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.
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Thanks voiceover guy. And on today’s podcast, we’ve got the MD of RobotZebra, Krystian. Hello, how are you doing?
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Yeah, really good. Thanks for having me.
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No, thanks for coming along. So first and foremost, tell us, before you tell us anything about the agency, where did the name RobotZebra come from? Where was the decision there?
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So really it comes from the experience of working for agencies that have really funny names. When you think about the market leaders, you need something special to stand out, and after hearing agencies like Screaming Frog, Leapfrog, Razorfish, Greenlight, Jellyfish, I mean they all have really stand out names, very unrelated to any of us, and I thought to myself okay, what am I doing here? I’m not going to call ourselves Zebra agency, because that’s just going to be boring. And then I thought to myself no-one else came up with the idea of a robot zebra. And agencies nowadays, we need to automate, so I thought to myself that’s the robot part because we need to automate more, but we need to remain creative as we automate, and that’s the zebra part.
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Fantastic. Right, so now this is your perfect opportunity, on the off chance there’s a potential customer listening, or a potential new member of staff, or a competitor who’s really interested, what do you do best? What’s the agency known for? Give us a plug.
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100%. So we are primarily performance-focused SEO agency and we really want to focus on the sustainability business while doing this. The longterm vision for the agency is one day we just work with sustainability businesses, trying to save this planet. Currently, just growing the processes, improving everything, growing the team, growing the client base, and surviving in this climate.
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So yeah, keeping the life jacket on but hoping that you can actually help the world a little bit more every single new client, hopefully.
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That’s the plan. Every single team member. So we’re also on a scheme where we contribute a lot of time pro bono to different charities and non-profit organizations with the planet focus. So [inaudible 00:02:59] best so that every time we hire someone, it’s not just another salary on a payroll, it’s not just another resource, it’s not just another amazing person, it’s actually more time that goes straight into the charities with [crosstalk 00:03:10].
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Which as noble as it is, I think it’s something that I’ve seen that you do, so I know that you practice what you preach, which is great to see.
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That’s our aim. We don’t want to talk the talk.
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So a good few years ago, when we first met, you were a fantastic freelancer, and I know that obviously you’re running an agency now. So what do you think has been one of the biggest successes in that, from freelance through to running RobotZebra?
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One of the biggest fears I had at the start was I will not be able to maintain the quality of the results as I transfer some of the clients to the agency model as opposed to the freelance model. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still heavily involved in every single asset of the business, for the foreseeable future I will be, but ultimately that was the biggest fear, what’s going to happen if I start to hire people, and I cannot transfer my thinking, and my processes, and the school of thought that I’ve been utilizing to generate results to new team members, especially as we often try to hire as much of a young force that we can mold ourselves. And so that was the biggest challenge and I think that was the biggest victory. And the biggest result is throughout the transition period, I don’t know, maybe we lost one client. Maybe.
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I mean you might have lost that one client anyway, who knows. But that’s fantastic. The two models are so different, but similar enough that you can make the change. I can see where some problems would come in because of the way you have to run it, other people being involved, other creativity. And one thing I personally found really hard, and sorry if you’re listening and I used to employ you, but it’s really hard to get what you need out of your own head, expect someone to deliver it the way you think that you’ve explained it, and then somehow be able to not show any frustration or anything in your feedback if it’s not quite how you envisaged. And learning how to deliver both delegation and feedback is a key part of running an agency, isn’t it?
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Absolutely. And don’t get me wrong, it all looks like sunshine and flowers from my side. I’m sure it looks completely different to the team members, as lovely, and forgiving, and patient, and talented they are. Yeah, I’m a pain to work with and I know it. I demand what I demand from myself from everyone else, just pure professional most of the time anyway.
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And I think if you start with a good level of honesty in a team, that works quite well. And if people understand I can be creative but I have these boundaries, it can also work quite well at the same time. So if you were to go back in time, your RobotZebra was to become a robot time machine, and you were to go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice that set you up for future success, you’ve maybe learned something along the way or something like that, what one piece of advice would you give yourself?
