Chris Simmance:
Thanks, Voice Over Guy. And on the podcast today, we’ve got Bella. How are you doing, Bella?
Bella Hegarty:
I’m really good, thank you.
Chris Simmance:
I’m really pleased that you’re here all the way from warm and sunny Andorra today. Um, you’re one of the, uh, agency advisors working with the OMG center. And I know for well what you do because you’re excellent at it, but for the everyone listening right now, can you just give us a bit of a rundown of who the heck are you and what the heck do you do? What are your creds?
Bella Hegarty:
So I call myself your client experience and operations consultant. So in essence, I work with agencies to align their operations and client experience to ensure that delivery is smooth. The founder gets the ability to step out the day to day without, without absolutely losing their mind and everything runs smoothly, increasing profitability, retention of clients, and just creating a better business experience all round.
Chris Simmance:
And we did a webinar a few weeks ago, didn’t we, about getting feedback, leveraging it, and things like that. That’s one small component of what you do. I think there’s a whole program involved in this, isn’t there? And it starts off with kind of questions.
Bella Hegarty:
Yeah, so I have my, I’ve coined it the five star feedback loop. So my background is actually in travel and hospitality. Originally, I spent eight years working in private travel where I experienced, uh, expectations are high, long hours, the hard work to put in with demanding clients, all kinds of different, all kinds of different things moving at the same time, super fast pace. So I understand exactly what’s needed. for an absolutely outstanding experience. And it’s often the fine details, but so developing from that experience, working with a brand and marketing consultancy, I could see the agency process in delivery
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Bella Hegarty:
and saw working with the founder that really wanted to start working on generating new business. She kept finding herself being pulled back in to either correct work from
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Bella Hegarty:
different members of the team or… having to manage communication of clients, expectations, sales, all the hats were happening at the same time. So throughout the framework, we really address kind of those five different areas of being able to help the founder step back from the day to day to be able to focus on that growth. So we start by going in depth on your services, your clients, who they are, which is so important because without actually really understanding your clients, you don’t know what you’re actually giving to them. and how that service impacts them. And I find that there’s so many agencies that I know that really focused on delivering an output that they know that they’re gonna deliver, but they’re not
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
Bella Hegarty:
aware of how their client moves through that journey. And that often comes with misaligned expectations and therefore we can’t actually deliver upon what they want and exceed that.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, and the story is old as time in a sense, because quite a lot of agencies have these problems. And part of accelerating your growth is kind of stepping away from the day to day. And you can’t do that without kind of addressing quite a lot of the stuff that you work on. Quite a lot of agency leaders as well, they start an agency because they’re great at what they deliver, and they learn to run an agency as they go. And sadly, the lessons are usually a lot harder unless you kind of go through a program of growth. or programme of support.
Bella Hegarty:
Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
It’s one of the fun things about working with agencies from my point of view is you get to help those people get through those things and accelerate them past that side of stuff. Similarly, I’m guessing you know, because you can see where these bottlenecks are and where these… not issues but where these things slow their growth down because you know jumping from one hat to the other or one problem
Bella Hegarty:
Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
to the next it’s just it’s context switching on a on a pretty horrible scale eventually and it’s quite tiring isn’t it
Bella Hegarty:
Yeah, I’ve seen so many, I did a post about this on LinkedIn not that long ago around how many times I’ve had burnout in the last or nervous breakdown in the last four months.
Chris Simmance:
Mm-hmm.
Bella Hegarty:
And it’s increasing and increasing as there’s so much more pressure on a founder to be able to grow the agency, manage the economy, the environment, every external factor that’s going on alongside everything with team issues, client issues, profitability. There’s so much. weaved in there, that
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Bella Hegarty:
if we can focus on the fundamental operations that can support your growth, making sure that you are able to manage that increased capacity, it can completely change everything for you as a founder. And I know because founders, and I’m working with founders, they are so passionate about what they do. It’s honestly, it’s so amazing to work with founders that are, they truly are absolutely exceptional at their craft and they bring on people that also a truly exceptional at their craft. And they’re so passionate about working with their clients and making them have success. But often it comes at the cost of their success and that doesn’t, or their mental state or their ability to be profitable because they’re trying to manage everything else. And if we can support that, then it can help them have the business or the agency that they wanted to start creating in the first place.
Chris Simmance:
Absolutely spot on. Crikey, bit rude. That guy, pay him once and he keeps coming back. I think he wants another invoice paid. So, Bella, what do you love the most about working with agencies? What’s one of your favorite parts?
Bella Hegarty:
I think being able to just be a part of their journey, but seeing one, the founder in their element, but two,
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Bella Hegarty:
the passion that they have for what they do. Like I said before, it’s just being able to work with someone that’s so passionate about their clients, delivers an absolutely exceptional output and really, really wants to progress. I think working with other ambitious founders as well is something that I can see in myself as an ambitious person that- they want to get to where they want to be. And if I can support them, that is huge.
