SPEAKER_01 0:00

We were at firm 300k revenue a month. Pretty much the majority of our clients were made redundant in this two-week period. And suddenly you're then in a situation where you're making 100k loss a month. We have no choice, God, what are we gonna do? We're gonna have to pivot. We've halved our prices. We had an account that was worth a million pounds and we sacked them. And even like lead revolution around like a four-day working week.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

And you also have built a fully agentic workforce as well.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

We've built this system whereby we've basically replicated every single person. The quality and the output that we're getting is as good as the human output.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Let's go back to kind of the early days.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

When I went out on my own, some of the clients that I'd worked with through the agency, the clients were approaching me directly. They only pay us 250 grand a year, we don't want them. So I was like, nice, I'll take him. And then that client was worth a couple of million within 18 months.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

You said that you quadrupled your turnover and tripled your team headcount in the space of about a year.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

At one point we had 50 people. If I said we've got 200 people, I'd know that I'm doing something wrong.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

If you were starting from scratch, what would you do differently now?

SPEAKER_01 1:04

I would say. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

So you started KVA whilst you were on maternity leave.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

I did, yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Over a decade later, and you're one of the UK's top digital transformation agencies, started off in the healthcare industry, and you also have built a fully agentic workforce as well. Yeah. Let's start off in the meat. What's an in-house agentic workforce?

SPEAKER_01 1:36

So it's really exciting because a lot of people think that AI is all about replacing humans. And obviously, what we want to do is replace the manual boring work so that humans can be freed up to actually focus on the things that matter, like connection, relationships, creativity, innovation, all that fun stuff that AI cannot and will not be able to replicate. So what we did over a year ago, we started looking at how we could automate a lot of our manual kind of workflow and also looking at how we could do that for clients as part of our digital transformation journey that we were taking clients on as well. And so we've built an intelligence layer for the agency which pretty much automates all the boring stuff, all the financial things, all the forecast flows, things like that. But actually, it's been incredible because we've trained it by our senior team. So it's not just the case that we've partnered and bought agents. Um a lot of the ones that you can buy online are not fit for purpose at all. No, you can buy them for like 30 quid or something per head. And they're only as good as their training, right? And their ongoing prompting. And so we've built this system whereby we've basically replicated every single person in an agency environment. And we have trained those agents within an inch of their lives. So actually, the quality in the output that we're getting is as good as the human output. And obviously, then we have a round of QC and things like that, but it's transformed the way that we do things and the way that we help our clients.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Nice. I'm keen to geek out with you on that because I've done exactly the same thing as a full suite of like 16 different AR employees as I love it. But let's leave that as an open loop for now and let's go back to kind of the early days because before agency, you started off as a designer, a junior designer.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Yes, I did. Yeah. So I came out of uni, I graduated with a graphic design degree, and I worked up in London for a bit, and I then decided that I was going to teach myself to code because back then you had to manually code. Um, so I taught myself front end, I became a developer/slash designer. And again, back then that was quite a unique skill set to have. You had the creativity, but you then had the understanding of how something was built. And I worked with so many developers at the time who would say, You can't build, I can't build that. And they'd look at what I designed. You can't do that. And I think, you know what? I bet you can. I bet they're just being goddamn lazy and I'm gonna learn how to do it. So that's what I did. Um, and I spent seven years doing that, and I started freelancing, freelance for a 10-year period, and realised over that 10 years that I was getting four bookings for one day and there was only one of me. So I'd always wanted to have a business. Told my dad when I was five years old I was gonna have a successful business one day because I wanted a purple BMW convertible. Still love my cars now.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

Did you get the purple BMW?

SPEAKER_01 4:26

I didn't, but I got a much better car than that. I love my pink Porsche. Oh, love it. Um yeah, so um I've always been driven, and I think that was then my opportunity to show that actually that commercial model was there. But also I really cared about people, and I know everybody says people before profits, but genuinely I've live and breathed that from the get-go. And one of the reasons I wanted to start KVA is because I'd worked with some of these agency owners, some of the large kind of um global networks, some of the smaller independents, and the values that are on the wall versus what people live and breathe every day. There's such a kind of um a disjoint, and people are unhappy. You see everyone clock watching in the office, 5:30, everyone bolts for the door. And I was like, clients are not getting their best work. This is crap. Like, no one wants to work in these conditions. So I wanted to create a workplace where I wanted to work, where I was really excited to show up every day, and so culture and having fun and all that cool stuff has been a priority for us along the way.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Nice, I love that. I do want to dig deep into culture with you because I know you self-identify as the culture queen. Yes, I do.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

It's literally means so much to me just to make workplaces in general happier and healthier places to be for everybody.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

I love that. Love that. Where do you think the early like you said from five you wanted to be a business owner? Where did where did that come from?

SPEAKER_01 5:48

I watched my parents really struggle with money, so we didn't have any money growing up, and a lot of my friends had families with money, and so I would go to their houses with you know swimming pools, or they would go to Florida every year, and I'd be I'd say to my parents, why aren't we doing that? And my dad would say, Well, you don't understand the way the world works when you get older. And I was like, But if you don't earn enough, get another job. And dad would say, Oh, it doesn't work like that. And I thought, Bet you it does. I'm gonna prove that. So it's like a red rag to a bull, right? If you tell me I can't do something, I'm gonna be like, I sure damn will do that. Um, so yeah, I think that's where it came from. It was just the desire that I didn't want, especially when I had my first daughter. I think that was the turning point. I thought I was in a tiny little flat at the time and I had a hundred quid in the bank. I literally had nothing. And I thought, I don't want my kids growing up in an environment thinking that nothing's possible. I had this mindset of abundance and I had this mindset of self-belief. I don't know where it's come from. I think your confidence over the years kind of ebbs and flows. So I haven't always had my confidence there, but I've always had my self-belief. I know I can do it, so I just keep powering on.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Maternity is maternity leave is one of the last times that most women will think about starting a business. I know, right? Yeah. For you, was it just the realization that you had that time in front of you to think? Or what what what triggered you? What was what made that the moment to then start the new agency?

SPEAKER_01 7:11

It's a really good question. And the exact trigger was my daughter was born premature and she was on a ventilator for the first two weeks of her life. She was in hospital for about eight weeks, I think, in total. And the consultant said it at 50-50 whether she's going to live or die. So every day you're looking at all the machines bleeping and like your baby being starved of oxygen and different things. And I she gave me so much strength through that because I watched this little baby survive, and now you wouldn't know that anything had ever been wrong. And I think that empowered me to think if she can go through that as this tiny little baby and she can survive, then I can like do this. And so it just I took strength from her, I think. And also I had nothing to go back to. I'd been freelancing. I think when you're freelancing, you're kind of acting as a bit of a salesperson for yourself, and you rely on your regular contracts. And because I'd obviously then had a baby and my baby had been unwell, I didn't have anything directly to go back to. So I just thought I've got nothing to lose. I'm in a little flat, I've got no money. Let's just so I put her into full-time childcare overnight. And I remember sitting there thinking, how the hell am I gonna pay this childcare bill at the end of the month because I've got no money? And I just went for it, and that's how KVA started in my back bedroom of my little flat.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Nice, love that.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

What was the first stage service and what were you selling and who to?

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Oh my god, this is so funny. So I was selling, so because I could design and build websites and apps and things like that, I was walking around our local little village and town, handing out flyers, going into shops, going, I'm from KVA Digital. I mean, now we're KVA, but back then we're I'm from KVA Digital. Can I build you a website? And obviously, like 99 out of 100, like, no, who is this girl when we don't want that? And then there was one client who went, Oh, wow, we want a new logo, we want a new website. Amazing, you can build it. And literally that just spurred me on, and I thought, this is brilliant, I'm gonna keep going. So the initial was just kind of brand identity and just skill set, the skill set that I had that I could monetize essentially.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Nice resonate with that. I did door to door to get my first agency client.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Did you?

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Yeah, first I probably three or four clients was a mix between cold calling and door to door. Actually, cold calling got us up to our first 10 clients. Was outbound, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Was outbound prominent in in most of the early clients?

