Expert of the Month - Tim Butler - Innovation Visual

VIDEO: 58:49 mins
AUTHOR: Robert Craven and Tim Butler

In this GYDA Talks, Robert talks to Tim Butler Founder of Innovation Visual. Tim has a background in marketing, sales and consultancy as well as having deep digital expertise. He has worked in a wide variety of sectors such as marketing services, technology, banking, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, professional services and finance, giving him a very broad and in-depth view of business. Using this business acumen and knowledge, and applying it as a 'digital marketing expert', Tim has led professional teams delivering digital marketing strategies for a large array of UK and international clients.

Innovation Visual are one of the those brilliant UK agencies that keeps on delivering.

Robert and Tim discuss:

• Just another agency or some things you do differently?
• Corporate responsibility and paying it forward. Why? Where’s the ROI?
• Are there secrets of success? What do you need to do to grow an agency?
• What does success mean? How do you know if you have been successful?
• Success is not selling out for £20m.
• The balance between running a 'great place to work' and running a profitable business
• How have you responded to the last nine months?
• How have customer habits and behaviours changed?
• What separates the successes from the failures?
• Your recommendations/pearls of wisdom, golden nuggets you‘d like to share: "The work of the CEO is to make decisions. Get informed so you can make decisions."

 

 

 

Transcription:

Robert Craven  01:08

And hello, and welcome to the GYDA Talks. And it's Robert Craven here. I am absolutely delighted today to have Tim Butler with me. Tim Butler, Tim runs innovation visual. He is one of those people who runs one of those agencies, which are the sort of the real backbone, the bedrock of great digital agency stuff. And yeah, welcome, Tim.

 

Tim Butler  01:32

Thank you very much, Robert, for that introduction, the bedrock of digital agencies. That's a new one. But I'll take it anyway. Thank you.

 

Robert Craven  01:40

Well,  I think there are loads and loads of agencies out there doing really, really great work, and you're one of them, and they're kind of under the radar and way because they're ploughing away, they're doing really interesting work. And they aren't necessarily getting 25 awards a month, they aren't necessarily shouting from the rooftops, but doing really, really great work.

 

Tim Butler  02:06

Yeah, flying under the radar, that's us.

 

Robert Craven  02:12

I think that's good. I mean, it's good. I think people really, you know, recognise that you're doing good stuff. So firstly, what are you known for? What will people know Tim Butler for?

 

Tim Butler  02:24

Well, the agency, I think we're known for performance, digital marketing. So we've always come at things from a number, focus. So we come at things, data first, and then creativity off the back of data very much about business strategy. So it's about what we can deliver as an end result. So we don't go in and talk to clients about a specific service, like, oh, we'll do your PPC, we go in and talk to our clients about what's the business goals? What's the strategy, then that needs to deliver those business golf? Oh, and by the way, it happens to be the services. So I think that we're known for that, we're probably also known for the longevity of our client relationships. So most of our client relationships with the exception of the new ones that we've been getting recently, in that they haven't, you know, they haven't been with us long enough, but they're going back years, like years and years. So like nine year anniversary next year for one of our clients, you know, plenty of clients five years plus, and given that we've only been an agency with employees for six years, that so those clients have come from when I was effectively me on my own before I decided to take that brave step of employing people.

 

Robert Craven  03:48

Agencies say, we're here to help you and work with you in your business and understand what's going on in your business. But they don't. They can't talk about business. If that makes sense. They can talk about digital agencies, but actually they can't talk about business. But I know from my conversations with you that you've got a really good grasp on not just running an agency, but  running a business. So are you saying that you kind of use that skill set? To kind of it's almost like being a marketing director on a rope, is it? I mean, maybe not?

 

Tim Butler  04:28

Well, I mean,  actually I've been cmo for nine months for one of our clients on a part time basis when they were reorganising so having to actually plan half a million pounds worth of full marketing budget across events as well as digital certainly would count as being like a marketing director of CMR on a rope, but I mean,  my background, I think makes me more commercial in that. I did business economics at MIT arrangement at uni. Part of that I ended up being part qualified as a management accountant. So I've understood from an early age, the power of numbers and the power of understanding the numbers. And then I've gone through a series of roles, which started off actually as an industrial buyer for a manufacturing company. And then I saw me go through b2b sales, and then into technology, technology sales, and seeing a wide range of organisations and businesses at different levels. And I think that has equipped me better than maybe somebody who's been in agencies for their whole career. I haven't been in agencies for my whole career. And so maybe I've got a different perspective.

