VO Guy:
Hello. And thanks for coming along to, …And we have an office Dog. The digital agency podcast, where we talk to agency owner directors and learn more about what makes them tick. From the things that make them similar, to the things they’d rather have known sooner, where they’ve had success and where they’ve learned some hard lessons. All will be revealed with your host, Chris Simmance, the agency coach. And he’ll be talking to a different awesome agency person in each episode asking them four questions and seeing where the conversation takes us over the next 25 minutes. Okay. So let us begin. Over to you, Chris.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Thanks, Voice Over Guy, and on the podcast today, we’ve got Matt Daley, founder and CMO of Circulate Digital, a co-founder.
Matt Daley (Guest):
How are you doing? Alright, we got there in the end.
Chris Simmance (Host):
All right. Thank you. We got there in the end. So for those of you listening, it’s been about eight times between the two of us trying to get this podcast done, and I’ve fluffed it up at the beginning when I just introduced him, then Matt. Why don’t you introduce yourself and tell us what you do, what does Circulate do?
Matt Daley (Guest):
Hey, guys. So, my name’s Matt Daley. I am the CEO and Co-founder of Circulate Digital. So, we’re a digital ads agency that helps brands all across the world to scale their digital ads. And we also have our SEO service alongside that as well. We recently kind of niche down a bit more into digital ads, but we, like I said, we’re still offering SEO. And it’s quite a big part of our campaigns because they work very well together, actually. When you link a lot of the technical stuff alongside paid ads, which we’ve briefly spoken about before this because we’ve recently launched a lot of our own advertising which has left us feeling very busy if I can complete our list.
Chris Simmance (Host):
I mean, you’re advertising your own services, which proves that advertising services work, right?
Matt Daley (Guest):
Yeah, yeah, we’ve been absolutely rammed. I mean, I didn’t quite think we’d get to the point where we’ve got to with this because we’re generating quite a lot of leads just through paid search and our organic. But we’re ranking number one in the UK for, you know, paid social agency, which is like our big hitter.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Or when this goes out, there’s gonna be about 50 agencies all trying to-
Matt Daley (Guest):
Yeah, I know. I probably shouldn’t say that, but it’s something that we’ve been ranking for, for years now, I think so.
Chris Simmance (Host):
And how long has Circulate been running?
Matt Daley (Guest):
So we started about eight years ago this November, December. Yeah, coming up to my 8th birthday. It was one of those things where I was working for someone else, and I just thought to myself, I can’t be bothered to do this anymore. I want to venture into my own thing. And after several failed businesses before that, just as students and stuff like this, Danny and I used to run some businesses when we were students. Yeah, and we started Circulate, and it was a really scary but exciting time, that start-up phase. It’s so different now because you gotta bear in mind the marketing approach was completely different. So we were like, we didn’t have any money, we were knocking on people’s doors like going into shops.
Chris Simmance (Host):
It’s exciting though, right?
Matt Daley (Guest):
Yeah. Yeah, it was so clear.
Chris Simmance (Host):
And you’ve got that new agency smell and everything, you know, it’s kind of brand new everything, everything you do is completely new and it’s exciting. Yeah, where is the agency based? Cause you’re not based in the UK, are you?
Matt Daley (Guest):
No, I’m based in Barcelona. I’ve been here for about five years, but I did actually come back to the UK for a bit. We set up an office in Manchester and then we also have one in Sheffield so kind of split across three locations really. But yeah, we’re also partnering with a print company down in Brighton. So, hopefully, very soon we’re going to be having some premises down there too. Oh, nice option for recruitment, yeah.
Chris Simmance (Host):
It does. It certainly does. So over the last eight or so years, what do you think’s been one of the biggest successes that you guys have had in running circulate beyond surviving eight years?
