Chris Simmance:
Hello hello everyone. How you freya? How are you doing?
freia:
Hi, I’m good. How are you, Chris?
Chris Simmance:
Not too bad. I’ve gotten over the initial personal pain of you using lightning strikes on a router to
freia:
Oh god,
Chris Simmance:
get
freia:
stop,
Chris Simmance:
out of doing
freia:
no.
Chris Simmance:
this recording.
freia:
No, your listeners do not need to know about our techie juice. This is take three just to give you a flavor.
Chris Simmance:
We try, we’re persevering,
freia:
Try
Chris Simmance:
aren’t
freia:
it.
Chris Simmance:
we? We’re very good at that.
freia:
Yep.
Chris Simmance:
Freya, thank you very much for coming on. Welcome to the podcast. First of all, for everyone listening, can you just give everyone a bit of a rundown of like who you are, where you come from, well, professionally and personally, obviously, and you know, what you get up to.
freia:
Yeah, so, well, thanks for having me, first of all. I am an agency consultant and I have been doing this for just about a year and a half. So I help agencies of all sizes really with their strategy delivery, operations, efficiencies, leadership. And I basically, I didn’t fall into it, but I stepped into self-employment after 12 years of doing agency side. So when I came to England first, I’m from Germany originally, I started a job in a lovely agency in Leeds. I think we were eight people at the time and I was brought in to set up what used to be called an off-page SEO department. So for those of you who have been in the industry for a while, this is now called content marketing or digital PR or whatever you want to call it. And at the time there was a huge trend. with brands and clients basically to do that kind of work. So we grew very fast and I grew that team from basically just me to a hundred people at some point. So that was content creation, design, outreach, PR. We had an international team, we had tons of freelancers. So it kind of became a bit of a beast at some point. So at that time I learned to love and to hate scaling and managing teams and everything that comes with it. And then later I moved into more of a strategic role with the board of directors. And I was responsible for taking our strategic goals and delivering them in the agency. So I had to work with the senior leadership team, all the heads of departments and the board of directors to make sure that our growth plans would become reality. And basically those four or five years of doing that really triggered the idea of becoming an agency advisor. And I kind of cover both. things now with agencies, the operational team scaling side of things, and also the strategic, how do you bring your strategic goals from the whiteboard into the agency? So change management delivery of the strategy overall. So I kind of, I cover both bases.
Chris Simmance:
listeners this is why you can tell I’m very happy that Freya is an OMG agency advisor. A wide range of experience, very good at what you do and I think that having the actual experience working in an agency as well as on agencies is really key because you know you can go into an agency now and you can see and probably empathize with how everyone in the will feel when changes are happening and you know that operational delivery of a strategy affects people and you know you need to make sure that there’s the right balance of needs and wants and feelings as well I’m guessing.
freia:
Yeah, that’s it. It’s interesting actually, because I started with a client recently who said they picked me to work on their change project because I had empathy. And I found that quite interesting because that’s kind of, I love that because that’s how I want to be seen and perceived. Because if you work
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
freia:
on any change, whether it’s numbers driven or people driven, it is all about the people making it happen. So yeah, I think. Once you’ve been through the process yourself and quickly and multiple times, you kind of, yeah, like you say, you enter those projects with a bit more empathy and understanding that you can’t just force change on people and you have to do it properly. And it might take you more time, but it will be done in the right way.
Chris Simmance:
Absolutely, absolutely. So in all of your experience, what do you think has been one of the most kind of fun projects that you’ve worked on, probably more recently where you’ve been working as an agency advisor or agency consultant?
freia:
Um, this is, it’s going to sound really geeky, but I love, um, going into an agency that knows that the numbers aren’t where they need to be, but they don’t know where to start.
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
freia:
So you just, you start with a blank sheet of paper in a way. So you just look at the numbers and you try and understand from the performance numbers, what the issue might be, but then you start talking to the teams and to the wider. departments to find out from the people doing the work, what could be the problems. And then you match the two, so you match the numbers with what the people have told you and come up with, well, here’s the problem, here are the solutions, let’s work them out together in teamwork. So I kind of like the investigation phase of just going in and figuring out what is the problem here, why are you stuck either at a certain size or
Chris Simmance:
So you’re
freia:
financial
Chris Simmance:
a detective.
freia:
performance.
Chris Simmance:
A detective.
freia:
Yes, that’s exactly how I feel sometimes. And those are my favorite projects where you just
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
freia:
come in because something’s wrong, they feel stuck, they feel like they have ambition and potential, but they just can’t push through whatever’s holding them back. So
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
freia:
I love that, but I also love being brought into an agency with a very specific project. Like I’ve recently introduced some people processes to an agency. to just make sure there’s consistency around one-to-ones and PPs, performance review, salary reviews. So I like that just as much, but my favourite, my favourite is the detective work, the what’s wrong, why are we stuck work.
Chris Simmance:
Well, you pay this guy once and he keeps coming back halfway
freia:
Rude.