 

Robert Craven  05:52

But absolutely crucial that I think that's I mean,  if you're a client, you don't want someone who can speak, agency, you want someone who can talk business and can relate to you and can add value more than just saying, Oh, we want to go on this platform and that platform, but  to actually, I mean, as you know, my thing is about going  up the food chain in an organisation, you're talking to the marketing director, you're not talking to the marketing executive.

 

Tim Butler  06:20

 I think listening. I mean, you're absolutely right. But I think listening to the right things within your client organisation, and actually hearing what that means. So we were onboarding a new client yesterday. And they're talking very much in terms of their organisation and their organisational needs. And before we did the onboarding, we prepped in terms of understanding their industry language, understanding we did we get industry reports on their business, so that when we're sitting down,  we can listen and understand. And I think  that's the thing, it's not necessarily about how you talk. It's also about can you listen, and can you join the dots when you're listening?

 

Robert Craven  07:09

Yeah, I mean, Do you understand your business? Mister agency person, you understand business mister agency person or missus agency person? Do you understand my business? You know? And do you understand me? I think way too often. Agency folk are treating clients almost like a black box that they do. PPC or they do website design, or they do whatever it is they do to the box, they walk away. And if the customer unless you understand that the only reason I'm doing this is because I'm trying to build a sanctuary for donkeys or because my daughter's ill or because I want to swim across the Atlantic. Unless you get me as a client. And unless you get the foibles of my industry, why are you using you can end up being like any other agency now. I just love that.  And  your agency isn't just different in terms of be of talking business talking customer. There's also some stuff going on  around corporate responsibility and paying it forward.

 

Tim Butler  08:27

Yeah, wow and, again, you know, not only are my rubbish at the personal branding piece, and making sure everybody knows about us as an agency. You know us because we've had a lot of interaction. We don't make a big deal about the Corporate Responsibility piece, but it's actually it's as much about me and my wife, who's the other shareholder in terms of our personal aspirations and our personal drivers, in terms of what we want to do in life, and that manifests itself in the business. So since 2012, we've been part of the 1% for the planet organisation. So we're certified to donate a minimum of 1% of turnover. So regardless of profit, 1% of turnover goes to environmental causes each year. And, you know, so that's something that we've been doing for eight years across the innovation visual, and now also because we run to other businesses as well, both of those signed up to that. But then it goes, it goes beyond for me, it goes beyond simply the money. The Corporate Responsibility piece for me is seeing a business as an organisation and a driver for change. Like we cannot leave it to other people. We cannot leave it to go for months, let's wait until a government mandates us to do something environmentally sound. Let's wait until the government mandates us to treat our employees properly. You don't need to do that. You can say, these are my principles, and I will live by my principles. And yes, if we're paying 1% of our turnover out to environmental causes, we have lost that off the profit. Right? But how big a deal is it to lose 1% of turnover? To give back to the world that we live in?

 

Robert Craven  10:38

Well that is what the finance hat said. And I know agency owners who said such something along the lines of oh, look, there's COVID coming along. There's about to be a bit of a storm. The one thing I'm going to get on, I'm not going to alter  is myself, I'm going to how are we going to get through COVID? I'm going to screw  my staff? I mean, what they do is they kind of do their kind of googly sort of, aren't we cool? Look, we've all got face masks with logos on it. By the way, all the staff are going to take 30% pay cut, or be furloughed if you want to keep going to keep your job, because I'm the Managing Director  and I've got a sort of a nice traditional approach to capitalism, which is looking after number one, and everyone else is serving me. So how do you add interest? We're talking right at the end of 2020 going into 21. How does Corporate Responsibility pay forward ethos? How did  that work for you?

 

Tim Butler  11:53

Well, there's different parts of it. So first of all, it's very easy for me to say, paying 1% of our turnover to charity each year, or that's, you know, that's no big deal. Because we were profitable, you know, we are running at a good profit. So, if it was a choice between, you know, we've got to lay somebody off, or  we're going to do this, I can understand that  if a company is not profitable, it becomes a very difficult question to do that. But there is a lot more to corporate responsibility than just making financial donations to organisations and in terms of the treatment then of staff. We never cut  salaries here. And I'm really proud we never cut salaries, we didn't take the grant the free grant money, we didn't take any free money, we did take the loan, the bounce back loan, and we will probably return the loan entirely at the just before the 12 month anniversary, but we took it as a safety net, to make sure that we were okay, which was I think, at the time a sensible move because we nobody knew what was going to happen. And whilst we were in a fairly stable financial position, as a, I had a responsibility to the team to make the right choices. When it comes to cutting a salary. I know of agencies because of their position, and quite often their specialisation. They had no choice but to either make people redundant or to reduce salaries. I know some agencies and some people that did that. I also know of businesses  that cut the salaries across the board of staff and then it transpires that the senior team continues to take the same, if not more money. And I think that's a bit offensive, to be perfectly honest, and I won't, you know, I'm not gonna go into detail of  the whys and wherefores of that I wouldn't do it. I don't think it's right to do it. If you think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if you're CEO, and you're paying yourself a load of money, the need to, you know, get yourself a more expensive sofa does not outweigh the need of your junior member of staff who actually spends two thirds of their salary just on rent before they actually go out and put food on the table kind of thing. So I'm proud of what we did, but I know that we were able to do it and we didn't have to make difficult decisions. In fact, we took the decision to hire a freelancer whose work dried up early in the COVID situation. And what we did is we made the decision well. I had a conversation and I said okay, here's what we can do. Do you want to be an employee? And we actually took them on as an employee to provide that individual with some stability, because they're a good person, they do good work. And they were clearly going to have some difficulties. It might have been short term, but we made that commitment to them because we could, and you know, it's been great for us, and they're good employees. But  that's the kind of behaviour that I feel is right. And that's the values but then I come from, you know, I come from a background with maybe strong values in that way, from, you know, the way I've been brought up, you know, my parents values, you know, they get inherited, don't they?

