Voiceover 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:
Thanks, VoiceOverGuy, and on the podcast today we’ve got Tom from SEO Travel. Please tell me you’re there, Tom.

Tom Mcloughlin:
I’m here for now, Chris. Yeah.

Chris Simmance:
Oh, do

Tom Mcloughlin:
Let’s

Chris Simmance:
you,

Tom Mcloughlin:
see if the heat allows us.

Chris Simmance:
for those of you listening, this has been a bit of a laborious start because, um, whilst we’re recording it is the hottest day ever in the whole world. And there is a lot of thermal throttling going on Mac books. So, um, we, we’ve bared with, so hopefully, um, we’ll get there. We’ll get there, Tom perseverance. It’s a big part of an agency owner’s trait, isn’t it?

Tom Mcloughlin:
Absolutely, let’s give it a go.

Chris Simmance:
So, so Tom. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us a bit about SEO travel. How long have you been guys going? What do you do? You never know there could be a potential customer listening.

Tom Mcloughlin:
Absolutely. Yeah. Um, thank you for having me on. Uh, we are a specialist travel marketing agency. So yeah, we specialize in SEO initially as the clever name that I came up with when we started suggests, uh, since we’ve grown, we’ve been going for 12 years and we’ve kind of broadened into a, uh, a slightly broader marketing agency. We’ve brought in things like email marketing, web design and dev paid social PR, things like that. Um, we focus on. SME market. So love working with small and medium sized businesses. And yeah, that growth has kind of come from people basically asking us if we do more stuff when we did a good job doing SEO. So it’s happened relatively organically and naturally. But yeah, we like what we do.

Chris Simmance:
So SEO travel, but not only SEO, that makes sense. I can get behind that. Is it only travel though?

Tom Mcloughlin:
It is only travel. Yeah. We’ve had a few kind of little side projects that we’ve done along the way, particularly during the pandemic. Obviously travel wasn’t a particularly attractive place to be during the pandemic. So,

Chris Simmance:
much we’re going on though.

Tom Mcloughlin:
yeah, yeah. We, so yeah, so we, we’ve threw a few other things up and, yeah, kind of give us a bit of stability through that phase, but we’re still probably 90% travel in terms of the client base that we’re doing.

Chris Simmance:
12 years is a long time to running an agency and still have the smile that you’ve got there, Tom. So what do you think has been one of the biggest successes that you’ve had since you’ve been running the agency?

Tom Mcloughlin:
Yeah, the smile’s still there. The hair’s gone. Yeah,

Chris Simmance:
didn’t want to

Tom Mcloughlin:
the

Chris Simmance:
bring it up, you didn’t.

Tom Mcloughlin:
war wounds, they exist. Yeah, biggest success. Listen, yeah, listen, survival through the pandemic was a big one, but I think the impact that the pandemic had on us and me and the agency is the biggest success for me. We did a big pivot and change to the business model. coming out of coming out of COVID where we decided to give all the profit that we make to educational charities. Um, so we’ve been doing that for two years now. We’ve given 75 grand away over the, over the first two years, which we’re super proud of given we’re coming out of, out of a very tricky period for travel. Um, and then we’ve set ourselves a million pound target for the, for the tenure, the first 10 years that we do it. So eight years left on there on that timeline. So yeah, kind of. Everything else that we’ve done has kind of come downstream of that change. And yeah, like I say, super proud of the team and yeah, kind of how that’s,

Chris Simmance:
That’s

Tom Mcloughlin:
how

Chris Simmance:
amazing.

Tom Mcloughlin:
that’s unfolded.

Chris Simmance:
Yeah, I mean, and it’s a it’s a really nice thing to be doing. And it kind of not distracts but stops you from worrying about the past issues that the sector that you’ve been sort of focused on has had. Did you? I’m obviously during the pandemic, everyone had struggles and issues from a work point of view, but you literally focused on an area that couldn’t. work. Most businesses kind of understood that it was semi-temporary and things like that and kind of pursued the plans that they were focused on things like that. What was it that you kind of did that maybe kept clients on during the pandemic that would have otherwise gone, I’m off.