Chris Simmance:
through a bloody black ass. It’s a bit rude, isn’t it? So that’s something you really enjoy doing, working with agencies. What about, what’s something that kind of, not that you don’t enjoy about working with them, because obviously you get to choose who you work with, but what’s something that you find like hardest when you’re working with some of these agencies?
freia:
Um, so I think there’s probably two things. If it’s a larger agency, one of my, well, it’s not really an annoyance, but it’s, they often make an assumption that their goals and what they’ve set out as their vision is just magically going to happen across all the teams. So
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
freia:
basically the whole attitude of we’ve said. We’ve communicated in an update that we need to do X, Y, Z, and this is the target, and no one’s doing it, and they get a bit frustrated with their people.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
freia:
And I guess, yeah, the assumption that people just make change happen without being actually guided through the change process properly, that
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, there’s
freia:
usually happens.
Chris Simmance:
lots of agencies do that, though, don’t they? They set the course, they say where we’re going, but they don’t help people know how to get there. And
freia:
Yes.
Chris Simmance:
it’s not incumbent upon people who work in the agency for the leaders to tell the leaders, well, this is what we need to do in order to do that. But
freia:
Yes.
Chris Simmance:
it’s an odd one, isn’t it?
freia:
Yeah, that’s, that’s it. And, and I get that because agency leadership teams or board of directors don’t usually have anyone in the team experienced with change management. And it’s not
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
freia:
typically a skill set that you would have, even if you work in operations, what my opinion is, if you work in operations and, or you are the CEO or MD, you should have a level of change management training or at least appreciation. But I get why agencies work in that way because they’re fast, they want to be agile. So they wanna get things done. So they kind of often overstep the fact that people need to be brought on the journey with them.
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
freia:
And that often happens in the larger agencies where, yeah, there’s a bit of an assumption that, yeah, we’ve made the strategy and now we’re communicating it and therefore people will just do it because it’s part of success of the agency and surely everyone’s bought into that,
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
freia:
but people don’t work like that. So I guess that’s one thing with the larger ones and with the smaller ones, they want to grow and they have ambition and potential, but the owner just doesn’t have the time. This is the typical,
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
freia:
you know it,
Chris Simmance:
In or under the business
freia:
we all know
Chris Simmance:
kind
freia:
it.
Chris Simmance:
of. Yeah. Too many ha- too many, too many things going on. There’s deliverables, there’s growth, there’s where do you stop? Yeah.
freia:
Yeah. And, and then overcoming that. So going on a bit of a journey with the founder to figure out, well, how did you get out of that situation in the first place? So before we do any work, you know, to, to grow and set you up with a strategy, how do we get you into a place where you’ve got the time, even just freeing up a couple of hours in the week, you know, even that can be a massive challenge. So, um, So yeah, that can be tricky.
Chris Simmance:
think one of the things that was a massive watershed for me when I was running the agencies was essentially I was the bottleneck in most cases. And
freia:
Mm-hmm.
Chris Simmance:
it wasn’t that I was stopping things from happening. I was essentially slowing things down because I needed to be involved in the deliverables as well as the growth. I should have focused on one of those two things and had someone who was smart and capable to deliver the other. aspects of that. And it wasn’t until I realized that I realized that I need to invest in either one area or the other so I can work on the business more. And
freia:
Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
it was a real change of mindset running these businesses that you don’t often come to, especially when you’re small because you are consistently thinking cash flow, cash flow, cash flow, cash flow, cash flow.
freia:
Yeah, of course. So how did you get to the point to make that scary investment of, I don’t know, was it like an ops person or sales person?
Chris Simmance:
Um, so it, so it was, it was an interesting, uh, time because I was, uh, I was working with, uh, an, uh, an advisor mentor who was essentially a, but did a really good job of asking some really, really curious questions, which were actually guiding me into a logic trap, which I couldn’t escape,
freia:
Mm-hmm.
Chris Simmance:
which was you’re in the way someone needs to get and do these things. And that was when, uh, we did two things. First of all, we hired for, uh, head of digital role, which then took me out of quite a lot of the deliverable stuff. Um, that was one person I only had to talk to, to make sure all of the, uh, the, the key aspects of what we were selling got delivered. And then we had a head of operations, um, uh, which actually is, was, um, Vicky, um, Samantha’s who’s my wife.
freia:
Mm-hmm.
Chris Simmance:
She was my wife beforehand. She’s still my wife now, so we must’ve had a good working relationship. Uh, she handled everything that was, uh, that was operationally required of the business, which then left me freed up to do all of the sales, the marketing, and essentially the growth aspect of the agencies, which had both personal and professional gains. The professional were obvious because we had better net profit and we had better clients coming in and things like that. The personal was I wasn’t stressed out about the amount of context switching that needed to be done. And it wasn’t until someone essentially tricked me into coming up against myself, um,
freia:
Yep.
Chris Simmance:
I decided to make that change. It was an interesting time. Um,
freia:
Great, yeah.