 

Robert Craven  15:48

 I've talked to Tom. And what's the number one most important thing you can do as a manager? And his answer was, choose the right parents. Because everything else comes from there.

 

Tim Butler  16:04

It isn't, I've worked with some great  people, you know, I've worked and I think that you can see in the culture of the organisation have much paint, they try and slap over it with games always such with such a cool place, which you could place the outright drive for money only comes through in terms of the way that they deal with people. And, you know, at the end of the day you talk, there's that saying about people lying on their deathbed going, you know, they never say I wish I'd spent more time at work. Well, the other thing they probably don't say is, oh, guy, wish I had another 10 grand, because it would have made so much of a difference, they probably look back and think, you know, wow, I wish I'd actually done more with my skills and talents to help other people make the world a better place. I mean, one of the things we did this year, even with COVID on, one of the organisations that we've worked with for a number of years is David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation. And we've been very fortunate to work with them  for some time in terms of helping them and giving them some advice, but they needed a new website they were getting, I can't use the technical term, because it's bad language. But they needed a new website. And I said, Okay, we will do this for you, we will do it for you at zero cost to you. And the day it launched, they had their wildlife Artists of the Year launch, which is selling artworks and also donations in 24 hours. That website, that new website, raised them a few pounds short of 18,000 in 24 hours, right? How could that make me feel? Okay, I wasn't able to go out and buy another new bike. But did it matter?

 

Robert Craven  17:54

That was interesting.  Fast Company Magazine did a survey where  they gave people the choice between what they can have, I think you can have Friday afternoon off. Yeah. Or you can have Friday afternoon off and get 5000 quid a year less work Saturday morning as well. And you can earn 5000 pounds more. And you know,  it was sort of a psychological barrier between the greedy, I want more money, I want more money. And though you kind of got you know, I only have one thing, which is my time, you know, in a month my time is spent. I've got nothing else I can use. I think it's a really interesting split. And I think that  part of that American dream thing, which is linked to wanting to sell my agency for 10 million quid, is this more money, more money, more money, more money, more money thing. And I think  loads of agency folk kind of lose the plot. And what I really like about what you've done is it's more like  there's a book called Small Giants by Bo Burlingham. It talks about you don't want to be the biggest and sell out what you want to do if you want to run the best, which is why it's meant to be hugely complimentary, that not the whole world hadn't heard of you, but you're running a really great agency. And it feels to me that's a really good example of you're just doing really good work with really good people, both staff and customers. And that's what you want to do. And if you quite rightly say, you know, that extra 10,000 quid, what would you have done with it?

 

Tim Butler  19:51

Yeah, I mean, I would have spent on something I'm sure but I mean, one of the things that when we decided and the decision was myself and my wife, we were running out of a converted garage at the back of the house and got this business. She's a medical illustrator, so she's got her own highly successful business and that hived off into its own limited company at one point. But when we made the decision, six years ago, in fact, it was six years ago, in November of 2020, when we made the decision to take employees, and we thought about it, we discussed it, one of the things we said was, we want to make this a place where first of all, we would want to work as an employee. And then secondly, regardless of what point in the person's career they're at, we would want them to look back at their time at Innovation visual and go, that was the best job I had. And those two things have stayed with us this whole time, in terms of how we think about employees. And yes, it sounds like all, you know, three, huggy aren't they Oh, oh, innovation, visual, they're all like nicey, nicey. You know, they clearly don't make any money. It's not that, because we're a service industry, right? We deliver through skill and knowledge. And who does that are people? So if our people are happy, engaged, and having a good time, they make our clients happy, engaged, and having a good time and getting the results they want. Which means that the financials for the business drop out the bottom, and, hey, we're profitable. So it's avert in my mind, it's a virtuous circle, it's not a Do you want to be nice to your staff? Or do you want to make more money? I think we can do both. And we can do both really effectively.

