Running a Successful Agency as a Female Leader - Ann Stanley, Anicca
In this GYDA Talks, Robert talks to Ann Stanley. Ann is the Founder and CEO of Anicca Digital, with over 20 years’ experience of online marketing. In 2016, Ann was named Leicestershire Business Woman of the Year.
Ann provides consultancy and training on a range of digital marketing techniques including; strategy/planning, analytics/auditing, website design/development, ecommerce marketing, SEO, PPC, email marketing, affiliate marketing, and social media. However, she is most well known for speaking on Google Ads and paid media.
Ann has worked with hundreds of clients providing honest advice on how they can improve their digital marketing to make their businesses grow and become more profitable.
Robert and Ann discuss:
- Gender and equality in the agency world
- Leading as a woman in the digital agency world
- What you wish you'd known...?
- What is a successful agency?
- Staff being promoted as tech or people people…on pay-scales (so no glass ceilings)
- How to hire? Go for people with experience or not?
- Recruitment bootcamp
- How is a £2m agency different from a £5m agency?
- The growing business invests in the sales machine
- Sexism in the industry
- Digital skills boot-camp
- Working from home
- Glass ceiling re day rates
- Do clients buy locally? eg East Midlands …
Have a listen to their discussion.
Find out more about Anicca Digital by clicking below:
Transcription:
Robert Craven 00:08
Hello, and welcome to GYDA Talks. And today I'm absolutely delighted to have with me Ann Stanley from Anicca Digital, who are based in Leicester in the middle of the UK. Hello Ann, it's an absolute pleasure to be talking.
Ann Stanley 00:25
Hello, Robert, it's been a long time coming. This interview hasn't it.
Robert Craven 00:28
Is one of those interviews which is made up of conversations at bars and in mastermind groups and online and offline and blah, blah. So we've got loads to get through today, I've got a little list of stuff that I'd like to pick your brain about. So I'd like to talk about gender and equality in this agency world, and also to talk about leading as a woman and culture and what you wish you'd known when you started. So, for those who don't know, could you just give us a quick sort of three sentence potted history of who you are and what Anicca is.
Ann Stanley 01:08
Okay, so I started my life off as a scientist, so I actually came to Leicester to do biology. So I've had two careers. So my first career was in medical research and scientific research. And actually, that's quite a big influence on me, because it means I'm really into the data. And I really like numbers. And I work for the pharmaceutical industry, and I work for the leather industry, and all that sort of stuff. So I actually started my career in digital in 2002, which is 20 years ago, which is quite scary. So I started working for an agency that no longer exists called Media Co and I started off by doing a lot of training, and I was doing business development, I was sort of doing sales. But I was more of a consultant. I've always loved the techie side of things. You know, I've already got my marketing qualifications. So it was so it's basically a marketeer that turned into digital marketing. And then about 2004 a friend and I decided to build a property website. So we thought we were going to make absolutely loads of money selling property online. So it was really early on. And of course, yeah, we stretched ourselves a bit far, we started to do overseas property, which was really exciting. And then, as you know, 2007, we could see the writing on the wall, then you know, the interest rates were going through the roof. So we basically stopped doing that and created an account with one of my best mates. He was a web techie. And I was really into paid search, because obviously doing that when we were doing the property, we're spending quite a lot of money. And then we sort of learned SEO as well. So we are what I would call a traditional search agency. So started with just the three of us. And it's our 50th birthday this year. So we've been around for quite a long time. In that time, lots of things have changed. So Alex and I went our separate ways about seven, eight years ago, he went off to do his own thing. And we stopped building websites, and focused on digital marketing and a similar sort of time we bought in content and PR, then we bought in social. So I guess we do, you know, we're just like a traditional digital marketing agency. And we do a mix of b2b and b2c turnovers about 2 million, and we've got about 45 clients. So we don't have loads and loads of, you know, small clients, we try and work with the larger clients where we can. So we try to do the sort of more technical end of digital agency work, you know, into the analytics and data studio and all the tracking and a lot of paid media. That's where we're really good at. So that's, that's really.
