E20: Joshua Grant

Richard Hill [00:00:00]:
What are some of the trends you're seeing in sort of age in the agency landscape? At the moment?

Joshua Grant [00:00:04]:
We're seeing a bit of shift change with some of those businesses of a certain size.

Richard Hill [00:00:08]:
There's always something in the news that's pretty dramatic around the world, isn't there?

Joshua Grant [00:00:11]:
You talk to anyone that's been in business a long time, they'll have been through various recessions, and you find that the people that do well always do well.

Richard Hill [00:00:19]:
You built that trust and you've proved yourself over years and months and months and years and years.

Joshua Grant [00:00:23]:
It's crazy. You work so hard to get clients in the door. You. You don't really want to let them go.

Richard Hill [00:00:29]:
Ultimately do a freaking good job.

Joshua Grant [00:00:32]:
How we not seen that? It's like literally in front of you.

Richard Hill [00:00:34]:
I assume you are using AI within

Joshua Grant [00:00:36]:
the agency, how to leverage it better for processes, but also reporting.

Richard Hill [00:00:49]:
Hi, everyone. Richard Hill here. Welcome back to Agency Intensive. Now today I'm joined by Josh Grant from Absolute Design. Now, Josh was on the podcast around 18 months ago, so this was a really good chance to catch up on what's changed, what he's seeing out there, and what's actually going on in agency land right now. We get into uncertainty in the market, the pressure agency owners feel when clients are feeling the pinch, and why times like these are exactly when agencies earn their strikes by doing a brilliant job, getting closer to clients and becoming a genuine trusted advisor. We also talk about the opportunities to help clients simplify bloated tech stacks, cut wasted spend, and get more value from tools they're already paying for, as well as where AI can actually help agencies with reporting operations and efficiency without replacing the human thinking behind it. So if you run an agency and want to build better client relationships, tighten up those operations and stay ahead in a noisy market.

Richard Hill [00:01:48]:
There's loads in this one. Let's get into it now. Before we dive in, I just want to quickly thank our sponsor, Aristo Sourcing, for sponsoring this episode. We've been using Aristo Sourcing for my team building needs, from customer service, executive assistance, admin support to digital marketing specialists. And they're a great partner for agencies looking to scale without the recruitment hassle of the more traditional methods. We decided to partner with them after seeing firsthand how their team have helped me and my teams grow efficiently over the past 18 months with reliable, skilled professionals who actually deliver. If you're ready to build your dream team, head to aristosourcing.com and find out more. We put the link in the description so you can go straight ahead and check it out.

Richard Hill [00:02:29]:
That being said, let's dive straight into this episode. Well, Josh, here we are again. Yeah, I think 18, 20 months since you were last here on the Agency Intensive podcast. Welcome back.

Joshua Grant [00:02:43]:
Thank you. Times flown and I can't really believe it's been that long. It's pretty crazy, isn't it?

Richard Hill [00:02:48]:
Episode five, I believe. And here we are now doing it again, obviously, 18, 20 months in agency land. All sorts of things happen, have happened, I think. And so let's, let's unpack maybe the last 18 months a little bit, see where, what you've been up to and obviously some of the things and plans you have right now and what you're working on.

Joshua Grant [00:03:07]:
Sounds good.

Richard Hill [00:03:08]:
So thanks for coming back in. As you probably recall, we like to talk about the things that keep us up as agency owners. You know, what's maybe one thing at the moment that is on your mind and that you're working on?

Joshua Grant [00:03:23]:
I think, I think the big one that's keeping me up at the minute and it's probably never goes away as an agency sort of owner or, you know, senior management or whatever it might be, is the uncertainty in the, like the world markets, all of that, you feel like, is that going to affect us? Is that going to hit us? Is the pipeline going to stay solid? And I think that's the one that at night time, when I'm like, you know, going to sleep, I'm like, you feel responsible for everyone's livelihood, don't you? You know, you want to make sure everyone's having a good living. All the rest of it. You're like, are we really going to get enough deals through the door? That's the one. It pays the bills. It's, it's the, it's the big one, isn't it?

Richard Hill [00:04:00]:
So, like, turn the news off.

Joshua Grant [00:04:03]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:04:03]:
Or is that a bit of a ridiculous answer to. Because I think no matter what's going on in the world, there's always something going on in the world. But obviously right now there is a lot more than ever going on in the world. Both. So the fuel situation, for example.

Joshua Grant [00:04:16]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:04:17]:
Can and does and is impacting a lot of retailers.

Joshua Grant [00:04:21]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:04:21]:
So that might, that might mean there's a downturn in where they spend their money, potentially. Because there's an uncertainty with retail at certain retailers where certain cost of goods may go up, for example, have gone up.

Joshua Grant [00:04:34]:
Or you.

Richard Hill [00:04:34]:
Is there more, more specific thing that's on your mind?

Joshua Grant [00:04:37]:
I think, I think it's part of that because you know, you can turn the news off. My wife hates the fact that I watch the news. She's like, just live in your bubble would be fine. And I'm very much like, well, you can't avoid it, because all of our clients are talking about it. Various different parts of the supply chain.

Richard Hill [00:04:54]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:04:54]:
And you want to be able to kind of support them if they, you know, like. Oh, you know, it's really tricky. All our shipping costs have gone up already. You know, they're feeling the pinch, and we, you know, have to sometimes pass the cost on with increasing rates and all that kind of thing. So I think it's important to kind of listen to it enough that you are making sort of concerted efforts to. To just be even better than you are. You know, like, if. If the world's in turmoil, there's always something like, you talk to anyone that's been in business a long time that have been through various recessions and whatever it is, and you.

Joshua Grant [00:05:27]:
You find that the. The people that do well always do well, and the ones that are kind of just floating around the middle and, you know, they might lose one or two key accounts because they're not kind of diversified enough, whatever it might be. They're the ones that you kind of see wobble. And. Yeah, we do see agencies. I know people in agencies where they've not been able to weather the storm.

Richard Hill [00:05:48]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:05:48]:
And that's in the last five years.

Richard Hill [00:05:49]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:05:50]:
Even the last, you know, year potentially. So I think making sure that you don't ever forget that is kind of crucial. Yeah. And we. Yeah, we've done more kind of like. Right. You know, now's the time to. While everything's a little bit in turmoil, let's just, you know, full send, really.

Joshua Grant [00:06:09]:
Like, you've got to give it everything to make sure you. You're above. Above the rest, I guess.

Richard Hill [00:06:13]:
But I think that's brilliant advice to the people that are listening. You know, ultimately, do a freaking good job.

Joshua Grant [00:06:18]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:06:18]:
Like, not. Not just everyone I'll ever do a good job, but, like, unbelievable job.

Joshua Grant [00:06:23]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:06:23]:
So when things maybe do get a bit tricky for some of your clients or some of the people within you, you know, whether. Depending on, you know, your sort of chain of where you sit, that you are unlikely to be the one that's gonna get squeezed as much. Do a really, really good job. But then it's like listening to the news thing. You know, I'm like this. I'm like, more of a. No, I don't. But then I'm not.

Richard Hill [00:06:46]:
I. I'M not completely deluded that I need to be aware, as you say, of what is going on. So obviously when it, you know, kicked off in the Middle East, I was actually about to travel the day after. Obviously I was very much watching it for self interest to start with. But then now it is starting to impact certain clients. But the same respect. There's always something in the news that's pretty dramatic around the world, isn't there? So there is, it can sort of, you know, you can slant your positiveness around the business and you go into, oh, have you seen what's happened now with this? And so I am more of a, definitely more of a positive outlook kind of person. Glass is always half full sort of thing and it's going to get fuller.