 

Robert Craven  21:50

Or is it kind of like a bell curve? Yeah. And I've introduced to this the other day  by an agency founder. And on the far left of the bell curve. It's  nice and friendly. But making no money. And on the far, right, it's a factory, making loads of money, but nobody's happy. But somewhere in the middle, you have, we're really looking after our people, our people are commercially aware, we're making good profits, which we're able to plough back, and therefore everyone's happy. And it's almost like there's a point in the middle, where you're fundamentally believing in your people. And the business is commercially aware. In other words,  it's selling stuff at a decent price, and it's buying stuff at a decent price. And it's paying its way, but there's a tipping point where  you turn into capitalist bastards in a way. And  it's about how I mean, one of the things I find with agency focus is way too many agents who are way too, oh, we've got to make sure that we've got, you know, fluffy cushions and  everyone can work from home if they want to. And everyone can come in when they feel like it  and we're having meetings and people can, but actually, you know, guys, it's a business. So we are going to measure your time. Because that way we can tell how profitable you are. And that way we can tell how much we should be rewarding you. And guys, we are going to have meetings and when they start at nine o'clock, they are going to start at nine o'clock and they are only going to be 15 minutes, because that way, you can spend the other 45 minutes making money and there's nothing wrong with making money. But  it's kind of some kind of a continuum.

 

Tim Butler  23:43

I  disagree  with that concept, because I believe  it's talking about it in a way that it's a trade off. And I don't think it's necessarily a trade off. Now. I mean, let's it's interesting, some of those things that you talk about. We measure loads, we have you know, we've got loads of measurements in place. Every Tuesday in team meeting, we talk about utilisation rate, not just across the team, but we actually highlight all the individual people's utilisation rates, you know, we are numbers driven, we make commercial decisions, but we treat our staff I think we treat our staff, like adults, like they can make their own decision and that they are self motivated. We don't need to motivate them they want to get on and I suppose interestingly, there's then you're now starting to talk about recruitment and the kind of people that you're bringing in there because if you need to look over somebody and keep on their case and make sure that they're not Skyping you've either got the wrong recruit, or you've got the wrong culture or both. But I think you can have a good employee experience, and at the same time deliver commercial results. I think there is a trimming of the profitability by doing the right thing. But I think it's more than acceptable long term sacrifice. So you may trim profit in the short term, you may trim growth in the short term. But over the long term, you have to look at the financial results. And that's another thing. I think a lot of agencies have very short termism  in their view. And so it's like, well, what profit are we making now? My big concern at the moment, and I'm doing business planning at the moment, is around the fact that I know, I've actually driven my team too hard in recent months, and I'm looking at my business plan to actually do things which will release the pressure release valve, because I know that  I pushed a bit too hard, or the businesses push them a bit too far, because of the circumstance. So I'm actively planning for that. Because if we want to have the right 2021, so that we have the right 2022 and the right 2023. So yeah, it's you got to take a more long term view, I think on  ROI on that. But yeah, good trade off.

 

Robert Craven  26:29

That brings me on to the next question. I mean, the question is a simple question, which is really, are there other secrets of success?  What is the recipe in your opinion? What is the kind of the recipe? What are the ingredients of the recipe for success? And  one of the reasons I ask is because it's really difficult for the people listening to actually understand what you need to do, because everyone says, oh, we need a great plan. We need great people, we need your customers and lots and lots of passion. And that's why we grew the agency to 150 people. And that's why we sold out two, essential for 5 million quid. But that doesn't answer the question. Because, honestly, so what do you feel is the stuff that you need in?

 

 

Tim Butler  27:21

Well, I would also say that this store is, you know, getting to 150 people and selling out for huge numbers, is a vast majority, vast minority of agencies. And you have to think about whether that's really what you want, as an agency owner, you hear stories of agency owners, you know, saying with regret that they sold out, because they're that their baby was mistreated, and they're their staff left as soon as it was sold down, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and what was the legacy in that? So first of all, what's the definition of success that an individual is working too? Now, the definition of success should be individual to you, as a person or individual to you as a team, if there's multiple fans or multiple people in the management team, and you should define your own success. It is difficult to measure some of the elements of success in terms of the nice to have. So I've talked about, we want innovation, visual to be the best job that anybody had in their career. Well, I can't measure that today. Because I'll have to measure that in 10-15 years time when I talk to EC staff.

