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 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 Daryl from Hard Numbers. Hey, Daryl.
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
Hey, Chris, how you?
Chris Simmance (Host)
Doing not too bad. Thanks. Don’t.
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
Have the opportunity to speak to you.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Well, we’ve only been trying to do it since April last year, mate. So we got there.
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
Got there in the end. Good, good things or at least mediocre things come to those who wait, Chris. Well, very modest.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, I can see, we’re gonna have a few laughs in this episode, everyone. And so, Darrell, you work at you. You’re a co-founder at hard numbers. Tell us who are hard numbers and what. The heck you do there.
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
Thank you very much. Yes. So, yeah, I’m. I’m Darrell. I’m a co-founder alongside my business partner Paul Stollery of of Hard numbers. We describe ourselves as a performance driven marketing and and communications agency. Or call hard. Numbers for two reasons. We help ambitious high growth businesses deliver again stretching sales targets. So we help our clients to deliver hard numbers and we deliver best in class measurement of the impact of the work that we do for our clients. We we outspend agencies three times our. Plays on tools and things like that that enable us to provide best in class measurement of the impact that we deliver for our clients. So we deliver hard numbers for our clients as well. We are about 20 headcounts, a similar number of clients, if you annualised our our our revenue at the moment, which agencies. Would like to do in terms of talking about revenues. Yeah, we’d be a a 2,000,000 agency and we do something like that, this this financial year, which is our.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Of course you do. Yeah, yeah.
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
Third financial year of training we’re trading, we’re about 2 1/2 years old. As things stand right now.
Chris Simmance (Host)
So you’re not doing. Very well by the sounds, but what a shame we do.
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
You know what we’re doing better than I could have hoped when we when we started out, but as a very wise person said to me once you know. You know, whenever you compare yourself to other agencies, right comparison is the thief of joy. There will always be a bigger fish out there. There’s always an agency that’s growing faster than you. There’s always an agency that’s weather. Great Big Blue chip brief that you would have loved to have won the previous week or whatever. That’s kind of the nature of. The agency business, right?
Chris Simmance (Host)
Absolutely. I I love to. When I when I’m working with new agencies, I love to start off things off with why are you doing this? What’s the purpose of it? And then that’s where you compare everything to afterwards. Yeah, if you, if you like, you say, if you look on Twitter or LinkedIn or. Thing it’s the same as with Facebook or Instagram. You’re always seeing the the version of someone on holiday. Essentially, you very rarely get to see the real version of what goes on. Everyone knows in most agencies there’s a fire once or twice. A week, maybe longer. And yeah, even in the best of agencies, with all of the awards and everything else, there’s there’s the same kind of. Problem. So yeah, the the comparison is the is the thief of joy kind of thing is is is true. Knowing where you want to be and it being objectively meeting your sort of business’s purpose and your company’s vision and all the people around you can get behind it. You don’t need to look elsewhere. You, you. You look inwardly all the time and and you and you can grow and feel a lot happier about that so. Coming up to year three, big party coming. I’m sure I’ll wait for the invite in the post. And So what do you think’s been one of the most? What? What’s? What’s been one of the the key successes that you’ve seen in the last in the last few years? What’s what’s really stand out there?
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
I think, uh, a couple of things for us, dumb luck has been an amazingly powerful driver in our business. You know, when we started out we had this strap line of in uncertain times. You need hard numbers, right? And and for the past 2 1/2 years, we’ve had nothing but uncertain times, so I.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And the next 10 years.