Richard Hill [00:07:24]:
But in reality there are things always happening that you've got to be aware of, but I think you can sometimes get dragged into those and then use that as a, you know, you may be blaming the fact that the business maybe isn't doing so well. Well, it won't be because of this and the fuel and. Well, hang on a minute. If you're doing a bloody good job and your clients couldn't live without you. I mean, this is some extreme language I'm using here. But, you know, you're doing a really, really good job. Your clients, you know, you built that trust and you've proved yourself over years and months and months and years and years. You know, they're going to probably want to work with you even more when times are tough, you know, and you're the, you're the trusted advisor that is there to help them through these times rather than the, you know, the sort of thing that gets thrown, thrown to the side sort of thing.

Richard Hill [00:08:07]:
And you just, like you say, hanging in there as a service provider, you know, not really adding the value. So I think it's times like these, this and now you can sort of really earn your stripes.

Joshua Grant [00:08:16]:
I, I totally agree. And we've, we've got one client that works in the oil industry and they came in for a strategy meeting the other day and it's something we do with all of our clients on a regular basis to kind of go through what their, you know, pain points are, what their growth plans are, what they're trying to do. And one of their things was, you know, they, they can only buy a certain amount of oil from their supplier per year. They get a quota and they've changed how you can basically call that quota off. They've gone, you've got to spread it out you can't choose when you want it kind of thing to kind of make sure there isn't like an hysteria with like supply and demand. But what that has meant is in that strategy meeting they're very much talking about. Right. You know, let's talk about the other areas of the business that could grow and we, we have got plenty of kind of supply for to kind of, you know, help them out with the areas of business that are going to get squeezed a bit because you know they're in a position where potentially they'll only be able to look after their existing clients and any new, you know, wholesale clients or anyone that comes on like that, they won't be able to.

Joshua Grant [00:09:18]:
They'll just have to say no because otherwise they're going to jeopardise their relationship

Richard Hill [00:09:21]:
with their existing clients with long term clients. Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:09:24]:
And they're sort of the. And I totally agree with you that you need to not if you sat and watch the news all the time, you would just be a very depressed person. But, but it's very much like going pick and choose the little bits of it and you know. Yeah, my brother lives in Dubai for example. So it's like you can't avoid it because it's very front center. But being like you say, the best you can be and supporting those clients with those questions and concerns going, you know, let's have a look at this, let's diversify, you know where your revenue is coming from A little bit is kind of really crucial.

Richard Hill [00:09:53]:
I think it's a bit like covert in it obviously different but and ultimately clients going through, you know, not knowing from day to day how good business will be. Obviously initially thinking oh my God, nightmare. But then obviously quite a lot of ecom brands had a good, good. Not all, but obviously quite a broad amount of sectors did quite well. You know and obviously communicating with them a lot more regularly, working with them a lot more regular. That's you know, and tighter around that time that I know a lot of agencies did quite well, you know, during COVID because they you know, obviously E commerce went crazy. You know, three years growth in a year sort of thing for a lot of brands. So it's sort of similar now where you know, you can really build that trust and that those relationships with existing clients when things are a bit tough for them.

Joshua Grant [00:10:37]:
I think I totally agree. We've got another client that buys as a lot of our mutual clients probably do as well buy a lot of stuff from you know, China. Yeah. And they bought this, you know, their their stock in a long time ago and it's seasonal. So they, they bought all their stock in for summer at the old pricing and probably are going to sort of leverage themselves in the market pretty well because some of their competitors tend to wait a little bit later to sort of bring stuff in.

Richard Hill [00:11:03]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:11:04]:
So they're now in a position where they're going to probably do very well this year.

Richard Hill [00:11:07]:
They'll have a good price and they'll still have more margin than normal.

Joshua Grant [00:11:09]:
Yeah, yeah. So. So there are going to be some winners. Yeah, sure.

Richard Hill [00:11:12]:
I've seen a few, I've seen a few petrol stations that have clearly got old fuel like in some of the villages and things. You're like, no way is that 1.58 oh gallon or whatever. It's like, give it a week, that'll be gone and they'll be up to the. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So now my understanding is you still go into quite a few events.

Joshua Grant [00:11:30]:
Yep.

Richard Hill [00:11:31]:
Yeah. And I think, you know, our, we've got a, a lot of friends of the podcast and the agency that go, go to a lot of the different events around E Comm, you know, in the E commerce landscape is, you know, it's, it's very busy with events now. I think more and more, you know, brands and agencies doing events and doing collaborations and partnerships. But I'm interested to sort of know, from you going out to the, you know, going, seeing a lot of the different people in the industry, what are some of the trends you're seeing in sort of age in the agency landscape at the moment?

Joshua Grant [00:12:02]:
There's, there's quite a few. So it depends on how kind of specific we want to get, I guess. I think one of the, the big shifts we're seeing and you know, like you say you talk to different tech partners, different sort of agency owners, whether it be dev or you know, digital marketing or full service, whatever it might be, they all have a slightly different kind of view, I guess on kind of where things are, but we're seeing especially on the kind of the platform side a little bit of a transition. So, you know, as we know there are SaaS platforms out there that dominate very well. We're both partners with, with some of those and we're kind of seeing a bit of a shift where people have probably been kind of sold that dream of SAS being great and everyone can kind of live on there and it's going to be amazing. I have to be a bit careful what I say because obviously, you know, you want to, you want to keep friends of Everyone but we're seeing a bit of a shift change with some of those businesses of a certain size realising that their total cost of ownership on some of those SaaS platforms is very expensive and it's very much then going is that extra cost really bringing us that extra return or are we better looking at kind of open source or consolidating looking at a different tech stack? Because those SAS platforms get expensive and when you're doing certain revenue figures, you know they want more of the pie, rightly so they bit restrictive on you know, payment providers or you know, to try and get them to use their own. And it's not for everyone and I think we've seen especially with, for people that kind of aren't aware of it in the Magento landscape. Hoover came along to kind of bridge the, the whole, I guess that was left when Adobe acquired Magento and has given Magento a road map.

Joshua Grant [00:13:47]:
So it's improved the front end because the, the themes, the legacy themes that were built for Magento. So like Luma is like seven, eight years, probably even older, hasn't been updated, very tricky to work with, slow, not very performant and like the admin and Magento was getting a bit clunky and this applies to Adobe Commerce, you know the paid version to a certain extent as well and also the checkout things like that that the SAS platforms have got really slick and super good. They've bridged that gap and people have realised that actually now some of those open source platforms that either a little bit more risky like you know, WordPress, probably a little bit risky if it's not managed properly, you know, that kind of thing. Magenta had a bit of a bad rep for being hard to work with and bit clunky and all the rest of it. We're kind of seeing a bit of a resurgence of, of that and some brands are going, you know what, let's have a look at that. That's and that's a lot of that

Richard Hill [00:14:42]:
comes down to total cost of ownership.

Joshua Grant [00:14:44]:
It does and you know we're fairly platform agnostic. It's very much like you know, what, what does the client want? And if they want a particular SAS platform that's fine, you know, we'll give them the facts and go well these are the things you need to be aware of what's going on. They need to make your own decision. But it's very much then to do that. And the total cost of ownership thing I think has been talked about for the last few years but I think is Becoming more and more of a, a thing as the costs start to sort of creep in. You know, we've got a, a brand at the minute that we're building a Shopify site for turns over sort of 7 million online. Not, not huge but decent business. And they're on a bespoke platform at the minute, so their actual cost association's pretty low and they can use whatever payment providers they want, you know, the rest of it.

Joshua Grant [00:15:28]:
So they were actually looking at, looking at, not using that SaaS platforms checkout to be able to then kind of dictate what they want to do. And you're thinking, well that's fine, but wouldn't be better on an open source platform that you can dictate your own destiny a little bit more. So I think it's very, very easy for agencies say, well, you know, it's going to be sass, that's going to be it. I don't think that's the case. I think it. There is still and we tend to by nature what we do attract complicated businesses that have got complicated things going on.

Richard Hill [00:16:00]:
Yeah, that's why they're high though. So you can break that down, look at the options.

