E003: Richard Mawer

Richard Hill [00:00:07]:
It's episode 3 of Agency Intensive. I'm Richard Hill, your host. In this episode, I speak with author and ex agency founder, Richard Moyer. We step through Richard's early days as an agency owner navigating those initial hurdles, Richard's process for nurturing leads for clients and for the agency, Richard's toolset and tech stack, which is very similar to our own. Building trust and partnerships and Richard's new journey is an established author, and this is his new book. Absolutely recommend it. Get it bought.

Richard Mawer [00:00:33]:
And so much more in

Richard Hill [00:00:34]:
this one now. Do me one favor. Hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you are listening to this podcast. You're always

Richard Mawer [00:00:39]:
the first to know when a new episode

Richard Hill [00:00:40]:
is released. Now let's head over to this fantastic episode.

Richard Mawer [00:00:46]:
Welcome to the show, Richard. How are we doing?

Richard Mawer [00:00:48]:
Very good. How are you, Richard?

Richard Mawer [00:00:49]:
I'm very happy. Inviting me on. Happy. Now Richard Yeah. We've sort of skirted around Lincolnshire together for the last, probably, 10 years, and we only met properly about a month ago about a month ago. But, obviously, we're in a very similar place, and I thought I've gotta get you on the show. So thank you for coming in and Pleasure. You know, coming into the to the agency in terms of HQ.

Richard Mawer [00:01:10]:
So I think it'd be great for you to introduce yourself to our listeners, you know, and how you started your agency and how you overcame those and maybe initial hurdles in the first few months years?

Richard Mawer [00:01:21]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, my name is Richard Moore. I currently run a consultancy, Ignite Growth, as a consultancy, but I ran, as you say, an agency for 7 years. Digital Media Edge, we were local to you in Lincoln, covered the whole of the East Midlands, very, very much b to b focused agency. And what brought me into the agency world was I've been in marketing and sales my whole life, really. It's been my growing up.

Richard Mawer [00:01:48]:
I'm 55 now. I think from the age of about 1920, I really came into this world, went into direct sales. From the back of sales, it was obviously, how do I get better leads, which took me into marketing. And then from there, I've really gone through 7, 8 businesses now. I've had a career really as an entrepreneur just Yeah. Setting up my own businesses. I always say to people I'm not a great employee. I am someone who very much, yeah, very much you relate to it, that very much I have to, you know, control, the areas that I know I'm really good at and give as much value as I can to people.

Richard Mawer [00:02:25]:
So Yeah. I tended to, work and do my own marketing in my own businesses, build those up. 3 or 4 of them have got past the 7 figure mark, so it was something I was getting very good at. I also worked with a lot of corporate clients, so I worked in the, in the legal sector for a while. I was here at, Sills and Beverage in town here, which was a period of employment when I was their head of marketing here. On the back of that, I actually then went into my passion, which was horse racing. So I'd always loved my horse racing, but I felt they weren't very good at marketing their products. They were a bit behind the times, a bit old fashioned.

Richard Mawer [00:03:03]:
So Mhmm. My brother was the, head accountant over at Saddle, still is, over at Saddle Racecourse. So we started developing their website, showing them how to use social media. We got very much into email marketing. Yeah. Yeah. So that was sort of my background, and I set up a company called Racing Profits Guides, which was really built around developing guides to race courses around the country. So we ended up with 15 websites.

Richard Mawer [00:03:29]:
We covered Cheltenham. We covered Doncaster, York Racecourse. We sponsored a lot of races on the race courses. So we really got involved in the whole industry, and people came to us really for for help with their own social media, their own marketing, which created a a sort of a virtual agency, which we haven't really planned on doing. Yeah. But it just that's how it developed, to the point where Betfred, the bookmaker, approached us to run tote pool. They just bought tote pool on the courses, and he want Fred wanted me to basically run all of his social media campaigns, for tote pool. So that then really led to a far more strategic approach to marketing, looking at the overall revenue goals for the business, breaking that down yearly, how many leads we had generate to hit those goals.

Richard Mawer [00:04:18]:
Customer acquisition became far more of a scientific process. And that really was where Digital Media Edge came from because other businesses outside of horse racing were starting to notice us.

Richard Mawer [00:04:28]:
Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:04:29]:
Yeah. So I switched really when the growth of football as a betting medium came. I knew my days were numbered in horseracing because that isn't really how your first person finds out about betting anymore. It's through football, Ipsen,

Richard Mawer [00:04:44]:
Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:04:44]:
MMA, things like that. Even darts have become so. Yeah. So we sort of shifted and pivoted again into Digital Media Edge to use what we'd learned, but to really become a very strategy first agency. We weren't sort of selling our skills as SEO or web designers or any of the other number of skills. We were selling it as a growth agency. Yeah. You know? And that really fitted our model.

Richard Mawer [00:05:09]:
You know? We really want to go down that route.

Richard Mawer [00:05:11]:
Love that story, Richard. I didn't I didn't know some of those things. Yeah. I know when we we first met very, very briefly, at Levent, I maybe 4 years ago, just in passing, really. And then and then I remember googling your name, and I saw the horse racing thing. Oh, it was, like, very intriguing. Yeah. I think it's great to, you know, most, obviously, agencies start with, I think, you know, quite often, you know, you've got an interest in something yourself, you know, and building something for you.

Richard Mawer [00:05:35]:
Then somebody says, oh, can you help me with this? Which they did. And you go, well, go on then. Let's have a look, sort of thing. And the next thing, you know, fast forward, whether that's a month or a year or 3 years, that starts to become oh, actually, you know, it's interesting, isn't it? You obviously get you got I can obviously listen to you, the real passion for Yeah. The sort of b to b side and obviously knowing a bit more than than than we've said yet about what you've what you've done. But, you know, how do you juggle working on brand building and direct lead generation in in in your sort of, agency? Because I think that's the challenge.

