Chris Simmance:
Thanks voiceover guy and on the podcast today we’ve got Chrisception. We have Chris, how you doing?

Chris:
Very good. Thank you

Chris Simmance:
Welcome to the podcast. Um, how’s your week been so far? We’re recording this on a Friday. It will be going out on a Wednesday. So all those people who are stuck in Wednesday hump day mode, um, how’s Friday for them?

Chris:
Yeah, Friday’s looking good, guys. Don’t worry. The

Chris Simmance:
Yeah,

Chris:
sun is still shining.

Chris Simmance:
you’ll get

Chris:
Weekend’s

Chris Simmance:
there.

Chris:
almost

Chris Simmance:
Yeah,

Chris:
there. Yeah.

Chris Simmance:
exactly. Exactly. So Chris growth animals, how long have you been running?

Chris:
We’re just coming up to three years old.

Chris Simmance:
Three, good year. Tantrums, things like that. All sorts of things

Chris:
Oh exactly,

Chris Simmance:
going on, you know,

Chris:
yeah

Chris Simmance:
yes. Brilliant.

Chris:
I can really relate it to my kids to be fair.

Chris Simmance:
So it’s been running for three years. You’ve got a co-founder or a business partner, haven’t you?

Chris:
Correct, yes. I’ve got a co-founder named Jen and we had worked together before, so we’d worked as client-side marketeers at the Goodwood Estate. So I was head of marketing, she was the most senior member of my team, and we had five enjoyable years working there together. But as many people do, we kind of came to a point where we thought, maybe we should do something different now. And so we came up with the crazy idea of starting Growth Animals.

Chris Simmance:
Brilliant. And I guess having done a significant amount of time working together, that kind of means that you kind of got each other, if that makes sense, beforehand. Most co-founders kind of knew each other before, but they’re probably friends, as opposed to work colleagues and friends. So you kind of understood how each other worked from a work point of view, didn’t you?

Chris:
That’s absolutely right. Yeah. Because to be fair, Jen had always referred to me as her work husband. And there were many sort of times where we talked about this concept of how we can work seamlessly together and have, you know, slightly at times tempestuous discussions about things that arrive at a good destination because we’ve kind of maxed out on each other’s emotional bank accounts. So we don’t mind taking a few

Chris Simmance:
emotional

Chris:
bits

Chris Simmance:
bank

Chris:
out. Yeah.

Chris Simmance:
accounts, we need to talk about that on another episode. That’s, that’s cool. So, so three years, um, tell, tell the listeners a little bit about the business. How do you work? What, what is it that you as an agency deliver?

Chris:
Yeah, so we call ourselves the ethical marketing agency. And essentially the idea behind that is that we feel that good marketing should grow a business’s bottom line and positive impact in tandem. And so when we are working with our clients, we’re often having, again, you know, constructive discussions around what’s the marketing, what’s the messages that we can put out there that are going to be helpful and inspiring to consumers rather than. intrusive or manipulative. And it comes from a place where, you know, one of the motivations behind this was that Jen and I had become quite disenchanted with the world of marketing when we worked for various big organizations. I’d been in Carlsberg for nine years, internationally before that, she’d been in luxury fragrances for nine years. And we’d often experience this whole idea where the pressures of shareholders or owners… comes down on marketeers and good marketeers end up doing slightly unethical tactics. And I think it’s seen in the fact that marketing as a profession is often looked at with a slight tinge of cynicism from those outside it because they do

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

Chris:
see it as being slightly irritating, slightly unethical.

Chris Simmance:
Isn’t it, isn’t it ironic though that good marketing and good marketeers influence the decision making of quite a lot of people that still think it isn’t powerful or useful or quality. They, you know, they’re, they’re trope of the coloring in department type thing

Chris:
Yeah.

Chris Simmance:
is, it’s still a thing.

Chris:
It is.

Chris Simmance:
Um, like, uh, in digital as well, especially I’ve spoken with people where They’re multi-million pound businesses and they think that, you know, just doing something on the website is fine because it takes two minutes to do. Um, but it does take months to plan. Um, the, the switch flipping isn’t, isn’t that hard, but the decision-making, the planning and all that sort of stuff. And, and the uptops and the shareholders in these companies, they, they’ve got one thing in mind and it’s the value of the share. Um, and that then means that. all OKRs are all, accountabilities are tied to that. And like you say, sometimes things get done that most people wouldn’t be comfortable with. So that’s your kind of your focus there, like kind of don’t say yes to stuff sometimes.