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Or no, I think a lot of our early clients, so because I'd had that 10-year period of freelancing, I'd built up a lot of relationships with people that I'd worked with in agencies over that time. And so when I went out on my own, I think so. I've always really valued kindness as one of my things. Like I will do anything for anyone else. I'm so generous with my time and with money and with everything. And I think people had remembered that. And so when I started out on my own, people were then like, Oh, we want to help, because they'd remembered that I'd always been there to support them during something. And so that then kind of started coming full circle. And some of the clients that I'd worked with through the agency, um, the clients were approaching me directly, and I went straight to the agencies and said, Your clients are coming to me. And one of them went, Oh, that client's a hassle, take them. They only pay us 250 grand a year. We don't want them. So I was like, nice, I'll take him. And then that client was worth a couple of million within a probably 18 months. So it just shows when you really focus on the growth of and you invest in the human side of things, that's where the returns start building.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

I I saw you mentioned someone, I can't remember where, but you said that you tripled your turnover, uh, quadrupled your turnover and tripled your team headcount in the space of about a year. I don't know if that was really early or later on in the business.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

It was actually really early because I think now, and it's an interesting point because we used to measure as as an agency, but all agencies I think used to have success as a measure of how many offices did you have worldwide? I remember doing an early like RFI for a big pharmaceutical client, and they said, How many physical offices do you have? One of the questions was, how many security guards do you encounter before someone reaches your first computer? And I remember thinking, oh, my little chihuahua on the ground, like, does that count? Um, but we used to measure, we used to think that success was having all of these different physical locations. And then we went into an era which I think a lot of agents are still in now, where they celebrate headcount and they go, you know, because at one point we had 50 people. Now I would never be proud to sit there and promote how many people I had. If I said we've got 200 people, I'd know that I'm doing something wrong. Because, in my view, now success should be measured with agility, how fast you can react to change, how happy your people are and your clients are, and having that fully agentic workforce because you've then got unlimited opportunity to expand without increasing your overheads. And by default, you can offset that cost to your clients as well and be more competitive. So, yeah, I think now it's not necessarily I'm not aspiring to be the biggest, but I want to be the best.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

I completely aligned with that. So many agencies, I think over the past two years, especially, more and more conversations I've had with agencies on this podcast, and just out of this podcast who have got massive teams and are just like struggling to figure out how to reduce them, being naturally a people-driven business. It's one of the hardest businesses to do layoffs in because it like destroys the culture in which you've built the whole company. I know. But so many large agencies with multi-hundred person teams or multi-thousand-person teams are a big danger to the smaller guys who can be far more agile, like you put it, by using AI, with the caveat that the AI has to be fed with the right data and it has to be good in the first place. It can only amplify what already is rather than.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Exactly. That is so, so true. And I think even it's really important that you don't just put a junior team with your agentic workforce because the ongoing prompting and the way that the way that you review and the way that it learns and things, having junior people is not necessarily the answer. So we have maintained our a senior team around how that is operated and used within the agency. But I mean, over the years, we've done over the years, we've done two rounds of redundancies because we've had to react to market conditions and changes. And we've had situations where we've had really, really large accounts and they have gone through no fault of our own. We had an account, um, and this is a really good proof point of putting people before profits. Um, we had an account that was worth a million pounds um at the time to us, and we sacked them, and we sacked them because the guy was an absolute asshole. And and I I'm like, that's not me mincing my work. Like he was awful. And I just thought, we're not, we're not working with people like this anymore. Life's too short, we're not doing it. So me and my business partner sacked them, sat there celebrating, really excited. Yes, and we're empowered women, we've sacked this awful man, and then suddenly went, holy shit, how are we gonna pay our overheads for them? And and so that then kind of sparked a panic. But what we did was to bring the team together and to say to everybody, look, we've always looked after you, we've taken you on holiday to St. Lucia three times, um, we've done we've given back so much, and now we need you to help us. We need to go full on new business, and we did, and that worked, and that wasn't part of one of the rounds of redundancies, but sometimes things happen outside of your control, and you have to react to them in a way that is helpful to your business, but kind to people at the same time, which is always a challenge.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

For sure. What are some of the early challenges?

SPEAKER_01 14:55

People always comes back down to people. Sometimes I get up and I say, I don't want to do this jum anymore because I don't like people anymore. I think I'm just such a kind and genuine person that I give everyone my heart and I expect that people will um will show up in life in the way that I do with the same values, and people don't. Um, over the years we've been done over by so many people that we've had employed with us. Um, it's been quite wild some of the things that have happened. And so um I think that is definitely a challenge. Um, the culture has kind of been easy, I guess, because it's so aligned to why to our purpose of positively impacting people. That was my founding purpose with KVA. Um other challenges I think are probably navigating uncertainty. Um, a biggest, biggest challenge I've had to overcome personally, and I was just saying before we got going, I've just come back from a wellness retreat in the Himalayas. I went there because I was burnt out, but also I was always living in the future. And and you can probably relate to this because when you're an entrepreneur and you're ambitious, you have your goals, you want to get there fast. So you constantly find it hard to actually sit and realize the present moment and appreciate it for what it is. So I was constantly in the future, and that gave me anxiety and panic when anything went wrong, and you didn't know what the outcome was gonna be. So I guess the biggest challenge that I've had to overcome personally as a business owner is learning how to sit in the present and release that fear and anxiety of the future and go, we can't control that. All we can control is taking small measurable actions in the present that is gonna impact our future in the best way possible. Don't even worry about it. Don't, you know, it just you don't need to.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

I think the very nature of wanting to stay ahead and then obviously pivoting time and energy into things like AI as well. It does create, on one hand, you you go through these days of feeling like you're incredibly ahead because nobody else is doing half of what you're doing. And then on the flip side, it's like there's the curse that comes with that level of awareness. It's like, oh, now I can see where things might be going and evolving. And so there's that anxiety of uh, well, why does it matter if in 20 years' time from now all of this data is going to be available to everybody and everybody's gonna be able to do this?

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

You said that you were you burnt burnt out beforehand um in the business. What specifically do you think caused that to happen?

SPEAKER_01 17:24

I went through very challenging personal circumstances. Um I went through a divorce, which was very messy, and my ex-husband took half of the value of the agency, which I am very fucked off about because I don't think that's right, and I think the law needs to change, but that's a whole nother debate. It's another podcast.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

It would be a juicy one.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

It would, wouldn't it? Um so he so I felt that that was it it really destroyed me in a lot of ways because not only was it then the relationship side, it was also the business side, and that was something that was so it's like my third baby.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Like Were you business partners as well?

SPEAKER_01 17:57

No, no, no. It's just the law in the in the law in the UK um in in England or Wales states that in a divorce a couple literally split assets 50-50, and he didn't have anything to split, and I did, and so it was taken from me, even though I had so traditionally, when that law was bought in, it was to protect women when men were typically the breadwinners. And women would then have children, give up their careers, and it would make sure that if the man went on to build a business, the woman would be compensated. Whereas now, women are building businesses, women are doing both, they're being mum, they're being entrepreneur, they're being they're doing all of that. And so I don't think women should be punished for doing that. Um, but again, that's another story. So I went through, I went through the divorce, I went through a so I lost five and a half stone in weight, I reinvented myself, I did so much body work on myself, honestly. I learned everything there was to know. I went like in a deep dive on Kelly. So, because I had no self-worth, I had all this self-belief, I had confidence, I built this agency, and yet I was entirely reliant on someone else's opinion and validation of me and of my perceived success. And if somebody wasn't giving me that, I was worthless, and that's crazy. Like, so I had to learn all of these kind of new tools and things, so yeah, kind of um took me down a new path.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

Nice. You feel revitalized after the heroes.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

I learned so much, like it's just crazy. Like the way that they live, and um, yeah, it would there were so many things that I learned that I've actually come back and put into practice straight away, and I just feel like a different person. It's great.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

Nice, love that.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

So in KVA, you originally were, it sounds like you were you're more generalist in the early stages, but then you just you then came into health and and focused in healthcare for a while. How did that come about?