Joshua Grant [00:16:03]:
Yeah, exactly. And I think where you find that a lot of the agencies in this, in the sort of the SaaS space, so the, the big commerce, the shophies, the whatever it might be. A lot of those agencies started off as property, you know, sign agencies, whatever it might be, haven't got a huge amount of breadth and depth kind of knowledge with actual development.

Richard Hill [00:16:22]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:16:23]:
Other than kind of front end. So very much like they, they'll go right, we can do all this but they'll plug all these things in. They'll use third parties for all the, whatever it needs, you know, that's expensive and we'll sometimes bridge that gap and go, well if you, you absolutely adamant you want to be on a SaaS platform, we could probably save you some money by building some of those bits for you guys rather than paying, you know, for a plugin that costs you every month. It's volume based. Yeah, all that stuff. Like people don't sit down and go, right, what is it actually costing me?

Richard Hill [00:16:52]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:16:52]:
To be on this platform and then

Richard Hill [00:16:54]:
have a lot of overlap as well. Don't they always? Quite often you think why are you using that and that? But actually you've never logged into that one and that does what that one does. So we can cancel those two or Crazy.

Joshua Grant [00:17:02]:
Yeah, the, the money that some businesses are wasted on like tech overlap, the the prime examples are things like email service providers. If they're using a decent SaaS platform like Shopify, it has a lot of really good email, you know, features in there that a lot of brands will probably never exceed. And if they do, that's fine. They can still go to those other platforms, but you're better off using what you kind of got as a call.

Richard Hill [00:17:25]:
At least use that rather than pay for something else and don't use anything.

Joshua Grant [00:17:28]:
Exactly. Tick that box and go, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Richard Hill [00:17:31]:
Well, you see that, you know, they're not. They're paying for, you know, email X and then they've not. But they're not doing any email.

Joshua Grant [00:17:36]:
I know.

Richard Hill [00:17:37]:
And the. If they just use the one that's in with the platform and they get to a point, yeah, they may well want to then go and use the paid one, but they're actually paying for one they're not using. And I'm not using the free one either.

Joshua Grant [00:17:47]:
Yeah. And I think it's a tricky one because you don't want to call it like, you know, sling mud, but I think there are sort of sales processes with some of those tech partners that have put a lot of brands onto those platforms without a huge amount of support, and they're now sat there with a platform they're not really leveraging. And those platforms are great. Don't get wrong. Like, if you leverage some of those platforms, they're amazing. But if you haven't got the support or you've got someone in the house to kind of, yeah, leverage it, you're wasting your money. And I think a lot of them now are, like, falling off. So the retention with some of those platforms is like, they've really lost a lot of clients and a big opportunity.

Joshua Grant [00:18:21]:
Because I, I think it's growing pains. I think some of those platforms scaled massively, really quickly, really struggle to build the teams and scale the teams out. And then they, they've kind of realised that and pivoted and gone, oh, animate. We need to actually make the agencies do all of that. And, you know, but it's, it's almost too late because they've kind of missed that opportunity.

Richard Hill [00:18:40]:
But that's where, you know, we're on the Agency Intensive, you know, podcast as opposed to the Econ One podcast. But as an agency listening, you know, if you're working with brands and they are, you know, paying for XYZ SaaS tools and software, there's an opportunity for you, as the agency, you know, owner or the agency team to do that audit with the client, you know, and build that relationship because ultimately there's probably going to be a saving there or, you know, or a win where. I didn't realise you weren't using that. So you help them set that thing up or you work with a partner to set that thing up and they're making more money or saving money and, you know, straight away, you know, they're not just paying a monthly for the bill that they probably forgot about for however many months. We all do it, I guess, in our personal lives maybe. Hang on. We still. We've got Netflix, we've got Amazon, we've got whatever it is.

Richard Hill [00:19:24]:
And I use Netflix. So what's going on?

Joshua Grant [00:19:27]:
I know you see them on like socials, those companies that actually do audit. Yes.

Richard Hill [00:19:31]:
They look. Yeah, you just let it. Hang on a minute. How many direct debits have you got? About three or.

Joshua Grant [00:19:36]:
It says 14. Well, your wife's got duplicates of what you got and you're like, what is going on? You're absolutely right. It's like, I think agencies is a massive opportunity there. Like huge. Because I know there are some really good agencies that have come out that specialise in, you know, leveraging a lot of these platforms and they become really big partners for those platforms. But most of the brands that we still talk to have got, not Scubus, how to kind of run any of the tech they've got and it's massive on it. And that's why we've got obviously great relationship with the likes, you guys, because we try not to do everything. We try to do what we do really well.

Richard Hill [00:20:10]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:20:11]:
And then make sure we kind of identify those sort of strategy gaps.

Richard Hill [00:20:15]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:20:16]:
And. And those, you know, tools they're not using and sort of, you know, support them. That's where the retention is big time. Like if you go and help a client like that and go just bring it all here, we'll. We'll cut through the noise and, and save you a lot of money, basically.

Richard Hill [00:20:33]:
Yeah, I mean, we, we call sort of strategy days, you know, clients coming in for strategies. They're more like a half a day, but it's, you know, it's a strategy day coming for a strategy day and it is very much. Let's have a look at the whole thing. Obviously we are iu. We. We do this bit, all these bits, but we know people like yourself that do the other bits, you know. But ultimately I remember, I know I wasn't in the strategy day, but I saw the, the document that followed the strategy day and the client. Exactly what you just said.

Richard Hill [00:20:58]:
The client is paying X amount for email and they don't even log into it.

Joshua Grant [00:21:02]:
It's crazy.

Richard Hill [00:21:03]:
Even if they just canceled that, I think that's 1500, 16, 1700 pound a month they're paying for email and they don't even recall logging in. It's like, no, no way. 700 pound a month that pays for a lot of new stuff or pays a lot of bills or some bills. And then get email working on it within the, you know, within the platform itself or the SaaS itself, the, you know, the Econ platform. And then it gets to a point where you might start looking if you need, you know, it depends, you know, but straight away you've got the saving on the sass or, sorry, on the, on the third party tool or whatever it may be. But then actually you're actually leaning into the thing and think, well actually we're now we're making an extra, we're converting an extra 7% of carts or whatever it may be because we're following up with people. Just a little thing like that could be the difference between profit and no profit sort of thing. You know, an extra.

Richard Hill [00:21:48]:
Yeah, you know, whatever it is.

Joshua Grant [00:21:50]:
So.

Richard Hill [00:21:50]:
Yes. So I think any agencies with us, which should be most of you right now, you know, opportunity to really be that. I think, you know, the word I like to use is that trusted advisor. Yeah, genuine trusted advisor where you're helping them with the wider audit, you know, there might be some things there as an agency you're not, you don't specialise in. That's why you build relationships and partnerships and so forth and you know, and work with a, a group of other agencies maybe to, to, to fill the gaps that you don't, you know, and build your own network of trusted advisors that you can then as a agency help that brand, that retailer with your 3 or 4 or 5 or however many trusted advisors sort of thing.

Joshua Grant [00:22:25]:
That's a lot of trusted advisors in one sentence. It is. But I think we still get a lot of clients as probably you do that, that they come to us and they haven't, they don't feel like they've had that trusted advisor.

Richard Hill [00:22:35]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:22:35]:
And if there's kind of one thing you say to any agencies that are listening to this, it's like people are still doing it wrong because they still come to other agency. And there was, you know, we all know how it works in agency land. People do move sometimes because they want to change the scene or outgrow kind of what you're you're doing or whatever it might be. But I think there are so many opportunities still there where people have maybe been part. They've worked with an agency for a few years. That agency scaled maybe. They've struggled to kind of manage the sort of service levels A few people have left that were key kind of contacts.

Richard Hill [00:23:06]:
Yep.

Joshua Grant [00:23:06]:
They've lost those strategy days or sessions or whatever it might be. And all of a sudden they kind of feel like they're in no man's land. And it's identifying and I think with. With all those tools that we've got, you know, our fingertips now identifying kind of those risk factors on those accounts early and going. Hang on a minute. We've just like how we're not seeing that. It's like literally in front of you. It's crazy.