Chris:
Exactly. Like a classic example is we’ve got a, we’ve got a client we were working with for a couple of years now. And, um, in October last year, they were, they sort of came to us and said, Oh, by the way, what should we do for Black Friday this year? And we just kind of had a good conversation with them. We said, well, why do you feel like you need to be playing in it? And is it actually the right representation for your brand? You’re actually a premium brand. You have this great sort of reputation, particularly within your local area. So have a think about what that’s doing to it by playing within this slightly grubby territory. And so, yes, they decided against it. And it’s little things like that where I think we can over time start to influence a better way of marketing.

Chris Simmance:
Yeah, it’s a similar kind of thing. And obviously not to get into the realms of like politics of stuff, but some businesses will kind of force teams to change their logos on Pride Month and all that sort of stuff when it doesn’t fit. And sometimes that isn’t for good reason.

Chris:
Yep.

Chris Simmance:
Fine for good reason, absolutely fine for the right reasons. But when you see a random brand that is not associated or not historically associated in a positive light with these sorts of things, sort of making a faux grab for some tiny bit of extra attention and this isn’t ethical. So it’s a nice place to be in. What do you think has been one of the biggest successes that you guys have seen in the last three years?

Chris:
I think for us, it’s that message has started to come through really nicely. So when we started, I think like many businesses, many agencies, the type of work we got was linked to effectively mine and Jen’s back catalog of category experience, whereas lately we’ve been getting a lot more work based upon this value fit of ethical marketing and impact marketing. And so the quality, the type of work we’re doing now is a lot more. Um, exciting, motivating than it was back in those earlier days.

Chris Simmance:
Nice. And, and, and like, it is true. Like when you start any agency, you, you do your line in the sand, like, hi mom, I’m this thing now. The flag goes up and a few leads come in from your network and from your friends and from people you’ve worked with before. And then over time, the, the referrals that you then get will be from the work that you’ve done. The marketing that you do will be the thing that generates the leads and obviously don’t rely on referrals forever because that won’t last. But. have a good set of clients and you’ll get referrals all the time, but build a business on referrals and it’s a small business. But if you, if you stick to your guns, you know, your value proposition and everything like that, and the language you speak is the same the entire time, then people will notice and then the right people will come along. It’s really hard to do that. It’s good to hear that you’ve kind of set a, um, a value proposition like really early. It doesn’t often happen with, with agencies when they’re, when they’re young. Should we say,

Chris:
Yeah, and it’s a good point around sticking to it. And because to be really honest, you know, there’s been times certainly in sort of year one and year two where we thought, has this been the wrong thing to do? Because it doesn’t feel like it’s getting us much business or much traction. So it’s interesting. Yeah, we did a white paper for one of the better words last year around the subject and interviewed a number of really impressive leaders who were… sort of showing the way of how to do marketing the right way. And off the back of that, we actually got a couple of bits of work. And even though they weren’t the largest pieces of work, it was so satisfying to get it via that route finally. And now we’re starting to see that approach of doing that content marketing, thought leadership marketing, whatever you want to call it,

Chris Simmance:
Say

Chris:
but

Chris Simmance:
it.

Chris:
being really consistent in the approach to it is starting to bear some fruit,

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

Chris:
but you do have to have the patience behind it, unfortunately.

Chris Simmance:
And the funny thing is, in agency world, it doesn’t move as quickly as everyone thinks, but it does move at pace. It’s just the consistency that you need to keep that then means the course is stayed, which is really good to hear. So if you go back three years into the past and you in general having your first incorporate conversation, what advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

Chris:
I think the main piece of advice I’d give to us then was to really be confident around our value that we have to offer. Because really, you know, we were coming out of successful careers, we had really good roles, we had really good reputation. But there was a natural sort of imposter syndrome that came in as soon as we were now agency leaders of, do we really know what we’re doing? Are we credible enough to charge X day rate? And so we naturally found ourselves, I wouldn’t say discounting, but we were offering our services at a rate that probably we would never dream of doing now. And it meant that we ended up doing smaller, bittier bits of work that took more time and distracted us from getting the better stuff.