Tom Mcloughlin:
Yeah, we, so we, we were left with maybe 20% of the client base over the course of, you know, we were super flexible with how we work. So we’re always just on 30 day terms with people. So that flexibility is always kind of paid, paid well for us in the past and kind of built trust and, and in what we do. It was a bit of a challenge when people have got that flexibility. I think we would have done it anyway, to be honest, even if

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

Tom Mcloughlin:
we, even if people were tied in, because people were on the knees. As I said, we work with small businesses. We’ve got very personal relationships with the people that we work with. So trying to just be a support for those people through that period was very important. And we did a lot of kind of sort of free support off the back of that to try and help people.

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

Tom Mcloughlin:
You know, there was a lot, all sorts going on in travel just underneath the surface of actually people not being able to travel like lots of political movements that was not favored to the industry at all. Um, so just trying to be there for them and build some brand. And that’s definitely helped us, you know, now as we’ve grown over the last, over the last couple of years and come out of it. Um, like I said, we, you know, we did some things that were outside of travel to kind of keep the, keep the wheels turning in that, in that period. Um, the, the clients that stayed. there was a bit of a boom in the staycation market. So the ones that we had actually did really well from the following year. And then, yeah, like I say, those few of those clients that just kept us going outside to travel were really important in that period.

Chris Simmance:
Nice and forgetting the dramas of the pandemic, what was it that kind of got you in that travel niche in the first place?

Tom Mcloughlin:
Yeah, it was very accidental. So I wanted to be a writer originally and I worked in PR in London for a year or so. I kind of didn’t like it in London, it was during the financial crisis.

Chris Simmance:
I feel

Tom Mcloughlin:
I’ve

Chris Simmance:
really good at picking meat.

Tom Mcloughlin:
had a few crises along the way. So me and my now wife Claire, we moved back up north and I decided I wanted to pursue the writing dream

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

Tom Mcloughlin:
at that stage. All the writing jobs that I was going for were asking about SEO and I didn’t have a clue what SEO was, uh, and I thought I’d better go and find out what this SEO business is all about. So, uh, so I went and worked for an SEO agency, kind of got to grips with link building and the technical side of things, obviously I had the writing side of it as well that brought it, brought that into the fold and I started a travel blog, basically just writing about my travels, uh, alongside that. And the idea was originally, that was a portfolio for. My writing that when I went back to get a writing job, I’d be able to say, Oh, here’s a body of work that you’ve got. But that

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

Tom Mcloughlin:
morphed into a more like an SEO testing ground for what I was learning along the way and that picked up steam, got momentum. One day I just kind of turned around and realized that I’d got a travel site ranking really well. I had a good case study. I had some really good links. That was one

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

Tom Mcloughlin:
of the things that agencies back then were struggling with immensely and I could write. So yeah. It seemed like more fun than doing SEO for garden irrigation services and things like that.

Chris Simmance:
Yeah, I mean, as a niche, at least from a writing point of view, there’s a lot more, it’s nice to write about aspirational enjoyment and entertainment based stuff than, you know, logistics and all sorts of like products that aren’t that fun.

Tom Mcloughlin:
Absolutely.

Chris Simmance:
I remember we used to have a client, I hope they’re not listening at the minute, but they did pavements. uh, a real struggle to write articles

Tom Mcloughlin:
Hehehehehehe

Chris Simmance:
for them because after the, after the 10 reasons why you should have X type of pavement type content was dried up. Um, the, the 11 reasons to have this kind of pavement type content dried up quite a lot quicker as well after that.

Tom Mcloughlin:
Yeah.

Chris Simmance:
So it’s a, yeah, so at least with travel things change and, and trends change and things like that. So it’s nice. It there’s, there’s plenty going on and also people want to get involved in it. People

Tom Mcloughlin:
Absolutely.

Chris Simmance:
this part of our nature.

