SPEAKER_01 0:00

Stephen Butler, they have eight cameras on set, probably like ten people working on the show. It costs them like 20k to edit the episode. You see a podcast as a revenue channel rather than like a branding exercise? The big limiting belief of so many companies in starting a podcast is like, I'm not going to get many views, this isn't going to be worth my time, etc.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

They have an arrangement with a partner or they get one customer, that typically would just pay for the podcast. Over five years, they sign one deal that's worth like half a million dollars. A tiny audience can have a big impact for these companies. What would you say is the most effective way to get a podcast off the ground?

SPEAKER_01 0:28

You just leverage them. And so you just lift them all out and then go and make deals with all of them. So you went from frying chips and washing dishes. You then went to start a men's leggings company, which didn't work out, to a SaaS, to now a podcasting agency that makes four million a year. You're managing how many podcasts now? A hundred. What are the mistakes that most hosts make?

SPEAKER_02 0:48

They're tooth structured in that the FSA just turns out dry. The best interviews always flow naturally.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

One thing that you'd stop doing immediately in most agencies.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

I didn't do that for a decade.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Tom, welcome to Agency Giants. I'm very excited for the show. So you went from frying chips and uh washing dishes, which, by the way, same.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

For real? Oh yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

In a chip shopper? Uh it was a little country pub. And I went I graduated from the washing of the dishes to the fryer, which felt like a serious progression at the time. And did you get to the next stage? Sue chefing, a little bit of dessert, sometimes a sandwich. I get I got sacked for taking the stick for someone else stealing a J2O.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

Oh, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Chef did me in. Really? Brutal. You then went to start a men's leggings company. Yeah. Which didn't work out. Very interesting though. Well, I unpacked that. To a SAS, to now a podcasting agency that makes four million a year. Why such a diverse array of different things to now bring you into podcasting?

SPEAKER_02 2:14

So, first to clarify, in the Chinese takeaway, it was it was a lot of chips, but mainly like the sweet and sour chicken balls, you know. And I was happy with how I got the job. The the daughter of the people that own the takeaway, I used to walk to school with her and I would like hammer her every day to be like, give me a job, give me a job. Finally got the job with doing the frying for like a year, and then I managed to get my brother and sister a job as well. And then because it was like if it is in Chippenham, which is in wheelchair, we just used to go out and drink in the town, and then I would go there on the way home, like a little bit drunk, and then the the Chinese parents really would not appreciate that. And so I went down in the rankings and I got phased out of my shift. And then my brother and sisters took my job. So I'm still pissed off with them about that. Um but then yeah, they transitioned essentially from when I was 22 to now I'm 36 or 7. For that period of, I guess, 15 years now, I've just tried loads of different things, including the May Allegrance company, many software products, information products, like every kind of online business you can think of, like tech startups. And the one that has worked the best is the the one I've been doing for the last six years, which is called Fame, which, as you said, is a podcast agency. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

And uh the software companies, were they in a similar industry or variety of different companies?

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Well, we we built two SaaS companies that we attempted to spin off the agency that were in the podcasting space. But then probably maybe my biggest learning is focus. And so it's very hard for me to drive forward Clement Soda Founder. Um very hard for me to drive forward multiple things. And so those external SaaS companies have now been folded in and are only used by us and our clients. Um the other SaaS companies that have been in a a wild array of worlds. What I would say the the thread that have connected all of these is probably online marketing. Even with the leggings, we I had three co-founders. I was the person doing online sales, et cetera. And then all the other small businesses were around marketing, probably.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

You also had a corporate career, didn't you? You were Ernst and Young. What forced you to then move out of that and into business? Because I presumably that was pre-all of these ventures. Aaron Powell Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

So I studied chemistry and I did a master's. And in my fourth year in the masters, you do your own project for like six months where you're in the lab, like messing with chemicals. During that time, I realized that I didn't like just working on my own with like really detail-oriented work. It wasn't aligned to me. Then I was like, okay, I have to go and do something else. I'm not going to do a PhD. So I just did what all of my other peer group were doing, it's applying to consulting and banks. Probably applied to like 40 places, and EY was the only one that accepted me for like a really strange role. It was IT risk and assurance. So you had to go in before the audit of the big company to test their IT system. So that's what I was doing for two years. Didn't like enjoy that work, but enjoyed other stuff and had a good time generally. But I always hated being told what to do. So my solution after EY was to move to Accenture and get paid a bit more and to do like slightly better work, which worked out well. But again, I realized after a year of that I still didn't like being told what to do. So in 2014, I set myself the goal of replacing my salary with a business I built on my own. And so just went to the internet. Could I can't code, still can't. So I just had to learn marketing basically if I was going to build something on my own. And so end of 2024, I left Accenture because I replaced the salary, and then since then have been not employed apart from one year where I had to go back and get a job because I ran out of money.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

And when did the mail leggings idea fall into this? And and where does that even come from?