SPEAKER_01 19:45

So one of the clients that I mentioned at the beginning, the 250k client that the other agency said, we don't want them, they're rubbish. And we took them on, and actually that helped to grow us in the early days, and they were a healthcare client. So, um, and because a lot of my freelance work had been in healthcare as well, um, that was helpful because I'd learn obviously working in regulated industries is quite different, and there's a lot of code of conduct and regulations that you've got to be au fa with like on a global level. Um, and so we'd kind of fallen into it. It wasn't a purpose-led decision. Um, however, on the lead up to COVID, we were really glad that obviously we had had that niche because it was one of the niches that was thriving during that period. We're actually finding that even though wellness as a sector is actually thriving and increasing on in value day by day, healthcare and pharma is actually not investing the same amount in their communications and marketing anymore that they were five years ago. It's a totally different landscape, hence why it's important always to be able to be ready to pivot and to change. So I guess we've gone from kind of servicing pharma and financial services, and then we kind of opened up our offering. And I've always thought, how can I, my passion is culture, like I care about that so much. And I've always thought, how can we package and sell that? That's almost like another business. But where we're actually at now with the digital transformation side of things is we've realized the hardest part is not the technology. Tech is kind of easy in a way. Anyone can do it within reason, but it's the people and changing people's minds about the technology that is the hard part. So we now very much work and on a consultancy level with clients to go in and to look at where they've rolled out their AI um infrastructure or where they want to, and we'll do sometimes the tech piece and the human piece, but it's that humanizing AI that brings really nicely the culture um element that I'm really passionate about. And it's kind of just join the dots by accident. It's worked really well.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

So you're removing the resistance towards adopting AI within the workforce? Absolutely. How are you doing that?

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Yeah, so it's all in mindset training. It often comes from leadership or middle management. I think there's a lot of fear. I think people think that AI is automatically replacing their jobs, and it will if they think like that. And so what we have to do is to go in and to empower them with how to use it. Some of the big, big clients that we work with, which blows my mind, the individuals that we speak to on a daily basis have been given a few tools and say, go, go create this, go create that. They're creating stuff all over the place. There's no synergy, there's no advantage to them using AI as an organization because everyone's fragmented, everyone's doing their own thing. They don't have a clue what's going on. There's no control and God knows where their data is going because no one has any insight. So what we then try and do is actually look at how we can streamline and automate any of those manual workflows, and then how can we make sure that people are adopting it and actually using it to get the benefit of what's intended for automation?

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Nice. So so you're coming in and what's like a typical use case for like a client who business is coming in and they are what's like the most common inquiry that you get inbound from perspective clients? Yeah. Because I think it's quite ambiguous the whole digital transformation piece.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Absolutely. So I'll give you an example of what's quite typical. So let's say one of our clients has a um is in charge of um a field of sales reps, and they have worked with a company to come in and implement AI, to be able to listen to all of the sales calls, to be able to analyze where there's problems, where does there need to be training for the reps and spit out all of this data? And then the client sat there going, okay, now what? Now what do I do? I've got this data, the AI is working, but actually there's no change in in terms of an increase of sales. And so what we do is go in and we sit down with those sales teams, or we analyze the data and we devise workshops and training packages, which are fun. They're not like the typical standard crappy corporate workshops that everyone just gets bored of and wants to, you know, give up on. Um and so it gets people engaged, it gets them into a different mindset. And once the sales reps start changing the way that they're thinking about things, that's where, and then they become excited to adopt the any of the tools that they've been given. That's when the company then starts seeing a significant return on investment. So that could be an example. Sometimes we go in and we build the agents at the same time, or sometimes we'll be automating that workflow for them. But often, and where I'm really passionate is in looking after the people because they kind of get left behind. Like we're finding some of our clients have gone from a team of 30 to a team of three. And these three people that are left, they are miserable. They don't enjoy their life, and they're not, you know, they're showing up to work every day. They may as well not be there because they're not caring. And when you don't care about something, you're not gonna be passionate, you're not gonna give it energy. And I'm a big believer in the the universe and the law of attraction. How are you ever gonna get anywhere if you just sit there bored all day?

SPEAKER_00 25:12

It's true. So, how are you? So if if you're taking on a client, actually, let's ignore the delivery part for now. I'm I want to go to the origin of where that seed was planted in the first place because seemingly it's like quite a big transformation in yourself, going from like healthcare communication to digital transformation. I can only presume, and and you can fill the blanks there, that came off the back of seeing the impact on your own business from your the own systems that you created internally for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

What was what did that early stage look like of building AI within the business and then how did that then blossom?

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Yeah, I remember trying to engage the senior team to actually train these AIs, and the way that I wanted them to do it was very natural and organic and using their own language and not something that is typed. So I said to them, Do you know what? Go on a walk with your phone, on a whisper flow or some kind of dictation, and go for a walk in the countryside with a coffee or whatever and just talk in to that. It doesn't matter what you it doesn't, you don't have to go into a load of um, you don't have to worry about what you're saying at this point. Just get it out, just talk about what you're passionate about, what you do. All of the kind of day-to-day things of what they do that are kind of mapped out and process driven, we can train that separately. What I was interested in is what was going on up here for each of those senior team members, because that's the kind of level of engagement and that's the human part. So I was trying to get that human part out, and the resistance there was insane. People automatically think, well, I'm not gonna have a job if I do that. And we were reassuring and saying that's not the situation. People find it really difficult just to talk into their phone and feel that it's weird. Um, and I think people were automatically trying to feed it what they thought it needed. So saying, I fill out a timesheet or a spreadsheet at 3 p.m., blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, that's not the information. We we've got that. We've got all of that. It's the stuff that we don't have that is in your mind. It's kind of that, especially for things like the creative team, like our creative director's brain is like second to none. It is insane. And I wanted to find a way, like, how can we get that out so it's usable when we're using this, this, these agents. Um, so it's from seeing that resistance, I think, that we actually realized, and the more we spoke to clients, the more they were all saying, Well, we've got our AI set up. And we were like, amazing, how's it working for you? Oh, well, not very well. We haven't seen a return on investment, and I'm just like mind-blown. Why it's your people? It's because your people aren't using it effectively, or they don't know how to use it, or they don't know why to use it.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

How does it look today? Is it a like an internal user interface that you created are basically an internal software with with individual segmented chats, like almost like the ultimate custom GPTs, I suppose?

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Kind of, yeah. So it's called MyKVA, and it's um a system that everyone logs into. It does things like automatic hosting, publishing of like landing pages, presentations. Everything that we've got is is bespoke. So when we're prospecting, we're sending out um examples or microsites or whatever to clients, there's everything's templated. So you just go in and you adjust, you say the pull the case studies you want, and then it pub will sell publisher. So anybody can do that without being a developer. You've got your standard kind of chats that act as your agents, um, but you've also got skills that are within those as well. So, for example, you could have your senior designer agent, but then you can do your pull in your skill of your presentation and pull in your skill of um slides, and that will automatically then build within like minutes a perfectly branded slide deck that anybody can go in. That used to take us days. It's wild, and it takes seconds. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

It sounds identical to what I've what what what I've built in in my agency as well, which is interesting because there's a lot of agencies that really want to do that right now. Yeah, yeah. So much so that I uh I had to I had to really ignore the woman in the red dress very recently because I was convinced that I wanted to start another agency helping agencies become that yes, me too.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Me too. I've literally been thinking about this.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

Someone's gonna do it and they'll do it really well.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

We need to do it together, right?

SPEAKER_00 29:36

Don't distract me.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

New business.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

No, not that you're gonna be shiny you've got shiny new shoes, shiny, shiny object syndrome. But it would just it would just be a really good industry because so many agencies are gonna need to do that. I'm interested in what you think is gonna happen when everybody has a system like that. Because then because really the the from the way I perceive it, is like the future of agency is in data. Yeah. And it's like, and it's how can we, just like you had that problem of speak on whisperflow, and what you're really looking for is the brain dump. You don't want the robotic answer of I need to speak to AR like AR. You want someone you need that internal dialogue downloaded somehow. If we could only have Whisperflow as a chip in our brain, then we would get what we wanted, right? And so what happens when everybody has an agentic workforce in an agency?