Joshua Grant [00:23:28]:
You work so hard to get clients in the door. You don't really want to let them go if you can help it. And yeah, it's easily done. There's always going to be those sort of things that fall through the gaps and you can't. You can't help. Sometimes the change of guard, like, you know, the client side and they sometimes want to bring the people in that they work with, whatever it might be. But I think you can fight pretty hard for that and make it a very difficult one to move. Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:23:52]:
If someone comes into. You know, we've had it with clients where they've had a change of guard. They've come in and realised that actually it's pretty good service that we're offering.

Richard Hill [00:24:02]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:24:02]:
It doesn't really give much to go. I've just come into this new job and I want to just move everything.

Richard Hill [00:24:06]:
Don't want to risk it. I'm the guys.

Joshua Grant [00:24:09]:
Exactly.

Richard Hill [00:24:09]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:24:10]:
Because it's like, well, anime. These guys have been solid for 10 years.

Richard Hill [00:24:13]:
Yeah. They're risking their career.

Joshua Grant [00:24:15]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:24:15]:
In fact. Right. I'm gonna shift it to the guy that I used at the. Hang on. These guys are really good. Are they better than the guys I know? Oh, yeah. This is our language. All, you know, a lot of m.

Richard Hill [00:24:26]:
A going on. And with a lot of our clients, whether, you know, they've been acquired and, you know, oh, is this going to be really good? Is this going to be. Oh, you're out sort of thing.

Joshua Grant [00:24:36]:
We had one recently, actually. I'm sure you guys monitor these and I think a lot of agencies hopefully. Listen. Do. They'll be like, yeah, you get a question with the client going, yeah. Can. Can you tell us what contract we've Got in place. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:24:50]:
It's not the best first question with a new. With a new contact, is it it? Oh, yeah, and I think it is. It can obviously be a bit like that in the. In the early months of a new contact going in as the main contact with it, with the brand. But it is. Is a bit like that, isn't it? It can be, but then that's where, you know, if you've built. Done some of the things we've talked about. Well, we know that we engage them to do this, but actually they know so much more than that.

Richard Hill [00:25:15]:
They've got a real good network of this, that and the other. And, you know, they've become very trusted and, you know, ultimately we've helped. They're saying that we've helped the brand grow. Xyz. I got an example where, you know, we work with this client for maybe a long time, about 15 years, I think. And then they bought another business which was quite a lot bigger than the business we were working on, but in that vertical. And with it came their marketing manager, who was then put in charge of it all. But he was put in charge of, you know, the whole lot, which is way bigger than the bit we had.

Richard Hill [00:25:46]:
So we're like, oh, this could be tricky. But then basically he said to us, I've never heard of you. Which is, you know, fine, you know, obviously there's a few people not heard of Econ. One, you know, UK brand. I was like, okay, really? But no, he not heard of us. But then, you know, we started working with them and he was in the meetings, he was like, God, you guys are really good. He wasn't used to the level of service, I think is the honest what he was had that had got used to with the other brand, even though their other brand was a lot bigger. So then we've been winning, you know, quite a lot of the other things that we.

Richard Hill [00:26:19]:
From this new brand that they've acquired, which is quite nice. But to start with, it's like, oh, you know, the marketing manager for the bigger brand, they're going to probably take all of it over time to their other agency, but it's actually gone the other way and we've. It's just sort of doing a blooming good job, you know, setting those sort of standards and so forth within the team and so forth. But right, well, let's move on so we can do an episode of the podcast without saying the magic word, which is AI. So I think, you know, a lot of people, you don't need an Agency anymore, You know, AI can do that and, and all that

Joshua Grant [00:26:58]:
nonsense.

Richard Hill [00:27:00]:
You know, what's your, what's your opinion with sort of agencies, you know, dying and you know, that sort of, you know, people say oh, agencies, I can do that myself now. And you know, hey, I can do that now. And what, what, what's your sort of take on that?

Joshua Grant [00:27:14]:
I, I wholeheartedly disagree and I think it's very easy to go, you know, what this, these things are so good at what they do used in the right, you know, scenarios that you can kind of see that vision of like, you know, no one's gonna have a job and everything's going to be automated. It's just not gonna happen. Yeah, there are some platforms that are coming out in the like the PPC space where very much it, it will try and run your sort of PPC campaigns, all this sort of stuff. But we, we find especially on the development side. So on our, I think that's, you know, we're primarily development agency. I think that's a good kind of way to explain it that you can use a lot of tools to kind of sense check things maybe, you know, help you, whatever it might be, might help you with admin. But when it comes to code, even though some of the, some of the sort of the models out there very good at, you know, potentially writing code, they've got no, they've got no experience. They know what they know, but they've not got that like it's, it's the architectural piece, isn't it? It's like who's going to go right, well actually it doesn't know about this thing and it doesn't know about that thing and that thing.

Joshua Grant [00:28:20]:
Yeah, but you can just tell it, it's not the same someone who's been doing a job for whatever, 20 years, maybe as a, as a web developer, coding, etc, their code's going to be better but they're also going to be thinking about the wider implications of is that going to cause security vulnerabilities, is that going to cause a technical debt that's going to cause performance later down the line. A lot of these things are good at kind of writing a bit of code in isolation in front of you, but they're not necessarily great at thinking about the bigger picture. And I think I've not seen a case yet where someone has proved to me that that that is, is there yet. And you can, you, you can feed all this information in and you can do handover documents so you can pass it along and you can keep all this build use, you know, user agents out, all this good stuff, but I think it hasn't joined all the dots together yet. And I think that's a crucial thing. And we, it's a bit of the same. Like we, we don't outsource development outside of the uk. We took that decision very much to be able to manage everything how we want to manage it.

Joshua Grant [00:29:23]:
You know, we want to be able to kind of sit in a room with the developers, we want to, you know, whatever it might be. And it's become a lot easier to kind of manage overseas teams and things like that with the way sort of technology's evolved. But I think just having that, it's that language barrier and being able to kind of, you know, work with someone for a long time, you can't easily replace that, I don't think. And that's the same with AI. Like you're talking to AI as if it's like your colleague or your friend or whatever, but it's not, it doesn't, it doesn't have that wider context and it, and it's not artificial intelligence, it doesn't, it can't think for itself. You are telling it to think. So I think that's a long way away and I think the problem you're going to have is people that put too much trust in IT are potentially going to open themselves up for it to cause some problems or miss massive things that it just is not aware of.

Richard Hill [00:30:19]:
Now, I'm just going to pause this one for a second with a quick note from our sponsor, Aristo Sourcing. Now, when it comes to building high performing teams overseas, for my agency, Aristo Sourcing is my go to partner. Whether you're looking to scale your operations, reduce costs or access world class talent without the hassle, they've made it incredibly straightforward for us. I've personally been working with them now for over 18 months and can thoroughly recommend their services. First, if you're ready to build your team and take your agency to the next level, head over to aristosourcing.com to find out more. Now, let's get right back into this episode. Well, you see it, don't you? Now, unfortunately, you know, when you go on to say, you know, I mean, this is probably a poor example but, you know, go onto LinkedIn and it's just a wash of dribble. I can't, I can't bring myself.

Richard Hill [00:31:06]:
I used to do a lot of LinkedIn.

Joshua Grant [00:31:07]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:31:08]:
Now I can't, I just can't bring myself to join the dribble brigade. Honestly, I wake up in the morning and feel like I just need to go and stick in my head in the cold shower.

Joshua Grant [00:31:20]:
Yeah, it's a race. It's a race to the bottom. Because the problem you've got is as all of that, especially on the content side.

Richard Hill [00:31:26]:
Well, I don't do it is what I'm driving at.