Robert Craven 03:48
Perfect, perfect. So let's get going on the conversation. So there's a whole piece that we've talked about quite a few times, but it's kind of not an elephant in the room, but it's certainly a conversation that doesn't ever quite get resolved. And I'm going to just slam two ideas to go well, one is about gender and equality in the agency while there seems to be white men running agencies selling stuff to black women. I mean, that's a very simplified, simplified explanation of stuff, but that you do see that happening. But also, I guess that leads on to I mean, you're a rare species, a woman leading a digital agency, there aren't there aren't many of you, I'm sure you are. Let's just start off with the gender and equality piece. What's your whole take on the mix of genders?
Ann Stanley 04:41
Well, I was brought up in, you know, I was a teenager in the 70s and I was into motorbikes and Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and I was a rocker and I was a rebel and I went to university and I was the only female that had been, obviously I was the first person from our comprehensive school to go to university, all my friends were male. And I, I wasn't really a feminist because I just acted like a blank. So I would have been your classic tomboy who sort of worked harder than all the other girls. And my dad said very early on, if you want to be better than the guys, you've got to work harder. So I sort of experienced a lot of sexism and a lot of glass ceilings, but I didn't really think that, you know, you should be treated any differently and you had to be successful on your own merit. So I always believed that, you know, talent would shine through. And I guess, when you equate that to now, you can see the difference, because you don't get as many glass ceilings, as you used to, particularly with people that haven't had kids, you know, if they've not, and I mean, both men and women really, up until the point that people started having families, I think that's when the issues start to arise. So we've got a 50/50 split and in fact, I think we've got more women than we have men. And the two of the directors are female, one male, so yeah, 50%, all the way through. So it's not like, there's a lot, you know, that is 50/50 up until sort of account director level, and then it goes to all men, it's not like that at all. But marketing has always been a tradition and biology was always a traditional female industry. So I don't think getting women into the sector is a problem. I think it's them becoming business owners that there's more of an issue. I think having the balls basically to, you know, be prepared to not worry about how much money you're earning and taking the risks. And I would say that women are a little bit more risk averse. And it's really only been in the last five years, you've seen so many more female agency owners that have just done it, done it, you know, and taken that risk.
Robert Craven 06:59
But it's still not that many. It's like it's cringingly embarrassing sometimes at some conferences. I mean, I mean, it's, it's to the advantage of anyone who looks different, whether they're a different colour or a different sex, or they're very tall or whatever it is, because it's it's very kind of commoditized population of similar looking white blokes of a similar age wearing similar clothes, talking about similar things, similar cars and similar family.
Ann Stanley 07:33
Yeah. I mean, I'm particularly in Leicester, because Leicester has always been a very, you know, one of the attractions of Leicester was that it's such a multiracial community, and until earlier this year, and so COVID, really, we have 30% from the BAME community, which I actually think is less represented than females, to be honest. The other interesting thing that I've noticed is, as you and I are of a similar age, aren't we, which we don't talk about too much. There's a lot of ageism, as well, you know, and once you get over 50, it's almost impossible to get a job in digital marketing, you know, over 40, I would say even so, there are sort of cliques. And in a way, it's a real shame, because there's a lot of talent in some of these groups. And my view is that you always employ people based on their talent. And, you know, we've done things like have a very transparent pay scale, where you've got bands of people, and they're employed in that band. And another one, of course, is, you know, we also rep recognise that certain technical skills, they're never going to make good managers. So we've got a parallel pay scale based on the fact that you can be a technical manager, or you can be a people manager, and you can still be earning the same salary, because glass ceilings based on hierarchy, I think, are a real problem as well. So we've tried to address that as well.
Robert Craven 09:01
So, so what you're saying is, if you're a real techie, a real pointy head shouldn't say that, but you know what I mean, rather than feeling obliged to go into management and people, he staff that you can continue some kind of a career progression.
Ann Stanley 09:18
Yeah, so we've got technical strategists, who they've sort of come through, usually they've come through, because we've got a lot of senior staff. And in fact that, you know, one of our issues around profitability is that, particularly during the last 12 months, where we had to recruit, we tended to recruit quiet senior staff. And we've sort of neglected bringing in as many trainees with us sort of addressing that now. So we're quite top heavy with our staff. So that means that there's a lot of people well, where would they go so we've sort of eradicated that problem by creating pay scales really based on the university scheme, which is where I originally picked it up from sort of 20-30 years ago. Where you know, you can carry on going up the ladder, irrespective of whether you're managing people or not. And I think that's really important for an agency like us where the technical prowess of your team is not. There's not a glass ceiling based on because usually the crap at it to be perfectly honest, the people that are most technical are usually the worst managers. I probably include myself in that to be honest.
