Transcript
Afternoon, everybody. Afternoon, all of you. Lovely people watching wherever you are. Hi, mum. Probably. Hey, Danny. Hey, Michael. Hey, Jenny. How are? You good? Thank you.
Michael Henderson
Yeah, well, good.
Chris Simmance
Whereabouts in the world are you at the minute. Danny, are you up in Manchester with?
Daniel Varney
I’m I’m in sunny Manchester, it’s baking, it’s about 30°, there’s no rain at all. It’s not freezing cold. I’ve. I’ve not got the heat on full blast.
Chris Simmance
Definitely typical Manchester weather. Fantastic whereabouts are you, Michael? You recently moved, haven’t you? You were. Yeah. You were in Manchester, weren’t you?
Michael Henderson
Yes, I’m. I’m still in Manchester a lot, but today I’m in, in, in, in Dudley or Dudley.
Chris Simmance
You said it.
Michael Henderson
The right way round, I think, I think so. I’m trying to acclimatise. It seems to like pick up all different accents, which is why you can’t, you know, recognise the twang of the Norwich Norfolk accent that I originally had so.
Chris Simmance
That explains it. You recently did a A a a lunch down in in Norwich, didn’t you? For for agency leaders. Right.
Michael Henderson
Yeah. So I have for David at pimento. Yes, but agency, yeah, different different. Agency founders, leaders and so forth there, that was fun, enjoyed it, got to talk about AI, which you know probably be something that will be touched on here by.
Chris Simmance
Have this feeling we might cover that slightly when.
Michael Henderson
Connie and Jenny.
Chris Simmance
We’re talking about risks, hey. And whereabouts are you, Jenny?
I’m just across, I think the Pennines is it to everyone over in Harrogate in North Yorkshire, so yeah. Still, as miserable as it is in Manchester, I think by the sounds. Of it, even though.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, it’s a relatively small island. We’re not really all getting very different. Wait, wait. It’s I I think I don’t think I I’ve had a dry dog in three days. Should we say they’re permanently damp right now? But that’s that’s the risk we take living in the UK. But we’re here to talk about growing in agency, growing digital agencies and growing the businesses and. Kind of growing through risk and de risking as you as you do go and I think we can all agree everyone watching this. Michael, Jenny, Danny, I think we can agree that there are multiple vectors of risk at all times when you’re running any business and none so stark in the days of recession. None. So stark in the days of. Tech change and all sorts of things like that. And I think that there’s there’s plenty of things that between all of us with our levels of expertise in different areas, we’ll have a a bit of an understanding on. Before we, before we do kick off, so that you know for the for the two people in the world that don’t know who you guys are, if you don’t mind giving us a little bit of a, a wee elevator pitching and intro. So start with you Jenny. Who are you? What’s your name? And where do you come from?
Ginny Nichols
Well, do we win like a speedboat or something like. Yeah, yeah, alright. OK. Yeah. So, yeah, I’m Jenny. Jenny Nichols. I run interim digital. We are a collective of over 100 senior level freelancers. All ex agency who support other agencies and brands as and when they need an extra pair of senior.
Chris Simmance
A cuddly toy, actually.
Ginny Nichols
And across performance channels so that can be SEO, PPC. Content, social media and and anything in between really that relates to performance or digital marketing.
Chris Simmance
Awesome, awesome and things probably. Uh, you. You probably get a decent temperature of how things are going into in agencies from a growth point of view. Cause I’m guessing that as an agency grows quickly they need more interim digital people and and in the times of of strife you probably get quite a lot of freelancers. To come to you to join your your ranks for the next burst of growth. What about you, Danny? I know that you’re in Manchester, but what else?
Daniel Varney
I head up the corporate team at Glazer’s ECL, so we’re a law firm. We’re based principally in the North West, Manchester and Liverpool, but we have some office in in London and we’re part of the global network, which is the ETL part of the name, which is European accounting, tax and law. But we have worldwide, you know, worldwide REACH if we need it. We’re principally app for owner manages SME space and and a large part of my job heading the corporate team is being part of our specialists created digital marketing team. And so we do a lot in the agency world right from startup. All the commercial stuff, the employment stuff, fundraising, employee incentivization contracts with freelancers all the way through to sales and I’ve been involved in buying and building a, you know, a multifaceted full service agency, listing it on a stock market. Selling it off and delisting it again so full full spectrum risks from right at the start to all the way through getting out and making your millions as an. Agency and hopefully.
Chris Simmance
Well, I mean one, one person to keep in your in your digital rolodex for for that time that you list your agency people Michael in Dudley tell us all about what you guys do at wrist.
Michael Henderson
Box. Yeah. So set up list box just over 10 years ago. So we’ve just had our birthday party, which was. Thank you. And we have commercial insurance broker who focus on agencies and tech business and we genuinely do because that’s where most of our clients are from and we look after them from the the freelancer all the way through to the large owner managed business with overseas offices. Yeah, you know with with several 100 employees. So we we look at the. Thing and we deal with a lot of them as they grow and change and make mistakes and forget about things and remember things and they’ll throw some curveballs at you and cry on the phone and stuff. So yeah, we we yeah, we get to see a few a few of the things that I think we’re gonna.