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Yeah, see, it's a really good question. I actually would go so far as to say the agency model right now is dead as it stands. I think it's dead. We have so through our agentic workforce, we've halved our prices. And that was quite a wild thing to do, right? Because every other industry, every email you get is we have increased our prices in line with inflation, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, and every time I go back to these companies and I'm like, what the hell are you doing? Like, this is not a vibe. You don't have to increase your prices in line with inflation. Who even says that? That's not like it it just shows how backward you are working. And I think for agencies, us being able to then halve our prices, yes, we could take that as super profits and we could hustle that away. That's not gonna leverage us ahead. And I think, and and for me, it's always been about being ahead of the curve and seeing what's coming. It's it's interesting. I think the traditional agency model is gone and dead, and it's all about how we pivot. And for me, that comes back down to the humans because even though we're gonna have the data and we're gonna have AI all over the place, we are still gonna need humans to operate it. We're still gonna need the warmth, the relationships, the empathy, the creativity, all of that, you're not gonna get that from AI. It's just never gonna happen. And so it's you know, it's somebody who knows if you're working with an with a human, it's someone who can say to you, Are you okay? Like, are you really okay? Like, what's what's going on? It's people who have your back. And that's not AI. Like, I don't know about you, but whenever I try and talk to Claude about a problem, it comes back and it says, Before I answer that, are you okay? Because there is references towards you not being okay last year, blah, blah, blah. And I'm just like, just answer my goddamn question. Stop trying to replicate empathy because it's not working. Um, so yeah, I I think agencies have to adapt. And I think it's in the human, the power of the human relationships and the mindset.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

I completely agree. I think I I thought about the human relationship piece. I completely agree with that. I I also agree that I think the agency model as it exists, the traditionally is dead in the sense that the even the large companies, it's just a matter of like how successful you are basically dictates how long your life is gonna last. But you've you're basically beanshot and you're just gonna bleed very, very slowly if you're really big and well-established and got a good reputation. But you are bleeding out whatever happens regardless, you need to you need to patch it up and you need to change. So it's not that the agency model is bad, it's just the the way that it is is has changed. But I think I I completely agreed. Relationships are absolutely everything, more than ever. I loved what you said about price going down and decreasing, because I've I've had this debate with so many agencies, and so many agencies in complete denial over this. AI has to drive costs down. Because if our profit margin increases, yeah, then it gives everyone a competitive advantage. And if we've all got a competitive advantage, we're like, where can I get an edge? Well, I can just reduce my profit margin a little bit more, I can charge less and I can do this. And so that's where the market goes eventually. And I think in like the next five years, and you know, I don't want to say too much on this podcast because then we could give everyone else the edge.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

That's so true.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

Give everyone the edge.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

I know.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

But if you do that, if it that's where it goes in five, ten years, do it now. And you really can clean up.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

Yeah, it's so true. And we had a situation, I'll be really honest about it, because I think it's really good for other people to learn from things. It's not always been raising, it's been bloody hard over the years, as I'm sure you know. Um, we went from a point where we had a regular 300, I mean we we price very much project by project. We don't have clients on retainer because of the nature of what we do. And um, we had a situation where we were at a firm 300k revenue a month. And um really our only overheads are people. We don't, we all work fully remote. Um and we had a situation where literally within a two-week period, and this is no exaggeration, two-week period, that went down to 20,000. And nearly every single client at the same time when budgets have been cut, oh, we've been made redundant. Pretty much the majority of our clients were made redundant in this two-week period, and we were like, what the hell has happened? And suddenly you're then in a situation where you're making 100k loss a month, 150k loss the next month. The way that I've always run the business, and thank God I've done it like this, is to keep the jam in the jar. Um, so we have never really taken anything out apart from when we've been rewarding the team. So, and apart from when I had to pay the bloody ex-husband out. Um, I've all stopped going on about that. Um, I'm over it, I promise.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

You had enough to pay him out?

SPEAKER_01 34:51

Oh, yeah, literally.

SPEAKER_00 34:52

That's impressive that you were able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Oh god, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's what I mean. So we'd kept, because we cleaned up in the early days, we had this huge pot, millions and millions of pounds of cash. And um, which absolutely stupid looking back now. I'm like, why did we do that? Because that would, we should, that should have been invested, right? But it it wasn't, it was there as cash. Because for me, who'd brought up with an ethos of the of the being scared of losing money, for me, having this pot of like millions of pounds, I was like, I'm I'm safe, I'm okay. And then suddenly that happens, and you're like, holy shit, I'm not safe anymore. What am I gonna do? But I am so grateful that that happened to us, and it just goes to show I'm such a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. The reason that had to happen is because it forced me to look at everything and pivot. And I think had that not happened, we would have seen that slow drain, we would have sat on it for years, we wouldn't have reacted, but that forced us. We had no choice but to go, ah God, what are we gonna do? We're gonna have to pivot. We've got to find the services that are really niche, that are really important right now, and that are aligned to what we can do best as an agency. And that's exactly what we did. So we're now past that term around around point. Um but yeah, it's bloody stressful.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

I bet.

SPEAKER_01 36:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

How are you thinking about the retainer piece? Because you mentioned like it's project-based, and it's one of the things that I kept coming into as a sticking point in my mind as well.

SPEAKER_02 36:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Um, there's one thing building solutions for companies, but they have to use them. And so there's this whole kind of like ongoing You build one AI system and it's never really built, is it? Like in an industry that's changing and morphing forever. You build something this month, three months, it's outdated, and you're a fool if you don't update it. So, how how are you thinking about the ongoing retainer model? Is it something that you want to get back to if you were in that place, or are you quite content just being project-based?

SPEAKER_01 36:42

I would love to be in a position where our core overheads are covered by retainers and everything else is then our project-by-project work. Because the way that we attract clients onto retainer is with our half-price hours. So that's by and it and it's only things that we can actually use AI for. So it's your typical kind of brand communications piece. It's like creative copywriting, content, assets, websites, all of that kind of stuff. If we've got situations where we're doing um strategic consultancy or we're doing anything like that, that would always be sitting outside of a retainer because we can't recognise the value from AI on that. And we have to be able to do that to be able to drop our rates. So we have our standard rate for project by project. And then if clients want to bank a load of additional hours with us on a retainer, they can. You'd be surprised at the amount of clients he went, we'd rather play full price and not have a commitment to a retainer. And I was like, are you mental? Like, what is this? They do. They just no one wants to commit. But like we're in a society of like commitment photos in general.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

I don't think people have been exposed enough to retainer-based models. You know, like it's it's it's normal to pay for your meta-ads retaining that. It's like I've got to pay someone to run it, blah, blah, blah. It's not yet normal to pay someone to manage UA systems. And we're very resistant to paying for new things, but we all we we we weren't resistant to paying for Claude every month or paying for tax machine. Now all of a sudden we're spending thousands a month on token usage. Nice. And where did that come from, you know? And it's because we saw the benefit. So I think there's probably going to be a lag. And it's like it's almost like right now with digit uh digital AI transformation agencies, it's kind of like being a meta ad agency or Facebook ad agency back then in 2015 or something like that. It's like always even a little bit earlier than that, maybe even like 2010, where it's like the demand exists and you know on paper it's going to be massive, but like the market hasn't caught up with it yet. I think being in early now would there'll be but and you could but you can only really do that if you've got the you know the guts to stick in it.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Yeah, so true. Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

You obviously worked with lots of like regulatory and regulated industries like healthcare and so on. Uh, presuming you've done stuff with AI within those industries, how have you found paving that? Because that's quite uncharted, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 39:05

It is. It's it's really hard, especially um so we find when we're working with our healthcare clients, for example, um, we we need to what we want to be able to do is to make a lot of information better accessible for patients. And and actually that's a challenge because patients are going on to things like ChatGPT and and Claude and trying to go, as we all do. I mean, I've done it, I still do it, I always would do it. Because I actually think sometimes they are more reliable than the GPs. Um, however, it's being able to, when we're doing patient support programs and things like that, we're looking at how we can make that how we can police it in a way. And I think that often comes down to having tools where there's a moderator in situ who can actually kind of moderate and catch things, most importantly, if there's things that are being given where there's inaccurate information. I think obviously you have to caveat that it's not a substitute for medical advice. Um, in terms of the kind of back-end data and things, I think it just comes down to having the system structure in place so that it is on lockdown as as much as possible with the information that's being fed, so that that's not going out into the public domain and can't be referenced by competitor pharmaceutical companies because that is obviously their worst nightmare, is them in development with a particular product and another company being able to access their trial data and their data that is so important to them. Um so yeah, it's it's it's definitely a challenge, but it's one that we've always done from the beginning. So it's it's kind of been easier to navigate. But I wouldn't want to be going in from scratch now in a regulated industry in AI. I think that would be like hard.