Robert Craven 10:30
What's your view on that terminal? Question about who you hire? Do you hire graduates? Or do you have seniors? Or do you have someone with five years experience? Or how do you answer that question?
Ann Stanley 10:45
It's a really interesting one, because we've always done both. So when we were small, we didn't have there wasn't any PPC, because we were a PPC agency 15 years ago, when everybody was an SEO agency, so there weren't any PPC people around. So we always use, we had a great relationship, we've got two really good universities and Leicester to mark for and University of Leicester, and they sussed out quite early on that if they could, you know, give a three year placement for a student. We used to get three students for three months, train them as rapidly as we could. And we used to use something called a recruitment bootcamp, where effectively, we would spend two weeks like a mini apprenticeship, training them and they forgot they were being interviewed. So that was a really good strategy, and a good way of interviewing and bringing on new staff. And then from them, we would take usually two a year, normally, maybe two or four years, and then we would train them up.
Ann Stanley 11:43
Now, they would often become more valuable, much faster than employing somebody that got one or two years experience. And Darren, who, you know, he's now my MD, because I'm now CEO, he joined Anicca that way. So he's an example of a, you know, success. After sort of, you know, he got to head of PPC, then he became operations director, and now he's MD, so that was through that route. So that route is really successful. And we're repeating it again at the moment, because the universities are providing grants for people, the local chambers are providing grants for employing people. So when you can take advantage of that. But when you're growing really quickly, which we've had various growth sprouts over the years, and you've got to deliver work fast, we've had to, you know, we've had to go up the pecking order and employ people with three to five years experience and with varying success, sometimes they've been amazing. And sometimes, they're just not as good as the people that you would have trained yourself, or you've got to retrain them in the thing in some of the ways that you do stuff.
Robert Craven 12:58
We have I mean, we took on a lot of quite senior people to make some big changes. And we did it, we did it deliberately, because we wanted to double in size. We're currently about 37 people. And we needed to get to about 50. And we thought the best way of doing that was to bring in some real talent. So we brought in a new sale, head of sales, head of marketing, and a head of creative and strategy. We did have one role that was new as well, which was content and PR, and I'm still recruiting for that job, because it didn't work out. So we've had a 75% success rate. They mainly all joined a year ago. So that was a big, big growth in headcount. But you know, that was because we could make them make a difference to the business, that was the real reason for doing it and, and make that stepwise change. If you want to be an agency of 50. And you want to have a turnover of 5 million, you've got to act like it. You know, you can't carry on acting like an agency of 2 million, you've got to act differently.
Robert Craven 14:05
And what do you think the difference is between an agency of 2 million and an agency of 5 million?
Ann Stanley 14:11
Well, that's a really good question. And what we're finding at the moment is that we're still suffering a little bit because of how remote we are and how flexible we are with our. And as some of the processes that we probably had in place, pre COVID have slipped. So I think being more like an engine in the sense of the processes, and the systems is really important, and we're having to re address a lot of that. But the investment in marketing and sales is the biggest change. And if I look at it, six years ago, I did the elevator programme with you guys, which is unbelievable, really. And if I look at the people that were on the table with me at the time, what the ones did that grew really, really quickly, which we didn't do was they invest in sales and new Is this a little earlier on? So I definitely think that people that invested in sales, here are the ones that have grown more quickly. And we've tried and failed so many times. And it's really only in the last 18 months, we've actually got the success around sales that we, we, you know, that we were looking for before. And it's the classic thing, you know, the owner, me, in this case, does most of the most of the business development because it was a consultancy sale. But we've been able to get a team of people that helped with that now, so it's not, it's not all about me anymore. It's not reliant on me.