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That’s an excellent question. I think the biggest one was just to trust in my abilities. When I was working back in the agencies, it took me a very long time to go onto the freelancing, and then when I started to freelance, it took me a very long time to go to the agency side. So probably 10 years of working in agencies and then maybe 3, 4, 5 years to turn from my agency side again into freelancing, and now from freelancing to an agency. Took a very long time in each of those stages. I think some people make those leaps a lot faster. They [crosstalk 00:06:52] CEO, suddenly they’re already freelancing and suddenly, before you know it, they employ a person. I think I’ve been in this industry for 15, 16 years now and throughout this time, I only made the agency leap in September 2020. So a year and a half ago. So it took me 13 years of doing this or 14 years of doing this to have enough confidence to approach someone. So I think it’s a long time.
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So you’ve gone back in time and your advice would be be more confident?
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Yeah, I think just make those leaps faster and not be afraid to fail so much. I really always wanted to have a really good base, really a lot of confidence in my ability to perform every function of the business, as opposed to just going and doing it earlier. I think it’s important these times, when we don’t know what’s going to happen outside the window any day now, so it’s important to make our decisions faster.
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Indeed. The important thing there, I think, is you recognize that maybe if you were a bit more confident, you might’ve changed a few things or done a few things differently, but in reality there’s also the other side of that where it’s a bit like looking on social media and things, if you look at someone who’s got photos of themselves on the beach on holiday or, in the agency land, hiring another member of staff or a big agency win, it can look very much like people are doing everything, like you say, in sunshine and rainbows, and everything is perfect.
The window to the world that you see that is other agencies isn’t necessarily paved with perfection the whole way, and there’s a lot of difficulties and frustration. I was one of those that just started, went, and did it, and it worked quite well, but it was a headache and a lot of stress all the time because I was learning things whilst everything was on fire. Whereas I would’ve probably gone back in time and given myself advice of go a little bit slower, work it out a little bit more before you start things. But everyone’s individually slightly different and I think you’re running a really good agency no,. And I think that’s come from you being yourself and taking the time that you need. Do you think if you went back in time and gave yourself that advice, would you listen to it?
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Probably not. That’s the problem of [crosstalk 00:09:04] at the time, you just do whatever you think is best for you. Whatever you think is the best decision at the time, whatever you feel is the best thing to do at the time is the best thing to do at the time.
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It’s funny because our jobs inherently are to give people advice, and maybe the fact that sometimes we find it hard with clients not listening to us so much is because they’re not ready to take the advice. And that in itself is a lesson that you need to learn, isn’t it, as an agency owner? Where sometimes it’s not the right time to give a client some advice or some feedback, or indeed a team member, because it’s a bit harder.
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Yeah, of course. And also when we forgive the clients a lot, and we have a lot of patience for them and a lot of compassion, we assume they don’t know ins and outs of SEO as much as we do, so we do give them a lot more UA. I don’t think I give myself that amount of UA every day [crosstalk 00:09:59], but it’s me not listening to good advice I get from others.
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It’s tough. It’s a balance, isn’t it, all the time? So I think we first met in [brightonSEO 00:10:16] in the Dome in 2012, that was the first one I went to and I remember meeting you there after, because you spoke there, I think. And so that’s my first time I ever remember seeing you and I think back then, you were very well known as an excellent freelancer, and I do remember everyone being aware of you in that sense. Is there something that you learned in your freelance life that’s helped you do really well on the agency side?
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Sure. I think number one thing, I was very fortunate to work in every scenario in every traditional setting, so freelance, agency side, client side. And so because of that, you pick up a really good 360 view. And so from the freelance side, you learn things like your own time management, you really quickly learn to deliver promises. If you promise something, you’re going to do it, you cannot pass the blame to anyone else. Your accountability, you just get toted really quickly as a freelancer. You do work on the result, truly on the result. Again, you may hire different agencies, work with different agencies, everyone says they’re performance based, but when it comes to actually setting the KPIs and keeping them or helping you figure out your KPIs, they very often give you a bog-standard rankings report and tell you everything’s looking great, the numbers are green.
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You’ve got a green arrow pointing up.
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There’s a green arrow pointing up.
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More green than red.
