V.O. 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. OK, so let us begin over to you.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Thanks. Voice over guy and on the podcast today we’ve got Luke Sheeran, co-founder of Falcon Digital. How are you doing?
Luke Sherran (Guest)
I am doing wonderfully. How are you?
Chris Simmance (Host)
Very good, thank you. You’ve just had an awful lot of technical difficulties. Too smart people who do this an.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Awful lot. We definitely should know better. This should not happen to.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Us it really shouldn’t it? Really shouldn’t, and I’ll admonish myself somewhat more later. And this is a special recording, because this is the second recording I’ve done with the founder of. Falcon, we did a recording which went live a couple of months ago with Sadie. Who is your co-founder and also wife. And so this is gonna be a really good one. I’m gonna see what you say. That is dead opposite to her. And and then I’m going to send her the clippings later.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
I’m going to be in so much.
Chris Simmance (Host)
So don’t get nervous, but definitely get nervous and we’ll see. We’ll see how we get.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Too late now, yeah.
Chris Simmance (Host)
On so, first of all, for anyone who didn’t listen to Sadies episode, tell us a bit about Falcon. Tell us what you do in the agency. And what the agency does in general?
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Super. So Falcon digital, so web design, digital marketing agency based in Cheshire. We’ve been going since May 2009 from a web design perspective, we focus on kind of the higher end projects with platforms like WordPress and Shopify and then from a digital marketing side, we kind of specialise more in in video marketing. Your production with a heavy focus around YouTube, and that’s really kind of what I do kind of day-to-day my job now is really video market. And YouTube. Yeah, it’s kind of a big change. From how we?
Chris Simmance (Host)
Started you and and I. Feel like that this isn’t so recent because I’m just remembering it. But you just got. Like 2,000,000 views or something, you got an award.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
I heard 180 million views.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Bloody hell, that’s even.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
More than OK. Yeah. So it was quite. It was quite a big one, a big milestone. I had a I’ve got a personal YouTube channel which originally was just a testing ground where I could, you know, experiment test things out. See what worked and. Then hopefully apply those same strategies for some of our clients. And then more recently, I said, you know, I really want. To make a thing of my own YouTube channel. And so last three months, yeah. Well, I’ve actually had. 100 million views in the last three months? I think so, yeah. So it’s been fun.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And infant. And does it translate into money? Does it does? It work or.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
It does. So I mean, last month, I actually earned three times more than I did through Falcon from YouTube.
Chris Simmance (Host)
So this is the last episode that Falcon will be on the podcast because there is no connectivity in Bermuda. Brilliant. So the agency’s been running since 2009 and an awful lot’s changed in digital marketing world as well as the web development world. I remember what WordPress was like in 2009 and that was. Well, that was really hard to work with and certainly a different, different, different world now, so. What do you? Think you know the longevity aside, what’s been one of the biggest successes that you’ve seen with the agency since you started?
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Longevity aside, I would say it’s probably been our ability to pivot and and to adapt really. Like you say, lots of things would change since we started in 2009. We’ve been fortunate enough to see other businesses kind of come and go within that time frame and I think that the reason that we’re still here is because we are a little bit more agile as an agency and we’ve been able to to change and what happens when things have changed. A lot of companies see that as a bad thing. They’ve had something that works for a while and something changes, and it’s a disaster. Whereas we’ve always seen it as an opportunity as well. How do? We how do?