Robert Craven 15:40
Just digging into that a bit. Because I think that's the, you know, it's the perennial question, isn't it? It's like, it's like, I'm now on my fourth sales director, I think I am going to sack him. It's kind of this sort of thing about, about like, unicorns, the magical people who, who can do the whole biz dev sales marketing piece clearly know how to do all of it. So how have you managed to crack that? We found we've created a Sales Machine?
Ann Stanley 16:12
Well, we haven't. I mean, you know, it took, as I said, I think we've tried four or five times before we managed to get, I'm gonna get I'm gonna, I'm gonna get cooler out, mind you, everybody I headhunter. So maybe that's not such a good idea. So Angie, she actually came from the reach group, which is, you know, the local, you know, the local newspaper group used to be Trinity mirror, I mean, they've had about five different names. And she actually sold herself to me. So she came to me and said, I want to set you know, I want to move and I want to, you know, I want you to employ me, you can't, I'm too good for you, too. And she was right. But it's such a rare beast. I do agree, it's really difficult. And I think the guys that are successful have had that look, but it's, I think it's hire slow and fire fast. And the people that didn't work before we know, we just, we probably let them hang around for too long. And I think after six months, they should be selling. In fact, after three months they should be selling. And in her case did it much faster than that. So yeah, I think it's if you get the right one, you know, they are like rocking horses. You know, it's just really.
Robert Craven 17:33
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So just go back to this, this because we started off talking about gender and equality, you didn't quite get some leadership, which is fine. Do you think that maybe it's even the wrong outdated question, but do you think women in some senses are better leaders than men?
Ann Stanley 17:54
I definitely think they do think differently. I would say that my style is quite hands on, perhaps to learn to delegate. I'm quite unusual in that in the women that most of the women that I've got agencies, I think are very technical. So I think that the majority of the agents are, you know, people like Nicola Stoll and a few of the others around them, that I know, they tend to be good consultants and good specialists in their own right. So they went through the route of being very, very good at their job, and then then becoming a business person. I had been fortunate in that I didn't have an MBA. And, you know, when I was in my 20s, we had a farm, and we lost loads of money. So I learned how not to do it early on. So I learned how not to be a good business person. But to me, the key is the I know you and Janusz talk about it all the time, is the classic visionary and the integrator you need that person behind the scenes, that is your, you know, your ying and yang, you know, you need to know which one you are, you know, are you the person that's out there, the one that's talking being the best ambassador, and being, you know, the person front of house and all the successful business women that I know, are not like me, personality wells, but are they they're the ones that are out there. And they've usually got some of the behind the scenes as the matching one. So I think if you come from that route, where you've already got a personal pro, you know, look, everybody talks about Carrie. But you know, Carrie knows that she's part of a team. She's not the only one, but she's the one that everybody remembers, because she's the one out there who's been very, you know, it's got that public face. So I think the later the agency leaders at the moment, the female agency, the ones that I'm aware of are the ones that have got that, you know, that got that visible face. And I think it's easier to become an agency owner. If you've done that. Then you know, if that's what you want to do. Then if you're, you know, you're quietly in the background because you've got to be able to sell and you've got to be able to convince people that you know what you're talking about.
Robert Craven 20:07
And do you think you've come across sexism from other agency leaders or suppliers or anything? Because you're willing to lead them?
Ann Stanley 20:20
No, I think that not anybody that is sexist deliberately, they may have been inadvertently setting up processes, or recruitment, where they're doing it accidentally, in the sense that they're not going out of their way to proactively recruit, you know, more people that are similar to them. But I do think it happens, I think it happens more in the more technical disciplines, like, developers, I think women that are doing web web development are really up against it. And even though there's some brilliant people, you know, there's a lot of good technical SEO females out there, they've done really, really well. But generally, I think they have a more difficult time than, you know, general marketing. But I don't think there's sexism, particularly in this industry. I think it's more accidental, or perpetuating people that are similar. It's a classic thing, you tend to surround yourself with people that are similar to yourself. So that's why you've got, you know, a low representation of the BAME community, you've not got many people over 40, or over 50. You know, hardly any in those groups.
Robert Craven 21:34
It started a fulfilling prophecy.