Chris Simmance
Talk about today. Yeah, and and. So having worked with all of you in your various different ways, I can honestly say that you know. If you’re if you’re watching this now as an agency leader, yes, you’ve probably got your insurance from a Google search and picked picked Hiscox. Insurance is the boring bit, I’m afraid, and Michael’s not afraid of agreeing to that, but it is absolutely essential. And you really do get what you pay for in terms of. The the types of the. Quality there and having bought from you as a as a as a customer when with the agency, but also sent lots of agencies your way, I think that everyone can agree that you know you it’s it’s the it’s the thing you don’t want to need. But when you do use it it’s important. And similarly I’ve worked with. Danny and Steve or Steve actually directly and I know that you know, again, it’s in times. Of trouble you. You’ve got the right people behind you, but it’s better to have them beforehand to de risk some of these things. And I and I know about 95% of the Freelancers that work with Ginny, and I know that they’re bloody great, so I can safely say. That if you.
Speaker
Need a.
Chris Simmance
Freelancer go to Ginny. So we’re gonna talk a little bit now about like the the, the kinds of risks that agencies have in, in a bit more sort of general notes. That I thought the best thing to do for everyone watching was just kind of just get the the picture of the the way that we’re gonna be looking at quite a lot. Because all businesses, all agencies, have the same components, there’s the finance, the marketing, the sales, the operations, the people and then the legal slash compliance aspect of things and all of these need to be in some kind of balance in some way or another. If you have great finance but terrible operations, you will soon. Have terrible finance. If you have great marketing but bad sales, your cost of sale will be terrible. So you have bad finance. If you if you have great sales and great marketing but terrible operations, your people will be bad and you will hate. People will hate you and then all sorts of other things will happen, most of which ends up turning into some kind of legal thing, whether it be a staff related thing or a client related thing or God forbid, some kind of data. Related thing, so all of these go hand in hand with all parts of business growth and with the current state of UK economy being currently in recession, although I did hear positive news today. It’s it’s only gonna knock on anyone that works in the marketing sector. Probably quite hard quite quickly. So some of the stuff that that we cover today will be about the longer term aspects of de risking from for growth. But in in the. Anyone watching this? You should be considerate of what’s happening now and how that’s going to impact the next, you know, 68912 plus months into the. Future. So should we talk about some of the risks from each of our own kind of perspectives based on the things that we see? I know that we speak to a lot of agencies as well and that and and you know you kind of get a vibe of what’s going on outside of your own kind of skill sets. So like for me. I’ll speak to the finance aspect for the moment, and there’s an awful lot of agencies that I’m working with that until they have a look at a real cash flow forecast, are not realising the risk of their efforts. You might work your backside off for an entire year and not realise that you’re doing it all for -6% growth over the course of the year, or that you might owe the the the owe the bank a couple of quid six months down the line and to de risk your growth. From that point of view, you. Should get a cash flow. Forecast there’s a there’s a free one on our site. It’s not gated, you can just click the link and download it. But knowing where your money is coming in and where your money’s going out is is only going to make it easier to have. And do your sales and do your marketing because in these kinds of times, you need to keep the marketing and the sales going. And Danny, what are you? What what do you typically see in terms of the typical risks that agencies see as they grow? You know, you say from start up to listing and and then the listing etcetera the whole way along there, there’s all sorts of different. Things so there’s. Are there some things which remain current? Regardless of size.
Speaker
I think we’ll.
Daniel Varney
Things that you look at when you’re setting out on the journey, you know whether you’re you’re setting up a new agency growing or or or getting involved. As you know, in, in a new business, you look at ownership, that’s the thing and that comes up and rears its ugly head. You know, we’ve had. We’ve had strange situations have been involved in. An agency acquisition for a client where there was 3 owners. One of them had left the business some time before, had sold their third shareholding or so it seemed. But when it came to it, they hadn’t. Nothing had been done and somebody else owned 1/3 of. The business so.
Chris Simmance
Ohh God.
Daniel Varney
You’re talking about working for -6% growth. You work for some girls and then you’ve got to give a third of it away and which is, which is what happened. And of course, when you go. To that person who hasn’t necessarily realised they’ve not signed the legal papers at the time. They want their palms crossed with silver once again to give it you back and other things. You know that there’s always something contractual and I look at both sides of that contractual relationships with your clients and what what are you delivering? What if you sign a contract and you you are flying and you’re very. Excited. You put a lot of. Lost time and expensing to getting ready for. And then the clients, often due to financial circumstances, you know the first sign of a recession marketing gets cut. We’re not gonna come. We’re not gonna go ahead with that project if there’s nothing in the contract saying you can charge them for the cost you’ve incurred up to that point, you can end up facing losses. Yeah. And similarly with employees and contractors. You know, having the contractual arrangements in place, the agreements that that sets out, what happens if and when it’s all very important and that protects value, financial value and of course your time as a manager.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, absolutely. One of one of the things which we might come on to at some point throughout here, but. Just just I get asked this a lot and the the answer is probably it depends as it often is, but. Almost everyone, if they if they’ve got the best contract ever. So let’s say they’ve gone to glaciers, they’ve got the best contract for the services that they have over the course of time. It’s a word file, for example, over the course of time, there’s edits made. There’s changes made. How? How do you, like, recommend that agencies look at these sorts of things? How often do they need a proper review? I don’t know about you guys in the in here maybe Michael because you know insurance and stuff and you could you look at fine print but like I I can’t tell whether a whole section’s been removed sometimes just because I think it’s the current original version. What what’s the advice there?