Chris Simmance (Host)
We work with this. Yeah, and. And. And if you look at the tombstone of every failed business, it almost always says we have always done it this way somehow. So yeah, adaptability and flexibility is massive. And I think you’ve got.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
That’s weird.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And pretty much with you and Sadie, you’ve got the same core team for the majority of the time as well. It’s Chris as well. Is it? No. Who is it? The worst? Who is it? Come his name now. Sorry.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
It’s Steve, Steve. The technical director.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, that was it. I’ve seen. I’ve seen over the years like, you know, you guys are almost like a family. You’ve worked so close together for so many years, and it, and I think that helps when it comes to being. Flexible because that that you you’re all hungry for the same thing. And I think that’s really quite a nice way. Of doing it.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Uh, 100%, we are like a family. I mean, I’ve Steve who works with us. I’ve known Steve since 2000. We met on our first day at university. Yeah, I was the best man at his wedding. He was best man at my wedding. So yeah, it’s a very close knit team for sure and that really helps because you got 100% trust in what everyone’s Doing which is great.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, and. That trust allows you to be able to say, look, we’re gonna change this because this is better or this is less bad for whatever reason or another. And the trust goes both ways because he’ll be able to say I’ve got this idea. I think this is the right move and you can kind of trust that it’s worth. Having a look at definitely, definitely. That’s awesome. So the I think I think the flexibilities in the last what well since 2009, I think Google has done about 3 updates a year, platforms have changed a million different times over and if you aren’t flexible then you are one of those kind of old guard not not that valuable businesses anymore and. You’ve gotta be able to support your team and your family and grow. And you’ve done that, which is a brilliant success, which? I mean it is. Around longevity. But the longevity is because you’ve moved with the times.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Yeah, that’s fine. I mean, the agency that we are today is 100% different to how we started basically, which is we. Definitely a good thing so.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Well, I recall that your agency started on the back of a napkin. In a restaurant.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
It did, actually. Yeah, that’s true. Drunken napkin. Probably as well. So, yeah. So say to my birth points for eight different agencies. She worked for an agency in Liverpool. I work for an agency in Manchester. We’re basically ships in the night. We just kind of crossed we both for whatever reason, felt undervalued and the companies that we worked for and we decided we’re going to do our own thing. And yeah, this is before smartphones, so we didn’t even have a smartphone to write this down. It was literally a napkin in a bar with a pen. And that was where our business plan. First was I did so.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And no wonder it pivoted.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Absolutely. It’s probably a. Very good thing that it did.
Chris Simmance (Host)
So if you could go back and obviously not necessarily napkin day, but if you could go back to when you started running the agency as a proper? Agency and go back and and you give yourself some advice only what would? What advice would you give to to younger full head of Hair Luke.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Ohh cheap shot. Yeah, yeah, I’d be very jealous with the. Hair for starters. That’s. Tricky. There’s. There’s a lot of things I’d like to say to that. Still, I think the biggest thing I know it probably sounds really cheesy. But it’s definitely to work smart and not. Harder. I think. When we first started the agency, which is the fear, had a big time fear. And so we were working 16 hours a day, seven days a week, just to build momentum, get things going. And oddly, I was very proud of that fact for the fact that I could work for 16 hours a day and work through the night. I think they called the hustle upon now, don’t they?
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, there’s an epidemic of that right now. There’s a little busy. There’s not a lot of productive. Yeah.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
For sure. So yeah, I think I probably could have cut that time in half and still really done the same amount of. Work and the biggest thing that I had in terms of working, not working smart was the fact they were constantly chasing new work. So we were chasing work. Doing the work, then starting again, it’s just a constant hamster wheel. Yeah, and we just didn’t have any kind of we had. We had retainers for digital marketing, but not for development. I didn’t really feel like we could, whereas now almost all of our development workers on retainer based, you know, agreements and it it just makes things so much easier. You can then really just focus on doing the work and not constantly wondering where the. Next piece of work is going to come from.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And I know this is this. This is almost a hard question to answer, but if you were to have been given that advice by you. And obviously, you knew it was yourself giving the advice. Do you think you’d listened to it? Because like you, you did that because that was the right thing at the time in your head. So what would you? What would you have done if you popped into existence older Luke and younger Luke had a chat.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
I don’t know, Sir, I am. And I certainly was. Extremely arrogant, so I probably would have thought that.
Chris Simmance (Host)
I knew better and well, yeah.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
So I know I probably would have taken it. I think we’ve just certain lessons that have to be learned yourself in life. I was given lots of great advice when we started the business and I don’t think I took much of it on board until I actually learned it from.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Myself later so a pivot on that question because you love pivots so. If you had the choice to go back and give yourself that piece of advice, would you choose to go back and give yourself that advice?
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Oh, that’s a good one. So I mean, my own personal this is this is a little like a little look into. The the mind. Of Luke here. I’m all about like the butterfly effect, so I think like one change would have the catastrophic change. In my entire life. So no, I wouldn’t because of that. That sounds really odd, doesn’t it?
Chris Simmance (Host)
So existentially, no existentially, no.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
But in principle, yes, I probably would, because I think would. Make my life. So much easier.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, fair enough. And then and then if you were to go back and I forget whether I managed to get Sadie to answer this, but if you could go back and give. Advice that wouldn’t have caused an argument but give advice to Sadie about starting a business with you. What advice would you give to her?
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Ohh well OK, that’s a good one. I would say you just need to be super patient because I’m going. To be grumpy and stressed for a good two or three years before. You know things. Really start to settle down. So just. Just Please be patient.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And I have good advice, I think I think. You know, knowing, knowing Sadie should have nodded and smiled, but probably ignored it. And gone her own way as well because.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Yeah, I think. You’ve drank a lot. More wine?
