and building that audience. And I think Lloyd doesn't necessarily have an interest in that, um, whereas I quite like it. I quite I've I've probably got a bit of an ego and I like I like getting out there, I love meeting people and stuff, and um yeah, so it's always traditionally been me. We did start our podcast Business Anchors where he was more present in that because we were chatting away, but it has more traditionally been me as the kind of personal brand.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

I I strongly believe maybe I'm biased because I have one, but I just believe in personal brand being one of the best assets you can build within a company, and I think in a world of AI and where it was so digital focused, you know, you mentioned you running ads for on the LinkedIn page, but it's your own. You know, I answered this question yesterday of an agency I was mentoring and said, I want to run ads, do I run it on the agency page, do I run it on yours? I'm like, run it on yours for your personal brand, but that's gonna be received the best from people. But I think what stops many, many people from starting a brand, away from you know, kind of general shyness and not having any desire to be known, is not knowing what to talk about. So, how did you how did you find that when like your agency was a lot smaller because you've been consistent with it for a long time now?

SPEAKER_02 34:38

Great, great question. It's evolved over the years. The the early the answer to that in the early stage, when I didn't know what to talk about, I would just share everything I was learning. Going back to reading Jab Jab Jab Right Hook from Gary V, I was like, I'm gonna learn stuff that's of value and I'm gonna share it with the world. So we originally that the format of that was I'd learn stuff like growing a Twitter following and write a detailed blog on our website teaching other people how to do it. And then that got picked up by social media examiner. This one on social media publications started writing for them, then started writing for other publications. Um so that was the uh that was the answer early. It was like just talking about it was mainly educational content because that helped position us as a company that knows what they're doing, because we're we're we're literally talking about how we're doing it. And over the years that's really evolved. When when we started to learn more about storytelling, the the power of our story, and um like telling the truth. I guess one um one thing I really try to do is like share the authentic journey that it's taken a long time. I think I know a lot of people want to be perceived as we're we're like the best in the world, and we did it easily, and we're you know, these three steps to success. For us, it's been a million steps over a decade, and so many mistakes. And I like talking about that journey, and and have learned that that hopefully makes you more likable. Like more people will listen to you if you actually tell the truth and are actually like telling the real story. So a lot of storytelling, talking about our journey now. Um, and also another key thing is talking about the work we're doing. That was another mistake we made. We were doing this great work, but not shouting about it enough. Yes, we had our milking the top 10% strategy, but we we now do that on steroids. Like, whenever we deliver an amazing campaign for a brand, we shout about it everywhere, and that that helps us win more business.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

You mentioned earlier about the kind of hockey stick growth that you're you're experiencing at the moment, you're working towards around two million pounds in revenue. Last year had quite a lot of growth. Like, what do you think the personal brand has had a lot to do with that? Was there something else that you've changed in the business, the accumulation of squeezing the juice? Like what that because 10 years is is is quite a long period of time to now be getting that hockey stick. Some things changed.

SPEAKER_02 36:52

Yeah, I I think a number of things. So we we grew 40% last year, and um we won some really big, exciting campaigns with some very well-known brands and delivered that. And honestly, a big part of that I think was that combat compounding effort over time. Um, like an example. One one large SaaS client we won last year that was a chunk of our revenue, came from a lady that signed up to my newsletter 10 years ago and has been on that for 10 years. She used to work at this company and they reached out to our ex employees, like asking for recommendations for UK agencies, and she recommended us. So, like, I do feel like it's the compounding effort over that time, and now's like our time, if that makes sense. Um, also the us just getting better at delivering results. Like in the early days, it was quite scrappy trying to figure stuff out. We've now got a really strong track record of delivering millions in revenue for some of the world's leading brands. Now we can shout about that, and that helps win more brands because you you have that trust. Like if you've done it for another household name brand, it gives other household name brands trust.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

So, do you think as an agency owner you're doing yourself a disservice or hand or I suppose trying to grow with an anchor attached to your ankle if you're not proactively trying to move up market, if it's those bigger brands that are giving you the credibility that are opening doors?