Ann Stanley 21:39
That's exactly what I think it is. I don't think anybody's deliberately going out there to do it. Because if they, if they, if they realised them at the talent that was out there within those minority groups, and particularly when recruitment is so difficult, you know, there'll be there'll be going after them proactively going after these people not trying to exploit them, you know, it's a false economy to do that. And there may be differences in salaries, it's difficult for me to comment, because we deliberately don't do that, you know, we don't judge people by any of those factors. But it may happen in other places. And I remember being at set SAS.com five or six years ago, and getting into a debate about this and finding it shocking that people, you know, we're treating people differently. But that was probably when there was more supply than demand now. Your staff completely demands whatever they want from you.
Robert Craven 22:36
Don't tell them don't tell.
Ann Stanley 22:41
You know, I think they know and I think to be honest, it was really, I don't know whether you saw Gareth, some posts the other day, which has got something like 15 million views, because he's posted about doing four days a week? Well, we've offered that for two years, but not really shouted about it. You know, but it was really interesting to see the extreme views within that LinkedIn post. And most of the people in our industry are thinking, Well, isn't this normal? Whereas other sectors, you know, so I think it's more sector specific than it is our sector that suffers from this.
Robert Craven 23:14
And also, we because we by definition, were digitally more savvy than the civil service. So but I mean, that's the classic thing about you, you get someone like Rees Mogg who's never done it. I don't want to comment on Rees Mogg as my MP. So he doesn't represent me, he represents the county I live in. Totally out of touch with how offices are run and how people run and how they need to run and so on and so forth. And fortunately, the digital agency world. We already knew what the internet was. We didn't have to suffer seven years of digital transformation in a week.
Ann Stanley 23:56
Actually, that's an interesting point, though. So I would say there was one area where we were a little bit ahead of the curve, maybe compared with other agencies because I was a single parent for most of you know, I've got grandkids now we were commenting about the fact we both got grandkids. And so when our head of paid media at the time, all that seven or eight years ago had her twins. And that was the first pregnancy that we encountered. So before most of the agencies were being formed because most of the agencies are five to seven years old. We were getting into this, Oh, oh dear, we have to provide early maternity cover for a year. And then when a lot of them, you know the man because we did have a good representation of young ladies in our group, although, as I said some of the guys have, have had quite a lot of paternity leave as well. We had to provide that flexibility. So we've been providing flexible working to accommodate the fact that we have so many women in the workforce for many, many years and you know, working from home and being able to, you know, leave early and just allow for your time. So I think that mentality, we were sort of ahead of the curve. But I guess, because everybody else has had to catch up, I don't see it as being a big problem in our sector, but I think it is in others, you know, and, and the other thing we did, as a result of COVID, is we employed a lot of people from outside of the area to take advantage of talent around the country, and we don't force them to come to the office once a week, you know, they come to the office once a month, and we make a bit of a social thing out of it. So, you know, I'm in the office today, but there's three of us in you know, and we try to come in one or two days a week, but we've made it completely voluntary. And, and I know a lot of people say they're flexible working, but when you actually look into the working, you know, it's not as flexible as they're pretending to be. So I think that's gonna have a big, a big impact on where people choose to work.
Robert Craven 26:01
And on the culture of those workplaces, as well, because it becomes very transactional, rather than relationship full if there's such a word. Once you have people working from home, how do you train people up? How do people understand what the values of the agency are? How do they get the pickup of the nuances?
Ann Stanley 26:23
Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely worried about that. And I think it was interesting talking to people that over the last few weeks, you know, Brighton and stuff, and a lot of people saying they were in three or two days a week. So I think we're going to try and encourage people to come in, and we've got amazing offices, you know, we've got a bar and we're by the river, and it's, it's really nice place, and we've got training rooms upstairs. So we're not going to get rid of our office, but we own it anyway. So it's a massive, you know, it's very, it's, you know, a great asset for us. But we do think we need to get people back in a little bit more. And particularly, when you start bringing the grass in again and doing the training, they definitely need to be in at least three days a week, otherwise, they don't pick up exactly what you can say.
Robert Craven 27:07
They don't have any of the nuances. So what do you what's your definition of inverted commerce? What a successful agency?