Chris Simmance:
Yeah, it’s funny, I often consider imposter syndrome to be the opposing force to the Dunning-Kruger effect. And I think that the majority of people who have imposter syndrome are actually ironically the people who shouldn’t. And the people that don’t have imposter syndrome really are. And,

Chris:
Hehehe

Chris Simmance:
you know, it’s all well and good to sort of question yourself, because if you are, then you know, you’re being honest and fair. Um, but the downside is, especially when, when you, when you’re starting an agency, it’s, it is a case of, Oh, maybe because we’re new, we shouldn’t be doing this, but we want, we think we should do this. Cause that makes sense based on all of our other experience, but no one gives a damn about that because we’re a brand new agency and the next thing, you know, like you say, you’ve got 15 projects instead of five, and you’re running around all the time in meetings and calls. And you’ve got documents to put together that you haven’t yet got the templates for and everything like that. And it’s very

Chris:
Yeah.

Chris Simmance:
hard to, um, to manage. So. Do you think that three year ago version of you will have listened to that advice or do you think you just still gone? We better just say yes to some cash.

Chris:
Probably wouldn’t have listened, no.

Chris Simmance:
Yeah,

Chris:
Ha ha ha.

Chris Simmance:
it’s funny. I don’t think I was saying just before the call, this is recording like 97 or something like that. And I’m pretty sure that about 97% of that 97 people have also said that they wouldn’t listen to themselves.

Chris:
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Chris Simmance:
It’s funny because, you know, situationally at the time, three years ago, that’s how you were and that’s how you thought. And if you did see a three, a version of yourself three years into the future, beyond going, oh, my God, you’ve gone gray. You kind of. You would hope that you’d listen to yourself, but actually

Chris:
Yeah.

Chris Simmance:
you’d still be very much entrenched in the situation that you’re in, so it’s pretty quite hard.

Chris:
I think you would. And I think there’s a certain degree of you do have to go through that pain a little bit to come out the other side and know what is the right way.

Chris Simmance:
Yeah, sound

Chris:
We

Chris Simmance:
to

Chris:
had

Chris Simmance:
me the best.

Chris:
we had people telling us those things back then, but we didn’t listen then. So, you know,

Chris Simmance:
Yeah. The thing is, sadly, the best lessons are often the hard ones.

Chris:
Yeah.

Chris Simmance:
And the hard ones in business either cost time or money. And both of those costs stress. But you can’t learn. You can’t just learn by reading. And there’s a million books on everything. Like you’ve got kids. There’s you probably when your partner got pregnant, I suspect someone at some point bought a baby book. whether it be a gift or not. And the second the baby came along, this baby book made no sense because it was totally different.

Chris:
Yeah, yeah.

Chris Simmance:
All of these agency books, most of the how to build a business books, they make sense functionally, but they don’t make sense in the real world. So you’ve got to learn, the situation is the situation at the time and how you handle it is fine no matter what. The lesson you take from it and how you handle it in a similar situation the next time. That’s the key.

Chris:
Yeah, exactly, exactly right.

Chris Simmance:
So is there anything that you kind of wish you’d done sooner that you’re doing now and it’s kind of working really well?

Chris:
I do wish we’d stuck to our guns more around what we are experts at and what we’re not. So, funnily enough, in the early stages, we were very clear about this, but then veered quite quickly and we’re back here again. And so obviously I talked about the ethical marketing positioning, but what we actually do, what our bread and butter is, is brand strategy. We are brand strategists at heart, so we can help to… effectively elevate the brand, bring it to life, whether that be with visual identity, with messaging, et cetera. But we also, as many do, have a couple of members of our team and of course an extended network who can then make some of that come to life through digital marketing or whatever it might be. But we’re very clear that the brand strategy, that is our heartland, that is what we are best at. And then we have solutions, some of them might include us, but some of them might be handing back to the client, referring other agencies on the delivery side. But in those early days, we were too easily sort of tempted to stray into territories that we weren’t the experts in because

Chris Simmance:
Mm.