SPEAKER_02 38:19

I guess it's different for everyone. Like, I for us, the bigger brands have the budget, the bigger brands tend to be happier. Like we um have like I was at an agency board meeting yesterday, and we're talking about leveling the floor, cutting smaller clients that you charge less and usually are less happy. Like, we've been doing a lot of that just just from learning like that. Usually the the lower paying clients, less profitable. We realize like we were losing money on some of them every month, um, are less happy, ask for more, take more of your time. So, our experience is leveling up what we're doing, cutting those smaller brands. We we still work with smaller brands that aren't household names, but yeah, the big ones tend to have the budgets, tend to have the appetite to do more creative marketing campaigns and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 39:10

We call it shaving the bottom 10% and say every quarter to have all of those clients ranked on efficiency, optimise for the top 10, all of the marketing messages moves towards that and and and shave the bottom.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

It feels rubbish though, like as as a person managing our sales, oh let's just cut tens of thousands of revenue. Give them the opportunity to attend, though. We do we do that, we do that, we do that. Yeah. But then like a chunk of them don't. Of course. And then it and and it's also it's even more frustrating. We've had a few where they're really happy with what we're doing, and they sh they're like shouting about us on social and stuff, and we're and we have to stop working with them because it's just not it's not helping us achieve our big big goals.

SPEAKER_00 39:51

Yeah, yeah. It is a challenge. What does the team makeup look like? I know you've got a huge variety of freelancers that you work with across the company, if I'm not mistaken, and uh an in-house team obviously inside of Kent as well. Like what was the decision-making process on building such a large external team?

SPEAKER_02 40:10

Um, from making mistakes. So um, I'd say three years in, we won this big, exciting project with this um well-known food brand. We did this really exciting project over four days. We pushed a woman out of a plane, we had a Jeff Bezos look alike, we had a single, we were doing all these, we did this really cool campaign. When we won that, we just hired five people and we were like, we need people. So we hired five people, um, and some weren't the right hire, and that had a long negative impact. Like you're asking about why it's taken so long as well. That had a significant negative impact for a number of years. Some of those bad hires with culture, with the way we were working, with upsetting clients. Um, so that that was a mistake we made fairly early on. Now our model is let's build a really strong core team who are highly skilled, and then with these bigger productions like the one we did in the Bahamas last year, we've now got a really like a really great director and DOP and stuff that we um can bring in for those bigger projects. So I think it to answer your question, like the reason we've got that core team and a much wider pool of freelancers is is because sometimes these big projects come in and just hiring loads of people wouldn't be a good way of working for us.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

And then maintaining quality across freelancers, do you find that a challenge? And also where's your where's your favourite pool? Is it South Africa?

SPEAKER_02 41:30

Um a lot of our freelancers are based in the UK actually, in the on the production side. Because they yeah. But we do we have uh worked with some kind of uh paid contractors in the Philippines and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

Um being based in Ramsgate, and this is I suppose a bit of a selfish question, I uh from lots of the agencies I speak to on in there. And I I think this is a my uh presumption of this is this is a corporate mentality that gets transferred onto agencies. You've decided to stay in Kent rather than move to London and so on, and many agencies will be like, right, we want to expand. We're gonna open an office in Manchester now as well. And my mentality is why do you need to open up an office in Manchester to now be able to get clients in that area? Has this been a limitation for you? What is your opinion of that, needing that physical presence in the place where the CMO or whatever is working?

SPEAKER_02 42:32

I definitely think it's been a limitation. Interesting. But um, I also want a nice life. Like I've got a young family, so's Lloyd. Um we've really one thing I'm proud of, one thing I'm proud of, like previously, I obviously had that burnout. Now we've grown the business in an organic way where we both actually enjoy our lives and we have time to focus on our health and do other things. So I guess, yes, we could have said, right, let's open an office in Manchester, one of us move up there, lead it, that kind of thing. But we like our lives down in the southeast. Um, we're not we're not an agency that's just you know, we're bootstrapped, we've never had investment. We're not an agency that just wants to grow for growth's sake. Like we want a balance of growing and having a nice life. So that's one thing. I guess also the talent pool, other than if you're hiring remote, like it's been hard harder to hire skilled people because we're on the furthest southeast corner of the UK. So that has been challenging as well.

SPEAKER_00 43:33

I resonate with that a lot, living in Norwich myself, out in the sticks, and very defiantly staying there as well, despite opportunity. Do you think the the bigger limitation is in talent or or or if it's in being able to win accounts, how does that manifest? Is it okay you have to then travel for pictures so you do it less? Or is it they actually are like hang on, we want an agency with that local presence?