Joshua Grant [00:31:27]:
That's the thing. It's like that's more and more that, you know, whether it be, I don't know, content written for organic SEO, you know, very much similar for people targeting AI crawlers and stuff like that. But if people are kind of regurgitate in this AI cycle, eventually the quality of all of that as, as we all know is going to deplete. Someone at some point has to add something new into the system that it hasn't thought about. And I think from a coding point of that still, still happens because you know, someone might not have thought of that scenario that you get a code. Yeah, it doesn't know about it.

Richard Hill [00:31:57]:
So your job's okay for now.

Joshua Grant [00:31:59]:
I think so.

Richard Hill [00:32:00]:
But I assume you are using AI within the agency. Know, is there maybe anything you could share, you know, around how you are implementing certain things without giving away the, the farm sort of thing?

Joshua Grant [00:32:12]:
Yeah, I think there's a really topical one at the moment. I'm in a few WhatsApp groups with different agency owners and things like that. And one of the ones that we've kind of all collectively started to kind of pull our knowledge on is how to leverage it better for processes but also reporting. And I think a lot of agencies, and I know Econ one's probably one of them, you've got a lot of different systems and you're trying to kind of join the dots and make it so you've got a uniformed kind of dashboard and rest of it. I think AI has definitely leveraged that and accelerated kind of doing that. Yeah, and, and being able to kind of identify those things that we said with like the retention base, you know, it might be that it will just all sort of flag an account going. There's a couple of metrics on here that it spotted that aren't kind of optimal to where you want them to be. And unless someone's happened to have checked that or it's on a report somewhere, they're the sort of things you miss.

Joshua Grant [00:33:03]:
And I think having a, an AI generated dashboard that's kind of cut through all the data to give you kind of bit of an insight. Yeah, you can't use it as your only tool. It's kind of that nice. It's like icing on the cake, isn't it? It's like you've still got the cake, but you've got this nice icing bit to the side that's kind of giving you that extra bit and I think that's where it's helpful. And. Yeah, and on the admin side, I think we've all been using it on admin stuff for a long time and I think you. You're kind of mad if you. You don't.

Joshua Grant [00:33:33]:
And it might even be like, as much as we kind of get internally, there's kind of a. There are different opinions in the business, I guess, about kind of how AI should be leveraged and used. And I think some. Some of the development team especially are very much like, it needs to be contained, it needs to, you know, you need to have a policy on where it's going to be used. But things like, you know, note taking and stuff like that is getting better and better all the time. Yeah, I think a lot of them have struggled in the early days and they did make those mistakes. And yeah, you've seen people that have not read it and sent it to a client, all this sort of stuff, and you're like, yeah, that's not what we said.

Richard Hill [00:34:10]:
That's not what we agreed to.

Joshua Grant [00:34:12]:
Exactly that. So I think there's very much like, you know, it accelerates that review piece. So you get to.

Richard Hill [00:34:18]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:34:19]:
Review it quickly. Go. I agree with that.

Richard Hill [00:34:21]:
The admin side of things speed up.

Joshua Grant [00:34:23]:
Yeah, I think that's really good and I think there's probably more to be done with kind of process and operations. Even from like a project management point of view, I think I haven't got to the bottom of how well that can be implemented in the business yet, because there are likely things in there that are going to save time or it's going to potentially even just identify inefficiencies.

Richard Hill [00:34:47]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:34:48]:
Or identify something to have a look at. It might be like. Well, we think there's kind of a gap there and you go and look at it and go, yeah, there is a gap there and you solve it. So I think using it as kind of a signpost, I think, is quite

Richard Hill [00:34:59]:
a good way highlight. Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:35:01]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:35:02]:
So a topic we're a massive fan of on the agency intensive is sales, you know, growing. I think, you know, we obviously growing agencies is really the core of agency intensive. I think maybe 18, 20 months ago, when we last had you on, we. I Think we talked a lot about events and going to events and partnerships. What's sort of working for you at the moment in terms of sort of winning new business?

Joshua Grant [00:35:26]:
So, so we've, we've definitely pivoted a little bit since I came on the last time in the sense of. I think a lot of people have over the last few years there was kind of that surge after covered of like, let's go to every event. Yeah, let's see what's going on. And I think it's taken me probably a good three, three, four years to kind of build the relationships from going to those events that are now kind of reaping rewards. And I think, you know, we would as a business, I think, you know, fairly, fairly safe in saying this. Been in a, a bit of a tricky situation if we hadn't have done that. Because a big percentage of our new business, especially the big stuff, comes in from networking and somebody you met several

Richard Hill [00:36:09]:
years ago kept that and three years later, whatever, four, two, three, four years later that know when the time's right.

Joshua Grant [00:36:16]:
I think it's always, I think it's always been like that in business. But yeah, I think because of how kind of big the Ecom big or small, like we all know each other but you know, I mean there's a lot of us, but we all know each other. Yeah, I think it's kind of more crucial because I think, you know, if you're in an industry that is a bit more old school, you know, there's only a few big players, they all need to still know the, the key people in that, but they probably don't need to move quite as quick. And I think that's the thing. It's like you could meet someone tomorrow at an event that's the next big thing.

Richard Hill [00:36:48]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:36:48]:
And that could be the next big gold scene.

Richard Hill [00:36:50]:
You don't really know and you've got to wait a couple of years to get there, you know, to get that commercial.

Joshua Grant [00:36:56]:
But yeah, yeah, we, we, we won quite a big account. I think it was a tail end last year that I'd met him at an event. I think it was three years previously and he, that was it. It was about a week after ECOM Expo last year and he dropped me an email. He's like, I've been to Ecom Expo and I spoke to a couple agencies that are stands there and they never got back to me. And I'm thinking that's a good tip there. Agencies always follow up. Anyone you've met at an event.

Joshua Grant [00:37:27]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:37:27]:
Are you following up?

Joshua Grant [00:37:28]:
Because, because, because he was like, they didn't follow up. And I remembered you for three years ago and you followed up. Yeah. And would you.

Richard Hill [00:37:36]:
You weren't even at the expo. So they got, they contacted the firm from the year before.

Joshua Grant [00:37:40]:
Honestly, Honestly. And I can't say who they are because I haven't, I haven't checked whether or not we'll, we'll be able to do it, but.

Richard Hill [00:37:48]:
And they probably spent 20 grand to be in the room or whatever.

Joshua Grant [00:37:52]:
They are a well known supercar manufacturer and you're thinking what? And it, I think because, because it, it's, they've got the, they work with that brand. It's through like a, like an intermediary company that kind of did it on their behalf. But I think maybe sometimes when people approach on your stand and they say they're from such and such. And because I'm, because I'm a car guy, I'm like, I know exactly who these guys are. If you don't kind of join the dots and realise who they are as a business, you probably think, oh, they're just some thing.

Richard Hill [00:38:26]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:38:27]:
But you're like, you wouldn't do the sort of.

Richard Hill [00:38:28]:
Oh, that's, oh, oh, they, they represent. Oh, okay.

Joshua Grant [00:38:32]:
Yeah. And you're like, wow.

Richard Hill [00:38:34]:
Yeah. Well, this is the thing. You never, never, never really speaking to a lot of these events.

Joshua Grant [00:38:39]:
No.

Richard Hill [00:38:40]:
I have a similar story where a guy reached out to the team probably three years ago and he starred with us on Meta, you know, and so, and the guys did a great job on Meta ads, Facebook ads as it was. And, and then. Great. So then he took all our services, you know, five or six retainers, you know, and really, really good client. And then the guys booked him onto the eCommerce1 podcast and he's like, I don't, he says to me, I don't, I don't know if you remember me. I was like, sorry, I don't, don't remember you. And this is like live on a podcast like this. He goes, well, eight years ago you were at the irx.

Richard Hill [00:39:15]:
And he said, and I was just setting up in business. And he says, and you were rammed that you stand, but you took half an hour to speak to me. And he says, I just thought, oh, that was really nice of you. You could have clearly just told me to, you know, whatever. And he was a startup, you know, at that time it was trickier. Expos. Isn't it? Because sometimes they're just really busy but ultimately give you time to everybody. You can and ultimately try and do the right thing.