SPEAKER_02 5:47

It was one of the first ones. It was probably the third business, maybe. The very first was Google Ads affiliate. So like bidding on locksmith in Texas and then sending it to the affiliate offers. And then there was loads of other shitty online businesses. But then the leggings came because my I had my two best friends and we were like, let l jeans are getting skinnier and skinnier. The next transition is to the male leggings. And so we started we started a business like 2013, had a stall in Bricklane Market, and then got on Dragon's Den. Ultimately we sold like 3,000 pairs over like five years, I think. And so we did well, ultimately sold it, but not for like $5,000, I think. In like 2018. So it ran for five years. But it was never a full-time thing.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Interesting. The ambition to be so.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

I think that was the challenge. In that I this was like when I was at Accenture, this could have been my thing, you know, that would have enabled me to leave. But the other two, like one is quite risk-averse, shout-out Joe. And the other one, he I don't really know. Yeah, he probably would have wanted to do it full-time, but we just couldn't. It's quite hard to get to make an e-commer business s support three people in London if you don't have any funding or anything.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

And then eventually you find yourself to agency. Did you start off podcast as the the core service? And and what what was the origin of the service initially?

SPEAKER_02 7:08

So, you know, I told you I had that year where I had to get a job because I ran out money. So that was 2018. And so I joined a startup that I'd actually invested in called EBST as head of demand jam. And I started a podcast to target our specific customer persona. It went really well. I left and they became the first client of fame. And so I think it's a really good way to start a business if you have a job, is like get really good at a specific process in the business. And then if you can transition out in a way that they'll still pay you as a freelancer or a contractor, then that's essentially the first client for your business. And you've derift the whole process of can I do something valuable for another company? So that was the first client, and then all we've done really for six years is just tweak and improve that process and then copy and paste it to loads of other clients. You're managing how many podcasts now?

SPEAKER_01 8:03

A hundred. And presumably a lot of that has been progressive through referrals and inbound over time. How did you get the first ten from the first?

SPEAKER_02 8:13

So the first one was my old employer. The next two were actually You know, I told you like I didn't I didn't really like being employed. So month four of being employed, I was like, okay, I need to start something. So I started a newsletter called SASHACO, which was a daily email of a SAFGRIF case study. And so I was like building the email list on the back burner. And so when I left and had the first client I started fame, then I just sent an email to the list being like, Does anyone need a podcast? That was the second two. So that's three. Then started doing some outbound and actually leveraged some contacts I'd made, because I was hosting this podcast with my old employer. So I knew people in SaaS companies in London, so I emailed some of them. That might got to like six. And then from there, it was probably that's when we started getting Google traffic. Um Google Ads, Google Organic, probably got the rest to get to 10. And then since then it's largely been the same. It's like Google, organic and paid, referrals, my LinkedIn profile, my podcast, probably the all the channels.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

We're really talking about very specific, very hyper-niche podcasts, presumably, or do you have some clients that are more kind of mass market broad appeal, or is it predominantly like a very specific micro-niche and then obviously with high impact to the business?

SPEAKER_02 9:32

Aaron Powell Yeah, that is the model that we specialize in. If a client comes to us and they they want to pay us and we believe in them, then we'll take them and we'll do do the other like high volume stuff, but we're not as good at that. So yeah. So I'll get a pitch off camera. Uh we actually so we're trying really trying to work on retention, right? And we have what's called persona and non-persona clients. And so now, going forward, we just implemented this. To bring on a client that's like below 50 employees, I think, in terms of the company, we have to get sign off from the head of account management. So because if her OKR is a retention number and she was seeing that the clients that were leaving were the smaller ones, because obviously there's high risk there. So yeah, I might pitch it, but I actually don't know how you big your company is.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

That's one of the best backwards insults I've received in a long time. But yeah, I I don't know like what size of company is so potentially uh you could be 100%. Maybe, maybe. Uh but I I'm interested in like the correlation. I think like a big limiting belief for so many companies in starting a podcast is like I think it's it's it's a it's a personal ego problem of I'm not gonna get many views, this isn't gonna be worth my time, etc. Um have you have you got some pretty large high-profile clients, big businesses, that have very small amount of views? And if so, like how what is the range? How does that fluctuate? Are we talking, you know, a podcast that can get even as low as a couple of thousand views an episode or lower can have a really significant impact on the business?

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Yeah, exactly. The the goal of PPP marketing, in my opinion, is you have to get your IDO customers to know like and trust you before they buy. And so if there's like we have a client, this is cybersecurity governance software, and so there's probably only, I don't know, a thousand people in the US that they would want to become their customer. And so if they get a hundred of them to listen to an episode every month, and so they get like, I don't know, a thousand impressions over the year with these types of people, and just over five years they sign one deal that's worth like half a million dollars, that's probably still gonna pay for the podcast. So a tiny audience can have a big impact for these companies.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

How does the commercial model work? Do you charge like a fixed retainer? Is it a percentage of the returns a fixed fixed retainer? Interesting. And where's that how does that range? From two to five thousand dollars a month.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

And specifically what are you doing for the pod? We break into three, so sourcing and booking guests, editing and production, so producing all the assets, and then promotion, which is where we take responsibility for the growth of the show. And so the pricing levers are how frequent the show is and how many of those three things we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Interesting. And are you benchmarked on any specific result in the podcast?

SPEAKER_02 12:18

Or we have a guarantee where if we don't hit 10% per month growth in downloads on average over the first six months, then we give the seventh month of services for free. And then after that, we set down a goal that might be between five and ten percent a month that we we don't have a guarantee against, but that's what we we we ask ourselves to hit.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Interesting. Interesting. And how how do you find broadly speaking, like I think a a really interesting topic in the agency space is the debate between actually offering guarantees and not offering guarantees on service. Did you introduce the guarantee because of a client acquisition problem, or is it just something that you've you've had since day one?