SPEAKER_02 43:56

Yeah, we I do a lot of travelling for pictures, like I was in Liverpool Monday. London yesterday, I I guess I don't I don't see that as a limitation for us because we've built a really strong present presence online, we can reach anywhere anyone anywhere in the world and travel to meet them. And we we've we've now done campaigns all over the world from like the Bahamas, America, Germany, Dubai, and and that and that's all been from us being in Margate and creating that presence online. Um I've also spoken at events around the world, which helps as well. So I guess rather than creating an office there, trying to go to these places and build a bit of a presence at the events that those senior decision makers are going to. That's kind of how we've overcome it. But I get your point. Like, I don't know, have you so you haven't built offices in places? Well, our headquarters in Sheffield.

SPEAKER_00 44:42

Yeah. Talent has been a limitation in some cases, but we've still got a great core team there of about 30 in-house. And I think the I think that's really been the major limitation. The majority of our clients are in the States. In the early stages, it was VAT. And we were just avoiding VAT. So we'd sign up the majority of clients. And so I think we because over 50% of our clients are in the States, I suppose I've always been interested by the concept that you need the local presence. And maybe that's something that exists more in the traditional larger corporate brands that exist. Because we're working with direct-consumer e-commerce brands, which are more new age, I suppose, more internet focused, more decentralized anyway. Do you do you go to America then? Or do you like have a a on the feet on the ground presence there? For the top 10% of clients will travel anywhere. So we'll build but it's really relationship. It's never to pitch, because the pitch is always it's on Zoom. You know, it's it's always even with brands doing very large revenue in the e-commerce space, and maybe it's just something they're used to. Being a digital first business and not having the physical presence, most of these companies don't even have offices.

SPEAKER_02 45:56

Most of our pitches are on online, like on Zoom and stuff. I'm trying to do more though. I'm trying to do more in person. Like I feel like it's good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:03

The early ones, they were always in person. The local restaurant.

SPEAKER_02 46:07

That's always in person. Yeah. Easier to travel to. But yeah, I'm trying to do more of that now. I've realized like as my role evolves, I'm really trying to put more of my focus on sales, building relationships with key people from big accounts and stuff. And it's so much easier to do when you just meet and get to know each other, those conversations that won't happen on Zoom. But I even I pitched a brand the other day, and the guy gave me a lift home in his car. And the chat we had in the car on the way home was probably the most valuable part of the whole reason of travelling that far. And you don't get that, you don't have those little unplanned chats online. But it's also not efficient, is it? Like, how did how what's the answer?

SPEAKER_00 46:43

It's it's it's dedicating and allocating time for for a country bumpkin, I think it's making sure you allocate time once a month, once a quarter at a minimum to be in the right rooms with the right people. Because it's not about there's a thousand agencies offering this a similar service and a f and a thousand very talented agencies as well. And so it's not about knowing the service that exists, it's about just knowing someone who you trust to fulfil it. And so that in person I just think is is very important.

SPEAKER_02 47:13

Yeah, agreed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:15

How do you balance or how do you feel about um I suppose in person with the office versus the freelancer as far as building culture is concerned?

SPEAKER_02 47:24

Oh, definitely easy to build culture with the team that are in the office. Um I guess interestingly, like when we've done these bigger shoots uh with these freelancers, there's a lot of camaraderie, and you really do build relationships on those shoots, you know, like flying everyone out to the Bahamas and stuff, you're there, you're on a mission together. Um, you're overcoming problems. Like we flew there, and there was a hurricane when we got there, and we went there for the weather.

SPEAKER_00 47:48

How many team members came out?

SPEAKER_02 47:49

Uh 27. Oh wow, yeah, yeah. Um on other shoots and stuff, you build you build that relationship over time. So, yes, it's not the same as having everyone every day come into our office, but then you can't have the best of both worlds. You can't have the top talent in the UK come and work for you because they've got their own thing going on and they're a freelancer or they're, you know, contracted. So yeah, it does. I I we've got quite a young team as well, and people do like coming into the office. And I like it as well. I think people work better. I don't know if it's everyone has different opinions, but I feel like we all work better as a team when everyone's in the office. The ideas flow better, the little conversations, getting a coffee and stuff. Um but then you don't have access to talent around the world.