Richard Hill [00:39:36]:
And he said, oh, when I, when I was ready, I knew I wanted to work with you sort of thing. And now they're one of our probably top 10 clients, you know, but you just don't know, do you, these expos? But I mean, that was an eight year sort of lead cycle, so I wouldn't, you know.

Joshua Grant [00:39:48]:
Well, I think, I think it transcends all businesses. I remember a family friend of ours, he, he went into a Mercedes, this was a few years ago, went into Mercedes dealership, and he's absolutely minted, you know, multimillionaire. And he goes in like, looks like, you know, he's, he's not got much money. Yeah, yeah. You know, scruffy, whatever it is, walks in the, the salesman don't really ever, you know, given time of day. And then they come over just as he's kind of walking out the door going, oh, can you help? He's like, oh, I wanted to buy like a, I don't know what it was at the time, like an SLR Merc or something, you know, some crazy Mercedes. But he's like, you didn't bother to give me time of day. So he went down to the next Mercedes dealership and went in and they were like, oh, hello, nice to meet you.

Joshua Grant [00:40:29]:
You know, decent salesman looked after him. Yeah. Because, yeah, you find a lot of these people a lot of cash.

Richard Hill [00:40:35]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:40:35]:
Do not look like it, you know, if you didn't know who someone like Jay Leno was, for example, and he just walked into a dealership before. He's just some old guy, like, don't look like he's got cash. He's got one of the biggest car collections. He's one of the biggest.

Richard Hill [00:40:46]:
Yeah, I've watched a lot of his car videos.

Joshua Grant [00:40:47]:
I love him. And you're thinking like, you just can't, you can't judge a book by its cover. And I think that's, that's the same when people come to your stand.

Richard Hill [00:40:55]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:40:55]:
And you're absolutely right. You know, it might be the businessman at that time is a bit small or that's a failed startup. You know, you think, you know, this is kind of a bit of a waste of time, but where are they going to end up? Yeah, that's the thing that, yeah, I

Richard Hill [00:41:07]:
think it's like also like you've got this wave of really smart young marketers coming through, you know, help try and help them with, you know, you know, they're looking for opportunities, they're looking to be guided where what to learn how to do something if you can help them. You know that generation are then going to become the marketing leaders of you know, the car brands and so forth. There's a client we've got in, you know, this is a podcast about you

Joshua Grant [00:41:31]:
but you know, just well last, last

Richard Hill [00:41:33]:
story that you know they were, you know, young, young last local. Local lady that works for a really small marketing agency and we invited her to an event of ours. You know she was just starting out, you know became, you know, really, really got to know her quite well. But then she's gone on to she. She's a. She runs the marketing for a thousand person, you know, brand that's a very good client of ours sort of thing. Obviously we didn't do it for that reason. You know, we just.

Richard Hill [00:41:58]:
You just, you know try and help these people whether that's client, you know. But you know, obviously we've run a lot of sort of community events. You just meet a lot of people along the way, don't you sort of thing and then when it's right, if you can help them, they can help you. They might think, well it's that sort of law of reciprocity. I could never say the word but it's sort of, you know, just think put good stuff out there by helping where you can. You know, if a retailer comes up to you and wants some advice on xyz, I know you will help do everything you can to help them.

Joshua Grant [00:42:22]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:42:22]:
And when the time's right they may well hopefully remember maybe you know, oh, you know, let's have a chat with Josh on But yeah, so the relationships you built then three, four years ago have been really good for the agency now. So I think it's still, you know, I think you know, obviously we talk a lot about the E commerce industry but obviously agency intensive, you know, agencies as a whole, you know, what events can you still be going to as agency owners that are sort of in your industry? You know, if you're in running an agency for. We've mentioned cars and car. Car parts. Cars, cars themselves. You know we are going to. Next week we're going to a very specific car automotive marketing event. It's not our event but we're going to network to understand that more.

Richard Hill [00:43:08]:
You know we've picked up a few clients this last two or three years automotive. We want to go and meet more and more of these people. I think getting out there still. It's still hard to beat, isn't it? As a.

Joshua Grant [00:43:17]:
It is and I think relying on the collections I've built from, you know, the last three years would be a silly thing to do entirely because you're missing out on the ones that you're building for the next three years. So it's very much like you still need to be going. And I'm going down to London tomorrow to the Econ Colab Club event. I don't, I don't particularly always go, sort of every month and I don't go to the, like tomorrow I can't go to the actual main event, but there's a spin off lunch event that I like to go to and one of the guys that I met there a few years ago, we've been helping each other out on client counts. You know, he's given us some great leads and vice versa. And I'm going down tomorrow to sit next to him at lunch to have a good chat to him, catch up because, you know, we've, we've been, we're jointly making a decent living by helping each other out.

Richard Hill [00:44:05]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:44:05]:
And I think that's the thing. It's like you, you, we all just want to have a decent living and I think the best way to do that is to kind of build those human connections of, you know, how can we kind of help each other.

Richard Hill [00:44:17]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:44:18]:
The bit I don't like about the kind of partnership and event side is where people are a little bit too much in your face and they're like constantly ringing you, like constantly hounding you. Because as much as I love all of them, you just can't. And we're not an agency that unfortunately can have a dedicated sort of partnerships person. And even then, as we well know, they get saturated as well. It's very much being mindful, I think of that. And I think as agencies, we've got to be mindful of. I think there's been a lot historically of people referring clients into the wrong tech partners for the wrong reasons.

Richard Hill [00:44:52]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:44:53]:
And I think we need to be all collectively quite responsible with that. And I think the, the good agencies always are because they have got that foresight to know at some point that's going to come and bite me because if I. It's not right fit. And you're going back like, why did you tell me to go and work with these guys? I've got the capacity to work with that platform, whatever it might be, they couldn't help or. Yeah, yeah. I think that's the same with those partner managers that are, you know, connecting. We get it all day, every day, LinkedIn, whatever it might be people are in the office going, I want to sell you this partnership, whatever, whatever. You just got to be mindful that people are really busy and I know that you've got your job to do, but it's just being that human touch.

Joshua Grant [00:45:33]:
So, you know, rather than kind of dropping in once a week, maybe drop in once a quarter, once a month, you know, trying to play that kind of. I'm here and I think they need to. I think the good ones do they see that long game. Yeah. But I think we. We kind of all got to.

Richard Hill [00:45:48]:
Collectively, it comes back to. There's got to be a genuine, you know, can that partner really, really help? Yeah, I think that's what a lot of it boils down to. Or that, that tech, that software, those set of people, that marketing agency, those dev people that can do this very specific thing. It's not. You're not just recommending for the say. Oh, no, we're not saying that. But I think ultimately there can be a lot of noise with partnerships, can't there? You know, hang on. Actually, have we got clients that already benefit from this thing that these people do and can they do a really, really good job?

Joshua Grant [00:46:18]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:46:18]:
And have it. And. But then I think you've got to be careful not to also have too many because you can have, you know, you can just be a very busy fool in partnerships where actually. Yeah, these are all really lovely people, but actually our client base, you know, I don't really need the half of this stuff. Right. Well, a quick change direction. So I'm intrigued. Obviously, when we last spoke, you had the office.

Joshua Grant [00:46:42]:
We did.

Richard Hill [00:46:43]:
And I believe now you don't have the office.

Joshua Grant [00:46:45]:
Yeah. So we. So we sold the. The office that we used to have in.

Richard Hill [00:46:49]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:46:49]:
Central Nottingham, which is. It was in West Bridgeford.

Richard Hill [00:46:52]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:46:53]:
So post covered. We weren't really using it.

Richard Hill [00:46:55]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:46:56]:
And then we kind of went, you know, let's. Let's get rid of it. The company owned it, so it's kind of an asset. Just sat there.

Richard Hill [00:47:01]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:47:02]:
And I think that, you know, the plans longer term for the business as well, a bit of a restructure, you know, to take it into the kind of. The next.