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Aaron Powell I think I looked at all our competitors and I was like, how can we get a better conversion rate? And so we just started doing that. We've done it for like three years. Had to pay it out once or twice, I think. Um the kind of the secret we have or like the lever we have is that we will use our own ad spend to basically ensure that we do hear the numbers. So we have like we have the guarantee, but we also can pay enough money to ensure we don't have to give the guarantee. But then obviously we have to pay the money and it reduces our margin.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Is that Google or Mesa that you're spending on?

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Uh in order to grow the the downloads of our client podcasts. Oh God, I I feel like the our paid ads guy is like probably the number one paid ads guy for podcasts in the world, I think. Because he just for three years has run campaigns for like 250 podcasts on like 10 different platforms. So yeah, if like Google, YouTube, Meta, these other podcast advertising tools that like put your episode on like blog posts related to the topic, um, TikTok, like everything. I'm a little bit less I used to manage him directly, but I don't anymore, so I don't really know what what they do. But he's got a good uh playbook, I would say.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

What would you say is the most effective way to get a podcast off the ground? In terms of promotion downloads.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

I'll like pick out some strategies that I'm seeing working at the moment. But probably my favorite at the moment is you know, if you Google like best sales operations podcasts, there's all these search results that have the top sales podcast list listed. Those I don't think those the owners of those blog posts understand the value of their positioning. And so you just list them all out and then go and make deals with all of them to get the show inserted. Sometimes you just have to pay. Sometimes you have your own one and you do a swap, put their show or you link to their article to get your podcast in. You can even ask, if it's a company's blog post, ask their CEO to be like, come and be a guest on the show if you put us on your article, et cetera. And so that's one of the first things we like to do because if you can just get like exposure there, then you have this like long-term drip feed of new listeners. That's an organic strategy. The a paid strategy, I would say, is having the host post the clip that is ideally themselves of them saying something controversial, interesting, etc., on the show, and then run LinkedIn thought leadership ads for that post from the company page that you've created for the podcast on LinkedIn. So that if like so obviously you post the clips first to find the ones that actually perform organically, and then you can kind of augment that with thought leadership ads. That's a paid one that I like at the moment. So those two. Okay, so my next one I would say is we'll do another organic one. So getting ranking in like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, et cetera, is relatively basic. So if you take Apple Podcasts, you have title, description, and author, those three fields. They're just understanding what is the one thing that you want to be that you want to be appearing for in search engines. And so ideally we can get that in a title of the show, like here, agency giants, right? So agency is probably the keyword. So that's like well done by you guys. Author is probably your name, isn't it, on this on Apple Podcasts. So that's probably quite good because you might get people searching for that. And then just having like them that main keyword and then all the supporting keywords in in the description. So that's like very basic, but a lot of clients can do that. Then let's do another paid one. There are like smaller podcast apps, like Castbox, for example, where you can get like relatively inexpensive spend. I'm not like convinced of the results because they have their own ads manager and they'll tell you the clicks, et cetera. Um and they don't always correlate with actual downloads you can see in your podcast hosting tool. But that can often be a lot more cost effective than running ads on LinkedIn or Meta. Paying for views on YouTube is a good way to get the numbers up, but doesn't necessarily result in high average view durations. So that is a like if you want a video to look popular, it's like relatively inexpensive to do that. But then you're probably not actually impact getting your actual end result, which is having people consuming the content.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

So that's another one. What about podcasts with external guests versus internal podcasts?

SPEAKER_02 17:34

Pros and cons to each. So external guests. If you are using the tool to like build your network in the niche, then obviously the the guest helps. Or you have to have a guest to do that. It can also help with growth. You just leverage the guest audience. Like I we have some clients now that if the in order to come on the show, you have to agree to share. So when you're like booking in in Calendly, you're like, do you agree to share this podcast? If they say no, then they get delayed and push back. So it helps with growth. It's better if you're like building a like if you're trying to get clients to essentially your partners or build a network. I think the strategy is obviously pretty saturated. And so if you're the very first thing we do for any client is like, what's the strategy? How do we differentiate ourselves? And if all the competing shows have guests and the clients open to it, then maybe we'll try and do a solo show. Or like a hybrid, so one episode solo, one episode with a guest. So it's really about uh in that initial stage, how can you how can you make a show that's better than your competitors? And sometimes a solo option is better for that. But if if the client, if like I want to build our network and part our partner network in this niche, then we're like, well, let's just do a guest show.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

I think that's what you mentioned on a different podcast that, or heard rather, that you see a podcast as a revenue channel rather than like a branding exercise. What did you mean by that?

SPEAKER_02 18:59

The way fame like the the initial show I started when I was um working at that company was definitely like we were judged on revenue. The CEO, I'd meet with him every week and he'd be like, hey, how many deals have we booked? And so this was my initial insight was that we're gonna build a podcast agency that is gonna aim to grow revenue for the clients, because obviously if they're making money, then they're not gonna churn. What we did find, though, is that when we had these bigger clients like these publicly traded SaaS companies in the US, the the like this the marketing manager who's responsible for them is actually not responsible for revenue. They just need to show, quite frankly, like a brand awareness metric. Like do they are the down is going up or not? Um and so when we're like, okay, should we try and invite our ideal prospects from the show? They actually don't care. It's not a goal for them. So those clients are often the best, the bigger companies. And so what we've realized is that yes, for maybe the companies with 50 to 500 employees, their primary objective, we have four of them internally, is ROI, and so we we optimize the show for that. But these big companies, their primary objective is brand awareness, so we optimize the show for that.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

As far as making a podcast as profitable as possible and revenue generating as possible, like what would you say are like the main monetization strategies?

