VO Guy:
Hello and thanks for coming along too, …And we have an office Dog, the Digital Agency podcast, where we talk to agency owner directors and learn more about what makes them tick. From the things that make them similar, to the things they’d rather have known sooner. Where they’ve had success, and where they’ve learned some hard lessons. All will be revealed with your host Chris Simmance, the agency coach. And he’ll be talking to a different awesome agency person in each episode, asking them four questions and seeing where the conversation takes us over the next 25 minutes. Okay, so let us begin. Over to you, Chris.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Thanks, voice over guy. And on the podcast today, we’ve got Sherrie from Glowbright Marketing. How you doing Sherrie?
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
I’m good, thank you. How are you?
Chris Simmance (Host):
All right, thanks very much. All right, we’ve just been talking about office dogs, and your hiring at the minute, and your office dog is part of the job description. That’s fantastic.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
He is. Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s a good selling point.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Oh, well it has to be. If you don’t like dogs then you prevent having to hire anyone who [inaudible 00:01:15]. If you don’t like dogs-
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
It could be a psychopath. Absolutely.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Could be a problem. It could be a problem.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
I think it’s a good weeding out process. Like, “Are you a psychopath if you don’t like dogs, that’s okay, I can find out now. It’s fine.”
Chris Simmance (Host):
Also, just in case we’ve disenfranchised some listeners here even, you can like cats too.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Oh, I love cats. I love cats.
Chris Simmance (Host):
So Sherrie tell us all about Glowbright? What do you do? What makes you guys special and why with anyone who may be listening to this, who just learned that you’re looking for staff, want to fill in an application?
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
So I started Glowbright Marketing two years ago when I left L’Oreal, where I was director of marketing there. And the reason why I started it was, because I found that there was a real need for the beauty services industry. So when I was in my roles at L’Oreal, and in my role at ELEMIS as well, we were creating all these amazing packs and social assets, all this great stuff, and giving them to our accounts. Obviously L’Oreal deals with a lot of hairdressers, or thousands of hairdressers. ELEMIS deals with thousands of spas. So in both of my roles there, we were creating all these amazing tools for these spas and hairdressers and they were like, “Yeah, great. We can’t implement that because we’re busy running our businesses.” Which is fair. So it’s a real head office thing where you’re like, “I’m going to create them this amazing tool kit for their windows,” and they’re like, “Can you give us product so we can sell more services?”
Anyway. So I really noticed a real gap in the market there where people weren’t really necessarily focusing on that industry and during COVID. I think it was really obvious that that industry isn’t taken massively seriously. It was the last industry to get any sort of help, or any sort of funding. So it’s something that I feel really passionately about, about really leveling, helping to level all that industry up as well. Really being able to give them the right tools and focus on them rather than previously it’s been about pampering and it’s been seen as a really fluffy industry. And you know what, these are people that have remortgaged their house sometimes and these are real business people that are essential to our economy. So that’s why I started to play Glowbright Marketing to focus on that industry by offering them digital marketing services and POS.
We do lots of social media, email, all of those kinds of things. We do lots and lots of PPC and social advertising. So we really offer a 360 marketing service for them and it’s very much dependent on what they need. So we run it in a pick and mix format. So if one month they need email services and then six months time they’re like, “Look what we actually really need some POS and print services,” then we want it in a pick and mix format that suits their budget. Rather than saying you have to be now be locked into a six month contract.
Chris Simmance (Host):
So in a sense, they can say what’s the business needs and then pick from those things. How’s that work for you on an operational point of view? Because, I know it’s agency, it’s hard to plan when you’ve got a six to 12 month contract for single services. So how have you gotten around that, it’s not a pitfall, more of a difficulty, because it’s quite tough, isn’t it? Someone wants [inaudible 00:04:41] to provision the services plan to work and then they want something else the next month. How do you do that?
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Well, I make sure that the people that I’ve got on the team are a bit of all rounder marketers and I’ve chosen that on purpose, where I know a lot of other agencies that have people that are specialized in social media, specialized in CRM, so and so forth. I’ve moved away from that. And in the same way that marketing teams and corporate companies would be, you have to be able to do all of marketing and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are an expert in every single field. It just means that you need to be able to offer that to what your customer needs at that time.