 

Robert Craven  28:44

You got a sense of it with a sense of whether you get out and whether your car tires are flat.

 

Tim Butler  28:53

You do, but a lot of the things in terms of measuring things like you know, have enough time for people to spend with their children or have enough time to go on holiday or spend time with their partner or their significant other. You know, quantifying that with a number is  incredibly difficult. So my  mum's interested in that when I talk to her, and she talks to me about the business and she asks me how things are going and  inevitably, at some point, I will talk about the turnover, and I'll talk about the profit. And she's like, well, it's not all about the money, though, is it? And it's like, no, but it's really easy to quantify a business success by looking at the numbers, the monetary numbers and also things like staff numbers, and it's not necessarily a measure of success, but  it naturally falls out in terms of oh, well, you know, our turnovers higher than it was at the start of the year. We've grown profitability by X percent. But you have to be careful  as an agency owner as to  what you're going for, and making sure that   that number, or  those financial numbers don't become your sole driving force. So you're asking, what's the secret of success? So, if you think success is getting to where you want to get, how do you set those levels? And then you need to think about successes, you know, was I successful today? Was I successful this week? Was I successful this month? Not just was I successful at the end of the year, or did I sell out after three years, because if you only measure success at the ultimate point, then you're gonna be quite miserable between now and then. So I  think about your success  in smaller wins and smaller elements. That's probably been utterly unhelpful for people watching it, because they're still going, come on, Tim, tell us what success is. So based on what we define as success, elements, people deliver. For us, it's our team that delivers. So people in relationships are absolutely vital in a service business. So training, I think, is absolutely fundamental. So making sure that the training is right is appropriate for the business. So, you know,  we have training plans, which align what the business needs in terms of skills, with also what the individual wants to learn. So we have people doing training that is very focused on, we need you to learn this, because we need to do more of that. But we also have training where we've got people now going, you know, I was really interested  in learning more about HR. So we've got somebody at the moment, we're paying for them to do high HR training, because that's what they want to do, and we should open that avenue up to them. So you need to invest in your people, because they're delivering for your clients. So at the front end of that you've got to recruit. And I think that we've learned a lot about recruitment. And it's taken us a while to really nail our recruitment processes, and how we assess recruitment. But what you want to I think, look for in recruitment, recruiting for attitude, recruiting, we use four pillars in terms of what we do with recruitment. So  it's the ability to deliver on the job role rapidly. So with my immediate skill set, I'm not gonna be able to remember these because I have to have them written down for the interview. So I'm probably only going to end up with three, we've got culture fit. So do they share the same values. So we're not looking for everybody to be the same. We want people to be different. But we want them to share the same values, because, you know, we are a bit tree huggy. And we give money to environmental causes. And when we do team outings, it's, you know,  it's a similar thing. So if they don't fit with that culture, if they are just money driven people, they're not going to fit with the culture, and then it's going to erode where we are with that, then it's the future fit. So are they looking to come with us on the journey? So if you look at a seat, if what if I look at CVS, and the person's jumped rolls, after, say, 12 months, or just after 12 months in each of the roles, they're probably not the right fit for us, because we want stay as who will grow inside the business, and we're prepared to invest in them. And then I'm trying to think what the fourth one is. It must be really important, but it's intelligence and problem solving. So this is because fundamentally, at the core of what innovation visual does, we solve problems. So we solve our client problems. So we want clever people, intellectual people who can look at something and go, this is a problem I've never seen before. However, it relates back to these other things that we've previously done. There's bits of this problem, there's bits of that problem, and they can join the dots and come back together. So we're quite geeky. We've  got quite a few people with master's degrees. You know, I'm a bit of a, you know, a bit of a thickie with only two two, you know, so, you know, we've got very intellectual people working there, and that's part of our culture fit. So I think, recruitment people, and I've done a very long answer to a short question.

 

Robert Craven  34:44

 New Year's Eve, coming up to midnight, assuming you're sober. How do you assess or decide whether it was a successful year or not?

 

Tim Butler  34:57

Well, given that one New Year's Eve 2012 to  2020 I actually welcomed the midnight chime inside the CT scanner because they thought I'd had a stroke. If  I'm not in a CT scanner, it's going to be a good New Year's Eve. The point of which we work I'm assessing. Anyway, now as I'm doing the planning, I will look back and I will grasp  the things that were positive. And how will I measure the success? I will have known in the weeks and months preceding that, are people happy? Are they feeling comfortable and less stressed? And happier? Have we delivered? Have we delivered on our business, our financial objectives? It's all in there. Have I spent enough time with my wife? You know, are the animals fit and healthy? You know, that kind of thing. It's a blend.