Chris Simmance:
I looked on LinkedIn this morning and on LinkedIn, according to sales navigator, according to, um, LinkedIn, this is self-identified, um, director slash owners of agencies, um, worldwide who identify as having English as a fluent or first language. There’s 845,000 people. Now, if you, if you assume that half of them, uh, are lying, that’s 420,000, should we say, um, cause they’re freelancers or whatever else. And, um, then you say, okay, all of them are co-founders. So then you can have that again. There’s 115, 110,000, um, agencies in the English speaking world. What do you think separates the best from the rest?
freia:
Um… Well, just based on my experience, I would say… Again, it depends so much on the size, but you’ve got the right roles in place. So what you just said is exactly what differentiates people that are stacked for a while, and then they bring in the right roles to actually. Make the next stage of growth happen. Um, so whether it’s, I think the typical roles there, uh, they’re bringing a sales director on ops director. Um, so that they’re starting to form a leadership team that drives certain areas of, of the business. So that’s kind of. at a certain size of agency, of course. But I think generally. Any agency that constantly evolves and changes and is innovative and doesn’t ever accept that the status quo is just how it will remain forever.
Chris Simmance:
Thank
freia:
So
Chris Simmance:
you.
freia:
willingness to change, but change in a way that can be repeated. So with empathy, with people in mind, with KPIs for wider teams, with kind of doing it properly. If you’ve got a goal in mind, so let’s say your goal is, we want to increase revenue by X percent in the next couple of years, then you can either have that as a goal and it may or may not happen because you’re not driving it, or you can really go for it and say, okay, well, to achieve that goal, we need to close more pitches because our close rate isn’t right. Let’s speak to the teams, let’s get an advisor and how do we increase our pitch rate, make it happen, implement it, increase the rate. I think… That happens in the agencies that are most successful is they really see through what they’ve set out to achieve. So they’re very good at implementing at strategic delivery and involving people in that.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, yeah. And like, I can’t stand that turn of phrase where people say, it is what it is, or we’ve always done it that way.
freia:
Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
Those are usually the ones that I would categorize it in the, the rest box. The industry changes far too frequently. The technology changes far too frequently for we’ve always done it that way to ever really apply in an agency. And it is what it is, is essentially capitulation to external factors. Um, you, what you can’t control. Fine. There are lots of things you can’t control. Macroeconomics, global ecosystems. You can’t control those things, but the things you can control, um, you should never resign yourself to not being able to control, um, and if, you know, I’m not saying become a megalomaniac in your agency, I’m just suggesting that. know, is what it is, is not the right way of thinking. And if you want to grow, you need to change. And if you want to change, you need to have a plan. If you need to have a plan, you need to speak to people to help you do that.
freia:
Yeah, I agree. And if you’re the owner and you don’t like change, then I would highly recommend you bring someone in who is up for change. Otherwise, there’s probably not going to be a very bright future for you.
Chris Simmance:
So Freya, coming from Germany, the land of some of those famous fairy tales, you go back home one Christmas, it’s a lovely winter’s day, you go for a walk in the woods and when you’re in the woods, you happen upon a magic wand. That magic wand can only be used one time. What would you use that magic wand for that would change every agency right now?
freia:
Oh, you’ve painted such a great picture of my
Chris Simmance:
Yeah,
freia:
country.
Chris Simmance:
I was thinking, you
freia:
This
Chris Simmance:
know, Hansel
freia:
happens
Chris Simmance:
and Gretel,
freia:
all the time.
Chris Simmance:
etc. Just forget the kids being eaten bit at the end and things like
freia:
Yeah,
Chris Simmance:
that.
freia:
yeah, yeah. Let’s not talk about that. Um, once, oh, this is hard, but I’ll probably say, I would use that to get all agencies to be more focused on the two most important things, their clients and their people, so really understanding who is my ideal client, how do I speak to them, how do I retain them, how do I grow them, how do I pitch to them? So knowing everything about your clients, but not just on the surface, but with real empathy of what are their struggles? How can I help? And with people internally, kind of in a similar way, how do they react to change? How can I take them on the journey of growth? What are their strengths? Are they in the right role? Am I using their strengths and skills right? So yeah, I’ll probably use it for that.
Chris Simmance:
pretty decent use of a wand, one go, one, one thing changes an awful lot. It’s, it’s amazing what you can change in an agency though, with the right mindset, you know, you, if you want to change, and you know, you don’t know how to do it, there’s people, if you do know how to do it, then the mindset is, get it done. The amount of people I speak to, I speak to God knows how many different agency leaders every single week and every single time, you can you can hear it the amount of things that have been started, but not finished. There’s like a hundred things on, but 80% complete rather than one thing on and a hundred percent complete. And there’s, you know, if you, if you over, if you try and do it all, like complete the game, it’s going to be really hard. So having focus and change in mind is, is really key. And thank you very much for coming on the podcast, Freya. And
freia:
Thank
Chris Simmance:
it’s
freia:
you.
Chris Simmance:
been fantastic. Obviously, you know, you’re, you’re based in the UK now. But when you do go back to fairy tale land, don’t go in any houses that are made of gingerbread because we all know how that.
freia:
We get told this in school, I won’t make that mistake.
Chris Simmance:
Thanks so much for coming on. And
freia:
Thank
Chris Simmance:
in the next
freia:
you.
Chris Simmance:
episode, we’re gonna speak to another agency coach, mentor, trainer, advisor, or partner, and speak to you soon.