SPEAKER_02 20:19

I would just ensure that every guest you bring on could be an ideal customer or well, it's actually we we we we call category one guests of people that could be an ideal customer or partner. So we're like 75% category one guests, and then 25% category two guests. Category two guests are not your ideal customer or partner, but they have an audience of them. And so you do still want to grow the audience. So you bring on category two guests because often they do actually create better content because they're typically better communicators, but then also because they have an audience, they should help the show grow. And you you you want the show to have some exposure to incentivize the category one guest to come on. So the first thing you do though is have ensure you have 75% category one guests, ensure that you have an incredible experience for the guests, and then just have some kind of trigger in the future to reach out to be like, okay, uh you mentioned in the episode something about this. Maybe we should talk about how we we can partner and sell our software to some of your clients. So either partners or customers.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

So but predominantly you're looking through monetization through guests rather than through viewers?

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Yeah, so so yeah, we we break down ROI into guest side and listener side. And so for these like 50 to 500 person companies, in the short term, we're much more likely to get an ROI through the guest side because growing the podcast, as you probably know, takes a takes a while. So that's what we focus on first, first six months. Ideally, we get some movement there, like they have an arrangement with a partner or they get one customer that typically we just pay for the podcast. Then if the show grows, then as we insert the ads full them in CTA, that actually starts to convert. Because you might get like a 0.1% conversion from download to somebody opting opting into whatever the thing is. Or to like have it have a demo. And if you only have a thousand, 0.1% of that is like 10, I think. Um and so that probably won't get a customer. But then if you have 10,000 after 18 months of growing the show, those numbers can actually work. So short term, we want to keep the client happy with it or keep the CFO happy with the show by focusing on guest side ROI. But then longer term, yeah, the holy grail is having ways to get the listeners to come in down to you to buy a thing.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Do you find that as far as people hosting guests are concerned, and if we're kind of still focused on the topic of we're building a podcast to generate revenue, which most people are, at least aspirationally? Do you think it's better to go into episodes with like a specific motive and topic in mind? Or do you generally advise for people to allow the episodes to be free-flowing in a natural conversation?

SPEAKER_02 22:53

Aaron Powell I think it depends on the host. We do like for every episode that we produce, we create an interview sheet, which is the research on the guest and then what we think are topics that the guest would like to talk about, that is going to add value to that, to our ideal audience, and ideally the host has some kind of interest in. And so we obviously give that to the host. Some hosts just read it out like line for line. Some hosts just completely ignore it. Actually, the best hosts have an awareness of what the probably the good questions are, but then when they see the guest's face light up about this one specific part, then they'll ask like three or four follow-up questions on that. Because you get the best content when the guest is like happy and engaged and in a flow straight. So the best hosts are able to spot that and then dig into those things, whether it's on the interview sheet or not. So I feel like the best hosts have like structure, but are completely ready to break the structure when they believe it's going to bring a better episode. Makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

What are the mistakes that most hosts make?

SPEAKER_02 23:53

So the the the the first answer I'll give is like they're on that scale of like following structure to not at all, like being too far either side, so completely unstructured where maybe the the guest is engaged in talking about something they're interested in, but is of no interest to the ideal guest, ideal listener. Or they're too structured in that the episode just turns out dry. It's like relevant content, but the guest then they're vibe with the guest. That's the first thing I'll say. Second thing I'll say is who I'm trying to think of like a really good client host. I've sat on a lot of client interviews. What if you're really good host doing, and so to reverse that, to invert that, a bad host wouldn't enable the conversation to flow. So really good hosts, they they have like their list of questions and they ask a question and they have like the next three questions in their mind, and the guest gives the answer, and then the host is able to seamlessly transition to the next question by linking it, linking the part in their answer to the next thing. So funny you mention that. Actually, I'd love to dig a bit more into why you think that is, because it's like on the list. So the therefore the the bad hosts are like, they ask the question, we get the answer, and then they're like, okay, so what do you think about X? Which is fine, and obviously in post-production, you can like make it a bit better, but the best interviews always flow naturally.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

And do you therefore think those people that are doing the best that are because it's a it's a it's a skill that has to be learned, right? For sure, yeah. Do you find that it's something that you either have or you don't, or have you really seen some host come on, I just really don't think this person's gonna get it, and they end up they do get it. And over what time period does it take for someone to grasp the concept?

SPEAKER_02 25:49

I think with anything, there's someone's initial baseline level of something. So like a football player, everyone has a baseline level. And there's also the speed of improvement, which can also vary. So you could start at a very low baseline level, but you could have a high speed of improvement, and over like two years, you you could get to like the top five percent of hosts. Or you could have a high baseline level or like a medium baseline level, but a very slow speed of improvement, and you'll never get into the top like 40% in the world, you know. So it in in short, to answer your question, I think it you can get hosts that have such a they have a low barrier to entry or a low like initial level, but then a low speed rate of improvement, and they're just it's just you're never gonna get to a level where the show is gonna be any good. Can you think of three hosts that are exceptionally good at the moment? That I like, I think Jason Kalakanis from the All In podcast, although potentially a bit annoying to some people, he is an excellent moderator. Um I don't know if you have you listened to the show. It's like tech and business, and it's just him and three friends who are like Silicon Valley moguls. He's just an absolutely excellent host, like bringing in the more quiet one, having epic intros, being humorous. So he's a really good host. Other interviewers that I like. None are coming to mind. I have a really a solo show that I think excellent, but I think what we're like what we're sliding into is like the talent, the world of talent, and like the the world of Hollywood. Tim Dylan is a comedy podcaster, does a solo show. Like is so engaging. But that's because he has spent like 20 years training to be a comedian. And so we're like edging into the world of talent. Alex Cooper of Cooler Daddy, like, she is so engaging to listen to, but these people are like the they're essentially actors, you know? So you don't really get that with the with the VP of like tech at some cybersecurity company that's gonna host our uh B2B show.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

What about the likes of Chris Williamson, for example?