 

Robert Craven  36:16

 Just thinking about it.  So agencies have had to respond to COVID over the last nine months and last year. And how  have clients changed? Do you think that customer habits and behaviours have changed? And part of the reason I asked that is because I wonder if the agency needs to be changing to this to a changing world.

 

Tim Butler  36:48

I wouldn't say it's business as usual. So  there's our clients and then our clients clients. And there have been changes across the board, which  you would expect in terms of, you know, what kind of a year we've had the  ability for an agency to absorb the stress. And I don't mean being the whipping boy for clients, but absorb the stress, and be able to genuinely help clients and make them feel better about what they're doing, I think has come to the fore more and more. So you don't become just the yes people. But you genuinely help you say, Don't worry about that we can handle that. Or don't worry about that that's not going to fundamentally impact your numbers. Let's help you and build a strategy. One of the things we did very, very quickly in COVID. Was all of the major customers having conversations about, okay, this is happening, what do we need to do to pivot? Because our clients have got all these things going on. And I think one of the things I noticed, particularly from the start of COVID, all the way through to kind of the autumn period was people were doing not only their normal jobs, but they were doing this big job of change on top of it. And so by talking to people, listening to people, and saying, you know, what do we need to change to make things better for you for your business? And how can we help? I think that's really important. And was something that agencies should  be picking up on? I think that we were fortunate in the fact that we've always sought to be a diverse client, like diverse clients spread, we deliberately went after industries and sections of the economy over the course of 2019 Not because I was some kind of mystic mag and I knew COVID was coming. But actually we were preparing for the cyclical recessions every 11 years. And we were actually thinking that Brexit was going to be the thing which maybe turned the UK economy into a downturn. So we were diverse. And I think that one of the things that agencies need to look at for the future is actually what do they want? Do they want stability and safety? Or do they want faster growth? And those that have been very focused and maybe been very focused on a sector or growth have probably been the most vulnerable? Because they haven't had the flex in the system to go. We're okay, here. We can now change a bit into that. But um, yeah, I think  you need to be a better listener as an agency In times like these.

 

 

Robert Craven  40:02

  Do you think there are characteristics of agencies that are struggling at the moment? And characteristics of agencies that are doing well? Is there a way that  you can see the difference by what the agencies are doing? Or do you think the success and failure is just random?

 

Tim Butler  40:29

It's not random. I think it's never random. But there are people who genuinely had brilliant businesses and brilliant agencies, through no fault of their own were in a sector that got hammered. So if you're in hospitality, hotels, you're in things like sports,  you're in sectors that just shut down, you know, you  could  have the best business ever. And you were not going to have a good time. Right. So it was luck, was it you know, fortune, you know, those things are random, in terms of who got hit rarely, because you wouldn't have predicted that this time last year. So those businesses, though, that are spread across sectors, and may be struggling, they were probably weak beforehand. And so  if you are financially weak going in, if you're weak in terms of your people, if you're weak in terms of your client retention, then you've been exposed by, you know, by the bad economic weather, it stripped away what you were doing, and it's found you know, underprepared not thinking about the right things, you might have been fumbling along growing and, you know,  making a bit of money, but actually, fundamentally, your core wasn't good. So I think it's a blend, I don't think if an agency goes down, it's not necessarily because it was poorly run. I think there's a lot of great agencies  that have really struggled. But it's amazing to talk to other agency owners, how some of the ones that have been in sectors that really got nailed how they actually they're doing well. Yeah, they've gone through it. And I actually probably think that those agency owners, you know, should be complimented more than maybe, you know, me, and, you know, innovation visual, we've grown significantly, we've taken three new staff on during the period, you know, our financials are even stronger than they weren't started the year. But we were diversified. So it doesn't mean that I'm a better agency owner, I know more  than somebody who's struggled and  had to reduce headcount.

 

Robert Craven  42:58

 I think there's a really interesting point that the ones who see, you know, 50%, below the line are struggling with dying. I think what's really interesting is, a lot of those people  didn't know how good they had it. But more importantly, a lot of them, they're actually not in as bad a place as they think they are. They just don't know how to behave in a reset. And  they just want everything to go back to business as usual. So sometimes the fault is that they don't have a phrase about being a lot becoming almost like shs becoming a warrior, like, Okay, right. So  that situation going on, we need to understand what the options are, we need to understand what we're going to do, we need to make gather the information, we need to make decisions, we need to get on and we need to treat every day  as an amateur. Versus, oh, dear, this is happening to me. When will Brighton SEO be open again, so that we can go and try and make some sales. And it's a kind of an attitude thing that I've been in. We both know someone who was, you know, in hospitality, you know, and he's kind of rearranged the business. So he's able to do, you know, SignWriting, and email campaigns, he's able to do more interior kind of design stuff. So he's taking his skill set, and rather than just saying, read through PPC and we moved on to find a way of becoming the number one supplier, the number one supporter of his industry, so that when his industry comes through, people will say he was there for them. And the question is, you alluded to, you know, have you got deep enough pockets to survive that? We're seeing some really interesting people.