Ann Stanley 27:26
I think, for me, one of our problems is that what we've strived for isn't the most profitable. So that's a bit of a shock, when you're thinking, Oh, I've got three to four years, I've got to know, I meant to be retiring or doing career mark three, I actually need to get my act together. And you know, and for the next few years, make enough profit to actually get the value to sell the agency, even if it's, you know, sell it to the staff or sell it to a web developer, or whatever we decide to do, and obviously working with Janusz, and your team on that job. But the things that I define as success are very different from that. And, to me profits are almost secondary, which is probably a mistake, but I'm just gonna go with it. So to me, it was always about the quality of the work, it was always about doing work that you that your clients value that got them results. And I've got this motto to prove it. And it comes from the scientist in me, it comes from the fact that I'm female, and I've had to fight through these glass ceilings all the way through my career. But I think this concept of proving that you do a better job proves that you're going to work harder, you've got the grit and determination, you know, doing a better service and not just doing mediocre work. To me, it's always about the quality of the results that you get for people.
Ann Stanley 28:52
And that's great in a situation where everything's going upwards. You know, you get people boasting about the fact that they've got three times more ecommerce revenue than they did a year ago. And actually, well, so is everybody else. But at the moment, for example, we've been doing some research and E-commerce is down 50%. You know, a year ago, we used a similar web. And we can see that, you know, a lot of the sectors that we work in, which tend to be sort of manufacturers of products, and either b2c or b2b on the e-commerce side, but they're down over 50%. And our clients are complaining because we're only getting 20% growth. And that well hold on a minute, you know, the whole sector is down this time. You know, if you're just if you're doing what you did a year ago, you're successful. So for me, it's all about the quality of the technical work, and our clients aren't particularly sexy. I'd say our clients were very unsexy. A lot of them we've got a few b2c you know, we've been working with darkness shoes Charles Bentley been working with for over 10 years. So those are the sort of brands that have got lovely products. But you know, when you're working with something like domino printers for the last six years, that's not really sexy stuff. So we can't do all the really sexy. You know, PRP says, a lot of it is just good quality content, good quality, paid media advertising. We've started to bring in more creativity in the last year to improve what we're doing. But it's just been a little, you know, it's not been at the cutting edge all the time, it's just been a little bit behind. But being that trusted advisor, you know, it's a bit of a cliche, but being there, and doing a lot of their thinking for them. So that's what I regard as a successful agency and, and being able to keep your clients and just do really good quality work.
Robert Craven 30:46
So if you then ask that old, that old question: What do you wish you had known when you started off?
Ann Stanley 30:58
Well, I definitely would have got sales a lot earlier. Because for us, there's a critical mass because of the cost of providing the support and the client services and the marketing, the sales and everything, we need to be bigger, you know, anybody that you know, anybody that wants to send us some work, you know, we'll love to, we'd love to take some more work. So I think having the sales engine in earlier would have been much better. Probably me focusing on what I'm good at earlier on, and that, you know, and, and getting the team to do a lot of the stuff because I'm, you know, I still dabble in some of the marketing drive my head of marketing, who's amazing, crazy, because I've got so much knowledge, you know, so, you know, focusing on what I should have been doing a little bit earlier. What else would I say? Investing in? Well, we've always invested in marketing, you know, we do a lot of stuff we've got, we do a lot of conferences, we've been doing webinars every week since the beginning of COVID. So we'd give a lot away, I guess. So that's a lot about branding and local reputation, I guess. But I think being a little bit more focused on the money and profit we should have done earlier. You know, our, our infrastructure, and our systems aren't as sufficient as they should be.
Robert Craven 32:24
So can you do that? Can you combine being really focusing on high quality work, and really focus on being profitable? It's like that thing about, you can be fast behind?
Ann Stanley 32:44
I think he can, if you've got enough critical mass. So our issue is that in order to provide the quality, we've got a lot of the support, but we haven't got as many people delivering the work. So if we can dilute that out. So I think you sort of say 30% should be non income generating, while also the type of work that you do. So one of the things that we've been doing this year, which has been really exciting, is we've managed to get some tenders to deliver training. So we've got at the moment, 100 learners going through a digital marketing training course, which we believe is, you know, filling the skills gap for the future. And it's very focused on these minority groups. It's all funded by the government under something called the digital skills bootcamp. And we've got another one starting in June, which we're recruiting for now. So that work is really, really profitable compared with just delivering digital marketing, which is all based on the number of hours, you know. So I think, I think I think the type of work you do is really important and having high value work. But the other issue, I think, in the Midlands is that there's a lot there, you know, particularly in Nottingham, these really good agencies, in addition to ourselves. And so we sort of hit a bit of a glass ceiling with regards to day rates. So you have to find other ways of being profitable and being more efficient. And I think that's what we're focusing on now is trying to be more efficient. And automation is going to be really important going forward and, and focusing on the work that people value so that you know, they're prepared to pay for it.