So where I really focused the agency on being customer first, and I know lots of people say that it’s a bit of a buzzword, but I really do believe in that, because if the customer does need something on that month, and we try not to do it month, month by month, but we will chop and change depending on what their needs are and ultimately what their budgets are. And by doing that it’s meant that all of our customers have started off maybe just taking social media and they all now take six, or more services by offering them that flexibility. So even though it’s a lot more work for us in the long term, it’s meant that we’ve been able to grow really quickly with the clients.
Chris Simmance (Host):
And I guess having people who are great generalists and flexible people makes a big impact and they’re hard to find.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Totally. And it’s not for everyone. Some people they do only want to focus on social media, or they do only want to focus on CRM and that’s fair enough, that’s fine. But we’re not at that stage yet where I can say, “Right, we’re only going to have a CRM expert, we’re only going to have a social media expert.”
Chris Simmance (Host):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. It’s hard enough say early doors within the first of five, six years of an agency, most of the time generalists are what you really want, because what you typically end up having is an agency which is focused on general digital marketing, for a general audience, with general services and then general people. But then they’ll pick a niche of a discipline, or a niche of an industry. You’ve picked the industry early [inaudible 00:07:00]. Which means that you need the generalists first and the specialists will come later. If you said we’re only email marketing, well then you’d only have expert email marketers on day one.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Totally. And I’d have five customers, because that’s not what they need. Yeah, exactly.
Chris Simmance (Host):
So think’s been one of the biggest successes so far of running the agency?
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
So on the first day that COVID hit when everything shut down, so I started the business in November, 2019 and then, so the first day was March, or April the 1st, let’s say. All my customers called me on the same day and said, “Look, we’re not going to be able to take your services anymore,” all on the same day. Which I knew was obviously going to come, because the news was literally like, “The world is ending.” And so I took a day, stared at a wall for half an hour and just was like, “Right, let me just think about what to do here.” And I called them all back and I said, “Listen, I totally hear you. What I’m going to offer you is to carry on doing social media and email during this time, because your customers are going to be sat at home with their phone in their hand. They’re going to want to hear from you. But what I’ll do is I’ll push the bill out by three months.”
So I didn’t bill anyone for three months, during the first bit of COVID, which is tough. But everyone was obviously, it was a win-win. They’ve got nothing to lose from that. And I also built them all a website doing that at that time. So we ended up making 60K for one of the clients through the brand new website doing COVID and that was brand new revenue for them.
Chris Simmance (Host):
That’s a win.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
So that was amazing. And being able to keep the customers during COVID, I was like, “You aren’t going anywhere.”
Chris Simmance (Host):
Fair enough. There’s some agencies which did dig their heels in and say, “No contract’s the contract and you’re locked in.” And I would wager that quite a lot of those clients who were angry at the time have now left them. Then you’ve got other agencies which did a similar type of thing to you where it’s kind of like, “Okay, well we can pause for three months and don’t build for three months, but we have three months onto your whatever the contract date was going to end. Stuff like that. But it sounds like your model worked really, really well and it was genuinely a great success.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
What I’ve always done with all of my clients is we build a really strong relationship. So everything is relational first, which is the main reason for the success of the brand, because all of my clients feel like they are the only client, which has obviously it’s pro and it’s cons.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Which helps a lot, doesn’t it?
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Yeah, but they really trust me and they know I’m not going to fuck them over. Oh, I don’t know how I’m allowed to swear on this. Sorry.