SPEAKER_00 48:31

But we we've done a mixture of both, so yeah, I agree with that sentiment for sure. Being in person makes a massive difference for a long time. I met up with quite a lot of resistance because of selfish desires of being very fluid and so on, but having that physical presence makes a makes a world of change.

SPEAKER_02 48:48

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

You flew to IB for two years ago with the team as well. How do you bake in culture pillars into the business? Do you say, okay, once a year we're gonna do a team retreat, we're gonna host events. Like have have you systemized that?

SPEAKER_02 49:02

Yeah, so we are very open with our team. They know all the numbers. Every week we have a weekly meeting, they know how the business is performing, they know everything, and it really helps show the impact of their work on the numbers. For all financial transparency, for financial transparencies. So they know absolutely everything. Um we we set a goal, we set goals, clear goals, everyone knows the goals, everyone can clearly see if we're on or off track with those goals, and we basically say, look, there's a tiered system. If we achieve this percent of our profit goal this year, this is the reward. If we achieve this percent, this is the reward. And the last two years we've the team have smashed it, and the reward was to take them to Ibeta for a week, and we did that, and it was insane and it was amazing. And we're gonna do it again this year.

SPEAKER_00 49:46

Awesome. And and is there like are there like a waterfall metrics that every department understands that they need to adhere to to hit that overall goal so everyone contributes to that core goal?

SPEAKER_02 49:57

Yes, yeah. I mean, everyone, because we've because all the team, there's primary and secondary account holders who are delivering all the client work, um, so they know how how on or off track their clients are and how that's working. We score everything, everything's scored, so we do this like happiness score every week. Early days we used to just do it anecdotally, like, oh yeah, they're happy, tick. Now it's scored. Now there's every there's like six different layers of metrics that you have to score, and it comes up with are we on or off track? So they get that. Um I lead all the sales side, so I know my metrics and that kind of thing. Um, so yeah, the tier everyone sort of knows. I guess it's not as complex as how is there's it? Sometimes you can try and over-optimise things and over-process things. So I think the the level it's at now, every week everyone sees it in the meeting, is a good level. I'm sure we could improve, like, but at the moment it's working.

SPEAKER_00 50:49

Coming from like no business experience of jumping into your own admission, like you must have you know had to build all of your systems from the ground up. There being any like particular resources that you've been able to just plug and play or or or particular systems that are now fundamental to how you grow.

SPEAKER_02 51:03

Yes. Yeah, it's just the same yes like that because it's it was like an aha moment when you discover these things. HubSpot, um, everything, all the sales opportunities. I was gonna say we put them on spreadsheets, didn't do that, they were just all in my head. Didn't know what the next step was for any of these deals to drive them along the sales funnel. Now we've got a systemised approach in HubSpot, everything's tracked, all tasks are set. So every day we know what we need to do to nudge that deal further down the line, everything's tracked, all the data and everything. So HubSpot has been massive. Um, we also use ClickUp for we've tested various things. We've we've tested Monday, Asana, but ClickUp, the team really get on with like managing all our projects and making sure all the tasks that every team member needs to do. It's all there's some really cool things that our head of production, Els, is creating in ClickUp. So I'm really we she's like a spreadsheet nerd, um, but she's brilliant. She she's creating all of these systems and processes that every time I'm like, why have we not done that? That is amazing. So yeah, click up. Um also yeah, I guess they're the key ones in terms of systems and stuff. There's various other tools we use, like we use a lot of AI tools, um yeah, like ChatGPT, Mid Journey, Higgsfield. They all kind of help, they're more for like I guess processes, and I use I've completely optimised our sales process with AI though. AI is mentor, and I'm sure you're aware of it, but it's insane what we've done from how manual it was to how not manual it is now.

SPEAKER_00 52:34

I I am uh on the other end, we're still deep on a three-day, a three-week bender of 15-hour days in clawed code. So I'm pretty deep, and and for the first time in eight years, well, I feel like I'm starting the business. That feeling of pure riding and energy of something new. Um, talk to me about that sales process. I'm really interested to hear that.