SPEAKER_02 27:50

Yeah, I don't really like listen to those shows. I've like seen a few clips, so I can't comment on that one. I also don't listen to the diary of CEO CEO, but the clips I've seen of Steam Butlett, I do think he is an excellent host.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

Um How much of it do you think comes down to the host themselves as an individual and the prep that's gone on behind the scenes per episode?

SPEAKER_02 28:16

I feel like these top hosts like do prep a lot. Um but then I feel like they get the balance right in that they're not like just going through question by question. They're like jump off the script if needed. That's typically where the goal is. I know like Stephen Bartlett, he he probably does some intense prepping. I have a lot of people prep, and then he like spends time on it as well. Probably Chrith Williamson as well. These like top-top shows, I feel like you to become the best, you have to like every single variable you have to maximize. Like they have eight cameras on set in Dairo CEO and probably like ten people working on the show, it costs them like 20K to edit the episode. So I think to become the best, you really have to optimize every variable.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Do you put in the groundwork to prepare ahead for all of the clients that you work with? Do you come up with interview questions and so on, or is the client doing that on their side?

SPEAKER_02 29:12

So if we go back to the three things that we do, so finding book and guest, editing, production, and promotion. If we're doing that first one, that includes us prepping the host and the guest for the show. The extent to which hosts look at their research does vary. But yeah, we create what we call it an interview sheet, which is just the research and the questions, and we share the whole thing with the host, often at just a selection with the guest. So we don't want the guest to know absolutely everything that's going to be asked. Um and some podcasts they don't want to send anything to the guests. Uh, but we the standard is we send a selection of the questions to the guests so they have some idea in case they're nervous. They they want to prep something. But I actually don't like sending guests. Well, for my show, for example, I send all the questions, but I only send them on the morning of the podcast. Because I don't want the guest to be like spending all their time and then thinking, okay, I'm going to save this to that. Then they're completely inside their head and they're not like you're not actually getting an authentic performance from them.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

Can you think back to a time where you've had a client that's it's just been an absolute car crash of a of a project to work with without having to call them out right now?

SPEAKER_02 30:16

Uh yeah, we have loads of car crashes. Uh if we have like 100 clients. So even if we had like 3% car crashes, we'd have three three a month. Um can I yeah, like we have loads of issues. Like it's such a it's such a like a meffy or can be quite such a meffy process and also an emotional one, especially if the the the key thing for us, because you know, I was telling you like the 50 employee thing. The typically the the most challenging clients are where the host is also the person who's responsible for paying the bill. So like the founder CEO of the company, they sign off on the bill, they're also the host. Those are always the most challenging because the the founder CEO is going through that emotional journey of being the host, seeing the numbers, which is essentially feedback on their performance, whether they're good or bad, and then having to sign off on the bill every month. So that's the reason why we're trying to shift up, because if we have the CFO or the marketing lead signing off the bill and then some like VP of customer successes hosting, when we split that out, it's often an easier journey. Um there have been times where we've just been like, look, I uh it's just probably not gonna work out for you. Like the podcast, even if you're happy to pay us, the podcast probably isn't for you for you guys. Umly a couple of times, because we don't like to turn away revenue, but that definitely has happened. And so sometimes I wish we had a service where we don't rely on the talent of the client in order for it to largely work. Um if you're trying to get a good podcast episode, the top the the most important thing is the quality of the guest. Second most important thing is the skill of the host. So that is a key part of the process. Um, which is why we have about two years ago introduced what we call host coaching. The better we make the host, the more successful the podcast, the easier our job is. So it's actually the best way, one of the best ways to grow a show, to go back to your point, is how do we make the host better? Then more listeners will will return retention at the foundation of growth. Show is going to grow faster. So that's why we we introduce host coaching as part of the service.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

And is that like an ongoing weekly one-to-one coaching element? Or how does that work?

SPEAKER_02 32:25

I like what I like. I'm kind of away, like we have a the head of account management that's responsible for the happiness of all the clients. So what I would what I would aspire to is, especially with AI, it's actually a lot easier now because you just upload the audio file to a Gemini Gem, for example, and then get the host coaching, you have to like review it and make sure it's like sent, makes sense. Um I would like host coaching after every episode. So we have like bi-weekly meetings. So in the in the AOB section, we have a section for feedback on the last one or two episodes that we've recorded since the last meeting. And then if there's like an issue that we're trying to overcome with the host, then we have like specialists in the team who like jump on a call with them. So that's what I want to see happen. I don't know if we're quite there yet.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

Talking to team, uh how many people have you got at the moment?