Richard Mawer [00:06:08]:
Yeah. And I think in the early days of an agency, I'd say up to that first seven figure mark, all my focus is on lead gen and customer acquisition. Yeah. You know, the brand is sort of a a side product because of us helping our customers be successful. And that's what I always said to the team in DME, you know, Daniel Priestley has this maxim, make your customers the stars. Yeah. And it's so true. If you get success for your customers, you become known for that.

Richard Mawer [00:06:35]:
Yeah. You know? So your brand our brand was always in the our our goal always as we're building towards 7 figures was get that lead gen machine working. Every one of our lead sources, we were constantly optimizing to make sure we knew our ROI on spend on Yeah. On Google Ads, on Facebook Ads, the way we were generating leads then. And then have, really the brand built on the back of that. So when we're thinking about building a brand, we're always thinking about our philosophies, our brand. You know? People come to us for a reason because of the way we do something. And that's really how you can differentiate, and I've talked about it in my book as I'm told we'll talk about in a bit.

Richard Mawer [00:07:13]:
But in my book, I always say that being remarkable at something is a real differentiator, and that's how you really command bigger money. You know, if you're going to ask for bigger retainers, you've got to be in a niche on your own, you've got to target a niche, but you've also got to differentiate how you deliver your service. Mhmm. And I think that's super crucial to any agency owner that's listening or watching this that they really focus in on that. The brand is part of it, but when you build into a £1,000,000, you know, spending a fortune on brand and a lot of a lot of your time on brand isn't as important as focusing on lead gen, making sure your sales process is very, very structured as we'll talk about later, you know, and all of that will help you grow. Now when your brand will be growing obviously about your identity, will be a part of your brand, how you do things is part of your brand, you know, and that's important because it also, when we get on to recruitment, it attracts people to you. You know, you do it very well. I think I watch you all the time, And I think if I was recruiting or if I was coming for a job, you'd know what culture you were coming into here.

Richard Mawer [00:08:17]:
Mhmm. Yeah. But that's all because of the way the brand's being developed. So it is important, but I I always say it depends where you are in your growth.

Richard Mawer [00:08:25]:
It's difficult, is it, in those early days, you know, those early days of getting to the million or getting to you know, obviously, you gotta pay the bills, haven't you? That's the that's the reality of life, and it still is even even even in, you know, multimillion pound agencies in a challenging year. So it can be difficult sometimes to get that split, but I think we I think let's jump in on the book. So remarkable business growth. Yep. Now, obviously, you brought us a book, a copy, about 3 weeks ago. It's probably the nicest laid out, smartest, intelligent book I've I've read in a long while. Oh, thank you very much. Firstly for bringing that in.

Richard Mawer [00:08:59]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:08:59]:
But I think for the listeners, you know, it'd be good for you to you know, in terms of, like, I think, you know, if you have go and buy it, guys. But for your sort of what would you say about, obviously, positioning you and your agency? Yeah. You know, the guys that are maybe thinking about writing a book.

Richard Mawer [00:09:14]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:09:14]:
You know, obviously, that has a certain level, doesn't it, when you're going into a organization and you're an author and you've got a, you know, you're a best selling author.

Richard Mawer [00:09:22]:
Exactly. Yeah. Amazon bestseller. And it was really, what changed my view on it was I I went on Daniel Priestley's key person of influence accelerator. So it's a 12 month accelerator, quite expensive, 7, 8 grand to go on it. But what he really focuses on is on the different piece he has. So pitch, publish, profile. And during profile, he talks a lot about his books and the power of his books to open doors to Yep.

Richard Mawer [00:09:50]:
Naturally get your trust and authority straight away.

Richard Mawer [00:09:52]:
So how did it take you to do the book then?

Richard Mawer [00:09:54]:
I think from start to finish, I started in the May 2022,

Richard Mawer [00:09:59]:
and I'd finished lockdown then. Not quiet, is it?

Richard Mawer [00:10:02]:
That that was way off the lockdown. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I started in May, and I literally went away to Yorkshire, booked a cottage, took my dog with me, and did the whole writer's thing of just locking myself away for a week, and just 3,000 words in the morning, 3,000 in the afternoon, and just really that week broke the back of it.

Richard Mawer [00:10:20]:
I got Just lock yourself. That's a good I I like that. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:10:23]:
And and the publisher I use, she was really good at sort of giving you guidance on how to structure your chapters, what what each chapter had to contain. So I had the topics I was gonna talk about already as headings, and it's literally pull a topic out, bash away a 1000 words, next topic, a 1000 words. And it was it was a really natural process, but it was also 25, 30 years of growing businesses pouring onto the page. You'd I didn't she said don't do a bit of research. I want it all out of your brain. Yeah. It's your methodology. It's your phrase.

Richard Mawer [00:10:53]:
To start to finish then, how long?

Richard Mawer [00:10:55]:
I think it took me about 4 months, 5 months.

Richard Mawer [00:10:57]:
That's incredible. I thought you were gonna say it

Richard Mawer [00:10:58]:
quite a lot longer. No. No. Well, I I really went for it because

Richard Mawer [00:11:01]:
I knew if

Richard Mawer [00:11:01]:
I was trying to, I'd, you know, trying to allocate an hour a day to do it, I'd never get it done. I'd still be trying to write it now.

Richard Mawer [00:11:07]:
So you went away on your own? Yep. Yep. So for how how long for? Sorry. As a week. Week. Yeah. Yeah. See, that itself sounds like a worthwhile exercise.

Richard Mawer [00:11:15]:
It was. And I think Having

Richard Mawer [00:11:16]:
a week on your own, just your thoughts and, you know, whether that's a project with a book or a project for, you know, working on the business. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a big believer in, having trips, you know, away. You know, make a point of booking.

Richard Mawer [00:11:29]:
Yeah. Well, one of my favorite books is Cal Newport's Deep Work.

Richard Mawer [00:11:32]:
His Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:11:33]:
His whole thing is getting rid of all distractions, going really deep on topics, and your most, you know, your most vital topics, you know, your most the things that are going to earn you money or the things the things you must get done. Yeah. So that's what I knew. The book was one thing that was a non negotiable last year. I wanted to get to a point where it was launched this year. We went through a number of drafts after that first 4 months, so it wasn't just 4 months and that's it. Yeah. We probably went through 5 or 6 drafts, then got the design of the book cover, then set a launch date for the Kindle version to be launched, and then the paperback version was about a month after that.

