V.O. 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 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.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Thanks voice over guy and on the podcast today, we’ve got Hannah Thorpe again from Verkeer. How are you?
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Hey, good. Thank you. Thanks for having me back. How are you?
Chris Simmance (Host)
I’m. I’m. I’m good. I’m good. We. I was just thinking that it’s been just over a year since we recorded the last podcast. And and I think last year we were having connexion issues and you had to actually dial in from your phone which made the recording quite quite interesting. So let’s hope that we. Don’t have any issues. Now we’ve started recording this time.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
You really styled it out that it wasn’t hard work for you to edit and that it was fine my technical incompetency. So sorry.
Chris Simmance (Host)
It took me 4 times longer than it took to record.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Perfect.
Chris Simmance (Host)
It’s OK. Only three people listen to it. So for anyone who’s been a bit naughty and hasn’t listened to your first episode in season one, can you just let them know A who you are and B who viqueira and what you guys do?
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Yeah, of course. So I am Hannah Thorpe. I am the Managing director at an agency that is called the. Care for those of you. That aren’t fluent in Dutch. The care means try. Sick and that’s what we’re really all about. Building businesses, helping you with your digital problems. And we like to talk about it that we deem mystify digital. So we hopefully make it easy to understand and we do that through offering consultancy as CEO paid search and paid social services.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Lovely. And that hasn’t changed a huge amount since last year, which means you’re on focus.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Yeah. Still achieving the same things perfect.
There we go.
Chris Simmance (Host)
How much? How much surge have you demystified? In the last year. Quite a lot.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Some would say too much. Yeah, a lot. And actually, I think what we’re saying like the way the market is changing like we’re just finding a lot more demand for like straight talking help in digital lift is great because that’s definitely how our agency communicates. So we’re glad to see that happening.
Good, good, good.
Chris Simmance (Host)
So over the last 12 months, there’s been a lot of things that have I I’ve I’ve seen, we’ve spoken a few times in the last year about, you know, about agency life. What? What’s one of the kind of the the major changes or developments that’s happened in the agency in the last 12 months? What have you adapted to or built into the business?
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
God, you know. What agency life is so short time? Every example I can think of is things we’ve done in like the last two weeks, which is just horrifying. Isn’t it? I would say as a general theme, what we’ve done is actually we’ve shifted our structure a little bit to enable our managers to choose their ratio of client facing work versus specialisms. OK. So we’ve really like leaned in on the fact that some people are. Technically brilliant, but still want to talk to clients, but not as much as somebody else. So if you want to be 20% client facing an 80% delivery, you can. And if you want to be 60% at client facing with 40% in hip rate, you can and we’ve kind of built a resourcing structure that really works for that. And I think what we’ve seen is that’s really helped our hiring and recruitment because actually people do want the flexibility to kind of define their own role and for as long as we can make that up work and we have a system where it works we. Really love to offer that to people.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And and I. Think something that you’ve clearly forgotten that you’ve done in the last year is you’ve put an awful lot of effort, I think as an agency into defining that outward narrative. I think you’ve been through site redesign not only just as a basic. Like you know. Make it look pretty, but you’ve also kind of done some narrative work around that. And I think that plus some focus on how you deliver your account management is there’s quite a lot of work.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Yeah, we actually we. Did an external workshop, which if you run an agency I would so recommend getting someone separate. In to help you with it.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Set of eyes is often often what what the doctor ordered, isn’t it?
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Yeah, it’s madness. And being told like you’re a liar. Like our person just laughed at the values we had, cause she was like, those are not what you follow. Like your values are actually better. They’re cooler than that. They’re clearer. They’re stronger in your business. So, yeah, I think that external set of eyes and then we really that was probably around the time we recorded. Last time and then. We spent a year really executing on that and seeing that kind of come through our work. And now in our one to ones like people actually their your manager sits and says to you like how are you fulfilling those values that we all define. You get that you can’t get promoted unless you can prove you’re fulfilling them. Yeah. And they’ve really become part of everything we do, which has really helped.