SPEAKER_00 40:43

Yeah, yeah. You already understood where the red tape was to know how to dance around it makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 40:48

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 40:49

So in your own with your own systems internally, how are you thinking about? I love by the way that you presumably you built the foundation of the system yourself. Like you architected the system and then and then built everything out, which is exactly the same as what I did. And actually, again, one of those kind of areas of debate which lots of people have met resistance with, like, why would I, as the founder, build these systems? I would just hire an AI engineer and they can do this, and I'm like, no, but that person doesn't understand the context of the company, the selfish motivations of the company, like what makes the company great, and they're just going to interview people and then you know, and everyone on the team then doesn't necessarily understand that. So, how are you how are you paving senior team members or you're trying to download the brain, let's say, of your creative strategist, for example, um, and ensuring that it's evolving and growing with somewhat autonomy, but isn't morphing into something else accidentally? Are you still quality controlling the system? Are you yeah, yeah, what does that look like? Because it's you kind of lose your baby that you build.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

You do, absolutely. But I think um it comes back to that just like you say, it's that QC stage. So every single anything that is being um prompted or is going in, especially something like medical copy, for example. Let's say you're doing a leave piece for a um patient awareness campaign or something like that, it will will always have that QC time protected. And a senior medical writer will still go in who has that human training and be able to check that everything is as it says it should be. Because it's not just just like if it was normal kind of marketing copy or normal kind of comms pieces, it wouldn't matter so much. But I think in regulated industries that matters so much, and that's where we've had a lot of resistance actually is clients saying, Well, how on earth are you gonna catch this? And we're like, don't worry, we're not just leaving it to AI and then serving it back to you. There has to be that human we call it human-powered, right? Because it is the humans have taught it, the humans are maintaining it, the humans are using it and evolving it. And so it's just and and also when it gets things wrong, it's then someone prompting it to say, actually, no, this don't do this, do this. And so it's getting better all the time, which is obviously one of the beauties of um using AI.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

What do you think is like that one simple core system that every business should have right now in terms of AI?

SPEAKER_01 43:11

A core system. I guess it depends on the on the business. I would say a core tool that every business that uses Gmail as the back-end driver to their email is Jace. Um Jace is absolutely fantastic at being a plug-in to basically write all of your automated replies. Um, I think every every business can benefit from that. And if it's not Jace, which is specifically just for Gmail, there's loads of others out there that do the same thing. Um, but I think something like that um is is massive. That that saved me two hours a day overnight of just and and the accuracy of it will go back through, it will look at every single historical email that you've ever sent. It knows your tone. I always put a kiss at the end of my emails, apart from to clients. Um, but internally it's just my signature. And so then it started. Writing like client draws and then putting a kiss at the end, I was like, no, no, no, we don't do that to clients, you know, not quite appropriate. Um, but it's it's really good in the way that it kind of um is able to replicate your tone. So I think that's a key one. And then I mean there's lots of ways of implementing AI, and I think it's starting with looking at where you're spending a lot of the manual time and finding ways of trying to automate that. Some companies probably just need an off-the-shelf agent that they could buy online. Um, some need more of a something bespoke that a company like us can come in and build. Um, so it's it's really, yeah, it's it's tailored as to what a company needs, I think.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

Are you backed at the moment from one of the main models such as, you know, Anthropics Fable, Opus, or a Grok, or are you uh uh do you use open source uh LLMs and then and layer your data on top of them? What's like the infrastructure?

SPEAKER_01 44:52

Yeah, so we and and that was so we have got a lead developer who works alongside me, and we've uh he's been with us for 10 years, so we've always kind of worked like this, which is great. Um, and so that was one of my core kind of requirements is we want to make sure that actually anything that we're training in our data is kept separate. It's that it's important that it kind of feeds through the intelligence layer, but we have that ring fenced almost so that we're building our own model, and eventually in years to come, then you can actually switch off the other models that are feeding it. But at the moment, it's relying on that to be able to take a lot of that early stage prompting. Um, and we're probably a good few years away from being able to do that. But when we do do that, we're gonna have something that's really powerful and bespoke to the agency, so it's kind of future-proofing in a way. Um, but then day-to-day Claude Um, we we use very much um as um, yeah, just for everything, really. Claude designers come on leaps and bounds. It's totally different before that. We were using MANIS as our kind of tool. Um, MANIS is actually going through quite a lot of change at the moment because they were owned by Meta, they had quite a significant investment. And now Meta have um have taken that investment out and they are going independent again. So it'll be interesting to see how that transforms. Um, but I think that the advancements that we've seen in the models, um, like like with Claude, for example, it's has been the the change that we've seen in such a short space of time has been incredible.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

Do you license your own model and your own system to clients or everything you build is for them?

SPEAKER_01 46:25

Yeah, everything that we build is kind of is for us and for them. It's interesting because when I was thinking about recently having a model whereby you actually were setting up an agency or a model that tr that helps other agencies, because I can see that's what other agencies are crying out for. Um and and so we toyed with that, and actually, one of the ways that we were thinking of doing that was to sell my KVA as a license system so it becomes my whatever, whatever the agency is. And that's almost like a purpose-built. I mean, that's been a year in the making, and it's never, like you say, it's never finished, it's always evolving. That is such a powerful little tool, and at the moment, and we don't license it. We just it's just used for us, but it does enable us to pass on those cost efficiencies. So in turn, clients are getting the benefit from it. I would just love that to have that recurring revenue model for us.

SPEAKER_00 47:20

Yeah, it's a really it's it's interesting. So I I did I just did that. So our model, our model, our internal AI employees suite or AI workforce or whatever you want to call it. It's called agency OS X, and I just released it to the public as well on our on our YouTube, quite reluctantly, because I didn't actually want to, but then I was recording this series where I was showing the process of starting an agency, and I I thought, oh, it's an unfair advantage to me using this thing and saying, you can't have it.

SPEAKER_02 47:46

I know.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

And I was thinking about what the commercial model is behind it, because it's actually quite a new business model. And we're just tokenizing it. It's all pay as you use, tokenized with and you can basically choose the percentage of profit that you put on top of like token use, and then it's there's multiple models being selected on the back end depending on what the input is, and then to give them the right output. It's a really it's a really interesting model because then there's also monetization through APIs and integrations and so many other companies, and so it's yeah, I I think it's going to be a really big thing in a few years' time is companies bringing out their own perceived models, because you're not really building your own LLM yet. I think we will uh like you said, you it all get to that point and then you pull the model away, and then now it's oh this thing works on its own now. Um but I but no one's really doing that quite yet. You know, we say like, oh, it's our own model, and blah, blah, blah. It's kind of just marketing. Yeah, yeah. But um I think that's going to be really interesting to see, and I think there's gonna be a huge demand for that. But I think especially in sub- niches of businesses, there'll be agencies that have a system like yourself, but that is specialized for healthcare, for example, and then that just gets licensed to clients within the healthcare space, and it'll just be a whole new service offering.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

It will, absolutely. It's interesting because we do get so particularly from the larger networks. And we had um the president of a large global network the other day, and she just messaged me on LinkedIn and she said, Can you help me go to the board with a pitch for? I mean, that was specifically around the four-day working week. And she said, Can you help us because we want to implement this? And I was like, Well, I can do, but also that's kind of my time, my expertise to put together a business case. So, yes, I can absolutely do that, but that needs to be done as a consultancy piece. And that's what drew me back again to going, other agencies need us, like they need the tech, they need their mindset, they need the culture, they need everything. Like, um, and I think then agencies like us that are far ahead in in those particular areas, why should we not then monetize that? You know?

SPEAKER_00 49:50

Constant debate. And then and but then in doing that, it's kind of like short-term gain. Yes, it but then long-term cannibalizing yourself.

SPEAKER_01 50:00

Exactly. And that's the challenge that, yeah, I completely agree.

SPEAKER_00 50:03

But then if everyone wants to do it, enough people will figure out how to do it. So if someone's gonna do it anyway, then why not be the person to do it? So I'm sure you've gone through all of that stuff. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:12

That's exactly the back and forth, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 50:14

Yeah. So kind of coming out of robot and into into human, then um, culture queen.

SPEAKER_01 50:20

Love it.

SPEAKER_00 50:21

Talk to me about that.

SPEAKER_01 50:23

So, um, like I said in the beginning, I love all things culture. I think it has the ability to transform a business and to um make it a business profitable because of how much people care, because of how much the companies care about the people. And so that's something I'm really passionate about. And so we've done crazy things over the years. So, four years ago we introduced Unlimited Paid Holiday. I remember the uproar on LinkedIn. People said to me, Yeah, Netflix tried to do that, it failed. Why are you doing that? Everyone has an opinion on everything that you do. And I was like, Borov, this is what we're doing. We might have a different culture to those other companies that have tried and failed. And to this day, we still we still have that there. We have never ever had one bad apple. Um, but genuinely speaking, we've had nobody.

SPEAKER_00 51:13

How much are we talking right now? So the year off.

SPEAKER_01 51:16

That's hilarious. They didn't get a chance to, let's put it that way. I probably would have done. Give them half of the chance. There's always one.