Richard Mawer [00:12:07]:
So

Richard Mawer [00:12:08]:
So in terms of, obviously, you're working with a publisher, probably the second point. Did is that somebody you knew, or was it recommended to you? How did you find that publisher, and how did you still decide on them?

Richard Mawer [00:12:19]:
I was using, actually, Daniel Priestley's got an, he he's actually a a part owner of a publishing house in in Norwich, Rethink Press. So some of his books you'll see here with them. I went through their initial initial training. They did a 3 day, book writers course, things like that that you got for free if you're on the accelerator. So I did all of that. Yeah. But to be honest, I just felt like a sausage in a sausage machine. I thought this isn't very personal, you know.

Richard Mawer [00:12:46]:
And I'm very much, as you can probably tell about, that personalization making everything very personal to people. Yeah. So I felt it was just going to be an order on demand. It'll be on Amazon. It'll be printed as people order it. So the publisher I was recommended was actually specialized in, business books. Alison Jones, she's called from, Practical Publishing. You'll see her on the back here.

Richard Mawer [00:13:08]:
Practical Inspiration Publishing. And she had a small house of authors, about 40 odd authors. She'd come from, Penguin background, some of the big publish houses, and then set her own boutique publishing house up. Nice. And I had a chat with her for an hour. The fit. Just really felt it was a good fit. Her advice was spot on.

Richard Mawer [00:13:28]:
You know, every time I needed advice, they were there for me, very much a personal service. But she was going to get 1,000 printed so she could get them into Waterstones, get them into the university. She's very big on having them in libraries at universities for people, and internationally. You know, she's got distribution through Europe, distribution in America, distribution in the Middle East and the East, and then she goes right through New Zealand and Australia. So to me, I thought if I'm gonna do it, Richard, I've gotta do it properly. I don't wanna just

Richard Mawer [00:13:58]:
I think this is the thing. I think, you know, most agency owners will know it's it's publishing a book, and then it's publishing a book. You know, you can obviously go on Amazon, publish there's a there's a the music story of somebody published a book on Amazon and turned it into a big into a bestseller. Yeah. Yeah. But when he went and bought it, it was actually nothing in it. It was a bit completely blank, and he just did it as a bit of a gimme, but also to sort of, maybe, try spotlight on, you know, on on publishing books. But, obviously, publishing a good book can put the time into it, which clearly clearly you have.

Richard Mawer [00:14:28]:
Yeah. Obviously, what that's doing, you know, in my eyes, and hopefully, it's just the reason you've done it. Obviously, it's positioning you. Yep. Obviously, with the years of years of experience, it's like this guy knows his stuff. You know? But, ultimately, you know, the quality, you know, the way you do something is the way in theory you do everything. Yep. So I think, you know, the guys that are listed, I think one of the big topics, I think this sort of brings into it, this is you know, so in theory, that a 100, if not 1,000, of people buy the book, you know, and then you've got, you know, you've got people that are, interested in you, interested in your brand, interested in your agency.

Richard Mawer [00:15:01]:
Mhmm. But turning those sort of marketing qualified leads into sales qualified, that's almost like the what's the word I'm looking for? It's literally that the gold mine within the agencies. Yeah. Agency Life, obviously, generating leads can be quite easy ish, but, obviously, the right kind, the right ICPs, and so forth, and then converting them into sales qualified. Obviously, then converting them into customers. Yeah. Now I know this is probably one of your listening to you and knowing some of the things you do, one of your big areas, this sort of, you know, the different, we sort of have funnel there, but the the different nurturing things that you do. You know, what sort of things would you recommend to our

Richard Mawer [00:15:42]:
listeners around nurture? And I'll obviously we when we were an agency, we spent 5 years as a HubSpot agency as well. So that's something to say that the training you get as an agency being in a bigger organization like HubSpot, is second to none. Yeah. And their sales, their customer acquisition, and their whole inbound methodology is that you should be attracting good fit people into your agency. You know, that's how you attract your clients. You don't go after everybody. You don't go broad.

Richard Mawer [00:16:10]:
So that goes back to that, you know, you're a very specific type of client that you're after. Yeah. Absolutely. Our ecommerce only will do, you know, it's a very specific service, very specific Yep. ICP that you're after rather than we'll take anything. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:16:23]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. I mean, the the one of their favorite sayings is who are you going to be a hero to? As your agency, who you're gonna be a hero to? Mhmm. You know? And they make you think this through, and we actually went across to Dublin, and spent time with Dan Tyre, who's written the forward of my book, actually, but he's the sales director, for HubSpot. Fantastic. I mean, we just did 3 days of intensive where he went through how you identified the right type of prospect for your business, and then how you connect with that person.

Richard Mawer [00:16:52]:
You know, we talked about good fit matrices, which is something I I give a tip in my book. I talk about it, but I also talk about it to every single customer that we have is basic especially if you're running an agency, you should have in mind who's a good fit for what you do. You know? And if you look through your last 100 clients, there'll be someone who'll stand out. You know, everyone says, oh, we're good with everybody, but you're not. If you actually go through the figures, where you made the most money, who you enjoyed working with, you know, who got you got the best results for, you know, you'll always come out with someone who'll stand head and shoulders above everyone else, and that'll probably be a sector or a vertical. So we do really well with manufacturing businesses, And it's the marketing managers within manufacturing businesses who are really good at generating them leads. Yeah. And you're really trying to make them look good in their job, You know? And that's what you Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:17:40]:
I I think we always used to drill back to who are we a hero to? What can we do for them? How can we make make them look good in their boss's eyes? You know, because they're gonna be the probably the the person who's bringing you into the business for the initial conversation. You know? And that's, I think, who you've gotta be in front of all the time. Yeah. You know? And if they're engaged with you as an agency as well, so if they're consuming your content, if they're actually in your ecosystem already, so they're a good fit and they're engaged with you, that's how we'd have our matrix set up, you know, because you'll basically have 4 quadrants in any good fit matrix. They're a good fit, but they're not engaged with you. They're a good fit, and they are engaged with you. Or they're a bad fit, not engaged, or bad fit, and they are engaged with you. Now your bad fit and are engaged with you people are usually good people to be your promoters.