Daniel Varney
Yeah, what I’d recommend there is, I mean number one, try and work on your own terms and that isn’t always easy because you will get some. Clients, particularly the. Bigger clients that that you may be going after saying no, we must operate on our terms that they are. But if you are in the position where you can put. Your terms forward have a. Master services contract that governs things. Governs the whole arrangement, governs your deliverables and payment. Terms your liabilities. And then if you’re going to vary that for a client because they don’t. Like a particular term. Do it in a call off agreement. So you say your master services agreement, your terms conditions apply. Next, we’re going to tweak this and this for this project or we’re going to add this and this because of a particular deliverable on a long term service agreement, whatever it may be, then you’ve got your master. That doesn’t change, and anything that does change and is bespoke to a customer or a specific project. Is in a small document that you you have for each. You know each time you enter. Into something it’s.
Michael Henderson
And I.
Daniel Varney
Obviously an ideal, but that’s what I recommend.
Chris Simmance
And and I I I must say there was one time when where we had this like big fish hang dangling over us when we were running the agency and they were forcing their turns on on us. And I must say that one of the probably better decisions that I made it without knowing it at the time was refusing to do so. Lost the client potential. Went but when I found where they went later, it turned out that that it hadn’t. It had gone where my gut had gone. And I’m not saying that just cause they forced terms on you. You should that they’re trying to do something dodgy, but in this case it was a risk I dodged. Jenny, how are you? Just just on the just to bridge the contract. Debit you you work with. Say agencies who have their own contracts for freelancing consultants and freelancers who have their own, is there some kind of alignment that you need to do there to make sure that no one’s accidentally upsetting anyone else or anything like that?
Ginny Nichols
Yeah, it can get quite kind of kind of chasing your tail a bit because it’s signs at what NDA, who signs, what contracts with who and is it IR 35, is it not IR 35 and are we an agency or are we a contractor? So yeah, we try and keep it as as simple as as possible and have individual contractor agreements. Between interim and the individual. Factors and and then we tend to and Danny will probably tell me this is wrong now, but and then we tend to have agreements with the agencies that. We work. With as well, occasionally the agencies prefer kind of things like NDA separately as well. Everyone within the interim interim community has to sign an NDA, specifically an individual contractor agreement, before they can work with. Our clients anyway, but just as belt and braces, I think some agencies do prefer those kind of direct to contractor NDA situations too. Interestingly, saying that Danny and Chris. That the kind of that David and Goliath situation, where freelancers are often, you know, the smaller minnow and and agencies try and push the 60 day payment terms on them and you know and and things that are big business is fine. But when you’re a one-on-one on one you know freelancers payment or even 30 day payment, sometimes it’s pretty tough to bear. So we’re not legal experts by, by any stretch. And if big agencies try and do that, we haven’t had the 60 day yet, but we have had some terms which haven’t felt right. We have kind of sought external people just to make sure that we’re doing things as as we should as we should, but so far, touch wood, all of the wood, the the agents who worked for have been pretty, pretty decent at holding. Their end of the bargain.
Chris Simmance
And and you’ve come. You, you you originally came from an agency background, didn’t you? Like so.
Ginny Nichols
Did, yeah.
Chris Simmance
As you were going through that and now working with agencies, what kinds of like risks are you seeing that people are kind of navigating at the minute? What are the things that that seem to be coming up a little bit more than than the recent past?
Ginny Nichols
Yeah, I think that the biggest difference is the the competitiveness within our world for recruitment and for good head headcount because the the talent pool is huge, the agencies are all fighting for the same people and what used to be kind of real nice to haves for employees are now just. Day-to-day benefits, so you know, remote working. So what flexi working not even a thing because we’re remote anyway, so, you know, massive salaries are coming in which obviously from a financial perspective it’s huge for agencies. Consider. So they’re all fighting over the same people. The people have stronger negotiation skills because everybody’s commanding higher salaries. So the knock on impact for that for agencies is the fact that they will have much larger cash flow issues. Yeah, by employing someone who may have been on, you know, 2530. A few years ago and. Now asking for 4045. 5K and and the additional risk that comes with that is also the the way that the agencies are positioning themselves. So if you should you be a niche agency or should you be in a full service agency if you’re full service, how do you employ an SEO or PPC if you don’t have any SEO’s or PC’s you know it’s like me trying to interview. Someone for Daniel Michael’s business. I haven’t got a clue what they do. So how could I vet someone in those guys? Industries. So why should a marketing manager know how good an SEO? So it’s it’s a real. Sticky situation for these agencies to be. And to to. A recruit and B know how to recruit the. The right kind of.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, and and something I I wrote it down so I didn’t forget because I think it’s actually polls really quite closely into into Michael’s world where you’ve got. Agencies where staff are working in the office out of office in public, you. Know in a. Shop with a company laptop or a personal laptop or a freelancer who’s part of a team, like as agencies are growing, there’s the risk there from a like where the heck are there and. Where’s my yeah. How do you ensure that kind of stuff, Michael, but also you’ve also you’ve got the when they’re not there because you know we’re in a. The moment of decline we’ve had to make people redundant. How the hell do we make sure that we’re still compliant from from, from all of our data point of view, go Michael, tell us. How the hell?