Chris Simmance (Host)
It it does, it does make a big difference cause everyone can. Everyone comes from a different place with different education, with different skill sets, with different backgrounds, everything slightly different. Even if you grew up in the same house, like brothers and sisters, everyone’s different and and if you can create a shared set of values, it doesn’t mean your actual personal values aren’t as important. But there’s something which as a. As a team, you can share a small amount of something which you all believe and and hold true so it makes it a lot easier, doesn’t it? To well hire, keep traction and also sadly if you need to.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the way we built our values and what was really important to us was having flexibility within them for people to still have what matters to them. So one of our values is ambition and the way we always talk about it is winning and not at all costs. We’ve recently hired some team members who are parents. And for them, like their win is actually being able to make sure they’re on time for the school run at 2:00. 45.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, I mean, I laugh, but it is really, really important.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Yeah. And like for us. So we’re happy, like if that member of the team gets out the door to pick up their kid on time and then sons, they get back. To work and. Finish their day later, like we have no issue. With that and. Being able to support our team in that way and you not be told you’re undermining the value. Cause I think so. Often a business could look at someone like that and say, well, you’re not ambitious. Yeah, but they. Are they just have different goals in life and they’re hitting those goals? In a different way.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Absolutely. And. And I guess outside of the agency, as you know, having two fingers firmly on the pulse of the industry, the industry has changed a lot in the last year, not just with like normal updates from Google and and and Google Ads and all sorts of things like that, but more widely speaking technologically as well and how have you seen the industry? Evolve in the last year and what stuff are you actively avoiding and what stuff are you actively adapting to?
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
This is such a difficult question. By the time you publish this, my answers might be different, so we’re having meetings for what we call internally, the K 3.0.
Chris Simmance (Host)
That’s fine.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Which is kind of a refresh of like how we approach our services, how? We talk about what we do. Based on the changes we’ve seen in the industry. That we can prep for. What kind of next year might look like, and although where we’re headed and actually really interestingly, where we’ve kind of settled is. We think you should ignore a lot of the industry changes, which I know sounds crazy, but like stuff like ChatGPT and all the AI tech we’re like, it’s really, really cool. And like from a nerd perspective, love it. But from a business perspective, like it’s just an additional tactic as a way to. Execute what needs to be a good strategy so everything we do is based on having a really robust strategy and a strategy that’s underpinned by, like hopefully some excellent SEO knowledge and paid search knowledge, but also like sector knowledge. And I think you would be silly to neglect what you know about a business sector. What you know about an industry in place of here’s a really shiny, exciting tactic. Let’s base the whole approach on it. And like, yeah, we’ve had clients be approached by agencies that are like, let me give you our AI strategy like it’s not a strategy guys. It’s just a way of doing things that will.
Click count.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Be quicker. Exactly. So I think for us it’s about like seeing through the noise as to is it actually changing or is it just changing how you execute? And for us, we don’t want to make business changes that are based on a tactical tool. We want to make business changes that are based on an industry trend like something changing in the market rather than. Just a way to make things quicker.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, I yeah, I I think there’s there’s aspects of things which you could you can probably in the business immediately see are useful for the tool. But if you built your business around it. Crikey. Yeah. So. Those sorts of changes have obviously you, you put a lot of effort into the last 12 months, you’ve the business itself has developed. The agency itself has changed. The industry itself has changed. What do you think about, you know, personally slash well when you’re running an agency, personal and professional kind of into intertwined quite, quite significantly. How do you feel? And from a personal slash professional growth point of view that that, that you’ve changed in the last year?
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
My teams have.
Chris Simmance (Host)
You’re perfect beforehand, as I guess. Is that what?
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Today I think my team would tell you a lot’s changed. I think like we’ve really as leaders in the care double down on working with our coaches a lot more in understanding kind of how we communicate and we always call it how we get off the roller coaster. Like when you’re running an agency, you have the best day and then promptly followed by like 3 days of Hell.
Speaker
Hmm hmm.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
No, and I think like.