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Bella Hegarty:
But they’re being able to witness the culture, often the witty banter that goes on within an agency, the blood, sweat and tears that they put into everything. It’s quite, I find them really friendly as well. And I don’t know about anyone else, but I think agency owners are great. So it’s a great industry to be able to work in.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, I love the rewards of seeing not just what you’ve done, but what you’ve helped achieve for other people. Those people have, you know, they’ve come to you with something that they need your help with. You’ve helped them, but they’ve done the hard work to actually get the results. And it’s really cool seeing it. It’s just nice to see lots and lots of wins happen in succession when you’re working in this way. And you know it, like you say, they’re very friendly and nice people to work with. with and it’s probably because the industry itself is relatively open and it means that you know you can have proper frank nice conversations with people enjoy what you’re talking to them about but also you know you’re learning as they’re learning because each one of these agencies as similar as they are they’re all bloody different.
Bella Hegarty:
Yeah, 100%. I mean, you can see that with the type of the projects that an agency works with, every agency has a different specialism or a different design flair or a
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
Bella Hegarty:
specific message or positioning that makes them stand out. And it’s looking at how can we enhance that, but also be able to help support them so that when they do reach that next stage of growth, that they’ve got everything that they need in order to be able to succeed.
Chris Simmance:
Absolutely, absolutely. And the thing with quite a lot of this is, you know, when we do the accelerator stuff with agencies, it’s not a case of you get to the end of the six months and bang away you go. There’s a traction element to this and you set the course with them, you help them run it. And then, you know, there is a check-in aspect. You do need to keep seeing it. And also, you know, for your own sanity, it’s nice to see the results go on their social platforms afterwards and things like that as well. And conversely though, what’s something that kind of frustrates you a little bit about working with agencies? Obviously within Reason, because they are all lovely people.
Bella Hegarty:
I think for me, it’s with the nature of what I do. Um, agency founders don’t necessarily look proactively at their experience in operations. And if that’s my only criticism is that I would probably say, I would love for them to look proactively at this. We look proactively
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
Bella Hegarty:
about marketing support, sales support, which is absolutely essential, but if we’ve got marketing and sales support and those leads start pouring in and we then can’t manage them, then. The downside of that is that there’s missing communication internally. We end up losing the clients that we’ve worked so hard to get. And that if we look proactively at putting in the right operations and a client experience that can move our clients through that process, retain
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
Bella Hegarty:
them, create advocates out of them and upsell them. Then that gives us a huge opportunity to actually grow faster.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Bella Hegarty:
And then the marketing support is even more impactful. So. let’s look proactively at this because if we can put that into place, then we can start to be able to really, you know, really catapult
Chris Simmance:
Mm-hmm.
Bella Hegarty:
that growth as opposed to looking reactivity at this when something goes wrong. Because if we’re looking at this, when something goes wrong, it takes so much longer to be able to build back.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, so would you say that’s, I don’t wanna put words into your mouth because it’s your interview. So what would you say in your experience sort of separates the best agencies from say the rest, the ones that kind of just chug along?
Bella Hegarty:
For me, having a simple experience can go miles. So making, often with agencies, services can be really heavy to deliver and every time they’re bespoke. If we can almost not productize it to a level that is, doesn’t have any character to it, but we want to be able to streamline our delivery service so much so that a client knows exactly what they’re getting when they come on board. that you can deliver this without you as the founder being having to be there. And that would be something that once you can do this over and over again and it’s standardized, this gives the agency a huge ability to be able to keep that growth. And that’s something that you see from really successful agencies is a standardization in their processes, in their experience, in their delivery
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Bella Hegarty:
in order to be able to do these in their sleep.
Chris Simmance:
Mm. And I think it’s so hard to do where there’s, I was talking to an agency lead agency leader just yesterday actually about like the balance between productisation and like the need for that bespoke level of service whilst maintaining the actual model of an agency which is, you know, thinking then doing and then you have you know exact level seniors and so on and so forth but you know if you want to do excellent work and you hire excellent seniors and you want to be known for excellent things you can’t hem them into a productized version of a service because that’s a million checkpoint list equally if you want to do lots of very similar work at a high volume, you need to have a productised thing, but you lose out on some of the creative thinking. And the balance is really hard to strike because ultimately you’re dealing with completely different people all the time on both sides, client and staff. Where do you sort of stand on that? I’m still struggling to decide whether high confidence, highly creative delivery thinkers and low levels of productised or processed work, or lots and lots of people delivering lots and lots of work but following a checklist.
Bella Hegarty:
I would, it’s a really interesting one because I think every agency is completely different and what they offer is completely, completely different. So I’d say you have to take this on a case by case basis. It would be really difficult for me to go to every agency and say, you need to productize exactly what it is that you do because without knowing your clients, your services, and specifically what your output is and what’s needed from the team internally to be able to deliver. that specific, that quality of output. It’s very hard to say, but from my perspective, a lot of the agencies that I have worked with all have a standardized framework that they use, whether that’s for strategy and then action and implementation or strategy planning and implementation, there’s
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Bella Hegarty:
always a consequential section of events. So every client’s different, every project’s different, but if we can follow a similar framework, we know what’s needed. internally and it helps us to be able to understand how we can make our services more profitable without having
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Bella Hegarty:
to put so much heavy loading in.