SPEAKER_02 53:01

Okay, so I'll get I'll I'll I'll paint a picture for what it used to be like and the evolution. So previously um would meet a prospect in person or online, have a chat. I'm really terrible at like trying to listen to what you're saying and being present whilst writing notes. So that made a lot of mistakes there, um, didn't document everything you're saying to understand your pains and that kind of thing to help us do a good pitch. We'd then develop the uh have an internal session. I'd have to come up with a whole brief for that session. That took time, have the internal session, had to write up all the notes, then had to create instructions for our designers to create a pitch, um, and then we'd pitch. Uh, and then we'd have to note down how they responded and remember all of that to think the effective follow-up process. Very manual process. Now, now what we do, I get on a call um with a prospect. We uh use Fathom to record the whole call, we use MedPIC, the qualification framework. My best mate works in enterprise sales, Ollie, and he's taught me so much about sales, and MedPIC has been a game changer for us. So we've got that that plugged in. Explain MedPIC. Um, it's an acronym for um everything that you need to be looking at when you're going to sell. Um, there's metrics, economic buyer, champion. I can't remember all of them, but I I it's all in ChatGPT now. But you basically ask certain questions to qualify the deal and score it and stuff, it's really useful. We've used like band, we've used MAN's Mean Authority Need, like basic ones, but this is a game changer. It also we've created a custom GPT, so we record the call, ask all the right questions. Chat GPT helps us prep for that call as well. So we've got a custom GPT for that. Then once we've had the call, we've downloaded the transcript, put it into our medpic custom GPT, it qualifies that deal, it sees if there's any gaps. Then from that, we create a brief for the creative team from everything they've said they want, what they're trying to achieve, target market, all that stuff. Create a brief for the internal creative team. They come up with ideas, we record all of that. We then use Chat GPT to turn that into instructions for our designers. And yes, there is manual processes throughout. We're not just AI do everything, like we're checking stuff and proofreading because it doesn't get it right all the time. Um, and then we create the pitch, the designers create the pitch, pitch it, record the pitch, and then use that to understand what the best next steps are. So it's and also I guess one we've just we've just won one of Europe's leading health and wellness brands, and a lot of that um AI helped a lot of that. It picked out in the the earlier conversation some of the key pain points from the key decision makers that I would have missed, and I realised reading through the the creative session briefly, oh yeah, they said that that's really important. We heavily leant into that, and in the pitch, they were like, we were echoing what they said they want, and we didn't miss miss a beat. So every time they're like, Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what we think. I'm like, Yes, because you've told me in the previous call. Um, so that like we yeah, we're that's where we're at now. There's there's a lot more we can do, like that's just phase one. And I really want to try clawed code. I keep looking at everything saying to try this channel at the time.

SPEAKER_00 56:05

Oh man. Just just just just strap on.

SPEAKER_02 56:09

I genuinely want to fight, like, I'm interested to hear more after this or whenever.

SPEAKER_00 56:13

But yeah, and we can geek out over it for sure. It's it's absolutely insane. How would you feel about the future of agency in an AI world? It's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 56:22

Like, I I I'm I've got a positive attitude towards it. Like, I I really think that um humans still have a place. And I'll give you an example. Like, yes, AI is brilliant, but I think if you took human A, who has no experience in marketing, and human B who has a whole world of experience, and they both used AI, human B would have a much better outcome. That that's my belief. So it's so important to have skilled people with experience. I'll give you an example. So for Sunny D, we came up with this concept, and the concept came from one of our team who remembers an early Tango's ad from the 90s and how that made them feel, right? ChatGPT can't talk about an ad how it made them feel. They remember this feeling of this ad, and this is just one of loads of examples that helped us come up with a campaign that was hugely effective and completely changed the trajectory of that business because of an idea someone had from how an ad made them feel in the 90s. Do you know what I mean? So this is why our I think we we've got like a human-first approach where it's human first, AI is enhancing our team skill set. But there's a lot of pushback. There is pushback in the industry as well. I did a talk about AI with a load of other agency owners and creatives, and they were very much like the oh no, it's not it's not good enough, it's not gonna. And I'm like, I I get it, everyone's passionate. I I'm not romantic about it. I I I don't care. I just I'm interested in selling stuff. So if this can help us sell more stuff, I'm in. But if you are creatives, I can understand how it makes them feel, right?

SPEAKER_00 57:52

Of course, there's always going to be resistance. But what about if you transcribe and document uh every single call across the creative department over the past five years, put that into a vector database, and now your AI knows how to think like your creative department, and that cannot be ignored.