Robert Craven 34:31
And asking the dumb question. You do believe that clients want a local agency, and therefore they kind of put a pin in the map and then draw a circle of 10 miles. Therefore you find yourself competing regularly against other agencies in the region.
Ann Stanley 34:51
Prior to COVID, I have this philosophy, which I think may still happen or this idea that agencies work they become like solicitors and accountants. And that there was get this because there's so many and we're you know, we're almost at saturation point that you would go to your local agency because you could go to their office and a lot of them want to be able to just, you know, we've got three meeting for four meeting rooms upstairs. And that would be what everybody would want, even though most of our clients weren't in Leicestershire, by the way. So we had this philosophy that eventually it would consolidate. And over the last five years, we've focused more on getting our brand within the East Midlands rather than worrying about being at all the conferences all over the country. I think the exception to that is if you can do something niche, or you can do something special that breaks the mould and I'm sure this is one of your sayings. You know, if you're the best, you know, you're the vessel or digital marketing agencies for lawyers, then you know, you'll know what I'm thinking of, then you know, you, you cut through all of that, and it doesn't really matter where you are. And so we have sort of thought about it in the past and thought, Oh, well, should we just focus on e-commerce? Or should we just focus on X, Y, and Z. So now what we tend to do is we focus on what I would call STEM, which is science, technology, engineering, and manufacturing. Because the advantage of those sectors is that they do both b2b and b2c. And they're the areas that we know a lot about, and they're unsexy. So other people aren't interested in those. So that's why I like those sectors. And there's loads of them in this area. So you know, if you look, if you look into the local East Midlands, there's loads and loads of manufacturing, there's loads of science, there's loads of, there's loads of bio, you know, pharmaceutical companies and tech. So, within the sort of, you know, heart of East Midlands, we're in the right place to service those types of clients.
Robert Craven 36:46
But we're about to run out of time. So final question. What are your nuggets, so your pearls of wisdom that you, you readily share with other agency owners or things, you find yourself saying to them quite a lot when you meet them?
Ann Stanley 37:04
Okay, so first of all, I think there's three main things. First of all, get a partner in crime, get your Darren, who's going to be the one behind the scenes, that does all the stuff that you don't do, and, and make sure that you know, keeps you on the right course, and start going off. And actually getting a Darren and, and Janusz is good, too, or Robert. So having a coach and somebody else internally to mirror you, I think it's really, really important. The second thing, which we are really good at is we're all over the numbers, we know our numbers inside out, we track everything. I think that's very important. For, you know, just understanding, you know, we know why we're not making the profit, we know what we're doing wrong, we just need to correct it. And I think the third thing is, if you want to be a bigger agency, you've got to act like it. So if you want, I mean, we are planning to get to 5 million over the next couple of years, and we're currently 2 million, well, you've got to put the processes in and the staff in place, and act like you would if you were that 5 million company. So wherever you want to be, you've got to act like it. So if that means you need a marketing person, it means you need a salesperson. Because if you look at some agencies that are doing that turnover, they've got those resources, and they've put them in place. And even if it means you've got to sacrifice profits now to achieve it, if you don't put it in place, you'll never get there. If you carry on doing the same thing. You'll say the same.
Robert Craven 38:31
Brilliant place to end. That's been so great speaking with you. Always a pleasure. The conversations always shoot left, right, up, down, across, in and out. But that's fantastic. Thank you so much for being a really lovely guest. It's been a real pleasure speaking with you.
Ann Stanley 38:48
Thank you so much for having me. It's been an honour.
Robert Craven 38:52
Thank you. And that's a wrap, as I say, Oh, great.