 

Tim Butler  45:01

I actually think that your battle footing thing is really key. And I think it's really important to understand and you know this because we spoke about it when COVID  was first hitting, we  went on a really aggressive battle footing IT innovation Vishal, I mean, really aggressive, it happened. So the first thing we did was we planned for 25% of the turnover to be lost. And then we did another financial plan for 50% of the turnover to be lost. And I went through the process, I looked at the whole business, all of the costs, and I had a if we have reached those points, I had all the decisions that were going to be made, I worked them through, I had them. And  I had those two plans, and then I put them in a drawer knowing that I had them. So if that happened, I've already done that thinking, there it is. Right. Okay, Tim, that's done. Now stop that happening. And then it was a real, you know, not aggressive battle. But  I was out there, you know, the team understood, the senior team understood, their job was to cover these areas, because I wasn't going to be in them. And then I went out and I had an action plan. And it was very defined, this is what I was going to do. And you know, I would still be making calls at six o'clock at night. And I would still be talking to people I'd be working through doing stuff. We were flexing when it came to clients. If we had clients which had particular problems we were adjusting things to help them and bring them along with us. And we  did act like we were in a fight because genuinely, I had no idea what was going to happen. And it would have broken my heart if I'd have had to start making people redundant.

 

Robert Craven  46:46

So  you made reference earlier on to business planning, I'd be really interested to know what your approach to business planning is. I'm meeting people who are still doing the three year business plan. And I'm meeting people who are saying, we have a cash flow forecast for the next six weeks and everything in between. So what's  your approach to business planning at the moment?

 

Tim Butler  47:10

Well, I'm  a believer in the, you know, the things that you talk to people about in terms of having your vision. So you have your vision, you have your plan, and I actually still have my original one from Google elevate 2017, you'll be pleased to know that's sitting up sitting on the top of the thing, I actually I look back at it, and some of the metrics are actually ahead of them. Some of them were not ahead of, I think you need to know, you need to know where you want to go. Right? Then your business plan, and particularly for 2021 should be something that your team understands. So are our 2021. When they came back from Christmas, the team were all given a copy. And you know that we also expose all of our financials to the whole team. So the team knows, you know where the numbers are. So we're very transparent. But the business plan for 2020 was given to  all the team and it broke it down. This is who we are, this is where we are going sort of headline stuff, this is where we've been and where we've come from. So this is what we've already achieved. Like to give it some context. And then what are the headlines that we want to achieve during 2020, and then break that down into the operational areas of the business so that if you're working in PPC, you actually have a page, maybe a page and a half, which is a plan for the delivering PPC within innovation visuals. There's one for SEO, there's one for HubSpot and inbound. So our plan follows that kind of cascade down effect, the difference for 2021 Is this year. For the first time, I am going to delegate sections within the business plan to members of the senior management team. So we're very fortunate that we've got a very good senior team. I have to say we're actually now mostly females in the management team. And that's not because we went out looking for women to take the jobs, it's because they were the best people for the jobs. And because we've got a great team and they're diverse in their thinking, they often challenge me and say, Well actually no, we shouldn't do like that Tim we should do it like this. What will  happen is our business plan now will be the top section if you like the vision will come from me. And then a number of those operational areas, the majority of the actual operational areas, those business plans will then be written out by the people who are actually responding to the School for delivering them during 2021. And our focus is that annual plan, but within it, we have quarterly goals. And then within it we have tactics, we will do this. So we will launch a new email newsletter, which will be fortnightly rather than monthly. It is a tactic  you can tick off when it's done. So it's not airy fairy, you know, oh, well, we'll just be more holistic in our approach to clients like shit, you can't measure holistic mister clients.

 

Robert Craven  50:37

I guess my question. Do you have some scenarios because COVID Three could kick in in May, or alternatively, in May, you know, London and the South of the UK could either be in tier four, or it could be in Tier zero and the government could say vaccines distributed to 70% of the population. back as you were guys, Brexit could all be fine and dandy. And  this pent up energy could be going against. Do you have scenarios? Or have you just got one scenario for 2023?