Richard Hill [00:47:09]:
Well, maybe talk about that on the next. Next time we get you on.

Joshua Grant [00:47:12]:
Yeah, yeah, potentially. So we, we also, like. It's one of those crazy things. I think we were paying like 30 grand a year rates on. On that.

Richard Hill [00:47:20]:
Just on the rate.

Joshua Grant [00:47:20]:
Because it's quite big.

Richard Hill [00:47:21]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:47:22]:
Is a big, big sort of like Victorian manor house. Yeah. The business bought it a Long time ago. So, you know, for, for a lot less than what it's worth now. But yeah, it took a while to sell it and we'd already, we'd already made the decision that we were like, right, we need to just.

Richard Hill [00:47:36]:
Were there other people in there, other businesses in sublet and stuff or.

Joshua Grant [00:47:39]:
I mean it could have been, it really could. I mean there are a lot of scenarios that were considered, you know, maybe like floors co working. Yeah. Are you thinking like it's just you got a way up kind of the return and actually when you look at it, you don't get a huge amount back for doing that, for the amount of time that goes into it. Unless you've got a place, you know, massive place.

Richard Hill [00:47:59]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:48:00]:
Purpose built kind of thing. And so we, we rented a, we now rent a cow shed on a. An old cow farm and it was purpose converted basically. Purpose built. There's, it's all open plan and ultra modern and because of the square footage, it's under the rate of all value.

Richard Hill [00:48:17]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:48:18]:
So our rent is like half of what the old rates used to be. So you're thinking. And it's brilliant because I think it, it comes onto that fact of like we, we as an agency and this is a kind of concern for a lot of agencies. Like, do you still need an office? Can you go into a, you know, just do it occasionally, Remote working space, you know, all these sort of things. And I think we, we as a business have always sold really well because we've got, got an office.

Richard Hill [00:48:42]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:48:43]:
And we get clients in strategy meetings.

Richard Hill [00:48:45]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:48:45]:
We get as much of the team in as we can at least once a month. Like try and get as many people in the building at the same time because you still need that social glue. And a lot of clients will be like, yeah, we really like you. But they don't kind of know if you're outsourcing it or they might have been burnt with the outsourcing model.

Richard Hill [00:49:03]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:49:04]:
They're like, you know, who are these people? Do they exist?

Richard Hill [00:49:06]:
But then they come to your office. Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:49:07]:
They're like, okay, yeah, it's a thing.

Richard Hill [00:49:09]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:49:09]:
And because it, because it's like, it's still got that wow factor. You walk in, it's like ultra modern underfloor heating. It's got glass down slippers.

Richard Hill [00:49:18]:
At work then.

Joshua Grant [00:49:19]:
Yeah, you could do. I mean, you could. And that's the thing. It's like we now sit in the office and my desk overlooks a field that's either got cows in it or sheeps And Lamb, you know, it's like. Is still nice. And then the. The office next to us is a big econ business, strangely enough. So it's like they're a similar sort of thing in the sense of they've, you know, I think they've got another office somewhere else, but yeah, they still need a space for everyone to convene, you know.

Richard Hill [00:49:45]:
Sure. Big, big plus for the having an office, getting the team together. Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:49:51]:
We. We always said that the office was like the silent salesman.

Richard Hill [00:49:54]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:49:55]:
Because it's like you're a tangible business.

Richard Hill [00:49:57]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:49:57]:
You're not somewhat. We all know there's been people that have started up their kind of agency by going, yeah, we're a big agency. The rest of it is like two people. And yeah, they just pretend that it's got this depth and layers. But I think the sort of businesses that we attract now are very seasoned and, yeah, they appreciate that human connection.

Richard Hill [00:50:15]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:50:16]:
And they like to come into very similar to us.

Richard Hill [00:50:18]:
We have a lot more. More and more clients, potential clients coming to this office. Yeah, yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:50:24]:
So. So I'd say to like, the agencies out there that are kind of. I know there's a lot of agencies that got rid of their offices and they just buy a bit of space or rent a bit of space and they go in occasionally on the rest of it and you can kind of get away with that. Like, my bro's got a quite a big business that he runs in London that they got rid of all their offices quite a few years ago. And he's like, well, yeah, but the co working space we've got, they don't really know that all those people are in it aren't our employees. So it's like. Actually it's kind of finding the right place, I think.

Richard Hill [00:50:52]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:50:52]:
And not everyone. It's not the right thing for everyone. Yeah. But, yeah.

Richard Hill [00:50:56]:
So, Josh, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on. Maybe. Is there a couple of things on the. On the absolute road map that you're going to be working. You're working on over the next 12 months that you want to share with our listeners that might help other agency owners, the sort of things that you're putting time into?

Joshua Grant [00:51:11]:
I think we've briefly touched on one of them, but the kind of reporting, getting a better understanding of how the business is running?

Richard Hill [00:51:20]:
So that's from. Yeah. Reporting for your own reporting.

Joshua Grant [00:51:24]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:51:24]:
And client reporting or both.

Joshua Grant [00:51:26]:
Yeah, yeah, I think just. Just more visibility and I think people are kind of. They're always open to it. So it's like, if you can make it really easy for people to digest a lot of data, they're always going to be open to it.

Richard Hill [00:51:40]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:51:40]:
And I think a lot of the agency, like client reporting has always been a bit like, I don't know, it's a bit flat. I don't think it's necessarily always kind of been dynamic enough to kind of leverage those things that are like the bits we might forget or forget. So I think there's a lot to be done on that side, but definitely operational in the business, I think, you know, working where, you know, are there efficiencies there? Can we make a bit more profit here? Do we need a bit more capacity there? Yeah, you know, I think we're doing, doing it at the moment where we're like, I'm doing a big manual one kind of to try and set the foundations of what we want to achieve out of maybe making it automated or at least, you know, getting AI to kind of a lot of the heavy crunching of the numbers.

Richard Hill [00:52:24]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:52:25]:
And already you can kind of go, well, this department's probably a little bit lean there. You know, that one's running a bit too hard. Yeah. This, this client account's probably not being pushed hard enough in the sense that we're not supporting them enough maybe. I think that's a really big one. I think so.

Richard Hill [00:52:41]:
Looking at the profitability in certain areas, departments and across the board, try and sort of get another extra, whatever it may be. 5, 10 out of.

Joshua Grant [00:52:50]:
I think so, yeah. Yeah. Because I think all of our costs, all our costs going up, our wage inflation's going up.

Richard Hill [00:52:55]:
Yep.

Joshua Grant [00:52:56]:
We've got, we haven't got any juniors on our team and they are all UK based, so they're all, yeah. Demanding pretty good salaries.

Richard Hill [00:53:03]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:53:03]:
Which is fine. But you know, you want to always try and reward them each year with a bit of an increase, you know, try and keep up with inflation, all the rest of it, at least. But that's got to come from somewhere.

Richard Hill [00:53:12]:
Right.

Joshua Grant [00:53:12]:
And if you can kind of make efficiencies. Yeah, that helps everyone.

Richard Hill [00:53:16]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:53:16]:
Because, you know, there's a bit more, you know, maneuverability there for the team.

Richard Hill [00:53:20]:
Yeah. You can, where you might have hired traditionally, you might try and, you know, build that extra work into the existing team, for example.

Joshua Grant [00:53:30]:
Yeah. But make it manageable. I think that's the thing. It's like.

Richard Hill [00:53:32]:
Of course, yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:53:33]:
It's the.

Richard Hill [00:53:34]:
Because of efficiencies in the way that you do things means we can do slightly, you know, extra 3% in each department means.

Joshua Grant [00:53:40]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:53:41]:
You know, well, that's a person you might have hired now you don't need to. But then that's on the bottom line, which can be spread out on paid on pay increase day.