Michael Henderson
It works well the the the good news is for most of that stuff, it’s actually pretty simple and straightforward. So where you’re working from, whether it’s at home, whether it’s hybrid, whether it’s in an office. As long as things are administered correctly, it’s it’s pretty simple and straightforward, doesn’t cost much more, and obviously if you’ve got employees and able to get, you know injured or or or do something that damages someone, it doesn’t really matter. Providing the policy is the policies are set up properly. So that’s actually one of the slightly easier parts of of dealing with. With current change there are. There there are more, sort of, you know, permanent issues that we see, some of them sort of tiny bit with what Denny’s sort of saying about the contract that we we find out. So we we try to educate clients to come to us with contracts, contracts will change and unfortunately agency owners sometimes think that the insurance that they get from whoever it happens to be. We’ll automatically cover them for everything. Yeah, but it won’t. I mean, what if the deliverables are different? What if they’re dealing with someone in a different territory, or what? We find quite a lot is that agencies will. 9 contracts were with, say, U.S. companies, and there’ll be things in there such as waivers of subrogation which basically.
Chris Simmance
What the heck does that mean?
Michael Henderson
Moved in from. It basically so sub subrogation is where so your insurer pays out and the insurer then looks to recoup the the money from the the party was at fault. Basically the the trouble is when they’ve got a waiver of subrogation, it means that that stops. So insurers who are insuring someone want to insure an agency that controls its risks. Not an agency that’s on the line for risks of other people cocking up. So the the the crooks on that is the most insurers won’t agree to a US jurisdiction and a waiver of subrogation. So we find so many clients who will come and tell us this. And it’s like, well, you’re in breach of contract straight away. Yeah. You’ve signed up to this. You’ve said you’ve got this. Ohh. And by the way, if you’re with, say, a lot of insurance. So for example Hiscox, they will refuse. They will not agree to a waiver of subrogation of professional indemnity for a US contract. They just won’t do it. So you’ll have to. To do so, yeah. So things like this, they’re all stuff that can be managed, all things that can be can be tweaked and changed. But one of the, I mean that probably bounces over to to to Danny in a second anyway, is that there’s always a perception that going back to the other party and saying, well, I can’t agree to this, that it’s. The big big. Companies that won’t agree to it, whereas we actually seem to find it, seems to be a little bit. So sometimes the big ones are actually. No, no. We’ve got people in here specific. We’ve got legal counsel. Understand what you’re talking about. There is no exposure to that. We’re fine, whereas it’s the smaller ones who don’t have that and it’s like, Nope, you gotta sign it. You gotta sign it. It’s been agreed. That’s it. We will have no no leeway whatsoever. And that’s what we see. So I don’t know.
Chris Simmance
I think I think as you grow it the the unknowns become a little bit harder to to identify because that I’m not even going to try and pronounce what you just said because I can’t remember exactly how it sounded.
Michael Henderson
But that I like I I I.
Chris Simmance
I I know that’s a concept I didn’t know what the word was. And as you grow any business as you grow in your your, your agency you you don’t know these things until it potentially like you say you’re speaking to some clients and and you don’t know that that that they’re in breach. They don’t know they’re in breach of their own contracts because. So like how how? Like Danny, I know that like the the the legal space is is vast and in your space even where it’s kind of niched down on the media and it’s still very vast how, how are you helping like agencies and how are agencies should help them? Should agencies help themselves from a like find out what they don’t know? Without kind of adding another big pile to it.
Daniel Varney
Yeah, I think the it’s very difficult to get past, you know, the the excitement of having that big fish on the whole and and reeling it in. And and often you know we. You know, recommend advise. You know you need to look at these things. You know, you’ve got your big clients, it’s great for marketing your business elsewhere. You you’re acting for a big institution, you’re acting for a big international corporate, whatever it might be. Well, yeah. How do we make it easier? I mean, we particularly Steve who who you know and and Michael. Works closely with as well. On exactly what he was just talking about. You know, we fire contracts between us to to to advise clients, but all we can do is try and make. It easy and. Make it accessible. And you know it’s a. Distressed purchase in in seven and a half. Eight out of 10 cases and it shouldn’t be. And our industry needs to realise that people don’t want to spend money. On lawyers, but.
Chris Simmance
Sorry, we don’t, I mean.
