VO Guy:
Hello. And thanks for coming along to And we have an office Dog, the digital agency podcast where we talk to agency owner directors and learn more about what makes them tick. From the things that make them similar to the things they’d rather have known sooner, where they’ve success and where they’ve learned some hard lessons. All will be revealed with your host, Chris Simmance, the agency coach, and he’ll be talking to a different awesome agency person in each episode, asking them four questions and seeing where the conversation takes us over the next 25 minutes. Okay, so let us begin. Over to you, Chris.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Thanks. Voice Over guy and on the podcast today we’ve got Peter from Kangaroo. How you doing?
Peter Jones (Guest)
Hi there, Chris. Yeah, great. Thanks. Thanks for having me on.
Chris Simmance (Host)
No problem at all. Thanks for coming. Thanks for taking the time. First of all, first and foremost tell us about Kangaroo UK. What do you do? What are you best known for?
Peter Jones (Guest)
So we’re a full service, mocked agency and there are two main strengths are Duda building in Duda websites and. Was it? They’re the. They’re the two, you know, managing Amazon People’s Amazon accounts. They are the two main.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Solutions. That’s that’s. So both of those things are I want to talk about both those things if I can. But first of all, how long has the agency been running?
Peter Jones (Guest)
So we start off as a branding agency 20 years ago and then we’ve just evolved. We started off. It was a a more of a a lifestyle agency and then. In about 2000 and. Sixteen, 2017. We ended up with basically Miss 12 and Sharon got together and says right, OK. Let’s let’s make this this Crohn’s agency. Which is what we’ve been working. On doing and then we introduced. Do that in. I think it was 2018. And we’ve flown from.
Chris Simmance (Host)
There. Yeah, I I I my first ever mobile optimised website was with Duda back in 2012 and it was an m.website and I paid an extra £12 a month to redirect it to to my own domain. So it wasn’t like m.duderforwardslashchrissrandomterriblewebsite.com and but I I’ve I’ve I’ve been. I’ve seen quite a lot of the developments that have come in the last few years on the agency side of things and they do have a really decent toolkit to kind of essentially build a web development department for your entire business. With a lot less. Through, say, pain than than having all different disciplines of development in one house.
Peter Jones (Guest)
Yeah. Well, for us, we we had, we’ve never had coders. We’ve never up until recently, we’ve never employed a coder at all, so it was all designers because from that design design well, so we just. And we was. Subcontracting to other coders as well, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magenta, all the others and I was in the networking Group One day and. I was frustrated that we were struggling to get. One website out. Out a month, you know, just launching months like a month was just.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Unbelievable played well.
Peter Jones (Guest)
I was renting to somebody with the frustration he was always losing out. Because you know. Wherever the scope was with the, with the client and the and the contractor, you. Know we was always. Picking the. Are losing profit. And we said, well, we’ve got to be able to do this ourselves. It’s going to be a way of doing it ourselves and a guy in the networking group to run it says, well, there’s a guy up in up north and he’s knocking out fifteen a month if possible. Can’t happen. So get your 1:00 to 1:00. So I had a one to one. With him and I. Went up and visited. Him. And yeah, sure enough, they’re knocking. Out average of 15 a. Month and I was blown away. There’s only six of them in the. Office 9 in the. Home Office couldn’t believe it and I. Came out. I realised that. This is, you know, I was actually physically. Ill over it because I realised. Oh, my God. What I’ve been doing? All that you know all this. Time I’ve been wasting time. I heard and. I got on to the on the phone and said look. We’ve gotta we’ve gotta change. We’ve gotta. We’ve gotta adopt the dude in the in the. Platform. You know, it’s the answer to everything. And my daughter turn around and says, yeah, I told you about that. Months ago.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, I bet. I bet. Yeah, I bet. That sounds familiar.
Peter Jones (Guest)
OK, yeah, I said nothing like that. So yeah, we we, we, we we dropped it, we’ve. We’ve grown the the most we’ve actually launched in the month is 22. Not all of the. You know, not all of the big websites. We’re we’re doing around. Around 7:00 to 10:00 at the moment. But they are. More complicated sites and there’s we build out custom widgets now.
Chris Simmance (Host)
We’re now a a coder and and we build custom widgets for ourselves and for for other agencies as well. That’s awesome. And so aside from realising how much money left on the table and then adopting. Luda and what’s been one of the biggest successes over the over the basically 20 years that you’ve been running?