Chris Simmance (Host)
You can get addicted to that.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
I think we both were and then we were like not sleeping and like, everyone’s exhausted. You can’t fight off any illness. Like it’s the worst and I think what we’ve really worked on is like how to not be on the roller coaster and actually sit at a more moderate level. So we’ve introduced them some processes for that, that have really helped. It’s like we don’t make a decision or talk about something a team member does unless it happens consistently, yeah. So like if you are late one day I don’t have a rage about it either to you. Or by myself. Depending on what my execution would be of that like you can’t mention it or think about it. Until it’s maybe happened like three or four times in a row, that’s when you’re, like, hold on. That’s not cool. And I think we’ve really shifted the business so that we focus on that with clients as well. There has been consistency to whether we’re happy and a consistency to whether we’re stressed about it. And that’s really just helped kind of moderate like make our reactions more moderate. And then with our reactions being more moderate, I think we’re making better slower. Decisions, rather than trying to rush and do 50 things at once because we’re not being so.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, I think that’s one thing that that it’s very difficult to to learn is to slow down decision making because things do happen quickly in agencies, but not that quickly that it’s worth the entire agencies value if it doesn’t go well and there’s stuff you can make quick decisions because. It’s very easy. You’ve got all the information you’ve had, the experience, etc. When there’s a proper decision to be made. You couldn’t take the time.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Yeah, exactly. And like otherwise, you’re just going to be changing your mind on it because as well, I think. As agency owners like there’s a tendency to not even let a decision bed in before you’re saying we should move on and do something different. And and we’re really like big now and having that test period and like, let’s do this for three months and then see where we end up rather than two days later freaking out about it.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Completely agree with you. What do you think? So quick fire question. Best thing in the last 12 months?
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
The best thing actually would be. If it’s so hard to pick one, I think the team our team development has really improved. I am surrounded by a great group of people who I can trust with pretty much anything.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Hmm, that’s really important.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Yeah, like sometimes they do stupid **** like sofas, wearing again like they leave gone off. Milk in the fridge, in the office. And I think they’re all children. But then other times it’s there’s just moments of brilliance. And I think knowing that we are all pushing to the same goal and that I can trust, they’ll make the best decision for the business is. Really, really important. And it outweighs all the other like day-to-day things that are annoying when you kind of have that fundamental trust that they wouldn’t let the business down.
Chris Simmance (Host)
I think you can tell where this is going. Worst thing in the last 12 months.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Oh, I would say recruitment just across the board. We have made some dodgy hires. Frankly, the market was questionable.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Just went with what was there.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Yeah, I think we made some decisions that went against our business values. When it comes to recruitment and like we just shouldn’t have done it, we should have been like, do they? Fulfil what we. Need rather than, are they a good specialist? I think we forget that it’s so easy to teach, like the digital stuff that we do. You can teach someone. See how I’m paid search, but you can’t teach attitude and personality and values.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And knowing those values which you’ve worked hard on and hiring based on those values and assessing attitude as well as you possibly can do is the best you can possibly do when it comes to hiring and it’s not, it’s it. It gets less and less as you’re more and more used to used to. Uncomfortable with that kind of feeling, but. You’ll there’s always. You will always hire someone who does really well in the interviews. Becomes really highly recommended and does well in interviews. That’s really well in interviews, comes highly recommended, and spends 3 months being excellent, and then they’re not. It it just happens, so don’t beat yourself up on that one. But I’m pretty sure anyone who’s listening to this podcast who’s running an agency has had a few duds in the last year.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Yeah, it just comes to all of us.
Chris Simmance (Host)
So what would you say, all things considered that we’ve you know, we’ve discussed around the the the Agency, what what would what would be something that you. Would say is it like a core focus for the business in the next year if we speak in season 3A year’s time? What’s the core focus?
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
So our core focus is to underpin everything that we’re doing with a pragmatism about the businesses that we work for. We work across some odd sectors and we need to understand like as specialists, when our channel isn’t as important as their brand. And and starting to like, actually make sure that everything we’re doing is underpinned by kind of business sense. Is this commercially viable like with entering well, we avoided a recession, didn’t we? But we’re basically in economic crisis. Like, let’s not be trying to sell people’s jazzy content marketing campaigns with zero KPI’s against them that have commercial value because it’s not the right time. And let’s focus on the things that help for the actual day-to-day of the business.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Makes perfect sense, so let’s hope that there’s been some pragmatism in 12 over the next 12 months when we speak next. Hopefully. Thank you so much for coming for a second time round, Hannah.
Hannah Thorpe (Guest)
Awesome. Thanks so much for having me.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And in our next episode, we we will revisit another agency leader and see how their last year has been. So thanks very much for listening.