Daniel Varney
It’s your money with lawyers at the outset might save a lot of money with lawyers down the line when you find out these these these breaches and these potential issues and insurance doesn’t cover this and whatever it might be, and you know we’re up to on both sides of that and we try and make it easy, we are launching and we. Have specific for this sector. He he product one Blazers we we are calling it. It is sort of a club. Where you know you get the benefits of of easy access straight into experts for a discounted you know we we discount fees and and we sit down with clients say look you can buy a certain amount of time you know you’ll get a quick and easy response from us we don’t have to go through the headaches every time of you know we’re so heavily regulated. We’ve got to. To our setting for file for client sometimes, but if. We get you. Know this membership under under way. It’s a quick response. You’ve got a direct phone line into three or four people in the team e-mail. I won’t say 24/7 because that’s puts us under. Too much pressure, but. Quick acts, quick response time to. Him. Yeah, and. Just try and make it simple, cost effective and you. Know we know what areas are gonna cause problems. We can look at those areas quickly and then say no. You need to speak to Michael about that or or hang on, your liability is too high. On this one or you’re promising to deliver ownership of some intellectual property that you don’t own and you can’t. It needs to be licenced. Jurisdictional issues might have touched on. You know, we don’t really want to be providing services in the UK to clients based in the UK, but working off that clients parents terms, it’s based in the states. States is a much more litigious economy than the UK.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, and and and and just to sort of move on to the, I guess the people aspect of of growth in a in an agency. And this you’re you’re you’re kind of acutely more aware of this, I guess, Jenny than than than quite a few people because you see both sides of this coin. You know, you provide support by freelancers into, into agencies, but you were once in those those seats. I I don’t know how many agencies genuinely aren’t completely sure about their capacity and the requirement. And uh, yeah, you know, there’s circa 37 1/2 ish hours a week of of of available billable time or whatever you wanna call it. That’s never really the case. And then there’s a Monday. You you have a really good week, a good month of of leads coming in and you’re looking at your thing and you think, oh look. Bob and Mary, they’ve got plenty of time to do that, but actually it’s not just about time. It’s about, you know, the mental capacity of context switching and things like.
Ginny Nichols
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Simmance
That how, how, how? Often do you get kind of agencies? Coming to you with. Like a quick urgent request and is that is that is that something that ebbs and flows over over time?
Ginny Nichols
Yeah, I think we have a kind of an internal motto where people don’t know they need us until they need us and when they need us. It was last week. So it’s it’s really, really, yeah, it’s really tricky for agencies because especially one of the, I mean you may well have seen this, Chris as well in in terms of feedback from agencies, is that lead time?
Chris Simmance
Don’t like mine.
Ginny Nichols
The deal closure seems an awful lot longer than it. Used to be pre. Kind of yeah. COVID time so. If you’re going for tenders that you know would take up a significant amount of your team’s capacity and that lead time to deal closure is taking several weeks and then going into several months and you’re trying to have capacity plan for what might land and then you maybe have two or three concurrent pitches that you’re going for and it might land, it might not, you already have this, these might cancel it, say. It takes up a phenomenal amount of time for agencies just balancing those books. And and and having an idea of who they’ve got when they’ve got and it also kind of I think it brings with it a certain level of fear with what tenders people go for in the 1st place. Yeah. Because you know, there there might be agencies, you start off as as single channel specialists or you know boutique agencies, you might do one or two channels who could go. For other tenders that are predominantly their channels, but with a couple of others and they could do if they had one more person in house or if they had some great partners in freelancers or whatever. But because they don’t, they’re put off by even going for those tenders in the 1st place, so. It’s a it’s a constant spinning of plates and you can never you can forecast your sales pipeline as much as you physically want, but if you don’t land that deal, then that’s your team either super not stacked. Or super stacked.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, and. And there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s a sort of a push and a pull that happens. An awful lot of time where you might be waiting for a deal to close. But in the mean time, the team couldn’t be doing something. But as soon as that deal closes. Everyone’s hands on deck and you also need some external support for whatever specialist reasoning and the the you know, not not supposed to sound boring but.
Speaker
Get the proper.
Chris Simmance
Operational processes in place. Yeah. And they’ve gotta be simple. They’ve gotta be repeatable. The simpler they are, the more repeatable they are. The less screw ups there are. That that. The wrist box needs to charge you more on the. Premium for next year. And Danny needs to help. When? When the client complains and doesn’t pay and the the, the, the the more repeatable, the more consistent and the more relatable and easy to update they are. The more likelihood is you can assign an estimated amount of time to something and say if this shopping list of that this client look is looking for buys from us, then these blocks and units of time need to be assigned to people and we can’t currently support for that. And we know for a fact that if we want to hire someone smart enough to do this work. It’s going to take two months of interviews and potentially if they’re coming from a typical agency. You know, three months of of of notice period before they can come and work for you, so you need to to be capacity planning sometimes six months ahead and that that should really boil back down to your your strategy of I’ve got these plans to get to these places. I’ve got these people to do it and that then means that we can. Consistently generate 100 leads a month at a 5% close rate, so five clients a month. 30 ish hours of operational efficiency means we need one person to be hired every three months, for example, and and and and the way to to consistently grow and derisk that from a people point of view and an operational point of view is to bright bloody plan. And do it. And it it’s get click up get Monday. Get assana, but actually use it. Don’t let it turn into a dumping ground of of notes and things like that and I guess. When it comes to like, I don’t know, like Michael, you might see this from a different perspective to to Danny cause I know Danny, you get calls for example, when big deals coming down and you’ve gotta help someone really quick. But you also probably get calls when the the proverbial has hit the fan and something terrible has happened. Michael probably get the lagging effect of that where? The next time you speak to your clients and you go through what’s happened in the last year, what’s happening in the next year, it’s very hard for you necessarily to sort of help plan a premium if you if they don’t know where they’re going. And there’s been a few mishaps along the way.