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
Yeah, right. I mean, you know, seemingly more uncertain than than the than than they’ve ever been before. So it’s kind of anytime we’ve ever gone to revisit that strap line it there’s been no. Point and and if we’d have set out. To be a. You know a hospitality or retail focused business or something like that, we probably would have had a much bumpier time over the over the course of the past two. And a half years, so, you know, dumb luck has been a been an enormously powerful driver for the for the business. I think the other key thing that we’ve been. Thing that I look back on and I’m, I’m. Kind of most. Proud of is that we have always invested. In the things that. We would tell our clients to do. It’s a big frustration of mine with any other agency when they make the excuse that the Cobblers children has the worst shoes with whatever they do, right? If they’re a paid agency. There are so many paid agencies. Right that don’t invest in paid campaigns for themselves. Or there’s ad agencies that don’t run ads, right? Yeah. For themselves. And for for what they do. And all the way through, you know, since we started, we we wanted to have a strong presence on on social media, both personally and and and as a business, particularly LinkedIn and Twitter, because they’re the kind of B2B channels. And we’re primarily B to B business. We do. We’re about. Ten 1015% B to C but, but primarily B to B we we create content you know we have a set piece coverage to capital report that we’ve done two of now and we’re currently in the. Planning of the the third version now where we demonstrate a connexion or at least a correlation between the amount of investment that businesses are able to attract. And their communications, their PR thought leadership, etcetera, etcetera. We’ve been very lucky to to partner with a great part research partner Karma on on the first two of of those. And and you know we we we churn out content you know about ourselves as well. You know our blog is it it, it is active we you know we’ve we’ve every single time we win a new client we do a win release about it you know the the PR trade media we we we have said some quite punchy and sometimes. Controversial things. I don’t think they’re that controversial like you should make commitments to clients, KPI’s and you know and commitments to generate them. You know an outcome and then write that into your contract. But clearly a lot of people on on LinkedIn and Twitter in particular feel like that’s sacrilegious in the in the. The PR industry.
Chris Simmance (Host)
We said I certainly need to be careful, but if you know what you’re doing and you know you know what the outcomes that you are creating can generate, you’re not going to promise something you can’t deliver. Equally, you’re not going to promise something which has many, many, many more outside factors than you can control. So when you when you make a promise or a commitment in a in in a, in a contract, it’s something that within you know within 9/10 of all control you can you can deliver. Yeah. So that’s that’s reasonable. And I would argue that quite a lot of the people that are aren’t that have I I I I I challenge you to look back on that LinkedIn content and see the types of people who said that that’s not a good idea are mostly SEO. Because if they’re paid, they don’t know how to work paid because paid is numbers in numbers out.
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
Yeah, it’s interesting actually. I think a lot of the very like a lot of the on that very specific piece that we that led to us getting you know we had the write up in our week about it and the rest of it. But it was from my business partner. As well, Paul, that kind of. Kicked, kicked, kicked off that discussion. A lot of freelancers in the in the PR space were really, you know, quite critical and some really. Strong stuff about us, you know, some of them. I have interacted with previously. Which I thought, yeah, there’s.
Chris Simmance (Host)
There’s a distinct aversion to accountability in many areas of of the industry and and I think that might be the. The the chord is struck there.
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
Yeah, maybe, maybe interesting, but yeah, so. In summary, Chris, we you know we’ve we’ve been lucky and we’ve consistently invested our our time over there for and and marketing budget and everything else on the things that we tell our clients to do. And funnily enough, that’s that’s thus far. Touch Wood paid off. The other thing that we’ve been very fortunate with and again is something we’d recommend to our. Apply its to do in the right way with the right strategy for the right reasons in the right places, is is investing awards and you know to gain recognition for the for both the agency and the work we’ve done in our in our first two years we kind of. Really aimed to build a name or build the name for the agency by winning best new agency awards, and we won five of those in our in our first two years, which we were really happy with. So the CRPR Excel awards, their regional and national, the UK Agency Awards and the PR moment.
Award so we.
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
Would chuff with that and and then we can continue to consistently make an investment in awards. So this year is our most expensive year of award entry so far as we’re trying to broaden out the kinds of awards we go for and win more as much for our work as an agency and the work we do for our clients. As as we we have previously for for us as a as an agency. So that’s another thing that we you know really.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Well, quite a nice litany of successful acts there and and and an outcome. So if you could go back in time though, when you and your co-founder were starting out and you know you poofed into existence, I could think I can see the Flash or Daredevil behind you, but I’m hoping it’s the flash. This analogy will work really well. You’ve you’ve gone back in time and you’ve created a flashpoint for yourself, which is. Essentially you being able to talk to yourself and your future Co founder, give yourself one piece of advice. What would you tell your?