Richard Mawer [00:18:27]:
There are people out there who love for what you're doing, but they're maybe not a great fit to be a customer. But it doesn't mean you turn turn those away. Yeah. You know, a lot of them are students from university. Like, we had loads of people coming through our website, and you probably do yourself

Richard Mawer [00:18:41]:
Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:18:41]:
As well, who are engaging with your content. They're sharing your posts. They're commenting on things. You know? Now Yeah. You don't want to ruin that relationship. They're not gonna make you a lot of money as in direct money, but, actually, that's, you know, something worth That's

Richard Mawer [00:18:53]:
an interesting one because I think, you know, we've, we're 14 years in, and I think, you know, I see these, obviously, very small guys and girls coming from university. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and, okay, they're just starting on their career. Mhmm. But I think trying to help those guys, it sounds like, oh, well well, one minute. We're after the firms that are doing this. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:19:11]:
But these guys that are coming through are the new marketing managers in time. You know? And I can think of clients we've got now that I cannot think exactly of a of a lady that is ahead of a 300 person strong Lincoln Organization. And maybe 7 years ago, 8 years ago, she was at uni. Yep. And she came to one of our events, you know, and she'd not been out of uni probably about 8 months. You know? So As an agency owner? She I was late. So I had my agency then. She was at an event like a a taster event that we do, MasterClass, that we do now, that's what we call it now.

Richard Mawer [00:19:43]:
Yeah. We used to run an event called what's it called now? It's, yeah, I I share a traffic app live. I think it's called off Tom Head. And she came to that event, and she went to work here there in a couple of places. And now she looks after 2 big brands at Lincoln. Yeah. Yeah. And she's a very good client of ours.

Richard Mawer [00:20:00]:
Mhmm.

Richard Mawer [00:20:00]:
So you just never know as well, do you? No. No. No. Obviously, in the in the moment, it's trying to differentiate, but doesn't mean to turn off completely.

Richard Mawer [00:20:06]:
Yeah. And I think the danger with being run running an agency is you wanna take every single job, you know, and I think that's that's just a recipe for disaster, and the number of people I've seen doing that Yeah. And that's what HubSpot, yeah, are really good at teaching you not to do. You know, they say, get your good fit matrix. Yeah. And then it should be binary. Yes. They're a good fit, or, no, they're not.

Richard Mawer [00:20:24]:
Yeah. You know? And that's what they always say. So working on attracting and converting more good fit Yep. Rather than obviously taking business for the sake of it, which when usually leads to churn and and and not on maybe the a right fit relationship or Yeah. Workflow. And then it's just obviously gonna be a bit of a hamster wheel. And I think that's one of the things that can keep a lot of agency areas up at night. Mhmm.

Richard Mawer [00:20:48]:
There is there what would I if somebody asked me this question, on a podcast about 2 months ago Mhmm. You know, what keeps you up night overnight? What what keeps you up at night, Richard?

Richard Mawer [00:20:58]:
I think the only thing that keeps me up at night is people who are very tactically tactical thinkers and not strategic thinkers. And I I think about this a lot because we always said that strategy should drive your tactical execution on a daily basis. But there's so many business owners and agency owners I meet that have no plan at all. They've no strategy in place. You know, everything is happening to them on a daily basis. It's not like a proactive approach. Yeah. So a lot my client work now with on a consultancy basis, the first three months is spent putting in place that detailed strategy.

Richard Mawer [00:21:35]:
And in the book, I break down 12 areas that you must have in your growth strategy. The metrics that you're going to be measuring to see if you're on track or off track with that. But that dictates your daily. You know, it dictates everything from your lead sources you're focusing on to what metrics are important to measure. You know, in ecom, you know, all the different metrics you have to measure. You know, but all of this should be driven by your strategy. There shouldn't be any chance. And I always make a and we used to do this with DME as well when we ran the agency.

Richard Mawer [00:22:03]:
We would sit down with our clients and get them to tell us their specific growth goal revenue wise. Where do they wanna be in 5 years, but where do they wanna be in 12 months? You know? And that to me was a really important figure. Yeah. Because for 1, in my sales process, we always anchored to that. So if I can get you to that, mister prospect Yeah. Is it worth paying me this? Yeah. Yeah. You know? And I still do it now with my consultancy work.

Richard Mawer [00:22:27]:
I've done it recently with somebody who who were trying to get to 7 figures, and I said, yeah. It sounds a lot of money you're gonna pay me, but if I get you to 7 figures and then beyond that, you know, and that's a really, you know, to get that strategic mindset and to talk about specific growth goals is something that I didn't see many other agencies doing. Yeah. I mean, that's great. Agencies were offering a service, you know, and they tried to sell it to as many people as possible. But actually, I thought, no. If we think strategically, then they're gonna be with us long term. We help help them get some of these milestones hit.

Richard Mawer [00:23:01]:
So we're probably talking there the element of forecasting. Mhmm. Talking to a client and a prosper a potential client or prospect. Yeah. You know, future pacing. Yeah. You know, see what life's gonna look like in 12, 36 months. Yep.

Richard Mawer [00:23:15]:
Absolutely. You know? And and putting a forecast together and giving them a a vision, a taste of a vision. Yep. But but, obviously, backing it up with specific, you know we say, you know, try and do some quick maths. You know, we wanna we wanna add another £1,000,000 to our agency. We have our typical client spends 5 grand a month with us or 5 times the same way. 83,000 a month is £1,000,000. So Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:23:38]:
We can add dealing with 13 clients, but, obviously, you can't add 13 on month 12. You've got us you probably got an average, you know, 4 or 5 this maths are really ropey, but 4 or 5 clients a month will obviously then you're okay. So how many leads to then conversion? But then, ultimately, when it comes down to sitting in front of the room with that potential client prospect or prospect or client Yeah. Yeah. I was having a very compelling offer to put in front of them Mhmm. That's very specific. So going back to you saying, you know, if you're in front of a, you know, a solicitor and you only focus on solicitors, obviously, your proposition should look quite strong because you've only worked with very specific Yep. Clients.