Chris Simmance (Host):
I don’t know. Well there’s a few podcasts which may get banned at some point. I have no idea. We’ll see. Just keep going.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
I’m sorry. I’m sorry everyone. Yeah. And I think having that from day one has really allowed me to say, look, we’re not going to do PPC this month because look, I’m never going to say no to PPC, but look, we’re not going to do X this month, because I can see from the data it’s not working, or whatever. So having that in the first place has been really helpful.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Which I think knowing your lane and knowing your audience means that you can have much more personal relationships, which the blessing is in the curse as well, because obviously, like you said, they think that they’re your only client, because you treat them in such a good way. But the good thing with that is that they know that at a certain point it comes back the opposite way around. So when you give them advice, which they’re not necessarily that keen on, they’ll trust you, because they believe you’re saying it for the right reasons, which if you have that relationship.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
And I think also what I did was I didn’t go too quickly down with the legal route. So I didn’t start sending them legal contracts from day one, which I know you’re supposed to do and I know it’s against all the policies and stuff, but I know with this industry you’ll just start scaring people off. So I did it really like drip-drip method, which I’m sure people will be like, “That’s so stupid. What if they took your services and didn’t pay you and whatever.” And yeah, sure that’s the risk I run, but that hasn’t happened yet.
Chris Simmance (Host):
I think at that point in time, absolutely uncharted territory for everyone and lots of people took different routes and some people it’s paid off, some people it hasn’t. And there might be three people who did the exact same thing as you and it didn’t work for them, but that doesn’t mean that it was the wrong route. Agencies are basically all the same except for all of the things that make them different. So the comparisons between agencies is so hard to make, as a fair one, because there’s so many different moving parts. But if you could go back in time, you put one of those, what’s it called in the hairdressers, the thing that dry the perms. You put one of those on your head and actually it turns out to be a tiny-
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Chris you’re stuck in the ’20s, yes?
Chris Simmance (Host):
Oh, does that not happen? Have they not got those anymore?
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
I don’t think so. I think people got electrocuted.
Chris Simmance (Host):
I have no idea, as you can tell, I look like I’m homeless. So if you could go back in time and on day one of you deciding you’re going to start this agency, you popped into existence and you said, “Young Sherrie, it’s me, old Sherrie. I’ve got one piece of advice for you.” What would that advice be?
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Oh, get help sooner. So I did the first year on my own and I didn’t employ anyone. So I literally just work every hour. I would say get help sooner so you can grow quicker. And where I got really bogged down on my current clients. I didn’t focus enough on new business, because I physically couldn’t. So I would say get help sooner. So then as the founder, as a CEO, my job can be new business and obviously making sure that the current clients are happier. But when obviously I was first starting out, I was doing everything. And it’s not a sustainable business model.
Chris Simmance (Host):
So burnout is a thing. But it’s also balancing that risk that you is a problem when you start and run on your own with, “I have to have cash flow and I have to…” You also have to really know your systems, your processes, your clients, how you want the agency to run before you can even consider.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Oh my God, totally. And that was a learning as well. I was still figuring out how I wanted it to be run. It’s my first business. So in terms of processes, in terms of getting different kinds of tools, do I want to use Later, do I want to use Hootsuite? What are the different kind of tools I want to use? What are the benefits? And all of that stuff takes time. So do I want to focus on Squarespace, do I want to focus on WordPress? All of those what is the offer. Exactly. So if I’m training someone, what exactly am I training them on if I don’t even know.
Chris Simmance (Host):
And it can really hurt your new business if things change too much as well. So you’ll end up with having people disenfranchised, or leaving the agency.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
100%.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Because it costs a lot of money.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
100%. If I think to how I run the business now to how I run it when I first started and it’s only been going for two years, it’s so different. There’s so many different things that I’ve been like, “Right, don’t do that again, because you did that and that didn’t work.” And I feel like from a learning point of view, I think where it’s been really tough for me, is everything I’ve learned I’ve had to learn through a mistake, which has been difficult, because it’s not how I like to learn, I like to know it. So having to learn through a mistake for quite a few things. Even stupid things like accountants and HMRC and stupid things like that, having to learn through a mistake has been really, really tough for me.
