Agency Intensive

Simon Penson is an Exited Agency Founder turned Consultant. He founded one of the very first content marketing agencies in 2009, Zazzle Media. 

After securing successful growth and merging with Stickyeyes, Simon sold his business for an impressive £37M. Then Scaled was born. It is his latest venture, where he consults other agency owners to build and grow profitable businesses all the way to exit and beyond. 

In this episode, Simon gives an honest account of the deal structure that resulted in that impressive valuation. As a journalist at heart, Simon stresses the importance of owning and understanding your audience to talk to them in their language to build that meaningful connection.

Listen to find out how he built and scaled his agency from 1 to 250 team members, how his opinion on culture changed throughout this period and the challenges he faced along the way. He also shares the secret to how his team’s content managed to become the most viewed on Moz. 

Simon discusses the shift in content marketing, shares his advice to agency leaders who are interested in selling, his opinions on options pool & team investment and the power of honesty and transparency during those challenging months.

Would Simon do it all again? Find out by listening to this podcast episode! 

Topics Covered: 

1:40 - Journey into Agency life 

6:40 - Championing content marketing as a business

9:01 - Initial acquisition conversations

10:43 - Merging and buying process of his agency 

11:47 - Growth of his agency 

15:30 - Launch of B2B SaaS fund 

20:40 - Most viewed content on MOZ. How the agency achieved that. 

25:15 - Maximising cross-channel content strategy 

27:45 - Maintaining a collaborative culture during rapid periods of growth

36:00 - The deal that generate the agency sale

44:19 - Advice for agency owners who are thinking about selling

49:30 - Options pool & team investment 

51:50 - Honesty and transparency. Testing things along the journey.

53.40 - Would Simon do it all again?

54:20 - Roadmap for Simon 

Joshua Grant is the Director of Digital at Absolute Design, a website design agency based in Nottingham. With a team of web developers and designers, they specialise in Magento and Shopify platforms, helping eCommerce businesses scale. 

This podcast episode is relevant to you if you have challenges with managing difficult clients & retaining your staff and unsure what tactics will add longevity to your business.

Find out how to build long-term strategic partnerships, improve the productivity amongst your team members and how to secure perfect fit attendees to your events.

It can’t be ignored that this business has been around longer than a lot of Founders in the agency space. There’s heaps of value and credibility to help you with your agency journey in this episode of Agency Intensive.

Topics Covered: 

5:46 - Why Absolute Design are pulling away from Magento 

9:22 - Niching down and choosing a specialism 

12:34 - Recruiting the right people and attracting talent

16:25 - You will lose talent if you don’t offer flexibility

19:01 - Office vs remote working

21:40 - Selecting the right partners

29:01 - Scaling up the team and how to manage the process

30:45 - Building a community with events

34:47 - Getting the right people to your events

38:01 - Measuring productivity across the business 

43:58 - Prioritising marketing time and budget

46:50 - Tools that his company can’t live without 

51:34 - The biggest mistake he has made at the agency

54:30 - Firing clients!

57:54 - The roadmap over the next 12 months 

One of the most respected humans in the eCommerce world, Nathan Lomax, discusses how you can take your agency to its next level of growth.

He’s a man with an obsession, to be the best serving agency for website migration for Shopify brands. 

From 400 calls a month to niching down on what Quickfire Digital are best at, Nathan shares the tactics he is using to scale his multi-million pound business. 

A team of 29 tenacious humans all on the same mission, to build a community of people that support each other during the turbulent times of business growth. 

Find out why Quickfire set out to smash the events market, how they add value to their clients and their positioning journey. 

Nathan touches on sponsorship, targeting perfect fit businesses, building a self-sufficient leadership team, how going from £1M to £2M is easier than £0M to £1M, the importance of remembering the opportunity cost of meetings and empowering the team to solve their own problems. 

Not only is this episode full of insight on how to scale your business with a humanistic approach, it’s full of honest life talk too. Growing any business doesn’t come without sacrifice. He shares how he manages to juggle a hectic family life with a growing business and his own sanity. 

If you are serious about scaling, this is the podcast for you. You will finish this podcast with real insight from somebody who is relentless in his pursuit of growth. 

Topics Covered:

00:15 - The story of Quickfire Digital

08:43 - Niching down to a Shopify agency 

10:36 - Identify adding value, focus on key differences

14:11 - Find your niche and what you are good at

16:50 - Doing 400 calls a month to build reciprocity 

20:50 - Importance of reaching goals through specific numbers

24:46 - Indecisiveness, obligation, and sacrifice in eCommerce

28:46 - Busy days, events, struggle for work-life balance

31:19 - Work dynamics evolve from informal to hierarchical

34:27 - Building new structures, learning as we grow

37:31 - Difficulty following systems, easily distracted by emotions

39:23 - Fear of loss as business identity risk

42:04 - Book recommendation

From Store Owner to Agency Owner, Chris Thomas has seen and heard it all. He is a self confessed agency hater and fell into the agency world by chance. 