SPEAKER_02 58:08

Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. We we had a bit of a shit the bed moment last year with AI because we we've been using it since ChatGPT came out and we've realized it's powerful, but then last year we saw this uh spec ad for Liquid Death and it was purely made on prompting. And I watched it, and it's not perfect. It wasn't good or good? No, it was really good. Okay. I watched it and I thought, yes, this isn't perfect, but I'm like where we are now, this was last summer, we've got a whole production business. I'm thinking we need to really I called Lloyd, and we had a whole day, stopped everything. We've come up with a whole plan for how we're capitalizing on AI and not we need changing our business. We've got a whole internal project where the team are building an AI business, we're using all the tools, learning it effectively. Because I think I I can't believe that like other agencies aren't panicking, panicking enough or changing what they're doing. I think the agencies that understand this stuff are gonna so surpass the ones that don't, and it seems like everyone, not everyone else, there's lots of people doing great stuff, but some of the agencies I've spoken to are like so much slower. And I'm like, what are you doing about it? And they're like, Oh, we just you know played around with this. And I'm like, we are changing our whole business because of it.

SPEAKER_00 59:17

It's a dangerous place to be, to be resistant to new tech. You're you're gonna be the granddad that doesn't know how to use the iPhone.

SPEAKER_02 59:24

Yeah. It reminds me of the book my dad gave me this when I was a kid, like Who Move My Cheese, about these mice, about people resisting to change. You've got to embrace it. It's scary, but you've got to embrace it, and that's what we're trying to do.

SPEAKER_00 59:37

A great book for that is the Infinite Game by Simon Sinek.

SPEAKER_02 59:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 59:43

Tell me more. It's a really great book. The Infinite Game. Many people play finite games in business in the sense that it talks about one of the stories there's is Canon and and um Nikon and uh and it was actually no Canon and um Canon and what was the the other? There's a company starting with K in the camera Kodak. And Kodak were very resistant to change in the in the camera industry, and when it came to creating digital cameras. No, digital cameras won't be the future. People want digital people want you know analog, and now we're kind of come full circle, people want analog again, but but but but then they were very resistant, and Canon came along and just absolutely blasted the industry, just took dominant market share, and because Canon are playing this infinite game. They they're not they don't have this fixed, finite goal in the state. They know that we are in the world of cameras in the in the in the in in photography, cinematography, whatever you want to call it, and uh and they're fluid to change, and I think that's what the agencies that survive into the next 10, 20 years of one to are going to be fluid to change that are open to completely changing the way they do every single thing they do in the company.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:49

I always just think of Blockbuster and Netflix, of course, like that. That is my go-to, just thinking like Blockbuster, no, everyone will want to go to a store and rent a video, and I love doing that, but then Love Film went on to be Netflix, like realized no no no, there's a more efficient way of doing this. So that that's my go-to, always remembering that blockbuster. You've got to embrace change, and it can be hard sometimes because you like the way that things are now. But what if? What if this change helps you dramatically? Like with AI, it can, which is exciting.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:19

I mean, you know, it could be the biggest and best opportunity that many of us have ever seen in our lives, and want people to capitalize on it, then the agency model where you're working with a diverse variety of different companies doing a diverse variety of different things. Are we not primed to be the people that actually come out of that on top?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:38

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm excited by it. I think nervous and excited.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:44

I but I I tell you one thing I think. I don't know what you think of this. I saw um a post from Daniel Priestley recently about the cost of AI and the cost of these data centers. Like they're losing billions and billions of pounds. Do you know what I think? I think they've hooked us on this stuff uh in a r in a really cheap way, and they're gonna take it away and charge extortionate amounts, and then we're gonna be so hooked and used to it, we're gonna have to pay it. I feel like that's the model.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:07

I was thinking about this yesterday. Models like Claw ChatGPT, it's the best LTV ever. Like you buy you can't not cancelling the subscription. You're in. You're you're locked into that membership. How much is it? Uh I mean I probably I pay £200 a month for Clawed Max. Okay. So I mean it depends. It depends if you're doing ChatGPT Pro, you're paying £200. But the average person's spending 20. No.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:30