Peter Jones (Guest)
That’s real hard one to to answer because there’s not one that’s learned. There are lots of different things. Duda was definitely one of the major things. We split the business up slightly. I concentrate more on the performance management side. So the SEO, PPC, Amazon affiliate marketing and Sharon and the team, they focus on the editing to design websites and print or anything like that. But what we’ve done is we’ve been niching down, we’ve created our own environments, one just for websites just selling and dooda one just for Amazon. And then we’ve got a general one for for general marketing for the smaller businesses. So nishin. Has helped. Yeah, it’s helped. But I still think we’re. I still feel as though we’re on a transition in that we’re trying to niche more into those Amazon and and do the websites and anything else is. Fills the gaps.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah. On the Amazon side of things, I mean it, it’s not new obviously, but it’s relatively new from a perspective of what is what’s offered in a in an agency perspective. So how did you? How did you get into that? What was the the driver that got you there that another. Oh, ****. Look what we’re. Look what we’re missing out on or. Did you?
Peter Jones (Guest)
No, it it was. It was part of. One of the older websites and we still go through this transition at the moment when the older websites all of a sudden one of the pages started ranking, Amazon client turned around, well sourced, it offered clients around us. Can you help us? So don’t let’s have. A look and then we put it on the website and then we started ranking for it. And then, you know, we’ve got our own team that that manages people’s accounts now. Which really helps us so. Yeah, it’s just, it’s just grown. It’s just organically grown.
Chris Simmance (Host)
That’s awesome. And so let’s not go back 20 years, but if you could go back towards the beginning of running the agency when you guys first started out, if you were to sort of booth back in time and give your younger self some advice, what piece of advice do you think you’d give yourself?
Peter Jones (Guest)
Yeah. Niche. Yeah, it’s just easier, but Niching gives us the ability just to focus on one message, one-on-one website, one the content. We can improve our systems and processes. We we’ve had really adopted. Something called we’ll click up is our project and I love it to bits. We we introduced well the Zen pilot. I don’t whether you come across Zen pilot. The Zen pilot have put a lot of systems and processes into agencies and it’s got a free download to do it and we just copy the. And I would, we did it ourselves and it’s been really successful, really changed as the way we’re able to report and manage all the tasks.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Nice, I’ve, I’ve. I’ve it it. It was such. It’s such a good platform. Click up from an agency running point of view and the automations are great that you can build the templates that you can create. Yourself as well for repeating tasks. There’s there’s a way of managing accountability without it being a onerous or a. Unfair process on the team, so the team A-Team doesn’t feel like they’re being watched, but also there’s an accountability layer there that shows like a Ledger of everything that’s going on.
Peter Jones (Guest)
So it’s wait. I I’m in the mastermind group. As well, which is some I started a couple of years ago and it was going through. Our accountability meetings also the guys, how do you? Get this information out. And this I showed them my my click up with whoa, hold on a minute. You’ve got it set up wrong because that’s the problem. Click. Oh yeah, very many different.
Chris Simmance (Host)
With the old garbage in, garbage out philosophy when it comes to these things.
Peter Jones (Guest)
Yeah, but what?
Chris Simmance (Host)
Isn’t it? They they.
Peter Jones (Guest)
Introduced me to as empire that I it’s a 50 page download I’ll spend. Christmas one. You know, one Christmas going through it and adapting, you know, all our colonies moving them over into this format and overnight it just made a massive difference. Another thing that we do is we we introduced traction the, the we we running that on 90 at the moment, but we’re actually considering what I’m meeting in a couple of weeks to try and merge that into click up as well. That’s also so yeah. So we’ve been introduced to all these other. All the areas of the. You know, for helping us grow.
Chris Simmance (Host)
That’s awesome. And and I and and the the traction stuff in particular. Like that? That’s. It’s a bit like from an agency point of view. It’s a bit like the the doodle moment. Where you kind of go.
Speaker
That’s what, that’s.
Chris Simmance (Host)
The right way to do it. This is amazing everyone.