Michael Henderson
Right, yeah, absolutely. And I’ve, I’ve, I’ve always in awe of the agencies that can deal with so many variables. Particularly on the your complicated projects, you know the the the massive software software implementations or or the the big app, you know development where something you mean how? You spend that many plates and obviously we’re, you know, like this will be obviously for for like for Jenny, how you can do that with some of it when it’s internal, some of it’s next external to make sure everything’s done and everything’s prioritised. I mean that’s a real specialism and that’s I.
Chris Simmance
Can safely say the analogy of the swan in the lake with its. Things going here at the underneath is is quite true of that. I think Jenny would. Agree. Sorry to interrupt you there.
Michael Henderson
And I’m sure so it and you know that the services are obviously gonna provide will be be massive as. Well, because when it comes to an issue and a claim and so forth, agencies are more than happy to say it wasn’t our fault. It was XY and Z. And you know, sometimes it can be so to be able to obviously deliver, you know, outsourced and and decent support that actually does do what’s needed to is important. Because if so, back to the insurance. A lot of the insurance policies where you got professional indemnity will cover you where a project goes wrong, you know it’s. Because X has happened or Y has. Happened, but they won’t do it where you’ve. Agreed a contract where you’re not resourced to do it and you’ve not put the right things in place and you’re literally just, yeah, you’re never going to happen. Well, I say that, but I can think of one agency, how I, whose name I will not mention who got claim pay for that once and then quickly follow it with two more in succession. No, they definitely did not have enough people to resource that and the claims were paid and that was yeah.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, and and there’s this, there’s this, this again comes down to the. You know, some of the boring bits of getting the planning done right because. If you if you know where you’re going getting there is a lot easier and I guess, Danny, you probably you’d see less urgency on the wrong end of the spectrum. I guess if at the right times in growth, the right plan was in place for, I know if we get to this many people or we have this many. Types of contracts and types of clients. Sorry, we need to speak to to Danny and team about this thing and it’s kind of all part of a plan, a lot less. Oh, ****** moments probably happen.
Daniel Varney
Yeah, sure. I mean the. The the thing around people is always is always an issue and it’s hard to manage even with the best plan. If you’re pitching for five jobs and five jobs come in. You know how you work that out? I’ve got no idea. Is is your straight percent 40%? Sixty percent, 90% whatever it might be. But I think, yeah. For having the plan. It’s the same thing you explained so well, Chris, about having both. It goes back to what I was saying less clearly.
Chris Simmance
Ohh thank you so much. Ever it was. Thank you.
Daniel Varney
Having a contract, you know you’ve got your MSA in place, therefore any terms that are varied or in one sheet of paper not dotted around the 25 page agreement. But other things you know, with that can go wrong that we see for agencies, particularly when you’ve got these clients, it’s important with your contracts with your clients, it’s important with contracts with your employees and your contractors. We’ve had situations where clients providing 3 or 4 services client thinks actually we could do that one in house. Let’s try and pinch that person that provides the services so.
Speaker
Oh yeah.
Daniel Varney
Well, to our. Agency. So, you know, we look at that’s one of the first things I look for in decent sized contracts. It’s so big fish can’t come along and steal your best person who’s servicing. Four or five clients. For you and that really puts you in the mess. So if you have that in the contract saying you actually can’t do that whilst we’re contracted and for a period of time afterwards, it’s like having a a covenant with an employee, they won’t go and act for a client or a competitor or whatever it might save for a period of time. You can put the same thing in place with with clients you won’t poach. You won’t coach our contractors that we introduce you to and vice versa. Of course. You know, you make it mutual. Everybody always likes you and it’s a mutual obligation, but it protects the agency for first and foremost.
Chris Simmance
And and I think Jenny, just there might be a shade of comparative sort of stuff here. Would you how how are you, how how do you help sort of balance that risk when? And agencies bring in an expert for a specific project, I mean. Do the does. Is it best for those, those experts, that come in from your team to to have access to the client and is there a risk there that something might?
Daniel Varney
Go awry well.
Chris Simmance
What? What do you typically kind of advise people when it comes to? That sort of stuff.
Ginny Nichols
I think firstly the biggest thing we say to agents is don’t overthink it. Because they they often think ohh, you know, can I ever get someone who’s seen you enough? Can I trust them in front of a client just because they’re not within the four walls of my agency? I think it’s like, well, hang on a second. All these people that. You’re talking about in the freelancer world. Firing from anyway. We’re ex agency. You know, they’re not aliens. They’re not up to. Steal your clients, they’re.
Chris Simmance
Well, not some of these people, mostly the bulletproof.
Ginny Nichols
They’re that that initial fear or overthinking of what position this person is gonna play because all they. Are as a team. Member forget everything else, whether they’re a freelancer or in. The four walls. And then approach it from a project by project so you know if it’s a massively technic. Call migration or acting or whatever it might be. It makes total sense for that person to be in the room with your client, with your team members, etcetera. If it’s more of a we act as the agency for agencies and we do the deliverables and actually we know what the brief is and we can pass it back. It doesn’t make sense for there to be. A great deal of communication. And it’s really the biggest lesson we we work on agencies with is being lean and being effective over efficiency. Does it? Is it gonna help your case to have that person in your in for you to pay to have that person in the room with you, yes or no? If it is then great, let’s do it, if it’s not. Don’t force it just because you feel like you should have the headcount and I think that’s where a lot of the risk with with hiring and in general with agencies has come from. Is that old premise of headcount for vanity and you know as soon as you look at headcount for vanity, you’ll you automatically have, you know more contracts for. For likes of Danny and Michael to hire people, you’ve got more overheads and financial impact because you. Have to hire these. People and say we’ve got this in house. Team so step that back, then think about exactly what’s the bare minimum that you need internally. Who can you part with? Partner with to to deliver that? How do they operate as part of your team? And then go from there and it just makes the the whole process a lot more simple.