Richard Mawer [00:24:16]:
You know, you're an agency for solicitors, for example. Yeah. Yeah. And based on the other 125 solicitors that you work with, we've built this forecasting model Yeah. Yeah. Based on, you know, whether that's, you know, traffic leads, conversion, the the the sort of the usual. You can create quite quite a compelling offer, obviously. And then, obviously, that is very potentially predictable.

Richard Mawer [00:24:41]:
Mhmm. So it becomes a lot more compelling, doesn't it?

Richard Mawer [00:24:44]:
It does. And I think our whole soul sales process built up to that presentation. And we always you know, we had a connect call for 15 minutes to check Yeah. What we called was pain power fit. Yeah. So it's something that we, again, I've learned from a big agency out in America. Everyone was given a Pain Power FIT score because he knew and you said about it being a long process. He knew if they were 555, so he had a 15 pain power spit score

Richard Mawer [00:25:11]:
Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:25:11]:
That closed within 30 days. His stats backed this up. If there was a weakness in one of

Richard Mawer [00:25:16]:
Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:25:16]:
One of those areas, it might be 60 days to close that deal. Yeah. And he was really good at at saying to me, you know, you must in that first 15 minute call with someone, you must ascertain the pain power fit. Is this the right person, power? Yeah. Is he gonna be able to make the decision? Yeah. Sorry. Would you is there anyone else involved in this? Oh, yeah. John will need to be in the conversation right.

Richard Mawer [00:25:35]:
She'll Yeah. Before we have the hour long.

Richard Mawer [00:25:36]:
Be quite a challenging one, though, I think, where, you know, you've had an inquiry come through. And they go, oh, I'm the marketing manager of of of, you know, of x, y, zed.

Richard Mawer [00:25:44]:
Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:25:44]:
Yeah. And, you go, okay. Yeah. And, obviously, then you maybe have that 15 minute connect call. Yep. You know? And you you know from the base information they've given at at event or on a form, etcetera. But then they're trying to have that conversation where, you know, are you the decision maker? Can sound a little bit, like, bit much at the front end, whereas it's not of course, you want the decision maker Yeah. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:26:06]:
And the person with the budget on the call. But any tips around getting the decision maker to those meetings? Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:26:11]:
And we we wouldn't ever say, are you the decision maker? We were never that blocked. So if I was on a call with someone Yeah. And we it was only 15 minutes, remember, this initial call. So it was all about them and their goals. You know? So, really, it was, you know, is there something for us to explore further in an exploratory call? So the end of that 15 minute call, you always close the call by saying, sounds like we've got something that we need to explore further here. Who else will we need on the next call? Because it's gonna be about an hour long. We're gonna we're gonna go through these things and these things and these things. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:26:43]:
And again, even that hour long call that we have as our second stage of the process, we only talked about ourselves for the last 5 minutes of that. And, again, HubSpot, we're really adamant. You talk about the customer the whole time. Yeah. Only at the end do you start talking because so many people just dive in with this is what we can do for you.

Richard Mawer [00:27:00]:
So in terms of the so you're working from a deck at this point? You're you're so but in terms of who you are and what you do, that's not even in the first couple of slides. That's, like, an appendix at the back more so.

Richard Mawer [00:27:09]:
Yep. It's towards the end of that hour long call. Because they've expressed an interest, we know that the right people are on the call by then. We've gone through probably their challenges. We always talked about what are your goals, what are your challenges, what are your gaps, what are your opportunities, and what time scale. So with the 5 areas, you're always covered in that hour long call. Yeah. And if all of those boxes were ticked, and you thought, yep, you know, there's a real opportunity here, then we'd say, well, this is what we suggest.

Richard Mawer [00:27:33]:
Yeah. And it's something I'll talk about in a bit for you, but, it's basically that land and expand model that we always try to get people. Let's do a small project for a client first. Yeah. Very, very low risk for them. Yeah. Low investment, gets them a set result, easy for us to deliver as well at scale.

Richard Mawer [00:27:49]:
Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:27:50]:
But that then always led to bigger retainer clients.

Richard Mawer [00:27:53]:
I think that's a great one. I know a few of agency friends I know, you you know, you're, you know, obvious, you know, sort of the holy grail is that retainer building the retainer. You know? And that's always been my sort of big focus. But the reality is, you know, if people can try your service with a smaller commitment Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, you get to know the p they get to know your people Yeah. And the way you work. You know, and then so it's no different.

Richard Mawer [00:28:15]:
Ryan Dice talks about it a lot from digital marketer. Ryan Dice talks about this agency approach, and he always said you should have this small project first. Because, again, you you're gonna get the loony customers as well for you. You're gonna get you know, let's be honest. We're all that agency call here. Yeah. Yeah. And and this is what you get.

Richard Mawer [00:28:32]:
You wanna attract the good customers who enjoy working with and you get the best results for. Yeah. But out there, there'll be people that'll throw a lots of money at you Yeah. Because and and I've had them 4, 5 grand a month, retainer clients who were a nightmare to work with. You know? And after a few months, we were saying to them, sorry. You know? It's not yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:28:51]:
Yeah. And

Richard Mawer [00:28:51]:
it's hard,

Richard Mawer [00:28:51]:
but ways, isn't it? Yeah. You know, really, that's just a lot of pain that you're putting up with. And for, you know, eventually, probably finish at some point. Either you're gonna finish it or they are because they're very challenging. Yeah. So yeah. So it's true true that I think, yeah, you're trying it both ways. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:29:05]:
As in the you're you're seeing what the clients like.