For the value you get, it doesn't make any sense. And it doesn't make sense like hearing about the cost of data sensors and stuff. Surely there's going to be a tipping point where they're going to need to charge us loads more, or it's all just going to crumble and burn, and we're all used to using it. And we're like, no, we need more of this.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:44

Well, they're going to. I built a data analytics software for a software company that I own. And this software, I've actually built this for the agency originally. It cost £100,000 to build originally, six months of development cost to build this data system that basically just gave us transparency on every single number. It's the most sophisticated PL that you could ever have, but plugs into all sorts of different things. That's what I built like last year. I actually gave up on the project eventually because it was just key costing less money. Seven days it took me to build a system that was more sophisticated on my own through Clawed Code. Mental. And so and that cost about 200 pounds in additional token costs. Yeah. Something's going to happen.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:23

If you remember, like it is crazy as well how I remember growing up, everyone was like, there was these geniuses at my school that were into coding. And everyone's like, if you learn to code, you are going to make it. And some of them really have. Now, vibe coding, like it's like that that is redundant. And it's not redundant, but it's like where we are now and where it's going to be, that skill set isn't as required anymore.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:46

My dad as a senior dev has been this whole life, and without diminishing how incredibly talented he is, he's super resistant to AI. I believe I could build the software he builds in 12 months in a couple of weeks, and I really I've learned a bit of coding from him, but I don't have an understanding like he does. Because you don't need to anymore. Yeah. And that's that will happen across all business verticals. Eventually we'll come in marketing. I think creative will be the final thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:12

That that that spark, that you know, that intuition from you creating advert advertisement, and you're like, okay, that thing really worked. Yeah. That that one little thing that separated you from everyone else, it's gonna be really hard for that final piece to get done.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:27

Yeah, that's the missing piece right now, that intuition and understanding what will work. Seeing a piece of creative that like AI has created, or or the the humans created, and knowing like that is gonna bang, that is gonna hit numbers, that is gonna work because of my 20 years' experience of seeing things and our team's tens of years of experience. Like, I I don't know when that's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:50

When is it gonna be able to do that? I think the limitation is context window. Because I think the data exists. You can analyse the best marketing ever across every strategy. You could analyse that with relative ease. The data exists. The 200,000 token context window is the thing that stops that from happening. When context windows are 200 million tokens and you're you're taking in massive information which is specific to one cause, this is the BBC, they want to do this thing, study every advertisement that's ever been had in that space.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:22

Then I think that's when Yeah, but the data centers thing, like when it's two million tokens, like how many data centers are you gonna need when there's millions of people doing that? Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:31

Like that's yeah, until they nuclear power the things, but Oh, isn't it true? Yeah, well, we can record a whole podcast episode and this maybe we'll come back and do another one. I've actually got some quick fire questions. Fire away. Okay, I've got some for you. Um one brand that you'd love to work with that you haven't already.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:48

Oh, any nostalgic brand. Love doing campaigns from the from with brands from the 90s like Sunny D, um Nintendo, PlayStation, Nokia. Don't say Nokia's still around. But yeah, nostalgic brands, because there's so much you can lean into with nostalgia. People love that feeling of the good old days, and that adds value to campaigns. Something that good creative can't on its own.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:12

Nice. One marketing channel that you think is underrated at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:17

LinkedIn thought leader ads.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:19

Yeah. I will absolutely be trying. Um one habit that's helped you the most as a founder?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:26

Going to the gym. Going to the gym. I'm now a coal plunge and saunawanker. Um proud to be. But yeah, just makes me feel good, sets me in the right headspace, helps me spin all the plates as well as I can. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

Best piece of advice that you've ever received.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:44

It's gonna take you a lot longer than you think to get to where you want to get to.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:48

If you had to start a new agency tomorrow from zero, what are you gonna do first?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:53

This is a massive one, actually. This is something I wish I would have done starting out. Go and find the person that's done what you want to do and speak to them. I didn't do enough of that in the early days. And I do now. Like go to all these agency board meetings and I get so much value. It wouldn't have taken us ten years to get here if I would have just met people that had done what I want to do and uh had had been there and done it. So go go and find and people are really willing to help. You'd be surprised if you if you LinkedIn message an agency owner that you really aspire to to achieve what they've achieved and ask for help, like a lot of them are willing to help. I'd do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:28

Dan, it's been a pleasure, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:30

It's been great, man. Thank you.