He has developed his agency to ensure that the constant frustration and disappointment he felt with his agency partners doesn’t happen with his clients. 

Chris acknowledges that the success of an agency comes down to the people. Your staff are your product, they are the ones that clients buy in to and deliver the service. Therefore, shaping a growth culture is one of his biggest priorities as an Agency Owner. 

He shares the decisions he has made over the years to impact the culture positively, how he engages his staff to retain them and how hiring superstars has yielded success. His day 1 and day 2 team are still working with him and that definitely accounts for something. 

Does your team talk about salaries? A heavily debated topic in the business world. Chris shares how he manages expectations by having transparent salary bands across the agency. 

Find out how he has changed his tech stack for efficiency, what he is using now for optimum productivity and what past software he is retiring. 

Everyone knows that being an Agency Owner is a rollercoaster of emotions, with a lot of ups and downs. Chris has transformed his life over the last few years by focusing on his holistic health and most importantly, his sleep quality. He shares how you can do this too! 

It’s time to innovate, deliver and delight your clients for success. Be two steps ahead of them. Embrace failure and engage in Black Box thinking.  

Topics covered: 

00:23 - How he went from Store Owner to Agency Owner 

04:39 - Skepticism of the traditional agency model

11:32 - How focusing on a niche has yielded success for his agency 

14:31 - Innovation and change vital for staff retention

18:25 - Black Box Thinking

22:30 - Retailers faced challenges in 2022 and adapted.

25:29 - His opinion on the impact of events 

28:55 - Anticipate client needs for successful marketing strategy - be two steps ahead of them 

30:46 - Retain clients and grow their business 

34:04 - Building client relationships leads to mutual success and referrals 

38:40 - Project management software: Switching to Teamwork, retiring Asana for 2024

41:15 - Launching new products, supporting businesses in 2024

43:01- Business and health book recommendations for success

It’s the age old saying, people don’t care about you, they care about what you can do for them. It’s the truth. 

And that’s exactly Richard Mawer’s mantra when it comes to agency growth. Put your clients first and you will inevitably win. Build a product that answers their pain points. Talk to them how and when they want to be spoken to. Listen, adapt and improve. 

Richard has been growing agencies longer than some of our team have been alive and he shares how you can too.

Listen to this episode as he shares how to nurture lead from initial interest to client, his tools & tech stack that keeps him organised and how to build trust in the crazy world of partnerships.

We all know that if you hire and promote the right people to deliver a good service, you can grow your business. 

Topics Covered:

00:00 - Richard’s extensive experience in the agency realm 

03:29 - Sponsorship led to unexpected virtual agency development

07:13 - Being remarkable and differentiating attracts bigger money

11:33 - Focus, depth and determination led to success

14:28 - Experience positions and quality attracts interest

17:40 - Identify heroes, serve, engage, and promote.

22:27 - Strategic mindset and specific growth goals approach.

23:38 - Managing clients, converting leads and proposition 

26:11 - Initial call focused on prospect's goals

31:30 - Agencies should prioritise transparency with clients

33:11 - Balancing costs and tools for agency retainers

36:03 - Customised reports provide vital information for teams

40:40 - Stepping back and focusing on high-value work

42:27 - Challenges of retaining staff in a changing work environment

45:42 - Entrepreneur focuses on scaling consultancy business effectively

49:48 - Podcasting, interviewing, live streams - powerful networking tools

52:14 - Tool for success

Turning down clients is the best thing that you can do to grow your agency. Sounds counterproductive right? 

But, that’s exactly what led to Rise at Seven’s impressive growth. Love or hate them, you can’t argue with the fact that they dominate the Digital PR & Search Agency space. From day one, they were working with big and established global brands. Clearly they were doing a lot of things right. 

But, growing a business to £7M a year doesn’t come without its challenges. 

Stephen Kenwright is generous enough to share an honest and unfiltered account of Rise at Seven’s rollercoaster journey to the top on this podcast. 

He touches on recruitment, marketing, targeting, positioning, whether industry awards are just smoke and mirrors, how to attract your ideal client, exiting Rise at Seven and what’s next for his career.

If you are an ambitious agency owner who wants to scale, this episode is for you. 

Topics covered: 

00:00 - His agency background

05:57 - Positioning, marketing and recruitment 

08:50 - Client perspectives

12:24 - Identifying potential clients and their fit, commercially and culturally

14:16 - Client budgets and partnerships

22:30 - Identifying key hires for company culture

25:21 - Managing talent is challenging 

26:56 - Late hiring of HR caused a flood of issues

32:05 - Balance between human and commercial factors and the value of awards for agency owners

34:24 - Rise strives to prove an SEO agency can compete creatively with the best

38:58 - Why Kenwright exited Rise at Seven

42:17 - Advice for Agency Owners…get a good accountant 

45:44 - 18 months of change, renovating, catching up and mini MBAs

49:11 - Kenwright’s next steps 

50:19 - Book recommendation 

Is this podcast worth listening to?

Listen to this short trailer episode to find out whether these honest conversations will add value to your life.