Chris Simmance (Host):
I always say that running an agency is the most expensive MBA you’ll ever have, because of the level of mistake. You make mistakes to learn a lessons rather than read a book, or something there. You know how they say there’s no proper manual of how to look after a baby. There really isn’t a book for running an agency. There’s loads of books about agencies, there’s loads of books about running businesses, but they’re books. They don’t have your unique individual situation that in mind at that exact moment in time. And lots of agency coaches, what they say is that, “Read this book.” ‘Oh I really need to do this.” “Oh there’s this really good book by this really good person. Here you go, go away and read that,” and then add another three or four months onto the retainer for you.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Literally, I’ve got so many books, I could literally open up a self-help library. It’s a joke. And I was like, now I got to the point where I was so confused, because I’d read so many of these books that I’ve been recommended. I was like, “I’m just going to stop reading these books, because this is not helpful anymore. It’s got past that point.” The other thing I’d say to younger the two years before would be, maybe save before starting a business. That would be a really helpful-
Chris Simmance (Host):
In case there’s a pandemic or something.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Yeah, yeah. Just this crazy thing that might happen, because what I did was I didn’t save, I left my job and I was like, “Yeah, it’s going to be fine. I’ve already got customers that are interested, this is all going to be great.” And luckily NatWest gave me a really hefty overdraft, thank you NatWest. And I just for the first year I was just purely in the overdraft basically.
Chris Simmance (Host):
And that will be that. Yeah, scary.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Oh yeah. I was like, “What have I done?” But no, it’s been fine now. But yeah, if you’re asking for advice for younger Sherrie, I’d be like, “Maybe just save some money.”
Chris Simmance (Host):
Yeah, save some cash. So we touched on mistakes, obviously learning things the hard way. But is there something that you did on day one of starting the agency that you went, “That’s it, I’m going to keep doing that,” in terms of something hit perfectly, whether it be with a client, or a system, or a way of working that you’ve stuck to that that’s been successful.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
I make sure I see my customers face to face at least once a month. So whether that’s taking them out for lunch, or going to their place of work and just being with them, that has been a game changer. And I know that’s not super common practice to really spend that much time with clients, but that has been a game changer. So they know that they will see me physically at least once a month.
Chris Simmance (Host):
I think that works really well to a point, in scale, obviously. Because if you couldn’t physically do it when you have 3, 4, 500 clients, that’s when you have the team of account managers.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
That’s when you have a team. Yeah, exactly. So that would always be passed down to where I’ve got a team now of three. The expectation is for the team to be in their accounts. Absolutely, at the bare minimum once a month. I think it’s really important and it’s a real you as people, us as well. I’m not sure how you can market something that you don’t really fully understand.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Yep, absolutely. And your specialist niche really, they’re used to the rep showing up with the bottles of shampoo and things. So it’s not again, obviously I’m not in-
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
No you’re right.
Chris Simmance (Host):
But they’re used to that sort of thing. So because of that, in a sense, if you didn’t offer it would be weird.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Oh yeah. It’s so relational and you have to fit your services to your niche. If I was working with a tech company, they might be like, “Why are you here?” But it works really well with the people that I work with and they do expect it. Everyone likes a free lunch. So, it works.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Who doesn’t? So if there’s someone listening to this podcast right now and they’re thinking, “Sounds really good. I’m going to take the leap, I’m going to do run an agency,” or they’ve just started this their first few months of running an agency, what one piece of advice would you give them if they asked you?
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Oh, I’d say to really map out what it is that you’re trying to achieve. What is your purpose? Have that really clear, write it out, put it on the wall. So when you do have days that are really tough, you can look at it and be like, “Right, this is why I’m doing this,” because you will have days that are really tough and you, if anything like me, you are going to look back and be like, “Oh, why did I leave that really high paying corporate job where they paid me for holiday and bank holidays. Why did I do this crazy thing?” So have a really clear purpose and I can’t be something wishy-washy like, “Oh, I want to make money and have enough for stock.” Make sure you’ve actually got something that’s actually going to get you out of bed in the morning. And hopefully it’s around community and hopefully trying people fingers crossed.
Chris Simmance (Host):
I couldn’t agree more. I think the purpose in an agency, it helps you hire, it helps you fire, it helps you pick the right clients. It helps you see that there’s a reason when something doesn’t go quite right. You can almost always track it back to something that detracted slightly from that purpose, or there’s a bad day, because I don’t know, a clients left and something else has happened and someone accidentally deleted some files, or whatever. One of those days where everything combines into this mess and you think, “Oh God, why am I doingthis?” And then you look at it and you go, “Because I’m doing it [inaudible 00:20:58].”