Chris Simmance (Host)
Let’s not get you into any more trouble. So is there something that over the years of running the agency, I know that you, you know you pivoted and you’re flexible with the changes and things, but is there something that you kind of wish you’d done? Sooner now that you know where the. The land lay.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Yeah. I think when we so when we first started growing the agency and we realised we needed to take more people on to cope with the demand of the work that we had, we were too scared to hire. So what we did was we found people that were fresh out of university and we did apprenticeship programmes. All with the idea of. Kind of training weapon and moulding them into our own way of how we wanted. And in reality, I think we would have been far better off just walking out the money and bringing in the right. People early on. You know, even if it meant paying them more than we were paying ourselves just to get the right people on board and get that foundation for the business so much earlier on, we wasted. So much time training people. Only for them to then get poached. By a bigger agency.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, I know. And that that’s so hard. It really is. I I did the same. I think almost every agency owner that has kind of built from zero has. Had it at the very least, that kind of argument cerebrally that, you know, do I do I do. I hire young and build them myself. Do I spend on one person and it’s so hard because you know the work, you know, the quality you want. So you think actually it’s probably better to have someone who’s not kind of. Not in a horrible way. People listening time. And they’ve not had systems and processes that they’ve had to unlearn. They’re learning it from zero. That’s that can work. It can be good, but I think if you’re gonna do that, you need to be one of the larger companies because they can then have L&D programmes. They can absorb the the loss of someone being poached and things like that. Whereas the smaller agencies, when they’re starting out like Optus did like. You did. The argument is in the other direction, which is Jesus Christ. That’s a really expensive person. Am I am I definitely gonna get the value out? Of that person. I don’t know what bad habits they’ve. Got until they. Get in the door. Oh, my God. This is really expensive. There’s a lot of risk here. Oh my God. OK. Go for the young one, get.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
The Apprentice in and what’s interesting is it would actually would have worked out better. Because a lot of the young guys didn’t realise that they were onto a good thing when they were. Others. So we had one in particular who, you know, he’d been working with since he. Left university. He then decided he wanted to move on to bigger and better things and went to a. Bigger agency and he came back. We can enjoy. The lifestyle and. I tried to explain to him, you know, we’re trying to move away from the agencies that we used to work from. We wanted to create agency that we would want to work out that, yeah, but because he never experienced that, he just didn’t really, really appreciate it. And I think if we had hired somebody else from another agency, they would have really. Appreciated our work lifestyle, but you know.
Chris Simmance (Host)
I think I think you’re right with that and I and I guess. That’s a lesson, which is someone else is to learn and it’s and. And you can do. You can do everything that you could possibly think of to try and kind of make somewhere great, but until they see that the view from the other side of the fence, it just isn’t there is there’s nothing to compare it to so. It’s just. Work. Yeah. And so is this something that you kind of did really early on that not necessarily stuck to but you, you realised was a a really good way of running the business and you know was an early success that, that that became something part of Falcon that’s, you know, indelibly attached now.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Yeah, I think so. I think if I had to answer that question, it would be just how. We have always worked with our clients. I think when we first started and we were a new agency, we just took on every piece of work that we could and sometimes we knew that it wasn’t the best client for us, but we took it. Because we wanted to work.
Chris Simmance (Host)
We saw the pound. Signs, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
I think we got into. This kind of a way where we. Were just treated as an outsource. And someone that would technically deliver the client’s vision that way. Sense. And so we didn’t feel like we had a lot of control and we often felt actually, that they were making decisions that weren’t the best decisions for their business. Mm-hmm. And we hated it. So we changed our business trap line. It it. It is actually something like your digital partner. Yeah. Because we want it to be strategically having a relationship. With the with. Our clients. Mm-hmm. Where we could discuss things. We could talk through things and they would appreciate our experience and what we do and we would obviously understand that it’s their business and they understand their business better than anybody is always well having those. And we’ve done that from early on and it’s always, it’s always worked out very well for us. It’s always meant. That we’ve had good long term relationships with all. Of our with all of our clients.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Well, if you, yeah, if you go into a relationship with the right expectations on both sides, then it then it’s great. And if you do the pound sign chasing, which every agency on its first. Starting sort of blocks does that. You don’t get to do the expectation management thing. It’s a bought on price style. Agreement. And but when you when you come in and all of your messaging and all of your persona and the values of the business all kind of exude this, this is what we do. This is who we are and it’s the same from the moment they land on your web page for the first time through to signing the contract to the onboarding and everything. If they feel the same as they did at the beginning, the expectations are managed really well. Then consistency means you get you get that client for a very long time and they get the results that they’ve been looking. For a very long time exactly.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Exactly, yeah.