Tom Mcloughlin:
Yeah, like you say, you can keep going down the rabbit hole, whether you’re talking about countries, regions, cities, things to do. Yeah, there’s a never ending kind of keyword research job there that you can, you can go down a hole of.

Chris Simmance:
Exactly. So if you could go back in time, 12 years, speak to the younger, probably full head of head version of Tom, just as you’re setting up the agency, what advice would you give yourself?

Tom Mcloughlin:
I’d probably zone in on the people side of things. I think I never had a big plan when I went and did it. It was very much, I was at this age, like I said, the idea just kind of hit me around the face as being a bit too obvious to, you know, not to pursue. So I did it freelance for a little while and then it did quite well. And then it kind of reached a point where I thought I can’t keep doing what I’m doing on my own because there’s too much work to be done. So let’s hire some people. But for a long time, I had that freelancer mindset of, oh, just… kind of bring a person in and dish a few jobs out to them and, uh, yeah,

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

Tom Mcloughlin:
carry on that way. I think being able to trust people, give them clear guidelines on what to do and what needs doing, and then letting them go and go and run with it is, um, you know, I’ve discovered over the years, super important. And if you can get good people, the right people who align with your, your values and, you know, your mission and your, your purpose and things, then, um, I think that’s how. That’s how you scale a good business. And it took me a long time to kind of get my claws out of, I was doing quite well actually, getting rid of getting the claws out of things. And then yeah, COVID

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

Tom Mcloughlin:
here, and it just reversed everything to zone back in. So we actually, one of the big changes we made alongside the 100% initiative through COVID was, we changed to like being a self-managed organization. So we stripped the hierarchy out of what we do. And yeah, basically. passed over that responsibility and that accountability to everyone at an individual level, which was

Chris Simmance:
awesome

Tom Mcloughlin:
a releasing

Chris Simmance:
that’s

Tom Mcloughlin:
thing

Chris Simmance:
really

Tom Mcloughlin:
for

Chris Simmance:
awesome

Tom Mcloughlin:
people. Yeah, but it was very much a tool to sort of force me to let go so that I could always revert back to that and say, hey, it’s not my job to go and interfere there. That’s that person’s job. I’ll let them go and do what they want to do and how they want to do it.

Chris Simmance:
Yeah, it’s so getting the claws out, as you said, and that’s hard because it’s, you know, you built something, it’s yours and you love it and it’s your baby kind of thing. But I think you’re right. That is the right thing to do. If you want to build a business that stands the test of time, the leader needs to lead, not do. And, and, you know, you, you. I’m not saying you don’t do any of the work because it’s sometimes nice to do a bit of work here and there, but you show people. how to behave, you show people how this, the values that you all share are exhibited, you live the company, and then you see that other people will show more accountability and deliver better work and be happier doing so because they reap the personal, professional and financial rewards that all come from it, which is just, it’s easy enough for me to say it’s very hard for people to do, I struggled with it a lot as well. And I think that It’s really hard when it’s really easy to lead when the champagne is there. It’s really hard to lead when the punches in the face come.

Tom Mcloughlin:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s, listen, I don’t want to paint a picture of utopia. It’s like, it’s, it is hard. It is hard work. It is, it does take a lot of time and we’re still very much learning lessons along the way. But I, you know, I’ve seen enough over the last couple of years of individual growth in people who have joined the team, who are just doing incredible things that, you know,

Chris Simmance:
Hmm.

Tom Mcloughlin:
if, if someone was there, if a manager was there, just handing them tasks day to day and saying, do this, do that, there’s, there’s no way they’d be doing the things that they’re that they’re doing and encouraging everyone to be a leader. Basically, it’s giving everyone the scope to feel empowered and kind of really

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

Tom Mcloughlin:
take hold of whatever their role is and yeah, kind of craft it and do it in the best way possible and not feel like they’re stuck in the same old way of doing things. They have ownership over it and they’re the expert in what they do. And if they can see a better way to be able to, you know, to explore that and test it and see if it is a better way. And if it is great, we adopt it. If it’s not. revert back and yeah, kind of keep your eye out for other opportunities along the way.