Matt Daley (Guest):
Yeah, I mean, like eight years is a long time and we never really started out to be, like you see, a lot of agencies these days kind of going in wanting to be the biggest and the best. We never really thought about it that way. We kind of started it to make our lives better and it has done that most certainly. Um, I think one of the best things we’ve done really is expanding our network into, I’d say Barcelona because we do have clients out here which has been really cool. But I think it just helps us to be a bit more of a global player when we’re talking to other agencies and other companies. It’s been a really, really strong kind of move on our end, I think, allowing us to cover a lot of territory. I think also, with me and Danny running this together, it also feels quite like a smart move as well because we’re brothers and we can talk very openly together, which has helped us a lot in our journey.
Chris Simmance (Host):
You naturally build a shorthand when you’re with family, but, like, you know, hopefully, my family’s not listening. I’d never do that with you guys.
Matt Daley (Guest):
Yeah, yeah. Like we, I think like we went through a lot together as kids, you know? So like we had a lot of trauma as kids, and I think it just helped us to build a really strong relationship growing up. It was almost like destiny that we’d be doing this together, I think.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Yeah, that’s nice. It helps, like you say, having a co-founder in whatever fashion is good because you can share the wins and the hard times. But you also kind of, I guess, if it’s family, there’s like I say the shorthand. But you’ve also got that, it feels nicer to share the win with your family too, I think. And it sounds nice. I mean, like I say, I’d never do it with my family, but that’s not a lot of people would, to be honest.
Matt Daley (Guest):
You have something special there.
Chris Simmance (Host):
You’re made of stronger stuff.
So if you could go back then eight-ish years back in time and speak to the younger version of yourself and your brother, what would you tell him? Or what would you tell each other?
Matt Daley (Guest):
Yeah, I think we got really caught up. If you listen to me online, you’ll see I talk a lot about mental health and this kind of stuff, and we got really caught up.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Yeah, to unblock you for that one.
Matt Daley (Guest):
Yeah, yeah, we kind of got to a stage where we were very hard as a business and that was hard on our employees, hard on every aspect of the way it worked. And I don’t think that did us any favors. And I think now we’re a lot more light on our feet in terms of how we go about running the business and how we deal with staff. We’ve completely done a U-turn and our company culture is something that we’ve just focused everything on. So I would honestly say like, go into business with a focus on company culture, make it the best place to be because if you’re focusing on that, then you know, happy people create better results in my opinion.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt Daley (Guest):
And when you’re running an agency, you’re focusing on people. So every single ounce of your effort should go into making sure that those people are happy, and that’s kind of where we’re at now. Fast forward eight years on, it’s not perfect. I say this in a lot of different places. It’s never going to be perfect, but you know, like 9 times out of 10, we’re really, really working quite hard on things. And I think one of the biggest regrets I’ve got really is when we started to scale because we started this as a lifestyle-type business. So for the first two or three years, it was just really coasting along with me and Danny and a couple of freelancers, and that was how it worked. But as we started to get more staff, we typically scaled too much with junior staff, and I don’t think that helped us because I could never take a back seat because I would have always got dragged back in. So now…
Chris Simmance (Host):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt Daley (Guest):
We’ve got more senior staff in place now, and it helps so much in terms of being able to let people crack on and not have to get dragged in all the time. Yeah, I think it’s probably a current theme amongst most agency owners.
Chris Simmance (Host):
It really is, and I’ve got 222 things on that. 11, I agree, culture. What’s I say? Culture. Each strategy for breakfast or something like that, yeah. It does, to a degree. I mean, it softens the blow of not having a decent strategy if you’ve got the people, and if you’ve got a good strategy and happy people, great, because if you’re going to spend the most significant amount of your waking days in your life working, it’s pretty good to be happy doing it. So if you’re paid well and you’re happy and you get to make something that’s good, then you’re going to keep, you know, keep doing well. One thing I have noticed is a lot of agency leaders now who’ve been running for, say, 5 plus years, and they’ve gone through the higher, the higher lots of juniors to do stuff because it’s cheaper, realized the impact of that, but now they’ve got quite a lot of people who are starting to hire mid to senior roles. And the juniors that they then bring in have a management layer in between it which kind of separates the leaders from the doing aspect of the work. And I think if you’re happy and you’ve got a gap between you and the frame of everything that’s going on every day, you’ll be a better leader because you’ll be less impacted by all the pressures of it all.