Chris Simmance (Host)
We used to have a strap line at Optus which was we won’t hurt you like your last relationship. And it was. And it. Yeah, a little bit punchy.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
You know you.
Chris Simmance (Host)
You know me and it was it was because I realised that so many agencies do the wrong way of managing expectations and that and it is still a transactional relationship. And then the pain that both sides. Go through at the end is OK. It’s not like a relationship break up, but it is.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Feel that way.
Chris Simmance (Host)
It costs money, there’s results, there’s issues around that. There’s time loss. There’s all sorts of things and. If you work with Someone Like You want to be treated, you’re a partner with them. You, you, you, you treat them like you would want to be treated, and they know their business better than you. But you know your service better than they do. Then it works really, really well, you know? Yeah. There’s times when if that’s the case and you truly live, that there’s times when. You know that for example. You might, you might give a client some advice. Part of the strategy is to do something that they definitely don’t want to do. For whatever reason, it might be they can give you a good reason as to why they shouldn’t do that, because they know their business. They know their sector well, then you wouldn’t push that because you don’t go well. This is the right way of doing it, you’d say. It’s not the right way of doing it for you. Technically by the book you should do it this way. Let’s work out an alternative to either minimise the impact of not doing it or maximise something. Somewhere else? That’s the right way to.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Behave absolutely, yeah.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Too many agencies, too many agencies are afraid to lose the client or have an awkward conversation. If you go into early doors with. There might be some awkward conversations, but we’re gonna, we’re here to help you. It works and in.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Your position. Do you see that a lot now? That’s what I meant. Yeah. Yeah. So I need to ask you questions, but. No, no, no, that’s great. Nice.
Chris Simmance (Host)
I can say all the keywords like coaching, mentoring, leadership, blah, blah blah. Yeah. So I spend quite a lot of the agencies that I’m working with, It’s not just about getting new clients in, they seem to not have that bigger, bigger problem. And I think it’s the retention of the clients and retention of the staff and it’s all then built around the values and expectation management and manage expectations, you lose less.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Yeah, you know this.
Chris Simmance (Host)
The agency game is a game of losing less and losing less over a longer period of time until you can sell the agency or exit in whichever way you want to. And you know, unless you’re, unless you’re focused on like a long horizon, that’s a long horizon would be similar to what you guys are working on. You know you’ve got an end in mind in your heads. That’s why you can move and pivot. And be flexible. Because those things always realign you to that that end goal and. If you’re not managing expectations of people along the way, you’re going to keep tripping over and it’s all people you know. People deliver the service, people take the service, people see the results. People buy from the clients. If it were anything other than people connected then, then you wouldn’t have any of those problems, and it’s almost always expectations getting something out of your head into someone else’s head. And that’s again, why? Maybe it’s easier to hire Super Juniors and train them up because it’s easier to get this out of your head into a fresh empty head. Not saying you had it, just saying you never learned it before. So if you’re if you were to have a new agency leader come to you with their napkin asking what they should do to set up their business.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Empty and brilliant, yeah.
Chris Simmance (Host)
This what, what one piece of advice might you give them?
Luke Sherran (Guest)
I don’t know. I’ve got 1 golden nugget. It’s got lots of little things all based on mistakes that I. Made as we’re going along. I think the first thing I would say is. Again, coming back to. What I’ve already said, it’s just hiring the right. Well, early on and not just staff as well, but the right suppliers that you need, making sure you have the right accountants, these kinds of things, early doors we made a big mistake with accountants.