Chris Simmance
And so just just sort of a mini round Robin in terms of like considerations and compliances and things like that and like. Thinking about the current state of of things I I’ve been I’ve I’ve spoken to probably 3 agencies in the last two weeks. You’ve had a client suddenly ghost them out of the blue and that’s that’s not just a contract, that’s invoices. That’s access to things and all sorts of stuff like that. And I I remember there was a client a long time ago that they went bust. They didn’t tell us because they were very busy. Going bust and you know, all sorts of terrible things happen with all of that. But we looked after their website and we had their domain and everything like that. There was a lot of stuff that from a like from an access to IP point of view we we retained and that we didn’t have anyone to to give it. To so as an agency is growing and working through the current sort of economy and the current ecosystem that we’re all sort of working in. What are you? What what? Advice. Would you give them from a considerations point of view? I’ve gotta Michael. First, since you’re looking like you’re ready to go.
Michael Henderson
It definitely wasn’t. The the the the thing that I would probably come back to again and again and again is is the communication with. The your, your. Trusted experts that it it really is that simple. Because you don’t know what you don’t know, and you don’t know if you need to be compliant with ex legislation, but Danny might you know, it’s it’s those sort of things where you just don’t know and and from an insurance perspective I mean for example, if you’ve you’re you’re an agency and one of your employees is going to be going out to the States and they’re gonna be. All the people that they want to work with over there, do you understand the compliance from an insurance perspective for things such as workers compensation? Do you know what you, you know? Do you know the trouble you get if you don’t cause different countries are different? And and it’s it’s just it’s just things like that. But all of these things usually can be can be sorted with with communication. So yeah. Be proactive. Communicate with people proactively and you will find that pretty much everything can be sorted but it’s when it’s the last minute and it’s a panic that all of a sudden it backs again. The wall, the city decisions are made.
Chris Simmance
And a A. Lot of that communication has to come from a place of being as a, as a, as a business leader, you need to be a little bit comfortable with not knowing the answer and not knowing what the question is is often even harder. So speaking to people who know how this kind of inarticulate question it it it turns into something. Important it’s it’s probably more important than ever to have that communication and to kind of look ahead and go what do I not know is coming up. And then in terms of like you know the the like I said a minute ago, a couple of agencies that I’m speaking to, they’re just suddenly being ghosted. Their their client has literally just gone off the face of the earth. Everything seems to be there, but no one’s responding. What? What kind of considerations are there from that legal route point of view, assuming they’ve come to glaciers and have their contracts airtight? You put.
Daniel Varney
Yeah, I mean you you can, you can have everything written down on paper, but at the end of the day, it’s only a piece of paper or not even that cause. It’s probably a digital.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, very much like.
Daniel Varney
Piece of paper in the cloud. Somewhere, but you know. You’ve got your protections in there. It’s still a business. It’s still a relationship. It’s still about communication, so you might not want to enforce your rights. You’ve got to believe. Your crafty contract because you don’t want. To accept the. Client, but at the end of the. Day. Yeah. Communication with that client. You know, we can’t act as a bank. We’re not here to lend you money. You are. Money. We’ve got some valuable intellectual property rights that you need you need for your business going forward. So you’ve got to. Get in touch with us and. At the end of the day, if you don’t. You know, that’s what we’re here for. I suppose you know.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, this phone rings 24/7.
Daniel Varney
Yeah, they, they they get a they get. A letter, even if it’s a very nice, polite letter that’s on a law firm letterhead, you tend to get a response. And but, like, know what your rights are. Understand what the risks are. Communicate with your client. Communicate. With your advisors.
Chris Simmance
Awesome. And then Jenny, so in in terms of sit, I don’t wanna go on the ghosting thing. Too much but like I. Say it is relatively raw for me at the minute, having to much like it’s three times in a in a in a week or so that these poor people who run businesses have in good faith done good work and. You know, they’re they’re thinking, am I gonna get the rest of this 12 month contract paid out over over the next few months? How are you? How what kind of considerations do you kind of think of from your own business that you run? Also, can mapping that into agencies what happens there?
Ginny Nichols
Yeah, it’s it’s quite. It’s quite tricky for. Us in the sense that. One of our USP’s is we’re we’re mega. Flexible with that. Because that we know that happens for agencies, you know it the nature of agency beast is they could all of a sudden lose a key client overnight and yeah, you know the impact for that you know I saw an agency recently. Last couple of months, who lost one key client and the knock on effect was 16 redundancies because of one client and you know that’s really. Yeah, that’s it’s and that you know that’s that’s huge and I.
Chris Simmance
Yeah. OK.