Matt Daley (Guest):
Yeah, no, it’s very true like that. That’s pretty much the structure that we’ve got in terms of how we’re going forward because it’s also really hard with recruitment as well. So senior talent right now is next to impossible. Going to a session.
Chris Simmance (Host):
I’ve done some research which I haven’t put live yet, and maybe it’ll be live by the time you’re listening to this. So look at the OMG website. And so in the last 10 years, since 2012, the average salary for an exec level role has the average median salary across just the UK has pretty much stayed the same. The average salary for a mid-level role has barely changed by about 5 to 10,000 pounds in the last 10 years. And the number of senior salaries, like director levels, astronomical difference. The number of roles that people are looking at across the country for juniors has gone down over the last 10 years but still relatively high. And if you think about that, that means that quite a lot of agencies are hiring fewer juniors at a cheaper rate. And maybe that’s why their data looks like the median salary is stagnated. But if people are moving into other roles, but moving horizontally or vertically, so moving into another role into a more senior position, then that’s where all of these jobs are going. And that’s why we don’t necessarily have enough seniors at the minute.
Matt Daley (Guest):
Yeah, it’s mad, isn’t it?
Chris Simmance (Host):
Yeah, and you do get some predatory recruiters as well, who are sort of upping the ante in terms of salaries and things like that, which is quite hard to deal with, but hey, it’s part of the course when you run an agency. It’s a people business.
Matt Daley (Guest):
It is. We’ve had two people recently poached off of us and they’ve probably had their salaries almost doubled, at least a 30-40% increase. But to give some context around what you’ve just said because I completely agree, we launched around five different roles the other day. Some of those are senior like SEO manager, senior SEO manager, blah blah. One application has come through for that one. We launched paid exec and graduate exec full paid, and we’ve had over 200 applications.
Matt Daley (Guest):
Really gives you some context as to how this is going right now.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Yeah, and just be mindful not to fall into the trap of hiring too many juniors because you’ve got to have a management layer there.
Matt Daley (Guest):
Yeah. No, we 100% do, and I think it’s really hard to do when you’re trying to scale because you need to deliver work essentially. But I also think this is where contractors come in really handy right now. We’ve upped half our workforce around contractors because we need people that can do senior levels of tracking and all this kind of stuff, which you just won’t get with a mid or on a junior range. But yeah, it’s an interesting market space.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Yeah, it is. We’ve gone on a tangent, which is good, but it was a positive tangent. So over the last few years, is there something that you guys did that was quite successful or unsuccessful that you kind of went, “hmm, we won’t do that again,” or “wow, let’s double down on that”?
Matt Daley (Guest):
Yeah, I think let’s start with the positive stuff. I think one of the most recent things we’ve done, like I mentioned, is actually put some time and effort into our own marketing. So we relaunched our site, we developed our value proposition. I think how many agencies there are out there that basically don’t have a clear value proposition is quite crazy, and we were one of those to be quite honest. So in the last six to twelve months, we’ve really put a lot of thought into who we are as an agency, and that’s why we’ve gone off into the digital ads and kind of environment space. I think that’s really helped us because number one, it creates that expert look and feel. When you’re coming to us, you know that we’re experts because we do digital ads, and we’re ranking really strong across loads of different keywords online for it. I think that’s been one of the most positive things that we’ve done, along activating the actual marketing activity, which is all kind of driven through paid search.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Value is a value proposition for the outside of the business is just as important if, as the internal value proposition, and that’s the underpinning of your whole culture. Everyone’s come from different places, had different upbringings, had different experiences. If you can distill everything into some core values that everyone can share.
Matt Daley (Guest):
Oh, yes.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Then you speak with the same language. It makes purpose a lot easier to derive. It’s a hell of a lot more powerful than just a flashy website or some slogan that means nothing. Data-driven digital marketing agency or strategic digital marketing agency or whatever it is, you know. It’s just what they do. But you can tell the difference a mile off. If you look back at your old site and you look back at the language you used internally and externally before you went through that value proposition work, night and day, would you say?
Matt Daley (Guest):
Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s completely changed.