Chris Simmance (Host)
When we first died, it, it sounds like a no. Brainer, right? An accountant is an accountant, but they’re.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Not no, they’re not. We made a mistake going for like individual like independent accountants thinking that they would be the best option or they might be cheaper because again, we were concerned about money, but actually going with the big ones, they weren’t that much more expensive and you’ve got so much more support. And so much more expertise there.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, it’s the, it’s the business advice bit that you get from an accountant that, OK, yes, I I’m. I’m not advocating. An accountant knows how to run any other business in an accountancy firm and usually an accountant who works in an accountancy firm works. For it, but they understand the mechanics of the financial aspects of the business. Yeah. And that isn’t just being efficient with what tax to pay and where to pay it and how to pay it. It’s other things like management accounts, cash flow forecasting. Those are things that they know. You know to have, but you never do, and no one’s gonna. You’re not gonna do it yourself unless someone tells you to do it. Yeah. And like a a good set of management accounts will see you through recessions. Mm-hmm. Because you know what to tweak what to change, what to drop, what to pick up. Three months before it’s a problem. Yeah. And you don’t get that with the wrong accountant.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Exactly, exactly. And I don’t know if it was spoken to about this before, but I actually set up a business straight out of university, which failed spectacularly, by the way. Right. And yeah, yeah, it it is. Lessons learned. And one of the reasons it failed was because I tried to. Less than 10. Do everything and. Really, it’s with Falcon. I’ve always known early on that this there’s certain things I’m not good at and certain things I never I’m interested in being good at. There’s just not a good. Use of my time, and I’ve always hired people to do. Those things I’d much rather pay for an accountant to do absolutely everything. Personal tax returns. You know, bookkeeping, that returns corporation to everything. So I’ve got nothing to do with it. Just sign and pay.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And sign pay and then when they speak, you listen. And like I often say to agency leaders like the that’s the. Boring stuff that you did not set up your agency to do. If you know it and you understand it, it’s still better for someone else to do it so you’re away from it. If you’re so close to the numbers, you sometimes make decisions that shouldn’t have been made because of those numbers, you know you look at the number going down and you make a people decision you shouldn’t do or you react differently when a client looks like they might. Leaving and they weren’t looking like they were leaving, but you just looked at the numbers before the client call and those sorts of things. It’s like you shouldn’t you keep away from those things that are if you as you grow, it’s you know, lots of agencies bring in someone financial controller into the agency. But as you grow you really need something like that really do.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Chris Simmance (Host)
So hiring is one piece of advice. One thing that you’ve learned and obviously getting the right sort of boffins from an accounting calculator point of view in place is another thing imagine if. If someone’s coming, they’re starting up an agency and there’s quite a lot of these agencies that are that are popping in and around now around the video production stuff. There’s quite a lot of it that that they’re doing, which is and I might be wrong here, I’m. I’ve only just dipping my toe into video. As I’ve said to you before, the before the recording. There’s a lot of these agencies that are essentially selling services, which are. You can they download the app, they build the reels and the stuff like that out of your raw video and charge to run it. Do you think that if someone came along and they said I’ve got this idea I wanna run? An agency like this? What would you, would you say, go. Ahead, it’s going to work, would you? Say, be really careful. What would you? What would you say to that person?
Luke Sherran (Guest)
It’s tricky so. It sounds like a good idea in principle, and I think as long as you are in a position where you can pivot if something changes. Good. It’s not what we would want to do, it’s it sounds too kind of quantity based rather than quality. Yeah, but yeah, I I’m. I’m, I’m. Although I’m an expert, so to speak in video and video marketing. I’m good at what I do. And so I don’t know if I can necessarily give advice. Somebody else about their business model? But yeah, in principle it sounds like it could be a good idea. I just don’t know what. The lifespan of it necessarily would be.
Chris Simmance (Host)
This this is the thing, there’s and. And I always find that when there’s a new trend or a new thing, businesses pop up like mushrooms and just like mushrooms, they typically die quite quick as well. So it’s just an interesting thing I’ve spotted. So many service I you know, I’m looking for a tool to edit my own video and I find 15 businesses that are offering two-minute video editing stuff and I’m like. This this you’re competing against so much. It’s very hard.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
It is absolutely and if you if you. Don’t know as well. It’s very difficult to make a decision. You know who’s good, who’s not? You know it. Was almost like a. Trial and error kind of situation. Really. Yeah.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Absolutely. Well, thanks very much for coming on to the podcast. And finally, thanks for coming.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
So welcome.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Along to the podcast as well. And I’m glad there’s been a big gap between yourself and sadies because I. Think too, you know. That there’s something to listen to there when I when this one gets released, I’m gonna link to say these ones as well so people can listen to all the trouble one after the other and see what happens. Yeah. I’m also gonna send this recording to Sadie later so she can see.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Ohh yeah. Ohh.
Chris Simmance (Host)
So have a lovely weekend. Thank you mate.
Luke Sherran (Guest)
Cheers. Thanks. You can do it. Give me a. Spot the difference on.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, thanks very much for coming on. It’s been great. To have you my pleasure. Thank you. And in our next podcast, we’ll be talking to a different agency leader to hear what they’ve learned and maybe some of the mistakes that have helped them pivot along the way as well. So thanks very much.