SPEAKER_02 33:14

Uh we call them team members, so people that are full-time. It's between 70 and 80. What is what's the main bulk makeup of that? Is it editors? Uh no, the two biggest groups are what we call PMs and AMs. So between 15 and 20 of them each. And the PM is responsible for everything going out on time. And the AM is responsible for the success of the show and the happiness of the client. So they on each each client has an AM and PM. They're responsible for making the show happen.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

So those are the biggest groups. Interesting. And where do you sit within everything? What makes you take entitled business?

SPEAKER_02 33:53

Um I have three focuses for this year. Number one is managing and leading the the main business better. So the podcast business, the thing we've been talking about this whole time, is like it has for the past for the first four years of the business it was 100% of the revenue. Now it's 75% of the revenue because we have these other things. So for the main part of the revenue, we have a leadership team of three people who largely like 98% run the function. So the growth person, ops person, and head of account management. So my first focus for the year is managing them better, managing and leading them better. Second focus is a new like sub-service that we've launched. And the third focus is my own mini-media brand called Cache Machines. So to answer your question on what makes me tick is often like the new thing. And so that's why I have this new subservice. I can't completely get rid of like I can't completely push the main service away because they're the hole there above the leadership team. Uh we don't have a CEO essentially, so I am the CEO of that. So I still have to do that. That's probably 20%. New service is like 60%. That leaves another uh 20% for like LinkedIn, newsletter, podcast that's like personal.

SPEAKER_01 35:14

What is what does a secondary service do?

SPEAKER_02 35:17

It's called Fame Crew. And we if you need if you Google like videographer in Liverpool, because your B2P company is going to a conference and you need a videographer there, then we have a network of crew members uh in around the world that will like manage and deliver the work and do the editing if if you want that done.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Nice. Nice. That's very useful. And the cash cash machines.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

That's just the podcast newsletter uh under my personal branding. That's evolved a lot over the years. Um recently rebranded to cash machines because it's like the thing that I'm interested in. It was first called confessions of a B2B marketer at the start, because I was interested in marketing. Got a little bit less interested in marketing because I've been doing it for a decade, so converted to confessions of a B2B entrepreneur, and then in the last three months converted to cash machines because I just want to talk about profitable bootstrap businesses.

SPEAKER_01 36:09

So you struck me as the kind of person that has a thousand ideas and and would potentially struggle knowing which one to focus on. Is that a fair assessment?

SPEAKER_02 36:19

Yeah, I think if I going, you know, I told you that in 2014 I wanted to leave my job with a salary. The business I built then was essentially just, you know, the all these companies that like hire offshore talent and then they hire them and they either connect you and take 30% or they like manage everything and charge double the salary. That's what I was doing. I had a team in the Philippines, would charge startups around here in London to like double their salary. We got to like a team of seven and that replaced the salary. That business model now is like really sexy and everyone's doing it. But for me back then, when I was going through the startup phase, I didn't think it was scalable. And so I just skipped off that, tried to build an online marketplace to do it. If I just kept doing that, the Filipino staffing business for like started in 2014, if I did that for a decade, I probably would have had a much bigger company. And so to answer your question, yes, jumping around I think has cost me like a lot of potential revenue because I would presume that Filipino staffing business would be larger than fame is now if I did it for uh 12 years, but I didn't sound like what are you chasing? I have think been thinking about a lot about this recently because I uh 12 months ago had a child and that changes a lot of things. Uh up until the child was born, or actually up until the child was like six months, it was always just growth, like the I want more revenue, like a bigger business. After the child is born, it does change things. You're like, actually, other things can be as important as building a business. But I still do love growth, like growth, my my primary value has always been growth and entrepreneurship, which is why this new like subservice that I'm essentially building with one other guy, because we're in this new stage where we're like designing all the processes, working out to find the customers. I really, really enjoy that. I feel it's not work at all. It does feel a bit like work when you're like have this, I don't want to say sluggish, but this big organization and you can't just like change things straight away because people get upset. Uh so I don't enjoy that as much. But there are other parts of the main service that I do enjoy, like managing the team, leading, pr presenting and stuff. So if if in a uh this has been a year of turbulence in terms of prior life priorities. Is it an exit? Uh I I am motivated by cash. Um whether the cash comes by exit or by um taking money out of the business, I'm not too concerned. It really is everything is for sale, and so if someone was to pay what I believe to be an irrational multiple on our profits, I would obviously take it. Um but right now I don't think anyone's paying that. So um I think it's fine to like I'm happy with uh like we've always been profitable ANL thing, so I have a lot of freedom in terms of what we do with the the cash in the company. And so I I'm in not in a rush to sell it because I actually don't know what else I would do.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

What's the biggest bottleneck to get past four million AOR?