SPEAKER_03 51:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

Um, and they were gonna. Um, but and actually, I think one of the good things about having a great culture is that you make me laugh. One of the good things about having a good culture is that um you very quickly know if you hire the wrongins because they are they're like a shiny beacon. You know that they're they're not fitting in and they're not having everyone's best interests at heart. Um, so yeah, over the years, nobody has taken advantage of that. Um, we started the four-day working week. That's something I'm really passionate about. Um, and we've given back loads over the years. We've taken the company on holiday to St. Lucia three times. We closed the office for it was basically I was on a family holiday. Um, it's probably five years into starting the agency. And I was on a beach beach in St. Lucia with my family. And I thought to myself, why am I on this beach when everyone's back working in the office? Some of these people have never been outside of the UK. One guy hadn't been on a plane, they've not been to the Caribbean. What right do I have to be in the Caribbean just because I started the business? I've got other benefits, but let's bring everyone. So I went back and I said to my ex-husband, um, you know that we were gonna do the bathroom. I'm actually not gonna do the bathroom. I'm taking the company to St. Lucia. And he was like, for God's sake, what are you doing? So I went in and I told everyone, I got really excited. I did this little PowerPoint on the beach. I was like, guys, we're closing the office, we're going for a week all inclusive in St. Lucia. Everyone started crying. It was just so beautiful. And so we did that, and then we did that to mark our 10th and 11th anniversary as an agency as well. And it's just, I could have taken that money, and people probably look at me and think, you're stupid, why do you not take that 50 grand for yourself? I could have taken that 50 grand. What am I gonna do with that? Buy a bigger house, buy another car? Like, is that gonna make me fulfilled and happy? No, it's not. I love my cars, I love big houses, but I don't need them to make me happy. What lights me up inside here is seeing other people smiling, is seeing the guy who was had a phobia of water. He didn't actually tell us before we got to St. Lucia, and he had a phobia of water, and we were like, oh no, what are we gonna do with like David and getting him in the pool? By the end of this trip, he was snorkeling in the deep ocean with me and my business partner either side holding him, saying, We're not letting you die because we don't have insurance for that. Um, but it was just amazing, and that is what lights me up, not just getting more money.

SPEAKER_00 53:49

Nice, I love that. You, I mean, it clearly works because you you you were listed in the top 50 most inspiring places to work in the UK, which is really cool.

SPEAKER_01 53:58

That was amazing. I had imposter syndrome at that moment. We saw Lloyd's Bank go up on stage before us, and then we saw Aldi, supermarkets, go up. And I was sitting there thinking, snow bloody way, because you know that you've obviously um you've gone in as a finalist, right? And then when they said winner, and we were like, Oh my god, it was just such an amazing, magical moment. It was lovely.

SPEAKER_00 54:19

I love that. Really nice were there any like business leaders that that inspired you that kind of taught you about culture?

SPEAKER_01 54:25

Richard Branson. Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, I love everything he stands for. And I think it's remarkable that he's obviously stepped away from day-to-day running and that virgin culture still lives on. And obviously, Holly Branson, through her work um as chief purpose officer, very much lives and breathes that inside the Virgin brand. Um, so I think and also he was bold, he was different. He created a brand called Virgin. He was, and he wasn't afraid to fail in public. We have such a kind of um how would we say it? It within our culture, people within our society, I should say, people look at other people to determine whether they are successful or not. And if you have a dip or something's going wrong, there's there's immediate thought that suddenly I'm not gonna be perceived as successful anymore. And I think what I love about what entrepreneurs do like Richard Branson is they just don't care. They just go, we're gonna start Virgin Cola. If it doesn't work, burst on it. We'll start the next thing, we'll start cosmetics. Oh, that's failed. Let's start the next thing. They just don't care. And they do it publicly because they kind of have to, but they also are not afraid of it. And it doesn't make you look at him any differently and think, oh, he's had fail, you don't remember the failures, you remember the successes, right? And so I think that's something that all of us can learn from and go, it's important to share those failings or the times when you're probably not as successful as you want to be, but you learn from them and that's okay. It just makes you a stronger person.

SPEAKER_00 55:56

For sure, I agree. Have you been to Necker Island?

SPEAKER_01 55:58

No, but it's on my bucket list.

SPEAKER_00 56:00

I've got an opportunity for you next June. I'll talk to you about it off camera.

SPEAKER_01 56:04

Oh my god, I'm literally gonna lose my shit.

SPEAKER_00 56:06

This is gonna get you there.

SPEAKER_01 56:08

Are you joking?

SPEAKER_00 56:09

100%.

SPEAKER_01 56:09

Are you literally joking?

SPEAKER_00 56:11

Legit with Richard as well. I I went to uh Jordan, this is insane. I'll make it happen. There's a there's uh there's a there's a British billionaire called uh Richard Harpin, and I was invited to his house last couple of weeks ago.

SPEAKER_01 56:23

Oh, you're going in a couple of weeks, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:24

He's really really pushing his brand in. He's really pushing it. And so um so I went to his house and then I met the uh the manager of the Virgin Investment Group. I've forgotten what the company is called, but any investment group. Okay. Yeah, there's a trip being arranged, and I can also we'll talk about it, it reminds me about it.

SPEAKER_01 56:42

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 56:42

Yeah, so that'd be good. And funny enough, I did a I did another podcast because we we I do two podcasts coming down once a month and then doing two podcasts. And then this morning, the the gentleman who's a gentleman called Andy, who is the founder of uh Lucky Generals, of course. Lucky General. Lucky Generals. Are you familiar with Lucky Generals? They're a massive uh they're a huge creative agency. They're like 150 team members, they sold to Omnicom.

SPEAKER_01 57:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 57:07

Um and they've been around for about 20 years. Anyway, great guy. But same question about uh business leaders, and he said Richard Branson as well. He's a massive inspiration for him. So Richard comes up all the time.

SPEAKER_03 57:18

Take me over him.

SPEAKER_00 57:20

Well, I didn't actually give him the invite, so if he watches this, he's gonna be gonna be a little bit upset with me.

SPEAKER_01 57:25

You you recorded this one first, right?

SPEAKER_00 57:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. We'll cut this bit out. No, I'll keep it in. Love it. Um Okay, cool. So uh but uh another thing, and we we kind of skipped over this because uh it just didn't feel right at the time, but does now. You're you're you're also a female, a woman-owned, certified woman-owned business.

SPEAKER_01 57:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 57:45

I didn't even know this was a thing. Yes. And it's probably ignorant of me.

SPEAKER_01 57:48

No, it's not a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 57:49

What's the what is what does that what does that give you? What does it do?

SPEAKER_01 57:53

So that's a really good question. So um 1% of global corporate spend is with women-owned businesses, right? How wild? 1%. That is, we're in 2026. That is ridiculous. So there are various different bodies that exist that give you certification. So one being a women-owned, and we work with an organization called We Connect. And what they did in the early days that was really, really helpful for us then, not so much now, because the political landscape, without me saying too much, has changed so that that is no longer there, there's not the teams there to um to come. We used to see teams that were just there to actually service and based on um diversity and inclusion, they're not there anymore, unfortunately. But when they were there, it was amazing because we would then get put in front of a lot of the larger brands in the early years that we would never ever have been able to have those doors open to us. Um so, and one of the reasons that I felt passionate about this is because myself, my business partner went early doors to a business forum. It was one of those kind of Richmond events organized things. And um, we went into an agent and into a room of 55 agency owners. We were the only two women. And we just obviously there was women coming in on behalf of clients. There was not one other woman agency owner. The next day, so it was an overnighter, and the next day they said, Oh, we're gonna go in, um, we're going onto the golf course and we're taking all the clients onto the golf course. And uh, me and Harriet, my business partner, were like, that's annoying. But can we just fake being able to play golf? But apparently you can't. Um, and it's probably the one thing that you can't fake it till you make it. We'd be there, like whipping up the grass and doing God knows what damage to the Grove golf course, which wouldn't be appreciated. Um, but it was annoying, right? And it's like this is not okay. Why women not represented? And I think particularly in the early days, because we've always focused heavily on digital, right, from the inception of the agency. And so um focusing on digital when we are going to represent um KVA in uh boardrooms of clients, and they say, Do you want to bring your data architect or do you want to bring your and and they're looking, and I'm like, it's okay, I can cover that. We'll we'll bring them in when we get to that. And you can see them looking, and I've got a um a MacBook which has a Schwartzky crystal cover to it, so it's got like literally like 10,000 crystals, and I'm always proud to bring it out, and you can see my team looking at me like, God damn it, Kelly, put that away because everyone's round the table with like their black dells. And I'm like, here goes my bling, because I just love shiny things, they make me happy. Um, and and I think that's a representation of who I am, it's creative expression. I think that's a good thing within an agency, but you can see yourself being judged for that, and I think particularly we see so much on LinkedIn about, and and I've seen with the algorithm as well, like the um the algorithm bias within LinkedIn. I don't know if you've seen any of those posts, but I did an experiment last year. I used to get between, I don't know, up to an average post would get 100,000 impressions, sometimes up to millions, three million impressions sometimes on LinkedIn. And now I'm lucky if I get 200 impressions. So that algorithm changed literally overnight for women. I then did an experiment and I changed my profile picture to a man and I changed my gender to a man and I changed nothing else. And my uh impressions increased tenfold overnight. And that shows I hadn't changed the language, I hadn't changed anything else. So it shows that for some reason the algorithms are actually obviously predominantly being written by men, but they're also favoring men, and it's nothing to do with the language, that's the black and white, like I've got the evidence behind it, and so that makes me annoyed because again, red rag to a bull. If someone says that's in unjust, I hate things being unjust. And so I'm like, I want to change that. I want to be the one to help that 1% grow into a 2%, even 2%. I mean, what the hell? It's crazy, and it just shows how hard, how much harder women have to work as agency leaders against their male counterparts, and it shouldn't be like that in 2026.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:58