Richard Mawer [00:29:08]:
It is. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:29:09]:
And then you're also building a revenue stream where you might have 3 or 4 clients a month, obviously, depending on the size of the agency, 3 or 4 clients a month that are on a you know, we we refer to them as sprints in our business. You're on a we've got 3 or 4 sprints this month. 3 or 4 sprints this month is whatever, $20 a month, 500 would depend on the size of the agency. But, obviously, for every 3 or 4 sprints, maybe 1 or 2 of those is gonna work into a retainer that maybe wouldn't have done if they hadn't got to try you. Yep. One of them, we think, there's no way we're keeping you. Yeah. Perfectly.

Richard Mawer [00:29:37]:
You know, it happens. It doesn't happen that often to be

Richard Mawer [00:29:39]:
It goes both ways in in the agency world, though. And, you know, it's certainly if that 80 20 rule applies, that Yeah. Suddenly you can get a bad client who's taken 80% of your time. Yeah. And that means that suddenly your time isn't being spent on the really good clients. You know? And so I I always think it's a healthy thing to have is that small that small opportunity to Yeah. Prove yourself to them Yeah. And then prove to you.

Richard Mawer [00:30:02]:
You know? We're always using that opportunity to audit people and find out other opportunities we can open up later on with them as well. You know? Once you've got that relationship, it's really Yeah. A way to a long term relationship.

Richard Mawer [00:30:14]:
No. That's great. Great. Great advice. Mhmm. So systems. Yep. What systems do you use to manage your clients specifically?

Richard Mawer [00:30:23]:
Well, we've as I said, I'm developing my own system at the moment. As you know, it's, leadnamic.com, and that's really a small business version of HubSpot. That's what I wanted to develop. So I found a white label product in America that I could then code and develop into our own

Richard Mawer [00:30:38]:
Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:30:39]:
SaaS product. So that's the system I use. Project management wise, I'm a big fan of Trello, always have been. You know? And if you learn how to use Trello properly, it'll just give real transparency for your clients on what you're working on as well. You know, it just gets that real collaboration going, which I think is important that the clients aren't handing everything over to you as an agency. There's always that partnership where you're having expectations of them to come back with things as well, and that's that's a good working relationship to have. Yeah. You know? And I think a lot of agencies, you know, just want them to hand everything over to you, and you get that result.

Richard Mawer [00:31:13]:
But a lot of the times, they're not invested in it then. So, you know, it's it's this smoke and mirrors thing of SEO and things like that that always used to be out there, you know, because people didn't quite know what you were doing. You know, there was always that, oh, we're spending a lot of money here. You know? Maybe. Yeah. Exactly. So I think

Richard Hill [00:31:30]:
The transparency piece, isn't it? I think a lot of agencies try and cloak, especially on the marketing side. Obviously, there's a lot of different styles of agencies out there, but on the marketing side, you know, it's a lot of, lingo, if you like, that can sort of cloud. Right? And rather just be straight with the clients. Right? We do this. We produce these deliverable deliverables each month. All this amount of time is gonna get spent on this deliverable. Rather than, oh, well, we're doing some SEO. You know, what exactly are you doing? You know, what exactly are you doing having that, very specific deliverables on a monthly basis, if that's if that's what we're sort of talking about on a on a sort of ongoing retainer basis.

Richard Mawer [00:32:04]:
Whereas I think a lot of agencies made the mistake of trying to sort of hide a few things if you like. And, you know, we've got all sorts of horror. So we could do a I'm sure we could do a sort of horror stories, outtakes of various things, but some of the things we come across. Obviously, we're 14 years in now. Mhmm. And, some of the experiences, you know, we've had with clients and with agencies, ex ex agencies of new clients and things like that.

Richard Mawer [00:32:27]:
Mhmm.

Richard Mawer [00:32:28]:
Okay. So Trello, and, obviously, your own system that you're developing.

Richard Mawer [00:32:31]:
Yeah. Yeah. HubSpot, as I say, for you if you're dealing with enterprise clients, I think HubSpot's fantastic. Yeah. But be very aware that it's gonna start costing your customer Yeah. And your clients a lot of money as they start to unlock a lot of the functionality. That was my Yeah. My only reservation after 5 years working with HubSpot was how dear it got very quickly for clients.

Richard Mawer [00:32:49]:
Yeah. We have been there. We have been through the Yeah. I think, yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:32:54]:
Yeah. Yeah. As an organization and the training, as I say, the background the actual support they give you as an agency, I think, is second to none. Yeah. Yeah. The the, as I say, the the cost to your client, and that will eat into your retainers because people start then trying to eat away your retainer by to afford more.

Richard Mawer [00:33:11]:
That's the trick, isn't it, as well, the balance. Obviously, you as an agency, you've got okay. You take a retainer for x, but if then the tool cost, you know, whether you're, you know, you're paying for HubSpot, you're paying for 3 or 4 tools for report. Obviously, HubSpot does a lot of that, but Yeah. Obviously, we're talking more about b to b agencies here It was well, not always, but, obviously, just when you take a client on, you might have a yeah. So you got a 4 gram retainer. Yeah. You might have a £100 or £500 cost just for the toolset to mine.

Richard Mawer [00:33:43]:
I mean, I was especially if it's if it's HubSpot and there's a sales team involved and things like that. So soon eating to the profit, can't it?

Richard Mawer [00:33:49]:
It can. Yeah. But I think the the beauty I found with HubSpot, especially when a cloud was using HubSpot and we were, is that we could set them up dashboards that showed them everything. You know, there was no gray area. Everything that we were doing every month was really transparent, and that was lovely. Because when you had a meeting once a month or even weekly meetings as a catch up, you'd go straight to the data. It wasn't about my opinion versus your opinion as a business owner. It's there in black and white.

Richard Mawer [00:34:16]:
Yeah. And we had a and one one client, as as I say, I won't mention them, but as I say, the we were generating 40 leads a month, for them from 10. So we've done this in 90 days. We'd get them up from 10 leads a month to 40 leads a month. Yet they weren't converting at the other end. So the sales process was clearly the problem, but they kept bouncing back to us. Oh, it's the quality of the lead. It's quality of the lead.