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What else are you paying for? Conditional [inaudible 00:11:55]. So at the end of the day, as a freelancer, you really learn to deliver on a certain business because every business is your lifeline. It’s living or dying. You’re making it or not making it. The other thing was really appreciating the network, because as a freelancer, the leads, at least for me, I wasn’t getting huge amount of leads, and so having a strong network was really key to that. And having referrals from other well-known freelancers that give their word and then delivering on that, and making sure you don’t burn any bridges. At least not too many bridges. But all those things, yeah.
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It happens. There’s always politics and misunderstandings in the world. So I think the accountability part of, like you say, it’s live or die. I always used to say when you work for yourself, you have to sing for yourself. So if you don’t sing well, you don’t eat. And so the accountability that you have to build on is incredible. And quite a lot of agency life is built around accountability as well, isn’t it? Because you’ve got staff who you want them to be creative and do the right job, but they also need to understand where the accountability line is between things I have to do and the way I have to do them, and I am accountable for the delivery of thing, whatever it might be.
And getting the accountability right in an agency is quite hard because quite a lot of people don’t like accountability for obvious reasons. It’s nicer to be able to hide and run away. But having decent levels of accountability in an agency, especially as you grow, it’s fantastic because you see people who know the boundaries, know where they can deliver and where they have to ask for support or do their thing the way that they know best. And it helps you focus on what the business needs, which is growth. You need to focus on sales, marketing, and the finance bit, let the team do the delivery and know that they’re accountable for it. And I guess, over time, all of that accountability you learn being a freelancer is massive when it comes to delivering in an agency.
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Yeah, absolutely. You learn a lot through working with the clients, through the biweekly catch-ups or whatever, or however often, or more often than that. What I still find, it’s really important to achieve the ultimate level of understanding with everyone. Usually when accountability breaks down, I found it’s because someone generally did it was their task. Because by default, you have three or four people on a call, different stakeholders, everyone’s got their own agenda to be there, but then you end up with some kind of a list of tasks. And very often they all assume it’s one person, and then it comes out well no, because this one has to build analytics and you know that best, this one is very technical, you need to [inaudible 00:14:58] the website and find those new errors that have happened, or do some investigation, and that’s clearly yours.
So we’re still learning, to be honest. It’s part of learning for any agency now, and I still remember those pains from being a freelancer that it’s very important at the end of the call to just specifically say, “Look, you’re responsible for this, you for this, you for this,” but this is your project and the account manager, or the account strategist, or the account holder is ultimately responsible for making sure that those other guys, they also work and do their bit. So make sure you distribute that. It’s not just one person, it’s always a joint thing. So the one person knows that it’s maybe more half of their responsibility, the bigger half is theirs.
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Yeah. So the thing with responsibility versus accountability is that you could have many people responsible for many tasks, but someone somewhere needs to be accountable for either putting all of this together and sending it to the client or making sure that it all gets done. And if you’ve got people who miss something, they think oh, that must be for someone else, then the whole system breaks down quite quickly. And much like SEO, running an agency is just an iterative process, you learn as you go. And you have to redevelop, and redeploy, and rechange things, and learn as you’re going. And it’s never done. It’s really never done. You know that saying, what do they say? “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey,” and all those sorts of things. Running an SEO agency and any digital agency really is a journey, and unless you close it, sell it, or keep running it until you die, it’s a journey. You’re always learning something new. And I guess it’s the speed at which you can learn that new thing versus make the decision, which is obviously really tough when things are happening so quickly.
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Yeah, it’s also managing expectations. So we still find there you have almost two sides to this, you’ve got the expectations within your team, and how often the internal processes will be changed, and how often they should expect change within the business. So you can drop one big bomb on them once a month, and give them a whole lot of changes, and then everyone will be maybe a bit confused, or you can do it once a week, maybe it’s a bit more digestible. But then we try to do something little every day, and then so many people just don’t know where they start any of the days so many things change.
[Crosstalk 00:17:31] the same on the client side. On the client side, you don’t want to tell them at the start, “Look, we will set this strategy for the year, but with the first month we will nail certain parts of it a lot better and definitely change the next seven months. Within the second month, we should have produced some results already, and that will change the next 10 months.” The KPIs, the benchmarking, everything should be adjusted as you go forward. So it’s a constant managing of expectations and aligning to do that on both sides.