Wild. Do you do you find find that being so female first as a company and as a brand, does it deter male talent in the business? And and do you proactively want to do that? Well, you mentioned the guy that was, I mean, you helped the man swim.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:16

So no, David, he was lovely actually. He was a great employee um back in the day. Um we actually, this is quite a wild statistic at the moment, but right now we only have two men within the agency. Um, and they are both emotional and emotionally intelligent men. It's interesting. I would love to employ more men. Um, I really would. Um, and actually, um, my business partner said to me um the other day for a role that we're particularly keen to fill, and she said, I feel like we need a man. And I was like, I feel like we do need a man. Um, but I think historically for me, but especially personally, men before I did that work on myself, men were not safe for me. So I just kept men like, you know, bring in the women, men no. Um, and that led from a lot of our male clients that we'd had. I mean, over the years, I've had all sorts. I'm I'm talking to, I'm trying to talk to a very senior level person at CEO level of a global organization. And I send him a creds and I'm talking to him about the humanizing AI piece. And he says, Oh, send me, send me explicit pictures, send me, like the kind of stuff that I get like that day in, day out, is wild. Like, I want to be taken seriously because my agency's good and because I care about what I do, not because a guy is like, oh, there's a blonde girl, we're gonna ask for like pics of her tits, like wild. And I get I bet you don't get that day to day from women.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:45

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:45

Do you know what I mean? Like it's it's different. It just is, and it it shouldn't be.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:51

No, I I completely agree. Interesting. Do you you mentioned that you had a role in the company just now that you were like, I think we need a man for this.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:00

Do you think you should be able to Do you want to go there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we can.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:06

We can because I think it's really it's a really interesting answer, Gone.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:10

Yeah, do you think you should be able to lean into this just I I'm here's here's my opinion. Okay. I'll give you my opinion first, and it's the safe place for you. I think that like there's there's certain roles where you just have a gut feeling that a certain person, certain, certain, a certain you want someone a little bit younger, or you want someone older, or you want so you definitely want women. I've hired I've I've had roles where I have I would I don't know, even though it's is it even legal? I don't know. I don't know. I've hired women in certain sales roles because I know that they're just gonna outperform men in these in certain positions in the company. And I'm like, this this makes more sense, and I would prefer that. Do you think we should have more fluidity around choosing who we hire? But then it's like, well, what does that then create if we can?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:50

It's like we want to when we want to, but then we don't want to if it causes us to discriminate on people. So where's the line?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:56

Exactly. And I think all we can do as business owners is hire the right person for the job, regardless of their gender. And sometimes that right person will happen to be a woman because of the soft skills that a woman might bring, or the you might actually find that that particular person is more kind of driving with emotion, and that's relevant to a, I don't know, um, inspirational workshops that you're going to be delivering or something like that, where you know that having a guy who's going in with a very kind of direct approach, that's not going to be right for the role. So I think automatically you are going to look at how they're coming across, but I guess that's less gender and that's more about their personality. Um, in particular with the role that we were looking for at the moment, is our number one challenge as an agency right now is sales. And so we are, okay, how do we? We have this amazing offering and we have all of our historical relationships. We want to go big, we want to grow, we want to do all these things. We're really ambitious. I'm like the most ambitious woman you will ever meet. And so I've got places to be, right? And so. By how do we go about increasing those sales? And Harriet said to me, I think we need a man. And I was like, Why? And she said, Because all of our clients are men. And in particular in regulated industries, financial services, pharma, we are seeing more and more women getting to getting into finance and life sciences and things, but nowhere near on balance the men that are there. And a lot of the decision makers and the more senior C-suite are men. And so we the only way we can get in the room is either it tends to be either with a man or it tends to be the guys that are actually wanting something else from you, which is not ideal.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:39

Yeah, it's very tricky. There's just there's so many other things to take into consideration, aren't there? It's not it can't be black and white. No, no. But for me, it was about balance in the team. So we're so male dominant in this team. We need some women in this team. We need some women in this in this specific team. So it made so much sense, but then it's like, well, yeah, where does where does the line get drawn? It's it's very tricky.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:01

It is trucky.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:02

And I haven't thought about it for long enough to have the answer. So I can't begin to attempt it.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:06

I think it's it's just roll by role, isn't it? It's what the right the right need for the right need for the role.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:11

Right need for the right role at the right time. It's like then and then it's it just can't be blanket rules. It's like it almost needs to be the grander scheme of the business taken into consideration. It's like, okay, let's look at this business. Are they only hiring a a woman for this role? Because there's they only hire a woman, or is it because they've got nine men and they probably you know, they've got nine women and they probably want a man in the team. There's probably like a grander audit that needs to be done to determine whether or not someone is discriminating.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:38

Yeah, absolutely. And I think within corporates they do that all the time. They need a tick box. Um, and that tick box happens to be, oh god, we've got all men on our board. We better tick box to get that woman in. She might not actually be the right person for that role, but they are ticking that box so they don't get in the shit for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:54

Yeah, it's true, it's true. I've I've I've got a I've got ads of leadership, and it it's all just so happened that this ad is just all white men, and there's ten of us stood there in these comments, and women are like, Where's all the women? I'm like, just come like apply, like I'm don't, I don't not want you. Like you know, like I don't not want you. Like it's I'm not making a declaration, but I just pose like I didn't even think of anything by it, but like it just so happened to be this way.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:20

That's probably me, Anthony.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:22

Commenting on that, how dare you.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:25

It's funny, but do you know what? That shouldn't even be a thing, should it? You should be able to put a picture up of all men, and that should be chill, but it's not because it activates women because they're angry that they are, they can see that they're being their voices are being donated, and particularly on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn is our only really professional tool. The amount of times I've woken up and gone, oh, that's it, I'm gonna raise investment and rebuild LinkedIn. I've thought about it so many times, honestly, because we need a we need a better platform with a transparent algorithm where people can see and it's not being controlled behind the scenes because that controls like a lot of our businesses come from LinkedIn. We got um one of our biggest clients, which is a healthcare company. My mum has uh leukemia, and um, my mum put a post on Facebook that was a very personal post about what it was like to be suffering from leukemia. And I said to mum, can I share that on LinkedIn? Because actually, I think a lot of our healthcare community are gonna like it's gonna resonate. So I shared it on LinkedIn, and um our now client picked it up and saw it and put us in the mix for a pitch, which we won. And then they became one of our biggest clients. So that came and my mum went, Well, that was worth having leukemia for us. Like, no mum, it really wasn't. But thanks. We'll take it, we'll take the win.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:40

We'll take that. I I'm behind 100% behind transparency on algorithms. I think that makes a lot of sense. I'd be really interested to know. I I would I would like to believe that LinkedIn isn't proactively favoring men on a feed. I wonder whether it's like a societal bias towards like like people have spent more time on men's posts, and therefore the algorithm itself is like in the same sense that we were saying, like, uh your AI gains a life of its own if you don't control it. It's like the algorithm has gained a life of its own and optimized towards men because for whatever reason the masses on the platform, which probably are men. Yeah. I don't know the statistic. Um it is yeah, it's predominantly limited to the and they're probably focusing, and then that's what's ended up happening. But I think algorithm algorithmic tri tri transparency would be a very positive thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:30