Chris Simmance:
And that kind of trust in the team is often reciprocated as well, which, which then feels nice, you know, it feels nicer to run a business in that sense. Um, so is there anything that, um, that during the, the current life of the business, um, the, that you kind of did that you went, Oh, no, I won’t ever do that again, or, um, a mistake that kind of, it was a bit of a hard lesson, but it’s actually allowed you to get to where you are today.

Tom Mcloughlin:
Um…

Chris Simmance:
No, you’re perfect.

Tom Mcloughlin:
I, yeah,

Chris Simmance:
Bye.

Tom Mcloughlin:
we’ve done it all right. No, I think the, I think the short-term thinking is probably like my main challenge, like my main thing along the way that, like I said, it just kind of happened step by step. And there was, I never really stood back and said, hey, what are we trying to achieve here? What are we trying to do?

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

Tom Mcloughlin:
And yeah, again, COVID prompted that for me to, I was actually, I remember when I came up with the idea for the 100% thing was out for a run on the moor. just running along thinking, how can we do, what do I want from this? Like, yeah, this has been a real slog for the last six months, trying

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

Tom Mcloughlin:
to keep our heads above water. What are we doing it for? And I’d never really thought that way. It’d just been like, oh, this is what agencies do and get another client and get another client and hire another person. And it wasn’t until, yeah, that kind of that pandemic kind of hit forced, you know, forced the step back that I realized, yeah, I hadn’t thought about this longterm. view, it was always just what’s the next step. And, you know, there’s a, I think it’s Bill Gates’ quote about the, what you can achieve in one year versus what you can achieve in 10. And people get bogged down in the one year and never really think about the 10. And I think at that point I sat down and thought about the 10 and thought, yeah, Hey, we can do some cool stuff here. It’s, it’ll be tricky along the way, but, um, but you know, in 10 years, when we look back, it’ll be far better than if we just keep doing this small,

Chris Simmance:
Yeah,

Tom Mcloughlin:
small thinking.

Chris Simmance:
I think part of the education that people have, as they’re, you know, in most, most cultures, it is kind of the short term education, there’s, there’s always something coming up, there’s always something next, there’s always something that, whether it’s seasons, whether it’s something that you know, there isn’t a long view. And, you know, we would have never as a species gotten anywhere without a, with, if we didn’t have the ability to have a long-term view, you know, traveling on, on dangerous ships across dangerous oceans, kind of knowing where you might well be in six months time, it makes it a little bit easier to have a rough day at sea when you know it’s one day out of, you know, 300 that you’ve got to, got to get to a certain place. And having a long horizon or a long vision or a long view, it makes it a It doesn’t feel like so much of us are knocked, does it?

Tom Mcloughlin:
Yeah. And that’s the key, I think is it’s not, it’s not being locked into it. It’s kind of having, having the direction, knowing where you’re going,

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

Tom Mcloughlin:
having goals that are associated to that. But yeah, not being too tied into them. That, like you say, you can, if we’re going over this, we’re going forward, we’re going this way, but if we need a slight tip to the right or a slight tip to the left, because we’ve learned things along the way, then, then that’s

Chris Simmance:
That’s

Tom Mcloughlin:
super

Chris Simmance:
it.

Tom Mcloughlin:
important, you need to do that and change it up. So, um, so it has, you know, like I say, I’ve seen the impact it’s had on the team and, you know, But part of my role now, like you say, rather than being involved in the day to day is to, is to paint the picture for people is to give them that, give them that view as to what we’re aiming for both at an organisational level, but also at the kind of individuals level and what it, what

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

Tom Mcloughlin:
it means for them.

Chris Simmance:
That’s awesome. So conversely, other than mistakes, what’s something that you did like really early doors that’s still in the business still in like a big core part of how the business operates that you kind of did and you it was either an innate thing, an unplanned thing, but it’s actually really become a big part of the business now.