Richard Mawer [00:34:38]:
So I said, well, let us take the leads for a month and run them through our sales process. Yeah. And we'll we'll show you what should be happening. So in the end, they got us to do the whole sales process as well as the lead, and then we taught their sales team how to take a how to actually run

Richard Mawer [00:34:54]:
the

Richard Mawer [00:34:54]:
sales process, how to respond to emails in the right way, how to use video in the follow-up and the prospecting. Yeah. So, again, it was because we have the data. It didn't become a personal argument.

Richard Mawer [00:35:05]:
Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:35:05]:
It says no. You know? I think we should still be having a 25% conversion rate, and when not, it suddenly dropped to 10%. And that isn't the quality of the lead because I'm attracting good quality people to you.

Richard Mawer [00:35:16]:
Yeah. I think that is a couple of bits there. Obviously, the the monthly reporting Yeah. Somebody said me once, so I'm in for a room for a room for a reporting. Obviously, a lot of clients don't have a look at it. Mhmm. And it usually yeah. It doesn't matter till it matters.

Richard Mawer [00:35:28]:
It's like, well, what do you mean by that? It's like, well, quite often, a month report can go to a client. Yeah. Yeah. You know? And, obviously, some clients, they just wanna know, right, we got, you know, whether we're talking about lead gen or ecom. Right? We did a we did 6,200,000 quid this month or quarter. Yeah. We spent $100 on ads. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:35:45]:
We pay the agency x, so the net or gross profit is you know, there's obviously a lot more to it than that potentially, you know, in a in a b to b environment. Yeah. You know, a lead cost us this much money. Mhmm. Obviously, sales is harder to track on a b to b side of things. Yeah. Yeah. But, ultimately, you know, if those reports are in place Yep.

Richard Mawer [00:36:03]:
And the right reports are in place for the right people. So if you're reporting to a marketing team, you know, they'll wanna know a bit more than that, you know, the different channels, whereas the owner I think this is my understanding, really, that the owner and the the people with the budgets are gonna know how many flippant leads did we get. Yeah. But, obviously, ultimately, how many do we convert? But, obviously, that's more so on the client to do the conversion, whereas ecom, it's on all of us. So Yeah. But reporting, I think, quite often doesn't really get a folk much of a focus in agencies. You know, I think the guys that are listening now Yeah. You know, you can do so much with reporting Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:36:38]:
Just to help to retain once you're demonstrating the work you've done Yeah. What you're gonna do, but then you can also you know, just very smart, clever reporting that's got you know, most people at the end of the day, most of the clients care about making money. Yeah. Yeah. So if it doesn't refer to somewhere a pound sign, I think you gotta have a problem.

Richard Mawer [00:36:55]:
And I think that's a really good point, Richard, because we spend a lot of time in the agency world justifying what we're doing for our retainer, but actually the plan never cares. They only care about the outcomes. And and as soon as you step away from that and just think, right, my reporting is gonna focus on their outcomes because that's all they really care about. Yeah. They don't care how many keywords you're now ranking.

Richard Mawer [00:37:19]:
So true. Oh, we are you're up 10 places on this and that and the other, and you got another 1000 visits, but they were signing for that. Oh, no. We didn't sign What? You gotta pay everyone's gotta pay the bills on there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Richard Mawer [00:37:29]:
We'll move on. So hiring, obviously, I know, obviously, in the different agencies Yeah. You've been involved with. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously, I know a few of the people, that you've hired. I think we even have one of your ex team members.

Richard Mawer [00:37:39]:
One of my ex team members. A very,

Richard Mawer [00:37:40]:
very smart lady working for us. I'm sure she'll listen to this at some point, so I better say that, but she is. Yeah. She is. So she's she's an incredible team member. Yeah. So hiring, retaining, and nurturing, you know, they also tie in. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:37:53]:
And then what would your sort of top three tips from your sort of many, many years in the trenches?

Richard Mawer [00:37:58]:
Well, hiring, if I'm talking to an agency owner, agency owner to agency owner, I would say get a biz dev person sooner than I did because I carried on doing the sales for far too long in our agency and became the bottleneck. I think, everyone within HubSpot kept saying to us, get a biz dev person on as early as you can. That should be your first hire. It's a tricky

Richard Mawer [00:38:18]:
hire, though. It's a tricky hire.

Richard Mawer [00:38:19]:
Yeah. But if you put again the processes in place, if you said, this is how my sales process works. This is my this is how many calls I expect to make, how many emails we expect. This is we know this works. Yeah. You know, then it's it is it isn't really. It's like McDonald's. Just teach them what you what you Process.

Richard Mawer [00:38:35]:
Teach them the process. Yeah. So it's, not finding the great salesperson. It's finding someone who fits your process well and will do it every day. And some of the best people I've seen, certainly in in the HubSpot world, some of the biggest agencies that grew the biggest, they just focused on 2 or 3 really good biz dev people working for them. Mhmm. And they you know, I can think of a few that, I work with in Manchester, and they always went for people from, the recruitment Thought you were gonna say recruitment. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:39:04]:
Recruitment. Really good. You know, like, I think we spoke about the best the best, digital marketers that I've hired weren't from the marketing side of university. They were actually the journalism students. Yeah. Because they were really good at research. Their copy was always spot on. You know? They had that understanding of creating great marketing copy.

Richard Mawer [00:39:23]:
So teaching them how to write an email sequence, things like that was a lot easier than someone who had lots of great theory on marketing, but actually had nothing in the real world. So I think journalism students for me were always a good hire for digital marketers. Yeah. And biz dev people, as I say, the recruitment industry seemed to everyone who I spoke to in the agency world who'd got a really good biz dev person said, oh, yeah. They came from recruitment. You know? Because they were used to that every day being rejected. They just kept going.