SPEAKER_02 39:34

So the we have the the hundred client barrier has been a barrier for like one to two years where we add between five and seven clients a month, but then we lose between slightly less than that. And so the growth has like topped off, but that's happened like three times. So we get to like 10 clients, then we got to like 30 clients, then we got to like 70, and then we get to 100. And so now it's just working out like how do we evolve the service to enable us to improve retention? And how do we also add more clients every month? So that's what I I'm not doing any of that work, but here's what I'm trying to uh bring out of the leadership team. So I like prioritize what they should focus on, but then they're doing it. While they're optimizing that, that that 25% of other revenue is what I've been working on for the last two years. And so I think ultimately, in order to get to 10 million, we probably will need to offer something else to these, sell something else to these clients, which is what I've been working on in the 25%. Either through acquiring smaller companies or starting new services. So we acquired three last year. And then this is the first time I'm trying to like, actually, it isn't the first time, but this is the first time I'm starting a subservice that's actually working. I've tried other sub-services in the past that haven't worked. Um so that's kind of my my job is like how how do we ultimately my job as CEO is how do we grow the company? And so there's like a couple of different avenues that we're exploring to do that. Do you want to have your own studios? There's a guy called Sam who I can't remember the name of his his business, who the founder of Karugo, maybe you know him, he has a LinkedIn, a personal branding agency. And I saw like a year and a half ago, two years, that they had bought a studio so that is really cool. And then I spoke with him on on a podcast actually, and he's like, it was it wasn't maybe the best idea, so maybe maybe we should cut this out because it's his business info. But um so actually, yeah, let's just not mention that in the show if possible. Why wouldn't we have our own studios? It's a great question. I just don't know how that's gonna like one studio is probably gonna add, I don't know, 250k a year in revenue. I don't know how much these places make. But I don't see that like our DNA is like fully remote, like global company, like global services. And I wouldn't want to tie us to one location. I think if there was a plan to like build fame studios, or we if we thought we could build a fame studio in like 100 cities, then I would be interested in that. The problem is I have absolutely zero experience with any like kind of in-person business. So I wouldn't be confident in executing. The reason I like the fame crew service, like fully global, fully remote, it's actually exactly the same thing we do with the main service in that we like find customers quite cost-efficiently online. We have good remote offshore operations to lower cost, but like we're still in control of everything. And then we manage global resources well. And so it's actually the same thing, really, as what we do in the main service, but just packaged in a slightly different way. So we're already experts in all the things we need to do. And that's why I think it's working quite well. So it feels like a more natural thing than starting a chain of podcast studios. But good idea. Good idea.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

Or not. It sounds like you had this like dream of starting and scaling and maybe exiting a SaaS company at one time and you never build these internal tools that you've kind of rolled in, rolled inside. I'm interested why drop the whole SaaS angle and just keep that internal. You've got a different kind of couple of revenue streams that you're building. Why did you give up on that side of things?

SPEAKER_02 43:14

I think I just wasn't good at being a product manager. Or like doing the whole co-founder thing. Because I can't code. And I would never be I guess I took the risk on like paying outsource developers on the early company. And so you're right, because I'm kind of diluting focus a little bit with these extra services. But I feel like they're more aligned with the competencies that we have as a business than I have as a person, like managing remote services with global resources. I think the skills you need to do that are probably quite different to building this this software tool. So I think we the the proof is that I've invested like a year in two different SaaS products and we haven't managed to grow them. Whereas these other things are producing revenue and are profitable. And so I'd probably just like stay in my lane, you know? Like to grow any business, you have to be better than your competitors. I'm not going to beat these other people that can code and like that know how to do software. Do you have to now with clawed code? Yeah, but then I I like that's just a tool that everyone can use, you know? And then so like these a developer is gonna be much better at building a product with clawed code than I am, you know. So I I still don't think that I'm gonna I can I can win. Um Yeah, I I've been burned too many times on that.

SPEAKER_01 44:44

How would you feel about AI at the moment?

SPEAKER_02 44:47

Yeah, I'm pretty amazed every day. I think it is a it is gonna be a problem for agencies. My view is that we just have to adopt it faster than our competitors. The the the the challenge I think most agencies are having or that we will will have or are having is change management. When I used to work in big consulting companies, there would be these groups of people that did change management. I didn't understand what it was. I thought it would be a like, why would any organization need people to manage change? And then we tried to roll out some AI stuff internally, and you do naturally get pushback. So we underestimated the power of change management. So going forward, whenever we try new things, we just have to communicate better, I think, internally. Our our like internal, like official and true opinion on AI is that no one is gonna lose their job because we're implementing AI. If we implement AI and you as a person don't then evolve in your role to be able to add more value to the clients, then you may lose your job. But no one is just gonna be fired because we implement AI. So that's the official internal view. I we haven't been that successful at rolling out anything there.

SPEAKER_01 46:09

Selfishly, to me, what are some of the and you you you you admit they haven't been too successful with them, but what are maybe some of the systems that you have built or use cases that you have found to have a positive impact on podcast, regardless of whether it's growth or revenue, just in general, what are the best one my favorite one at the moment is we have bi-weekly or weekly meetings with every client.

SPEAKER_02 46:39

Historically they were not recorded. So we decided recording them, feeding the transcripts into a clawed model, and then it just gives the head of account management a weekly report on whether they're a churn risk or not, so she can better focus her time. That's a really simple one, but I think is having an impact. The kind of longer-term thing I'm working on is a an open claw general agent that will sit in Slack, that will start to do the simple tasks. Like if we're finding guests for clients, then every week we have to reach out to, let's say, 10 guests and we have somebody in the Philippines who will go and understand the guest persona, find the guests, get their email, LinkedIn profile, et cetera. So ideally, like that can that doesn't have to be done by a person anymore. But that doesn't mean we're gonna fire the jail team. It means that they will have to go and when I say jail, I mean geff liaison. They'll have to work out a way to add more value to the business. So that's like the longer-term thing. And so I think we'll relatively soon be able to be uh to do that, and then there'll be other things that we'll try and have that general agent do. Aside from that, on the marketing side, going back to the new fame crew service, like Googling Trade Show of Videographer in Liverpool, obviously we're only ranked for that. And so building out the landing pages for that service has been so much faster using AI to create the like the different things on the page that's gonna be better for SEO. So that it's been crazy how fast we've been able to do that, mainly because of um co-work, called co work.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

I'm interested to get some of your insight on agency growth in general, having been in the industry now for a long time. Like how do you how would you, if you were starting from scratch now, do things differently today than how you originally started with the business?