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Bella Hegarty:
So it’s understanding what that framework is for you to be able to deliver the service that you’re offering. If there is high level strategy involved that takes, it’s very complex and can be very, very different. And then what happens next is just understanding the consequential events of what happens through a project that helps us to be able to, in essence, streamline and productize. the thinking behind it so that it makes delivery easier.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Bella Hegarty:
I think that would be where I would stand on it. I don’t think that, I think there’s things that can be productized potentially, but it really depends on the agency itself.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, and the struggle was additional layer to that is that you’re selling something which ultimately is an invisible intangible thing with numbers that are related to it that are subject to interpretation, and also rely on the client understanding the work and the results of the work. And it’s especially hard with SEO, it’s less difficult with paid stuff because there is a click plus this equals that. and less difficult with things like digital PR, if you’re just counting links, but for quite a lot of intangible things, you’re sort of saying, hey, we’ve got this methodology or this process and we follow these things. We know what good looks like. Here’s some results we’ve had before, but give us the money now and we’ll probably get you somewhere in the future. This is where you come in and you can help make this work for an agency in a way that they’ll understand how to better, but communicate it.
Bella Hegarty:
Yeah, because articulating that value is very, very challenging. Um, that, and I know for myself, because a lot of the clients that I work with, we do the initial work, but when it comes to return on investment for their clients, depending
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
Bella Hegarty:
on their sale cycle, it could be a few months, it could be a year, depending on what that product, that delivery service looks like.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Bella Hegarty:
So it’s understanding as clients go through this and something that I do with clients specifically is. I speak directly to their clients and team
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Bella Hegarty:
to be able to understand where that value is, where those points of frustration or those points of benefit were, how did they describe the transformation going through the process? So
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Bella Hegarty:
when we look at clients that you may have worked with previously, maybe it’s six months ago or a year ago, we can then actually quantify or qualify their results personal to them, because at the end of the day, it’s quite subjective. And
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Bella Hegarty:
I always think with quantifiable results, the statistics or the money metrics that we get for clients,
Chris Simmance:
Mm-hmm.
Bella Hegarty:
the qualitative side of that is the process that they’ve been through really helps give context to those numbers without that you’re just giving numbers for the sake of numbers. Testimonials for the sake of testimonials doesn’t do anything for you, but the context and the mix of both can really support. So if we can get that feedback from our clients, whether it is six months down the line or a year down the line. that really helps us to be able to articulate how valuable the service that we’re offering really is.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, yeah, spot on. Yeah, can’t disagree with any of that. You’re the expert. And so, you know, you live in Andorra, it’s a beautiful place, absolutely magical. And you know, you go out in the summer when this when you can walk in the mountains, you’re walking through the mountains in the woods, and it’s so magical and beautiful, you happen across a magic wand. However, this magic wand can only be used once, what one thing will you use that magic wand on to change for all agencies in one go?
Bella Hegarty:
Oh, that’s a really good question. Um,
Chris Simmance:
Thank you.
Bella Hegarty:
I think it would probably be my, be fixing my only frustration. It would be to help agencies look proactively at their experience and operations.
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Bella Hegarty:
And that would be the one thing I’d probably change because if we look proactively at our clients, our team, our operations, our foundations, and that supports. everything else that helps them grow. And I’d say that would be my one real wave, my magic one wave, and it would be help shift the mindset of agency owners often. And it’s a real challenge because I understand working for an agency founder how difficult when everything else you’ve got to manage is to start looking proactively and say, well, this is a nice to have, we don’t need it right now.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Bella Hegarty:
But if we can see it as a necessity, because it is a necessity, And without it, we end up fumbling around. And often that helped,
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Bella Hegarty:
that causes us as the founder to be pulled back in. And even if we’re not in the day-to-day delivery and we’re in a larger agency, we as agency founders, you can see just the, the time being wasted, the profitability margins going down and you’re looking at what is happening and why can’t I see it? And that’s where things like this helps solve that problem.
Chris Simmance:
good use of a magic wand there Bella. Thanks very much for coming on the podcast and waving it around for a little bit that’s been great.
Bella Hegarty:
Thank you, thank you for having me. It’s really nice to be able to talk about, I love doing what I do and I love helping other people. So it’s been nice to chat about it.
Chris Simmance:
Wonderful. And when this goes live, it’s going to get snipped up, sent everywhere, and everyone’s going to be able to hear all about it. So thanks so much for coming on. In our next episode, we’ll be talking with another agency advisor, mentor or trainer, or even one of our partners. So thanks very much for listening and speak to you all soon.