Ginny Nichols
And the couple of takeaways from that, those kind of scenarios is first one, don’t rush to hire. I think that’s I think every like I was going back to before that headcount for vanity and headcount for fear because you feel like you need the boots on the ground. Don’t don’t worry that you need people in house. Just make sure you have a really. Deeply knitted in brilliant kind of project management or client services or however you. Deem that pool of people internally to to sort it from an internal perspective and have this support network of external specialists who can lean on when you do win a. Big tender and it goes the other way. So I think in terms of how how you can navigate that. It’s actually really tricky for freelancers, and we don’t have the answer quite yet because we’re often at the very bottom of the rung as well because, you know, when a client’s dealing with losing huge amounts of clients, it’s the the freelance at the at the bottom of. The pile of the. Thought process so it’s yeah.
Chris Simmance
Exactly, sorry.
Ginny Nichols
But yeah. Yeah. So so.
Chris Simmance
I I don’t.
Michael Henderson
So I was gonna sort of say, UM is so we we deal with a lot of the claims where. People, the the agency will look to chase money for the the different things. And then sometimes it will turn into the client will make up all these different things that are not not right to be able to get out of paying it. But my point sort of is, and this is probably for I’d I’d be interested in Denny’s take on. This is a lot of the time they have to chase for this money because they’ve already agreed to pay. Next to the the you know, the consultants, the contractors who need to be paid and a lot of the. Time again as sort of as has been mentioned before, if you’re, if you’re a freelancer, this, this, this money is far more important to you theoretically, than if you’re a a big agency. So I I don’t know how how often you get disputes like that where the end client is obviously being an ****, making things up to not pay it, but that’s putting the agency. In the in this awkward position in the middle because I know that there’s there’s people. Move, you know, mortgages and stuff to pay the reliant on them paying.
Chris Simmance
Them there’s. There’s always someone in a chain somewhere along the line and and ultimately This is why the paper slash not paper exists. This is why the insurance exists. This is why the planning exists and things like that. And I didn’t realise that we’ve managed to talk about insurance contracts and operations. They’re over 46 minutes guys, so. Just if we can have a very quick what’s your one quick fire final take this away and and your your your your This will help you in the long term tip for me. It’s set up some OPS that actually have some some simple to follow numbers on them that are repeatable. And Danny, what what are you thinking?
Daniel Varney
It’s it’s on the same thing, Chris, but it it’s it’s risk management, it’s take the time regularly to look at how you deal with your employees and how you deal with your clients and contractors know where the risks lie. If somebody experiences a a problem or a whole, make a note of it and see what you need to do. But have that keep that risk registered there.
Chris Simmance
Ohh fat word.
Daniel Varney
Are you compliant with the laws? Listen to some more. Of these excellent webinars on the OMB Centre, you’ll you’ll get lots of good tips. Go on the Advertising Standards agencies website, they give you excellent compliance. You’ll know you’ll be able to learn quickly by just keeping up to date, attending webinars and looking for information on. Regulators are not the enemy. Yes, they do enforce things, but they’re also there to train and. So just be aware of the risks.
Speaker
They’re the.
Daniel Varney
And see where you get help from.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, Michael, what what are your kind of closing big tips apart from buying the right insurance cause I hope that’s obvious right after after hearing from you.
Michael Henderson
Yeah. So as is going to be centred a little bit around insurance, but then it’s also got, it can be it’s it’s wider, that’s communication, it’s conveying info. And it’s doing it proactively. It’s doing it regularly, but also making sure the right people are conveying the information. So from an insurance perspective, it’s fine to have a numbers person giving information, but they might not know what the actual deliverables actually are. And those deliverables might actually affect whether things are covered or not. So I would suggest it’s like a sort of mentality. That you proactively want to get across what you’re doing and you proactively want to do that and you want to do it from a full holistic sort of perspective and welcome that and welcome the comfort that comes from. Yeah, we, we’ve we’ve done that. We’ve proactively done that. We’ve spent the time we’ve. Together, our insurers know exactly what they’re. Doing or whatever other. Supplier, they know what we’re doing. They know what. We need they. Know what? That that sort of proactive overall where all the different stakeholders are in there to make sure that the right information is put across. That’s the one thing you know, very, very rambling, inarticulate.
Chris Simmance
Love it. It was. It was a beautiful ramble. Michael was a beautiful ramble, Jenny. It did. Jenny. What? What? What should people take away from you?
Daniel Varney
Makes sense to me.
Ginny Nichols
Don’t rush to hire. Don’t rush to add that financial pressure of, you know, additional headcount on the bottom line. Additional impact to the the culture of the business. You know you don’t know if that person’s gonna have an impact on the people and and the people in the business and and I thought Michael summed up really well in terms of it will get sorted. And there are people out there who can help you get these things sorted. You know, the people in the interim community, myself included. Are there to soundboard your recruit? Do you need that headcount? And if you do, what does that look like? Don’t feel you have to approach those kind of hugely impact problems, issues or problems on your own. You know there’s people like me, Michael and Danny out there specifically to help you through those times and and don’t rush to solve a problem by yourself.
Chris Simmance
Absolutely and. And anyone watching this now or later, these guys, they do know what they’re talking about. You’ve just proven yourselves to be true. Their contact details on the screen and thanks so much for coming on, guys. It’s been brilliant to talk to you and hopefully see you well on another webinar or in person at some of our. An event.
Ginny Nichols
Awesome. Thank you for having me. Thanks, Chris.
Speaker