SPEAKER_02 48:36

Aaron Ross Powell I think we got a bit lucky. There wasn't there were like two credible B2B podcast agencies when we started. And so just the Google term B2B podcast agency we've always ranked for since like day one, I still do. Now there are a lot more, and so we have to get a bit better. But if I were starting again, I would definitely offer something that people are looking for. Again, going back to the phone crew service, like people are looking for trade show videographer in Liverpool, we just want to rank higher. I would not bother with like the trying to sell something to somebody that they're not already searching for. I just feel like it's just the easiest route is just to get good at Google Organic and Google Ads, because the sales process is also much more shorter because someone has intent. They're looking for that thing. We've never got outbound to work. So if I ever do a business again, it will be just working out how we can do something slightly better, like slightly high value or lower cost for something that people are already looking for, and then work out how we can rank better organically and be able to pay more on Google Ads in order to outbid people. That's like the rule for any business I'll start.

SPEAKER_01 49:40

Aaron Ross Powell So, in a way, attaching yourself to whatever the latest trend services.

SPEAKER_02 49:47

Well, yeah. So the the job is going to be easier to get the clients if there's more demand than there is supply. And so that's when the trend would come in. Like if you probably at the moment, AI automation agencies are like there's probably more demand than supply that might change in like a year. So yeah, that would be a good example. But it wouldn't necessarily be a can uh we wouldn't necessarily have to have the the trend. We just have to believe that we can offer something slightly better for something that people are already looking for.

SPEAKER_01 50:20

What's your opinion on rapid-fire questions?

SPEAKER_02 50:24

I we do suggest for all client shows that they have some kind of consistent element. It doesn't have to be rapid-fire questions. It can be like the same opening question, a segment in the middle, or it can be like consistent closing questions.

SPEAKER_01 50:40

Interesting. Your answer to that question was going to be conditional on whether or not I ask you any. And you said no, they're terrible. And I'll glad I haven't got any right now. But before I do that, I'm I'm interested coming onto this. You you you assessed the opportunity to come on. We spoke off camera and you you jump on a podcast every couple of months or so and you saw us. Was there anything you saw that we were blatantly doing wrong that you would change?

SPEAKER_02 51:04

Um I can tell you what you're doing right. Like it was a good email from your the person on your team. It was in person and it was on a Friday. I probably wouldn't do it if it was on other days Friday afternoons. I didn't do much work anyway. Um what you're doing wrong. No, I actually don't like I like the email. The comms have been great. WhatsApp group's good. I actually we might steal this. For clients that do in-person recordings, I think WhatsApp group is good because also it gives you the other channel afterwards to like engage and send them the link to LinkedIn Post or share. So it's nice. Uh add that to the process. What you've done wrong, I don't I I wouldn't I didn't see anything that you've done wrong, but if I spot it, I'll let you know and we can add to the comments on YouTube. Or get host feedback off camera, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 51:47

Rapid fire then. Okay. Okay, best B2B growth channel right now.

SPEAKER_02 51:52

If you ask me like a year ago, I would say LinkedIn organic, but not anymore. Maybe YouTube Shorts. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 52:05

On main channel or create a secondary channel for shorts?

SPEAKER_02 52:08

Yeah, so now you're here's more advanced than my knowledge. So I would um well I know people that like just have these like un unbranded channels that they just use to test shorts. That's like elite, that's like above my pay grade though. So that sounds good. I would do that. If I if I was like hardcore trying to grow a YouTube channel, which I've never successfully done, I would do that.

SPEAKER_01 52:28

I hear there's a lot of people would damage their main channels due to the kind of person that wants to watch a short-form piece of content versus long form until the long form suffers because of the mindset shift between the two. Yeah, but this is like a next level YouTube knowledge. One metric every founder should track.

SPEAKER_02 52:44

Monthly employee retention.

SPEAKER_01 52:48

Nice. Could be annual. Doesn't make a difference. Most overrated marketing trend right now. AI outbound. Interesting. Why?

SPEAKER_02 52:57

I think I'm buying that we never got it to work for us. And like I feel like with without bound. I personally will only answer if I'm like pretty sure this person actually knows like me. So I'm saying this purely out of my own experience or like what works with me. And that might be completely different to other valuable people that you're trying to not say I'm valuable, other people that you're trying to get hold of, you know.

SPEAKER_01 53:21

I've got a pretty naughty system sending 3,000 emails a day right now. For real. Pretty well in the agency, yeah. Nice, man. Maybe a little value exchange there at some point. That's gonna be my my you know, my my my post-episode reach out in in a couple of months' time. Hey, just maybe do that.

SPEAKER_02 53:39

Okay, but that that's exactly right. Like you spot something, a potential problem that a guest has. And if you have a good solution, then it would be it would be terrible of you not to present it.

SPEAKER_01 53:50

Future management company of the Agency Giants podcast. Best book or podcast that shaped how you think.

SPEAKER_02 54:09

And so my whole like management leadership philosophy is based on his book. So I recommend any founder read them.

SPEAKER_01 54:17

Nice. And finally, one thing that you'd stop doing immediately immediately in most agencies. Nice. Tom. Thanks so much. Thanks, man. I really enjoyed it.