Chris:
it felt like it was, obviously it was more money, but it also felt like it was worth the shot to see whether we could go that way. But actually what we’ve learned is, no, be really clear from day one about what you’re best at, what your niche is, for want of a better word as well. and hero that as much as you can.

Chris Simmance:
So conversely then, is there something that you, as you started up, that you did kind of write off the bat? Is there something that’s kind of stuck throughout that has helped you get to here?

Chris:
I think our brand proposition, so the ethical marketing piece and the other thing that we always talk about when we speak to prospective clients is the fact that we’ve come from this client side background, so we’ve been there, done that, got the t-shirt, we understand your pain points. Those have been two consistent messages that have been there from day one and have never really faltered.

Chris Simmance:
Yeah. And, and in the, and I think that’s probably because, you know, it’s actually a piece of you. Like, you know, when

Chris:
Yes.

Chris Simmance:
you build a proper proposition like that, you don’t just do it lightly. It’s very easy to say it’s hard to do. And, and, you know, anyone can write something on their website. It’s very hard to actually know that that’s what fits you. I work with a lot of agencies that we accelerate the growth of an agency and what often happens is you look at it and well, one of the big bottlenecks is you don’t know who you are and who you’re selling to and what you’re selling to them and you have to work that out before you can run headlong into a bunch of sales. Because if you don’t have that, then it’s really hard to do much more. I think

Chris:
Yes.

Chris Simmance:
that, you know, if you… If you know that upfront and you knew that in the beginning and you stuck to it throughout, then it’s definitely the right thing for you.

Chris:
Yeah, yeah.

Chris Simmance:
Unless all of a sudden everyone hates being ethical, then you run to a winner. Stick with it.

Chris:
Hehehehe

Chris Simmance:
So someone’s been listening to this podcast, they’re thinking about setting up an agency right now and they’ve come to you, they’ve knocked on your door and they’ve said, hey Chris, give me some advice. What would you give them? What piece of advice?

Chris:
So yeah, definitely almost to what you just said is really have a think about who you are, what’s your proposition that’s gonna come through in your agency, what makes you special. So almost do the classic Simon Sinek start with why exercise, understand your why, what’s your purpose, and make sure that does come through in everything that you communicate. And then those sort of more. Practical things that we kind of touched upon of knowing your value sticking to your value Don’t go too cheap unless you really have to

Chris Simmance:
Yeah.

Chris:
and Yeah, being consistent be consistent

Chris Simmance:
consistency, that’s a one, that’s a big one. Regardless of anything you do, be consistent.

Chris:
Yes. Ha ha ha.

Chris Simmance:
I often say, you know, the following the checklist thing sometimes works if you can make it work, it’s hard, because you can follow the checklist in the book and all that sort of stuff, but if you make a list of all the things that you can do, then you make a list next to it that’s all the things that you can do that you enjoy doing. And then you make a list next to it. There’s all the things that you can do that you enjoy doing that someone will pay you well enough for.

Chris:
Mmm.

Chris Simmance:
The third list is the shortest of the lists and then that becomes the right now that who do I like working with? Who

Chris:
Yes.

Chris Simmance:
do I like working with that buys these things? Who do I like working with that buys these things that pays this much? And then you’re getting on the verge of getting towards where that could be.

Chris:
Yeah,

Chris Simmance:
Then

Chris:
it’s

Chris Simmance:
you

Chris:
a

Chris Simmance:
just

Chris:
really good

Chris Simmance:
add

Chris:
exercise.

Chris Simmance:
yourself to it.

Chris:
Yeah.

Chris Simmance:
It takes a lot longer than I’ve just said, but it is really good because it helps. Like once you know that your language changes, your elevator pitch changes, everything you say changes, and it feels a lot more comfortable to talk about your business.

Chris:
Yes, exactly.

Chris Simmance:
So thanks very much for coming on the podcast, Chris. It’s been great to talk to you. Two Chris’s on one podcast is probably the best one I’ve had. Sorry to all the other guests, but none of you are called Chris. So. Thanks very much for coming, mate.

Chris:
Thanks for having me, it’s been a pleasure.

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