Joshua Grant [00:53:48]:
I think that's pay review day. And getting people kind of on board with the re. And we're doing that at the moment like getting people on board with the reasons why you're doing it. And it's very much like, look, we're transparent. We're telling people we're doing it and we're doing it to make sure that everything's manageable for everyone and that we're getting the best out of it for everyone. Because if the business is doing better, everyone gets the reward.

Richard Hill [00:54:07]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:54:07]:
Of it. And if everyone's kind of not exploding because they're so busy.

Richard Hill [00:54:13]:
They're not. It's not too much.

Joshua Grant [00:54:14]:
It's not too much there a fine.

Richard Hill [00:54:15]:
We're not fine line. But that is obviously you got to be keeping an eye on both sides, haven't you? So, okay, we're under capacity here. So yeah, these guys can do more or this department. But however these three guys over ups their neck in it. And so we can't just go right. 5%, everybody extra. So it's understanding where people are at

Joshua Grant [00:54:31]:
is it's even the forecast inside and that's a bit that I'm definitely going to work on over the next 12 months is it's really tricky to forecast, especially in the development space because it's not like it's a retainer necessarily because it's a project comes in fine and it'd be X amount of hours and it should go through and sprints or whatever it might be. But we all know that things move around months.

Richard Hill [00:54:52]:
Now is six months.

Joshua Grant [00:54:53]:
Yeah. And then, you know, there might be a couple accounts clash or a client is all of a sudden not available or whatever it might be. You can't build all those factors.

Richard Hill [00:54:59]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:55:00]:
But getting a bit more visibility on that and we, we always do like a, a monthly helicopter. We call it the helicopter meeting because it's top level and we'll look at kind of all the pipeline, how big those jobs are, how many hours are like where they're potentially going to go in the schedules. But a lot of that is, you know, you still move. We're still moving a lot of those pieces manually in the helicopter meeting.

Richard Hill [00:55:19]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:55:20]:
Because it, it doesn't, it doesn't translate through all the rest of the system throw. And that's the bit where you're like we could probably get a bit smarter.

Richard Hill [00:55:27]:
There's some patterns there that could be used.

Joshua Grant [00:55:30]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:55:30]:
Well, Josh, it's been an absolute pleasure. Now I don't know if you remember but I like to end every episode with a book recommendation. Do you have a, a recent book that you've read that you'd like to share with our listeners?

Joshua Grant [00:55:42]:
So I think I did on the last one and you know what? This time I was thinking about this. I'm not so I've not been reading as much as I like to and I think everyone's probably guilty of that to a certain degree and especially because I get distract. A person gets distracted by. By whatever. So I've not been reading as much recently but one of the things that rather than recommendation is like I really like the sort of human elements of everything you interact with in the world and I think I see things on LinkedIn that isn't dribble occasionally from people that's kind of like honest. I watch podcasts. Yeah. Bit like this, I'll listen to them, whatever and even like I follow quite a lot of different YouTubers and things like that and I'm always picking the bits of like, you know, what their perception of that and how I could implement that in what I do day to day is really quite a YouTuber

Richard Hill [00:56:36]:
then that you would recommend to our listeners.

Joshua Grant [00:56:38]:
I I car guy and he's really well known. Well there's two really well known ones like the big, the big one in the world at the moment and he's from Leicester is Matt Armstrong. Yeah, I always watch Matt. I watched him from the start from his co early covered days when he basically got famous because of furlough. He had time to kind of start his channel which is amazing and I've watched a few of the spin off ones like Chris Slicks etc and one of the clients that we used to work with sells tools and stuff like that and this was a few years back but I was very much talking to the CEO there about like how they could leverage kind of that and, and implement that in their business. But the bit I take away from that is like even though someone might already be doing something, whether it be restoring supercar, you know, crash damage supercars or whatever it might be somewhat. I was thinking about this the other day actually quite a good, probably a good one to explain but like you think McDonald's, they. They're probably the most well known fast food chain.

Joshua Grant [00:57:36]:
Right?

Richard Hill [00:57:36]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:57:36]:
You're thinking surely someone couldn't get into that market and still do well with it. But they, but they could because there's always room for someone to do it better and different. And I think that's the same in our industry. Like if everyone's kind of doing it exactly the same way, then it's not going to work. You've got, you've got to kind of come in and go, well, we're going to do that better. And I think that that's where I've got a lot of that inspiration from. Watching all these people, whether it be

Richard Hill [00:58:03]:
where they've gone to, they've sort of disrupted an industry.

Joshua Grant [00:58:05]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think, yeah, I watch some of the bigger ones like Steven Butler, whatever it might be and pick through kind of the noise because some of those channels got so busy and yeah, so much to watch. But very much like a lot of those, you'll kind of get those same sort of repeat sort of patterns of like business advisors or mentors or whatever going. You just need to look at your proposition and do it better than everyone else. And, and that's, that's sort of it. And if I am reading some books I'd always try and like autobiographies and stuff like that I really find interesting.

Richard Hill [00:58:37]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:58:37]:
Because you get to understand the person, the journey, all the rest of it. So that's a long way of saying I haven't got a recommendation.

Richard Hill [00:58:43]:
You haven't read any books but you watch a lot of YouTube.

Joshua Grant [00:58:45]:
Yeah, yeah.

Richard Hill [00:58:45]:
Because. Thank you.

Joshua Grant [00:58:46]:
My comms, the channels coming in similar to my.

Richard Hill [00:58:50]:
I might have just recently subscribed to YouTube Premium.

Joshua Grant [00:58:54]:
Yeah, I know. Best thing you think, you do the maths on it and go, I can save X amount of my life by not watching ads.

Richard Hill [00:59:00]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:59:00]:
It's probably worth it.

Richard Hill [00:59:01]:
I have genuinely, I'm, I'm obsessed with YouTube at the moment. We are as an agency. It's a, you know, I think, think it's. We've got a lot of plans for the agency and the, and this podcast for, for YouTube. Personally, my kids have started YouTube channels and they've got more subscribers than me and I'm thinking this is not happening.

Joshua Grant [00:59:18]:
This is, it's literally the best marketing tool on the planet. You a lot of, in fact one of the ones of the spin offs, they were interviewing Matt Armstrong on one of the podcasts going like, you know, how have you got successful? The rest of it. And he was saying that most. Now he's so big and he gets 5, 6 million views a video. Most people can't afford to sponsor them.

Richard Hill [00:59:39]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [00:59:40]:
Because 5, 6 million viewers is worth a lot of money. Right. So most of these big channels are then setting up their own merchandise. So he, he, he basically will plug his own merchandise because he will get more money than he will than he would from underselling a sponsorship to someone. And you're thinking it's like it's business genius because they built their, their own marketing platform. Yeah.

Richard Hill [01:00:04]:
And they can now they're marketing in with the marketing with merch that's got their brand on.

Joshua Grant [01:00:08]:
Yeah. They're making loads of profit. Are you thinking it's great. And I think you wouldn't necessarily do that in our space. Or if you guys get bigger, you

Richard Hill [01:00:15]:
can wear an Econ one or an agency intensive cap to work.

Joshua Grant [01:00:18]:
Oh, I absolutely would. I'm an econ1 fan. But I think that's the thing. It's like just thinking outside the box a bit.

Richard Hill [01:00:25]:
Yeah.

Joshua Grant [01:00:25]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [01:00:26]:
So, Josh, it's been a pleasure having you on. For those that want to find out more about what you do, more about Absolute, what's the best way to do that?

Joshua Grant [01:00:32]:
Best way is probably to go to my LinkedIn. Yeah. So you find me, Josh Joshua Grant on LinkedIn or our website, which is a really long domain name and we should really change it, but absolute hyphen design.co.uk we've been around 30 years. Start off with a brand and design agency. We're not going anywhere anytime soon, but anything really develop related, Econ related. We're the go to. We're based in Nottingham. So.

Richard Hill [01:01:04]:
Yeah, brilliant. Well, thanks for coming on the show. If you enjoyed this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button. Wherever you are listening to this podcast, you're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Have a fantastic day and I'll see you on the next one.