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
I’d love that you’ve used a flashpoint reference there. I’m a huge comic book geek and Jeff Johns Flashpoint is was one of the the a Great Flash storyline. So thank you for that. Yeah, I. I’m going to give you 2 answers to that question, one slightly flippant, one slightly more seriously. I would go back and I would shake myself and any other agency owner I knew that I’ve I’ve spoken to over the previous 20 years of my. And say, why didn’t you tell me? It was? It’s so much like hard work. There are easier ways to earn a living to do this, particularly someone who’s much of their living, you know, as a business development director for various businesses of various sizes and and shapes.
Chris Simmance (Host)
That was the serious answer, right? Not. The flip, yeah.
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ll flip it. The answers coming shortly, but it’s it is a, it’s a constant seesaw in a business where it’s. Where that asset I’ve worked in businesses previously where that asset is not the people, the asset is the technology or the in the E or the client base or whatever. We’re in a in an agency business, that asset is is unquestionably the people for the vast majority of the value of the business and for the vast majority of. The life cycle of the business. And and and as a result of that. You have a constant tension between your talent pipeline and your sales pipeline, and that’s been the, you know, the the tension that that we’ve had throughout you know our existence. I I think my my business partner Paul would say in COVID if we had our time again, we would probably have been a bit braver in terms of putting the accelerator down. And hiring more account manager, stroke senior account manager level staff to bring into the business, which would have helped us maybe further accelerate the out of that period of time and and you know grow even further and faster than we than we have today but. Hindsight is 2020 and to to have been, you know, to have the confidence. To do that. You know, really, really, you know, requires a vision that would have gone beyond the just the numbers that we were seeing day-to-day, you know, week, week to week. So we don’t beat ourselves too much about that, but if we’d have been a bit braver in terms of, you know, hiring and and scaling the business. You might have. Yeah, run further faster.
Chris Simmance (Host)
OK, so a little while ago you mentioned dumb luck being one of the successes. What’s dumb luck not done well for you in the last three years? What what’s? What has been something that you’ve done? Oh crap, we should have really thought about that. A bit more.
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
Yeah. Where have we been? Where have we? Just been dubbed.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And yeah, where’s the where? Where’s the done unluckiness come in.
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
That’s a great. That’s a great shout, I think. I uh. I think it’s not necessarily. Luck for something like this but. You can, you will. Always know when you look back. At pitches you didn’t win. There was, you knew, the reason you weren’t going to win it. When you were pitching it. And to have been more critical and more careful about the things that you invest, your very limited, you know time and resources and and effort and and thought and care and and attention into you know you’ve really got to view pitching. A. A real investment. I think agencies. I’d love to. I don’t. I don’t do our ourselves and I’d love to try and come up with a calculation for how much does it cost us to pitch, you know, a a small medium and large size, you know. Business in terms? Of time and effort and resources, and and all the. Rest of it. To then think OK well, imagine if that was actual money we had in our bank account, like right now, right. Yeah. What are the things we would invest money. But like on on doing it. And I think if we had a if we had that that that view there have been things that we’ve pitched. We have a particular business model we don’t count, we don’t do our time sheets. We don’t sell our services by time. And So what that means is when we deal with the very, very procurement led processes. We don’t, you know, when we get sent a spreadsheet that says fill in your hourly rate for each level of member of staff that’s going. To be on this account. We don’t do that. We don’t feel that because we don’t, that’s something we don’t do. And what we should have done, in retrospect, is have another way that we could have given data points to our our prospective clients who are in the in the procurement function of the business, so they, they. Don’t they? They’re not. Nickel and diming us on hourly rates of clients, but they do at least understand how we’re building the value and and what commitments of, yeah, time, effort, people, resources, et cetera, et cetera. We’re we’re making today. Their their service and what that’s going to result in in terms of outputs and outcomes for their business. So that’s definitely been something that we learned along the way I think. It’s very me to ascribe my success to luck and ascribe my failure to my own personal failings or yeah, you know it, it works that way in leadership. Yeah, 100%. And also I think that not one thing as well. You know that like you’re the captain of your ship, right? If, if. If you didn’t succeed in something, then the first place to look is in is in the mirror and think OK where? Where did I go wrong? How? Could I have achieved a better outcome for for, for, for myself, for the agency, for our team, and for our?