 

Tim Butler  51:11

Well, no, we see it as a living document. So in 2020, clearly what we had planned didn't happen. But we had enough of the plan to know what was important to us from a strategic viewpoint, like, what were the most important recruits, and in what order we would put people into the theme. So what you need to have in a business plan is to have something that you can evolve. So is it Eisenhower or somebody like that some famous general said, you know, you've got to have a plan going into battle, but it will be absolutely useless because everything will change. But you know, the worst thing you can do is not have a plan at all. So that's kind of our approach that we've got to plan but we don't expect it to be followed. We don't expect it to be rigidly like, well, we will keep to the plan regardless of external factors. We have methodologists when it comes to things like recruitment, so we have a trigger level of capacity. So when we reach a certain level of capacity within the delivery team, it triggers a recruitment process. So if we don't hit the turnover figures, then actually what will happen is the recruitment that we've got in that budget will slip. Now we do from a financial viewpoint, we do run three budgets. So we have our budget, which is what the business plan is based on. And then we will have an upside budget, which is where we're even better at selling and generating revenue than we thought, or we have the downside budget, oh my god, this is the world's going bad. So what do we do now, but we've got to budget for it. So the business plan is done on the main budget. And then we have an upside and a downside financial forecast. And the crucial thing is all of those should show that we deliver profit. So we are net financially positive. So we are adding to cash reserves at any point as we go through the year, because that gives you your flexibility. And one of the numbers that I think everybody should measure is, you know, the days to light out numbers in your business, because that gives you the ability to restructure if the stuff does hit the fan.

 

Robert Craven  53:31

Lovely. So final question. Which is really your pearls of wisdom or little gems or little sort of thought bubble that you would share to someone who's earlier on in the career, then you're there kind of trying to grow and develop an agency? What are your recommendations, your little pearls of wisdom, your golden nuggets, I'd love to hear?

 

Tim Butler  54:05

Wow. Okay, so pearls of wisdom. I think  you're a big believer in working on the business, not in the business. And I would echo that. So if you're the leader of an agency or any business, you need to look to separate yourself from doing the day to day, the change from delivering to thinking about the business. And it's quite an abstract concept before you actually get into that place. You need to do that quickly or as quickly as you can think about the role of the CEO is to make decisions, right? So as a top tip, think about it. My job is making decisions and starting to think about your day to day job is that so you need to inform yourself about your staff. for your clients, but also the wider markets that you operate in the wider economy, what's going on  in the whole space? So read  well, so read things like Harvard review, McKinsey reports, read Gartner reports. That kind of stuff. Don't just skim over the BBC News Channel and think you're informed with what's going on with business. Don't just read people's opinionated blogs to know how to optimise X, Y, Zed for the latest Google algorithm. That's not your job anymore. Your job is to make decisions. Because the thing is when you come to make the hard decisions, and a lot of those hard decisions occurred in 2020. With COVID, you need to have already absorbed a lot of information, so that when you make those decisions, you can make them rapidly and you can make them effectively with the best information. It's not perfect information. So think of your job as the CEO as chief in charge of decision making. And that will help you change from being the person that helps deliver to being the person that people go to. Wow, how did they know to do that when that happened? So that's what I would say,

 

 

Robert Craven  56:16

I absolutely love that. And just kind of tying in some bits of the earlier conversation, I just came across my December 2018. Predictions, one of which was going to be the biggest recession,  in living memory, probably in the next two years. I mean, clearly, I didn't know about COVID. But like yourself, we kind of see people saying there's an 11 year cycle, there's a financial cycle of currency cycles, Brexit, there's all this stuff, and  it all lands on the first of January 2021, give them plus or minus six months. And  I think you're absolutely spot on that your CEOs absolutely love that, you know, I thought you're gonna say the other thing, which you often say. And I have kind of half stolen it. So you said today the role of the CIO is to make decisions which I adore. And things which I've kind of half stolen, that you say is that, you know, sales make everything else easier.

 

Tim Butler  57:22

Oh, that's on my wife bought.

 

Robert Craven  57:25

Just, that's just awesome. I'm afraid we've run out of time that has been really, really compelling. listening and watching. You've really explained your thinking, and you've really explained and you know, how you go about running your agency and planning and designing the future. So I can just say a really, really big thank you, Tim. Thank you so much  for the time. Thank you so much for your openness, about how you've been running things, and innovation. Thank you.

 

Tim Butler  58:01

Thank you for the opportunity. It is really good. And I just like to say that it gave me the opportunity to wear this shirt, which I bought for Octavius' wedding. Who  has worked for me for the longest out of all the team. It was his wedding chair and because of COVID I couldn't go. So actually I'm wearing the shirt I bought for his wedding. It's the first time that I've had an excuse to wear it. So thank you for that  and I hope that it's useful. Maybe a waffle but I hope people watching this around what I've said is useful.

 

Robert Craven  58:33

Fantastic. Thanks very much, Tim.

 

Tim Butler  58:35

 Thanks, Robert.