Ann Stanley 39:01
I've no idea what that was like. I mean, we wandered off a bit.
Robert Craven 39:03
It was nice and conversational and didn't feel I didn't feel like we were ploughing through an agenda. It's lovely. It's great.
Ann Stanley 39:12
There's a few things in there that people might find useful. The thing about the thing about having a pay scale, I think that's always really useful. The thing about having the recruitment boot camps, I think is something that everybody could use, so do you need to record a different version or something? Or do you?
Robert Craven 39:31
No, no, no, that's it. So what happens is it records your own. Record the mind. You can probably see it on the right hand side. So you're 99% uploaded and then it slammed the two together so you're not dependent on broadband like zoom zoom does everything in the cloud. So if I decide to go down, all over the place where I've personally got bad broadband, it goes down. So that's why we use riverside and it's better quality as for HD or no idea what that means. But it sounds like I know what I'm talking about. So quickly. So thank you very much. I'll check my diary about whether I can do that date. That'd be fantastic. I just have five minutes of your time. So Janusz and I are now partners in crime.
Ann Stanley 40:26
Already, but you know.
Robert Craven 40:28
Yeah, that's fine. That's cool. That's fine. That's even clever. It's even better. And so I am talking to his clients to just check out how they feel about the service they're getting from whom is anything they want more of, or less of, or stop doing or start doing or continue doing? And it's just just a general sort of update, any feedback that we can give him?
Ann Stanley 40:55
Yeah, so we really liked working with him. He's a really good guy, he asked the right questions, there was a very strange conversation about two, three months ago, where he said, I'm not sure I'm the right coach for you, because you don't do the classic things that I would tell an agency to do. And my comment back to that was, well, that's not why I employed you, for I what we employed you for was to help us come up with a plan and advisors, you know, how that compares what other people were to do, and keep us and help us keep to the plan. Because our issue isn't the planning and working out what we need to do, our issue is sticking to it and putting the processes in place to make it happen. So it's more the implementation of that. And having that external voice of bringing in, you know, what else other people are doing, which we're not doing? So I, we've nowhere near exhausted our relationship with him. Interestingly, I'll just tell you what we're. I haven't had a chance to turn yet because I'll see him on Friday. But selves and Technology Centres that we're members of have got this free mentoring service, which is called the Better or something I think it is. And we've got like a mini board there. But that's actually more like a board word in the sense that we've got to preserve what we're doing. So it's different. So that's more that sort of like questioning what we're doing. And we're presenting it trying to be more grown up, I guess. But with regards to the three to four year plan, what Janusz does is what we need. So I'm very happy from that perspective. I think sometimes it's a bit soft on us.
Robert Craven 42:53
You think he's soft? But maybe, maybe that's because he doesn't want to lock horns with you.
Ann Stanley 43:01
I mean, it's not, it's not scary as soon as we need to know. But at the minute, I think maybe we're not being tough enough with the rest of us. I think there's a different issue. I think we're not being tough enough on others. And some of the things like the processes and stuff we're letting other people get away with. And I think maybe that's where we need to address issues now. Because if we are genuinely going to try and hit these profit targets that we need to get to, then we need other people to start upping their game. And one of the things I didn't say in the call, is I think the trouble will be and I know this is my characteristic, not necessarily others, is we're a little bit to people first and a little bit soft sometimes. And we're not we're there when one of the Bristol when one of the guys said to Darren, he needed to be more of a see you next Tuesday. Because he said he needs to be a bit nastier. I mean, it's just not in our nature to be like that. I'm not asking that I'm not asking Janusz to make, you know, be like that, you know, and I don't think we will ever be like that, but we were a bit more tough. Yeah, I think we need a bit more tough love. I think and I don't know how much of it is my bad habits and things that it's almost too late to be able to change. Do you know what I mean? I'm the best advocate. You know, I'm the best salesperson but I was probably the worst. You know you got the best and the worst in me. So I don't know whether we need to be tougher on me as an individual and work out the Thought division. I mean, it's easier now with Darren. I mean, you can hear what I'm saying. But it's easier now with Darren being MD because he's taking more responsibility and he's running more meetings. So he's me in turn with Seymours face, which is good, which is a big change. That's good.