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Absolutely. I think if you bring in a client and you’re not managing their expectations, they often leave quite quickly. If you bring in a member of staff and you’re not managing their expectations, then they either leave or are disgruntled. And your job as an agency leader effectively is to manage expectations of the client and the team whilst also growing both, and that’s a lot. It’s a lot to do. So if there’s a potential, like a new agency owner listening to this podcast or someone who’s thinking of starting their own agency in the near future, and they’re listening all the way through to the end of this podcast just to hear Krystian’s one piece of advice, they’ve listened to all of our chat and they’re just listening for this one piece of advice, what piece of advice would you offer them?
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It’s a strong reason behind having the agency that everyone can actually buy in. I think a lot of agencies are built on some kind of a mission that’s one of those missions from some kind of a book. Don’t get me wrong, you need help, ideally you should get a business coach to help you come up with your initial mission if you don’t have one yet, but ideally you should be building on some kind of fundaments. And I think a lot of people truly build those agencies just on fundaments of profits and that’s it. So for me, from the start, when I was starting, when I was a freelancer making really good money, why would I want to employ others, and have more responsibilities, and more headaches, and more trouble, but then ultimate I’ve decided that look, on my own, I could only dedicate a bit of time towards charities. Now, with every time I hire a person, that’s another five hours a week we can dedicate to pro bono work for charities.
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It’s fantastic, isn’t it?
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That means that now, after six people, we’ve got about 30 hours every week dedicated to charity work that’s free. Every single week. And so it’s not just that we try and we plant trees in different countries for an ecology scheme we’re part of, we’re actually doing this. So when I was starting an agency, I was like the only reason that I will get out of bed to work with the team, to work with more clients, which means more headache, to manage all those expectations, and pay the taxes, and pay the salaries, and make this all more difficult for myself ultimately, because if you’re a good freelancer, life isn’t really that difficult, the only way I can see this to go from here to there through all this pain, through all this learning I have to do, and through all this, ego sacrifices is if there is something really strong on the back of this.
And that’s how RobotZebra was really born is through this one mission from the very start. And now every person that joins understands the mission, and they [inaudible 00:20:44] the mission. And if they’re on board with it, you can see the spark in their eye when they realize that every week they will contribute time to charities. And they don’t have to use their general skills in life, like cleaning something somewhere, picking up [crosstalk 00:20:59] from ocean, but actually use their digital marketing skills that you’re honing in every week for the betterment of the planet, and securing charities some very valuable time that’s usually very expensive for them [crosstalk 00:21:10].
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And doing good in the world, you’ve got to use what power you’ve got, what superpowers you have. And not to be horrible to anyone, anyone can go and pick up rubbish, and you can choose to do that as well, but if you’re deploying your superpowers from a digital point of view for the power of good, then that’s great as well. And I think you’re right, having a purpose, the reason to get out of bed in the morning, as you say, is essential. And I think once they know what the purpose is and the mission, everyone’s on it. And when you have a bad day, they know that it’s just one bad day in a journey on a mission for something else. I think that’s fantastic advice.
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Yeah, I think they know that it’s worth it. That it’s not just made so someone can buy a house or something like that. At the end of the day, it is that, and at the end of the day, you want to be in a place in the world where you’re doing good things. Equally, look, if I was a brain surgeon, I would go and do that somewhere where it really matters and it’s really not affordable for people to do. Again, like you said, not to be horrible to anyone, we’re not exactly saving lives here as a marketing agency, but at least we can use some of this time for the betterment of the world.
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It’s fantastic, yeah.
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[crosstalk 00:22:32] the best skill that we’ve got.
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And especially these days, it’s nice to know that you’re making some meaning beyond what you do just as your job, so absolutely fantastic. Thank you very much for coming along. Been wonderful having a chat to you.
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You too, Chris.
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And in our next podcast, we’ll have a different agency leader and we’ll be talking about their lessons they’ve learned along the way. So thanks very much and enjoy.
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Thank you.