Peter Jones (Guest)
Should be doing this what I found you know, as you can see, like a. Like reading books. I like understanding how to try and systemize processor and I found that it was. It was really difficult so. Feel how interaction when it’s on the shelf for years. But trying to put it into a format that actually made sense and then for the team to adopt was was was really challenging. So what we did is we. We go through traction team meetings and I was a little bit standoffish at at the time, so. I thought well. Did I? Should I? Is it just leaders or is it the whole team and I went? Do you know what? It’s let’s just do it as as the whole team, and then I’m sitting in the meetings and I’m honest with you. I’m going this cost me a lot of money into it. You know, I’ve I’ve got.
Speaker
8 or 10.
Peter Jones (Guest)
People in the room and hours. Of an hour of lost revenue, and I’ve and I’ve got lots and lots of sheets of paper, a A1 paper stuck all over the walls and I thought, how do I make sense of this? So we introduced 9090 dot IO and that. Really helped us put everything. Together and create scorecards for for them, and then we have these regular meetings. And then I’ve got bills now. You still have people coming in, you know, in in teams. We’re going today, actually, after this meeting and to to develop our plan for, you know our our. Next three years. Our next quarter two and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. Making sure that everything’s all in line. And then this the the challenge that you. Know the coming to the room. I’m. Going our productivity. But when they leave the room. I’m gonna be honest. I’m. I’m right going. I’m so pleased I brought.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Him in? Yeah. And. And. And that’s the thing it’s like. I don’t like it and I’m sure you don’t like it when you kind of see you’re seeing stuff happening all the time, but you’re not seeing the whole picture and then you get people that you trust who can who can do what they’re doing and they show you what they’re doing and you get what you you you are running this world. This is brilliant. This but.
Peter Jones (Guest)
What? What the biggest? Thing is, is is their idea is. It’s not my ideas, it’s their ideas. I’m just. I’m I am steering them where I wanted to go and I’m I’m just being open and transparent. What we’re. What we’re doing? And they’re coming up with the. Ideas. And they’re putting the systems and processes.
Chris Simmance (Host)
You know? Yeah. I mean, a captain, a captain sets the destination and very rarely steers the ship.
Peter Jones (Guest)
Right. Yeah, exactly. It’s like there this morning they’ve all over now and it’s just been doing the do the university just to. Make sure that they’re up. Because they’re sad. By the end of quarter one, they don’t have all. Their certification all done, and so they’re just. Back in short chunks of time out to and to do those sort of.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Awesome. And so is there something that you you did early doors when you set up the the agency that’s kind of set you up for this success now the the longevity is is obviously a a a result of of something you’ve done well early doors.
Peter Jones (Guest)
I think we, we, we networked a lot. Growing business on our local networking, but the problem that that came was we couldn’t scale the we couldn’t demand high. Hourly rate, you know, we’re not cheap. We don’t pretend to be cheap. We’re £120.00 an hour and I’m proud of that and lot of decisions as well, yeah. We’ve improved our efficiencies. But we can’t continue with that in in. Our local environment, so the. I think. I should have had a coach in earlier than than 1/2 done because I thought I could do it all myself. I found what I realised looking back is procrastinated quite a lot and I knew I wanted to do but I didn’t get the buying of the team and nobody holding me accountable for making sure that I was getting these things done. It was easy to do work in the business and work on the.
Chris Simmance (Host)
So if I said that’s a, that’s a hard thing to learn, right? Like, hey, Mr basically every single agency leader being the same ego driven person and you need to start thinking about other things that are not how amazing you are, but how many things you need to learn.
Peter Jones (Guest)
Yeah. One of the things we did we. You know I’m. I’m early 50s now and I want to be out by 60. So I want to sell this agency. But so. I had an idea of what exit looked like, and then I went to the coach and write it all down and realised actually his numbers not quite right. So we, we’ve. We’ve had to in this way another is what we bring them all in another set to the team, but you can either. And have a employee and trust so you can they can buy the agency out themselves and wait. Or if you prefer, they’ll be. We will go to you know, we’ll sell to another agency. And that’s well, we sort of looking at, you know, what does a an agency? Need to look like what? Our benchmarks and her out there, which is why we’re joined the mastermind group and that’s developed into. One-on-one on one as well, Mr Moran, one-on-one, accountability.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Well, the, the, the, the interesting thing is when you build an agency and you’re growing it and you’re in it all the time, obviously you get to that point when you start working on it, which is brilliant and it’s a bit of a watershed, but the building it. Cell’s perspective is is really difficult because you’ve got to think about the decisions you make that are right for your team and right for the business, but also are attractive to someone else and it’s not always just that you know the bank balance, but it’s it often is, but it’s it’s the the composition of the business and the types of clients that it it generates and things like that that. If you’re focusing in One Direction, you may end up accidentally making it really hard to exit in the long run, and you just don’t know it until you start speaking to coaches, mentors, and in masterminds and things like.