Absolutely, yeah. And I think either way, the programmatic bias is there because it's being generated by men, probably for men, and then being in our that's being kind of enhanced and rewarded, which is then training the AI to be even more so. So yeah, it's um there there's a lot of women doing some great campaigning work in that space and trying to change things, but ultimately it's that's not gonna change overnight. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:56

One of my great friends is Lara Acosta, who's who's quite large on LinkedIn. She's got I think she's got like 500,000 followers on LinkedIn or something. So she's the she's the largest female influencer on LinkedIn in the UK at least.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:07

Wow, I'd love to hear how she gets on with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:09

Yeah, I can put you in touch. I'll introduce you for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and she's been on LinkedIn for for many years now, but she's she's I I haven't I haven't had this conversation with her to but it'll be interesting for you to see if she's absolutely but she would she would she would know more, let's just say.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:26

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:28

Okay, cool. So kind of let's let's zoom out a little bit and just kind of get back to the the the business somewhat. I'm I'm interested on what your plan is now over the next five years. Because it's it seems like only the last 12 months or so you've gone through quite a big transformation. So now you've had the time to you've gone to the Himalayas, you've had the time to reflect, you're you've got more clarity. Like, what is the game plan for the next five years from here?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:51

Growth. Growth, as as every business owner is gonna say, right? You're never gonna sit there and go, I want to go back. Um I want to grow, but I really want to make a difference in the world. I want to use my platform through Culture Queen to help people to transform in the workplace, help workplaces transform, and use that digital knowledge and the kind of heritage story behind KBA to actually help people to transform using AI. Um, and that's something I'm really passionate about. And I care more about that than I do necessarily about the financial rewards of it. I mean, obviously the financial rewards are important because we've got to keep the lights on, we've got to have the money there to be able to grow. But that's really what lights me up. I want to be able to make that change in the world. And and even like lead the revolution around like the four-day working week. You know, that's really important to me. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:42

Talk to me about that. So you you would like a you say a four-day working week, you would that you're very pro four-day working week.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:49

Very pro, very pro.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:51

Are you four-day work week? You work four days a week.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:53

Yeah. Well, me personally.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:55

Wow. I I could okay, so someone challenged me at this on me on this the other day. And I said, Do you know what I could say that I am? Because the whole point of that fifth day is that you spend that doing something that is important to you, that is not dictating, because you're being paid to do that in essence. So you get paid for five work for four. So that other day, some people who have young families might want to spend more time with their children. Some people, me being an entrepreneur, I want to, I want to do something, I want to start something else up. And so that one day I could argue, well, then I spend time doing things like this, you know, the podcast recording, um, that kind of stuff. So I could definitely, and that is where I would choose to put that investment of time, absolutely. Um, so yeah, it's um it's been it's been good since we've implemented it.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:40

So your whole team are on for Fortnite. Interesting. Have you did you manage to, did you run any like KPI markers before and afterwards? Like have you tracked any data on it or just generally feels like it's much better?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:52

It feels like it's much better. Um, we do have some markers. I I think the main markers are are people happy, which we track, and the revenue, which we track, because in essence, it's getting everybody so invested in what they're doing that they care about growing the agency as well. I think um we're in a time where we don't, especially when you're in a kind of small to medium-sized agency, you have to wear lots of hats. You'll be familiar with this. You don't just turn up, even if you're employed as a an account director, you're also gonna do a bit of the FD's role and you're gonna do a bit of, you're gonna do everything. And so that includes organic growth and new, new, new business. And um that's important for everyone to get stuck into. And when you have an engaged workforce who really care about what you're doing, they care about your vision, they care about where they're working, they enjoy what they do and they're happy and they're rewarded, they are gonna work damn hard. Like we've got a commission scheme as well. So any new clients that anybody brings in throughout the agency, not just within new business development team, but anybody, you get 5% of the profit of that account for the lifetime of that account. So that's a really nice way for people to earn in the early days. We had account directors who were earning more than me because they'd bought in new business. And that's great because I've always thought, what's the benefit of people going freelance? Because obviously I started freelance. The benefit of going freelance is that you have freedom over your hours and you have freedom over your income. We can provide those two things within the agency. We can have people can have unlimited earnings, bring in new business that's gonna, you can sit on LinkedIn in the evening, anyone can do it, and you'll be rewarded for that financially. And then flexible working, obviously, you've got fully flexible working in the same way as as if you're a freelancer.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:34

So it kind of all your team members are incentivized on new business?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:39

That's cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:40

Yeah, every single one.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:41

That's cool. So, like employee-generated content on on LinkedIn so that they're building their own brands.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:46

I've literally done a workshop the other day with one of our senior medical writers who wants to get more visible. And I did a workshop one-on-one on building her personal brand. That seems really really strange because a lot of people would say, Well, actually, you're developing her to go somewhere else. And we've had an employee, um, she she works with us now, she's our um creative strategist, and um, she came to me a few years ago and said, I want to start a business. I'm really passionate about gardening and I want to start this business. And I was like, Cool, go and go and put away a pitch and go away, do a pitch, come back, which she did. And I I loved it. And I was like, we're gonna invest in you to do this. And so we did the whole launch event for her, we invested in building an app for her, we got everything off the ground, and she now runs that as a side hustle to doing her day job. And people always like, especially the older generation and like scratching their heads, like my mum will say, Well, why are you doing that? Because you're gonna lose, you're basically training someone to go somewhere else. But if while they're there with you that you're getting maximum output and they're happy, then that's the best thing for the business, right? And for the human being.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:55

Yeah, they all they're going somewhere else anyway. Yeah, they're going somewhere else anyway. It's so rare that someone really is a lifer, like it's just this day and age. So I'm so behind that. That's a really that's a really, really cool idea. It's is is incentivizing everybody on growth. Yeah, yeah. Especially like you're in an era where it's a personal brand is really thrown down everyone's throat as well. Like really, just like the importance of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:16

Absolutely. And also it's interesting because when I had this one in one workshop with a senior medical writer, she said to me in my last agency, I was not allowed to, um, I wasn't allowed to shop on LinkedIn. There was all these rules and regulations. They said no videos, no putting your face on video. And I was like, what the hell? Why can you not? Why should you be like you're still a person, you still represent yourself. You might be on LinkedIn with your job title, but that doesn't mean that's who your identity, you have your own identity. And so I just think that's archaic leadership. You know, you've got to let people express themselves. And obviously, as long as no one's doing dramatic damage to your business, right? And obviously, then you take steps. But if somebody is just wanting to get more visible, that's a benefit to your brand.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:59

Yeah, I agree. If you were starting from scratch today, like you lost the whole company and you were just getting back in the agency space, what would you do differently now?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:08

Oh, that's a bloody good question. Okay, hold. I need to think about this. What would I do differently? Oh my god, probably a billion things. Um, that's a really hard question. I should have prepared this. I would say I would employ less people. I would scale using AI as much as possible, I would get clients on retainer, I would turn down more work than I would accept because it would be better to actually have less work, less employees. Sometimes when you expand really quickly in the early days, it puts a lot of pressure on the business. So I think I would control that a lot more, especially because you're using AI and almost have that growth going more organic organically. I think I would probably I'd probably go to VC and I'd probably look at acquiring lots of agencies and building a little group together. And the primary purpose for that against a VC's mission is not to make more money, it's to actually impact more people positively with their working conditions because you've got more employees. Um Yeah, I think they're the key things that I would do differently. I would definitely not worry about the future. I would take each day as it comes.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:23

That's all you can do.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:24

Yeah, exactly. Easier said than done, though.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:26

Yeah, it is, yeah, it is. Okay, I've got some quick fire questions.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:30

What's one brand that you'd like to work with that you haven't already?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:33

Virgin. Nice. We'll have a word with Richard when we're there, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:36

Yeah, absolutely. One thing that you wish you learned sooner.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:40

How to live in the present and how to take decisions based on intellect and not on my mind and my emotions.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:50

But the best book that impacted the way you think? And one habit that uh keeps you grounded?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:57

Meditation.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:58

How often do you meditate?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:00

I try every day. Since I've got back from the Him Himalayas, asked me in a month, it might not be that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:05

And one quote or motto that you live by.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:07

She said she could, so she did.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:10

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:11

Very welcome. Very welcome. Thank you.