Right.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, I I I I think from a leadership point of view you, you bang on, there’s there’s a, there’s a few things which when I’m working with different agencies, all all agencies are the same whilst also simultaneously being completely different. And when it comes to to pitching and when it comes to to selling and that that, that don’t sell on the hours thing. Totally agree. Don’t don’t. If anyone’s listening to this and you, you send in pictures or proposals to clients and say it’s this many hours a month, start thinking about how you deliver that because. You’re not selling hours, you’re selling years of expertise. You’re not selling a a a time based commodity. You’re selling intelligent thinking and and and planning. You’re not selling these things. So I I would argue that knowing your hours used internally so time tracking is great for utilisation rates. It’s good for planning ahead. It’s good for hiring, it’s good for. Sadly firing. It’s fantastic when you know how much people cost the business in terms of their time, because then that helps potentially with things like how much does a pitch cost. But it also means that when you’re composing a a, a a plan for a client, you can you can tell the procurement team similarly to how you do. Darrell with the here are the things we’re gonna accomplish. You can you can Bill on outcomes, not inputs. And framing things correctly as you’re pitching to people allows that to not be a red line in a conversation later down the line at the procurement stage, but there’s so many different ways you can do it, depending on what you’re selling, cause you know if it’s PR, it’s very hard to to to because it does take a lot of time and a lot of effort. If it’s PC, it’s not as hard. In in terms of quantification, because you know it’s this many hours roughly a day, but you you’re right, it’s it’s awful to be sticking hours in a procurement contract cause you do end up having. Can you give me a a? Can you give me a a a a plan for how long this is going to take to do and how many hours have you done this month? Can you give us a time sheet and all those sorts of things? That’s conversations. You shouldn’t be having and. Yeah, so. Over the last three years, you’ve learned a lot for sure. Over the last three years, I’m sure your Co Founders learned cofounders learned a. Lot as well. What if, if someone’s listening to this right now, what one piece of advice would you give them just as they’re starting the the process of setting up their agency?
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
Invest in best of in class accounts, easy Advice, Support Council and monthly management accounts. It’s every single, you know, agency, you know that I I’ve interact with, interacted with over the course of the past three years that has not, you know, really taken off. And might be tootling somewhere around the 11 million or under. They’re they’re disrespect to them or anything else, but I I think may not have matched their ambitions when they started. Has an accountant that provides them annual accounts. At the end of the year, and you know the that’s like the the, you know the the, the, the, the characterization of accountants that all they do is bayonet the dead right and and actually you know.
Chris Simmance (Host)
At night.
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
They need they need to be in the trenches with you, right? They do not. Fighting the war with you, but definitely telling you how many bullets you’ve got left, right? Yeah, and and and helping you understand what the body count is at the moment and and all of that good stuff. I’m I’m riding that war analogy pretty hard, but. Hopefully you you you get what I mean with the set and and you know one of the key secrets to our success has been, you know magic digits. The finance firm that supports our business that you know every single month, we get a a pack from them that tells us how we’re performing, what our cash flow forecast is, what our. Sales forecast is, you know all that other good stuff and that has given us a platform to make real decisions about the business month to month of how to support the the growth. To the the company so that I think for, you know, for anyone, I, I’d encourage them to to look at getting a proper level of of financial support for the business straight away rather than just getting an accountant to to do the stat accounts at the end of the year and.
Likely agree with.
Chris Simmance (Host)
You, I completely agree with you to to the inner marketing inner marketer in me as as as reworded all of your advice there into. Darrell says. Get a good accountant so you know your hard numbers.
Daryl Sparey (Guest)
Oh, I can’t believe I didn’t come up with that myself.
Chris Simmance (Host)
I’m here all.