Chris Simmance (Host):
And what about something that you learned quickly that you should stop doing?
Matt Daley (Guest):
Yeah. So this is actually just down to me and Danny as business owners and leaders, I think, but we pretty much came in and played the same role quite a lot in the business. And I don’t think that’s helped us, but it’s really difficult when you’ve got a co-founder because you feel responsible for everything. So, you know, we’re often working on the same ship, and it’s like, it’s really unproductive, yeah.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Go to your board meeting and present something, but he’s already got it there.
Matt Daley (Guest):
Yeah, and I think in the last year or so, we’ve actually had to put a lot of emphasis into changing what we’re doing. Now I’m leading the services managing the team, ensuring we’re putting out the highest quality proposals, and he’s focused on the numbers, finance, and operations of the business. We have different strengths and preferences, and it’s worked well.
Chris Simmance (Host):
That’s it.
Matt Daley (Guest):
I think focusing on what you love is important. If you have a co-founder, you’re likely to have different personalities.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Growing up together makes it even more likely to have some kind of dichotomy between likes and wants. But the clarity to work that out eventually worked.
Matt Daley (Guest):
We weren’t productive for a little while, but we always worked. We have completely different values in some cases, and I live a different lifestyle in Barcelona.
Chris Simmance (Host):
I think that helps to keep the agency grounded because we have different perspectives. It’s quite helpful to remind yourself and be self-aware.
Matt Daley (Guest):
Self-awareness is actually a huge topic. We can go on for about an hour, but yeah, self-awareness is…
Chris Simmance (Host):
Do another podcast, mate. We’ve only got 25 minutes.
Matt Daley (Guest):
Yeah, another one, so…
Chris Simmance (Host):
If there’s someone who’s just started an agency or they’re thinking about starting an agency and they’ve waited all this time for us waffling on, to hear your one piece of advice, what one thing would you give them that they could take away and turn into something of value?
Matt Daley (Guest):
Look at yourself and think, what am I great at? Like if you can niche down into a certain area that you are awesome at, am I allowed to swear? It’s that cool.
Chris Simmance (Host):
I haven’t had a podcast taken down yet, so yeah.
Matt Daley (Guest):
So if you can niche down into an area that you’re really awesome at, like let’s say you are the LinkedIn king or queen, that is gonna work really well for you because you are gonna become an expert, and you’re going to be portrayed as an expert in that. And you’re more likely, as a start-up, to win more business in that. Because if you go out as the jack of all trades, “I do LinkedIn,” like you’re one person, it’s gonna be hard for you to be the best at everything with all your…
Chris Simmance (Host):
I’m just looking at myself through the camera here. I don’t know. Where? That’s true because.
Matt Daley (Guest):
I am too, to be fair, but-
Chris Simmance (Host):
Very modest as well. So you are.
Matt Daley (Guest):
I’d say as you grow experienced in digital, you can get very good at a lot of different things. But you know, just starting out, maybe it’s worth being quite selective of what you’re offering and actually for a customer that resonates a lot better, I feel. We’ve had loads of positive feedback on our recent transition. We used to offer web design, development, all this kind of stuff, and it’s like these are things you do when you start out in business and you realize straight away it’s something you shouldn’t be offering.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Yeah, and the friction that it causes, like you can lose good clients because you offer services that you’re not good at.
Matt Daley (Guest):
Oh yeah, exactly.
Chris Simmance (Host):
So your piece of advice would be to look at yourself and look at what you’re great at and then focus on that, basically. Yeah, that’s fantastic advice to end the podcast on, so thank you very much, Matt. It’s been a very enjoyable recording.
Matt Daley (Guest):
Yeah, no worries. Good. It’s always good to see you. So yeah.
Yeah, thank you.
Chris Simmance (Host):
And it’s good to see me as well. Listeners can’t hear you, they can only hear us, but we’ve had fun. Hopefully, you’ve had fun, and in our next podcast, we’ll be speaking to another digital agency leader to hear about everything that they’ve learned along their journey of agency life. So thanks very much for listening. Cheers, Matt.
Matt Daley (Guest):
Thank you.