Peter Jones (Guest)
That that. That’s exactly right, we was. We was on the Rob track. And you know, we’ve not got enough recurring revenue. We know that. But there again we you know we build websites and but we we work. It we we. Having it, we’re. We’re changing how our systems and processes. To be able to book, sell more and and. It’s about 100 systems and processes people are buying are and other people when they’re looking at us in our eyes are going to be buying us. Those are the specialisms that we do and the systems and processes that we’ve got. So for the mechanical.
Chris Simmance (Host)
That’s awesome.
Peter Jones (Guest)
Still shipping, but we and we’ve got a long. Way to go, but we’re we’re on the road.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Oh, there’s no such thing as perfection. Come on. Peter well. So if there’s someone listening to this podcast now. And they’ve they’re they’re. Waiting and itching to hear you’re one piece of advice. They’re just about to start an agency and they’ve knocked on your door and they said, Peter, give me one bit of advice before I get going. What would it? What would it be?
Peter Jones (Guest)
Get a coach.
Chris Simmance (Host)
There. Well, I mean, and the MG centre is the perfect place to go and get a coach. Fantastic, yeah. Thanks very. Much brilliant. Cheers, Peter.
Peter Jones (Guest)
It’s gotta code. We we need you need. This is a well shredding path. One of our challenges was we’ve never none of us in our team worked for a larger agency before. So what does? The larger agency look like what is the? What should the EBITDAR be? What should the the profit be? What should the? You know the output, the utilisation scores be and and then how? How do we track them? How do we do that? Basically, in some ways, some people. Were going, it’s. It’s simple, yeah, because they know they’ve been. There we haven’t.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, and and well, nothing.
Peter Jones (Guest)
Designers pollinated look lovely colourful plants and their trousers and stuff like. And you know and. By encouraging them and bringing them into the into these meetings has helped them. A lot. So this is their idea, this is. Their great plan and they’re following and.
Chris Simmance (Host)
I mean, it is great, it is great advice and I think that the only kind of caveat to that advice is you should only ever get coaching or. To ship when you’re ready to listen to it, even if it’s right at the beginning, probably best, but you need to be ready to listen because it’s it. It it’s, you know, there’s no point in visiting the doctor and not taking the medicine. It’s it it it’s it’s hard enough to come to terms with not being perfect. What you think you’re perfect at or something like that? But if you’re trying to grow? And you’re not willing to listen to the supporting advice that you’re asking for, then then it’s not the right time to take on. A coach.
Peter Jones (Guest)
I think there’s when when the students ready. The coach would appear.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And there’s thing.
Peter Jones (Guest)
One of the biggest our home, our. Hard moments when I started the the. Face to face Coaching course was. I actually I went to, went to London and had a meeting, had a really good meeting come back. And I felt awful. Felt so bad, you know.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, yeah, you’ve been beaten.
Peter Jones (Guest)
Up. Yeah, absolutely. And then I realised what I’ve been doing. I’ve been there, struggling myself in my. Own 4 walls. Trying to get all trying to get it perfect. Money or the systems? Of processes in. And then I’d neglected myself. I’d neglected my my own body. I I didn’t do any exercise. I wasn’t. I was. Eating junk food and I was just focused on 100% trying to get it right. And then you’re out on a minute.
Chris Simmance (Host)
It’s almost not right.
Peter Jones (Guest)
Is it that? Has really helped me. Just just when they’re from the business and I came back. Sorting myself out.
Chris Simmance (Host)
That’s awesome and brilliant advice to win the podcast on, so thank you so much Peter for coming along.
Peter Jones (Guest)
Thank you for the opportunity.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Thanks a lot.
Peter Jones (Guest)
And it gets Nuggets out of this.
Chris Simmance (Host)
I I think people people probably will and and in our next episode we’ll be speaking to another digital agency leader to hear their story and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. But in the meantime, thanks very much for for listening everybody.