Tom Mcloughlin:
Um, the travel specialism is definitely one which yeah, was kind of by accident. Like I say, I didn’t do some big, uh, market analysis plan and, uh, see,

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

Tom Mcloughlin:
see which one I should go for. Um, I think the sort of personal touch I would say is still something that, you know, again, most agencies are probably a reflection of the people who own it and lead it and, um, I have always wanted to. know the people that I’m working with. I’m not corporate. I, you know, I don’t like that approach. I don’t, yeah, it doesn’t give, you know, get my juices flowing. And there’s a, I think there’s a risk as you grow that you start falling into corporate habits. And I definitely felt that, like, you know, even just down to like how I interacted on LinkedIn and things like that. It’s like, Oh, I’ve got to sort of be a professional. And I, I kind of clicked myself out of that and was like, ah, this isn’t who we are. This isn’t what it’s about. And that’s something that I definitely try to instill in the, in the team,

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

Tom Mcloughlin:
um, is when we’re talking to people, they’re just human beings. Like they’re just someone else who’s having similar problems, similar challenges to you. And you should always treat them that way. They’re not just a client. Uh, they’re yeah, they’re, they’re a person and that, that relates to the, the focus that we had on SMEs as well. Cause you know, we obviously with niche down to travel, but then. after, you know, we worked for a while with anyone who was in travel and we worked with some big enterprise level companies, jets who were just down the road in Leeds and we did some work with them and, um, all my experiences at that level were not a lot of fun. Like we, you know, bureaucracy red tape got in the way, the ideas that we had, the kind of fast move inside of things just all got nipped in the bud and we were just left with annoyances and going around in circles, trying to

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

Tom Mcloughlin:
tick boxes for people. So, um, so yeah, I think that’s something with. really rounded back in on that, that was a strength at the start that, yeah, trying to make sure that as we grow and the team grows, you know, that’s still at the heart of how everyone else interacts, which isn’t an easy job. Like people come with a lot of habits from other places where they’ve had that, that’s like, this is work, this is how it’s drilled into you to

Chris Simmance:
Yeah,

Tom Mcloughlin:
behave

Chris Simmance:
yeah.

Tom Mcloughlin:
when you’re at work. So yeah, it’s an ongoing, an ongoing process.

Chris Simmance:
It’s, um, but the good thing is if you, if you know who you are as a business, you know what you do and you know why you do it, then how you do it is not as hard to, to work out because you can have creativity, but people know what good looks like.

Tom Mcloughlin:
Yeah.

Chris Simmance:
And if they know what good looks like, then they can kind of do it essentially in their own way with their own approach, but within the bounds of this is who we are and what we do. And then it kind of means that when you, you know, you get a lead come in because you’ve done really good marketing, but they are not going to be a fit. It’s very easy to tell whether they’re not going to be a fit

Tom Mcloughlin:
Yeah,

Chris Simmance:
relatively quickly.

Tom Mcloughlin:
100%. Yeah, no, absolutely. We know. Yeah, exactly that. You’ve hit the nail on the head. We know when we’re speaking to people, if they’re going to be the right kind of client and, you know, when they aren’t the right kind of client, we tell them and it becomes pretty apparent on all on all fronts. And we don’t, you know, we don’t want to work with people if we’re not the best, the best choice for them. It’s when we’re having a conversation with people and we can see they really care about their business, like they’re into sort of that journey of moving things along. And, and it’s not just a

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

Tom Mcloughlin:
marketing person who will probably be at a different place next year, because they’ll just be bouncing around the career ladder and they’re ready to throw you under the bus at any, you know, any opportunity and then claim all the results for themselves. It’s, it’s, you know, we, most of the people that we work with are either, you know, owner led, or they have a kind of senior leadership person involved who has been there for a long time and is likely to continue to be there for a long time. And, you know, that relationship

Chris Simmance:
Yeah

Tom Mcloughlin:
grows and builds together with us.