And the people that are working with me are doing it because, and the clients meet that because, and that’s why I work with them. And it really does help.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Totally. And sit down at the end of each month. Something that I’ve done from the beginning is I sit down at the end of each month and obviously I pulled the reports for the customers, but I pulled the reports for the business as well. And even if it was just me, I would do a little review just for myself.
Chris Simmance (Host):
It keeps you honest.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
What could I have done better? What do I think worked well and fail fast. If it’s not working, stop doing it. It’s okay.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Yeah. And if you’re on top of all your numbers and your strategy that’s connected to your purpose and you have people that are in your agency connected to your purpose.
So where do you go when you need help? Obviously I’m not trying to sell digital marketing agency coaching services to you, or to anyone else in that way, but everyone finds support in different ways. So what do you typically do?
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
That is something I’ve been really struggling with actually. So a few people have recommended me to start looking at maybe getting a business coach, just because it is lonely. And thankfully I’ve made some really good friends where they also run agencies, but that’s a relatively new thing. But yeah, it’s tough. It’s really tough. And also the hiring, the firing thing, I hate it, honestly. It’s not in my wheelhouse. I find it really challenging to do the hiring and the firing.
Chris Simmance (Host):
It’s hard and it’s all on you. All of it. So take your friends and your colleagues’ advice, because there’s a thing where if someone’s kind of been there and done it and it’s their job to keep you on track with your purpose. Then anything, whether it be a couple of calls in a month to just have a chat, or more structured stuff helps. Quite a lot of agencies end up, in a sense formalizing, like you say, the friendship that you’ve got with a few agency owners where you formalize their thing. So you end up with a monthly meetup. So you kind of have a chat as a bit of a mastermind group type thing. And sometimes that helps as well, because you can structure it a little bit and say, “Right, we’re all going to talk about staff this month.” And then everyone comes with their niggles and their problems and their solutions and you’ll all help each other out.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Yeah, exactly. The thing I’m going back and forth with at the moment, and this is probably quite a topical for the climate, is whether or not to get an office. So I know obviously I want to continue doing hybrid working and I think it’s important for mental health and absolutely, I think that’s a really important thing. But I can definitely see the benefits of being in one place together, especially with marketing where we’ve got loads of printouts and stuff like that for our clients. Having it all at my house, a nightmare.
Chris Simmance (Host):
And you never get to have a day off if you keep seeing all your work.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Exactly, exactly. So I’m currently in the process of thinking about getting an office and what that looks like from a cost point of view and all of these kinds of things to think about. It’s hard.
Chris Simmance (Host):
And just remember those sorts of decisions. They should always somehow map to that purpose.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. But I think being able to collaborate together, doing it all by teams or Zoom and stuff, it’s not so easy to do everything via online.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Yeah, no, I completely agree. And I think bringing it back to your advice is it’s hard to stick to that purpose all the time. If everyone’s just a bunch of pixels on the screen all the time, I can see your face in your eyes, but it’s totally different to having a meeting face to face where you can still see the same face and eyes, but there’s something that you lose. And if you have several bad days in a row, or your team members have several bad days in a row, just doing a bunch of calls, one after the other is really hard. How are you going to…
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
But also from a founder point of view, honestly doing approvals constantly by email is painful. I’m only one human being. Can we just do it face to face?
Chris Simmance (Host):
Well, I think you’re doing it wrong. You should be two human beings. That’s it. All agency owners have to be at least eight people. You should-
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
No, I mean, in terms of the approvals.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Thank you very much for coming on the podcast.
Sherrie Emery (Guest):
Oh, no problem, thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed our chat.
Chris Simmance (Host):
Absolutely lovely. And I hope you who are listening, have gotten something out of it. In our next podcast, we’ll have a different agency leader to talk about their story and the things they learned along the way. Thanks very much for listening.