Chris Simmance:
And that also lends itself to better hiring and people management process as well, in the same way as finding the right clients, doesn’t it?

Tom Mcloughlin:
100% yeah, the same things as with clients is when we’re hiring and people, you’re interviewing people and you know, you can tell five minutes into a conversation if this is going

Chris Simmance:
That’s

Tom Mcloughlin:
to be the right kind of person and if they’re

Chris Simmance:
it.

Tom Mcloughlin:
not. And that’s fine. It’s okay. You know, everyone’s different. And I think it’s the temptation and the risk is always that you, you know, you just grab what’s available at that moment in time and that’s, again, it’s quite a big switch that we’ve made recently. We’ve tried to put more emphasis on. Um, I guess, uh, a longer run in the recruitment process. So we’re not just hiring when we urgently need people. It’s more like, yeah, how can we engage in

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

Tom Mcloughlin:
build a community of people who know us and know what we do, and then when the fit is there and the requirement is there in the team, you can, you can open it as a conversation rather than a kind of like, here’s a job description. Do you take the boxes? Let’s, let’s get you in.

Chris Simmance:
Yeah, lovely. So someone is about to start up travel SEO, not SEO travel, they’re gonna compete on, but you’re a really nice guy. So they’ve come to you and they’ve asked for some advice. What one piece of advice would you give them on their beginning of their agency journey?

Tom Mcloughlin:
I would talk about purpose. I think, I think the change that we’ve seen since we introduced the hundred percent mission and, and goals and how we, how we go about that. It’s just completely changed the game for us on, on all fronts. It’s from the, you know, we’re talking about the people that we, that we, that we hire in the team again, when we’re, when we’re looking for people to join the team, they are. Engage with that as soon as they start talking about that, you can see that, oh, right, they’re into the same kind of things we are. When we talk about client, when we talk to clients, we can see that they’re, you know, interested in those kinds of things and have a similar goal or on board with it. Um, and I, and I think it’s something that’s just generally in the world and, and the job market and kind of how, what people are looking for from work. Like it’s just become much, much more important and, um, you know, just kind of. paying people a salary and expecting them to turn up just doesn’t

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

Tom Mcloughlin:
really cut the mustard. If you want to excel and you want to do great things, I think you’ve got to have something that they can get behind and everyone can, you know, kind of push to go and achieve something. I’m just reading at the moment, Seth Godin’s new book called Song of Significance. And I would recommend it to anyone. He talks about this in great detail and it’s, yeah, he paints a great picture of how it can work. I’m totally on board with all that stuff.

Chris Simmance:
I mean, that’s technically two pieces of advice, but

Tom Mcloughlin:
Hehehe

Chris Simmance:
I agree that they’re linked. They’re linked enough for you to skirt that one through. Um, thanks very much for coming along to the podcast, Tom. It’s been great talking to you and learning all about how you’ve built what you’ve built and it’s great to see a longevity, but be that it’s you’ve not gone 12 years and lost your, um, your care that started the whole thing off. You’ve not been jaded too much. So that should be something that as an agency owner taking, uh, like resilience is really key. And if you’re starting a business or you’re early into your agency journey, when you get those knocks, those first knocks or a few knocks in a row, don’t think it’s forever. It there’s always a, there’s always an out if you know where you’re going.

Tom Mcloughlin:
Absolutely. Yeah. The resilience thing is big. I think probably people have said it a lot on, you know, in your previous interviews.

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

Tom Mcloughlin:
And that is super important. If you want to start out, you’ve got to be ready for the bumps along the way. But yeah, if you stick with it, it’s a good ride.

Chris Simmance:
Yeah, it’s a good rollercoaster. Champagne on the way up, punches in the face on the way down.

Tom Mcloughlin:
Yeah.

Chris Simmance:
Thanks so much for coming on, Tom.

Tom Mcloughlin:
Pleasure. Thanks for having me. Cheers, Chris.

Chris Simmance:
And in our next episode, we’ll be speaking with another agency leader to hear their story and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. And thanks very much for listening