Richard Mawer [00:39:52]:
I think as an agency owner, obviously, I think most people listening, you know, they had done the majority, if not if not all the sales, sort of sub a mil. Yeah. Yeah. Sub half a mil for sure. Yep. But at that point, when you hire that person and that person brings in that first, you know, 3 grand a month retainer Yeah. It's like an epiphany. Oh, yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:40:12]:
Yeah. You know, the difference is like, I don't necessarily have to do this, but, yeah, obviously but you probably keep getting drawn to it because it's what you've done for the last however many years, and it's the bit you're probably you're good at. You know, obviously, you understand all the different areas of, you know, if you're an ecom or you're in you're in, you know, b to b, you understand it, but try and let it go. So spending that time documenting it, spending that time with that person Yep. I agree. It's one of the best time you'll ever spend with with with with your team.

Richard Mawer [00:40:40]:
And for growth, it's it's what really does unlock growth in nearly every agency I've seen. You know, once they get that Yeah. And the and the owner starts stepping back and just doing that. Again, I go back to strategy, but doing that high value strategic work, you know, need to do and to take you to the next level. Yep. You know, you just don't do it if you're out selling, if you're out meeting customers, if you're out doing the presentations yourself, all of those things push the really high value stuff. And I talk about in my book a lot about managing your time and what you do on a daily basis. And one of the activities is to map out for 2 weeks what you do from 8 in the morning till 6 at night.

Richard Mawer [00:41:13]:
You'll surprise yourself what low value stuff you're still doing. And I I did it on myself, and that's why I think it's such an invaluable thing. Yeah. And the things you can delegate, the things you can process out and let somebody else do instead of you in your business. Yeah. And the things you just shouldn't be doing on a daily basis.

Richard Mawer [00:41:30]:
Yeah. We're all still I mean, I still have I'll be still put my hand up.

Richard Mawer [00:41:33]:
Yeah. Yeah. But as safe, you're looking to grow that's over 7 figures like a lot of the people in watching this will be doing. You know, that that pivot is really important.

Richard Mawer [00:41:42]:
Yeah. Yeah. It's a good, great point. You know, when you you sat there listening to this now, I'd say, sat, what have what have you done this morning? Yeah. You know, how long have you been in your inbox for? Yeah. Exactly. How many times have you, you know, looked to your AdWords dashboard to see x, y, zed, you know, whereas you could have a dashboard built that just gives you a quick glance at every like, big picture. Exactly.

Richard Mawer [00:42:03]:
And so on and so on and so on. You know? Maybe a task there.

Richard Mawer [00:42:07]:
You know? You have

Richard Mawer [00:42:08]:
tomorrow morning install x y zed, time tracking software. Yep. You know, there's a couple out there who use Harvest in our business. Yep. There's a I don't know. We we manually and we manually use that. So but there are others that just automatically will track where what software you're on, and if it's like, just spent 2 hours on LinkedIn, which I'm guessing quite a few people do. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:42:27]:
Yeah. So retaining staff. I think, obviously, we've had an interest in 3 or 4 years with COVID, and, well, I know there's work from home, work from office, work from home, work from office stood at the oh, you know, and keeps changing and splitting, and I think the United States are quite nice split out there. You know, a lot of people obviously got used to work from home full time, but a lot of people coming back to an office, want to be part of an office environment. In terms of retaining staff Yep. Have you got any sort of specific, words of wisdom for retaining agents?

Richard Mawer [00:42:57]:
The flexibility is a really important thing, and knowing the makeup of your staff because the Gen z's, the Gen x's, you know, all the millennials, we we have a real mix of staff in most agencies.

Richard Mawer [00:43:08]:
Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:43:09]:
And they all have different drivers. You know? I think, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk does this really well with his teams, his build, but he really understands each driver of each person, you know, and he's very flexible with them. Flexible. That's very, very important now. And, you know, people are expecting flexibility. Let's be honest. You know, if you're a a digital agency owner, you're gonna be probably attracting younger people now a lot of the time, and they want the flexibility. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:43:34]:
You know, they wanna be able to work from home on a Monday. They want to come into the office. They still I think and our daughter's a typical example of this. She's moved to London recently, and she was working remotely for a year, totally remotely. It wasn't hybrid, and she lacked the social interaction. She said you don't get that serendipity being in an office and Yeah. Things happening. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:43:54]:
And you're certainly in the agency world need that. Yeah. And some of our

Richard Mawer [00:43:55]:
best ideas have been a discussion around the table, working on a client's project, looking at the challenges they're facing, and coming up with that. You know? Yeah. I don't find a lot of people love Zoom, but I still don't find you can get quite that depth on a Zoom call.

Richard Mawer [00:44:10]:
I agree.

Richard Mawer [00:44:11]:
So flexibility. So flexibility. Transparency, I think there's a lot to be said for being very transparent with how you're growing your business, what your revenue goals are, making sure everyone's invested in that strategy.

Richard Mawer [00:44:23]:
Like a shared vision with the team.

Richard Mawer [00:44:25]:
A shared vision. That alignment is massive because everyone's gotta know their small roles in your big role, you know, your big goal. Yeah. And if a lot of the times when we have strategy sessions with clients, like I say, 1st 3 months I'll spend with the client is developing that strategy, and then I'll say, right, let's have a half day strategy launch day. Everybody in. So everybody knows this, not just you as the owner. Everyone should know this inside out. Mhmm.

Richard Mawer [00:44:49]:
You know, because then that culture, the whole thing you're breeding, has a reason.

Richard Mawer [00:44:53]:
Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:44:53]:
You know, it's not just about getting to 7 figures.

Richard Mawer [00:44:56]:
What they're day to day is making up the bigger have the bigger picture.

Richard Mawer [00:45:00]:
Yeah. And if marketing are told, this is how many leads we've gotta generate this year Yeah. And then sales are told, right, you've gotta convert at this. You know, there's an SLA there, isn't there? There's sort of a a relationship. Yeah. You know, a a a an a an SLA in place saying, well, we'll generate you 30 leads a month, but you've gotta convert at 25%. Yeah. You know? And that's that's really a relationship you want and that sales enablement is all about that.

Richard Mawer [00:45:22]:
It's about there is no sales and no marketing, not no 2 separate silos anymore. It's all us working together because we're working for that overall goal. You know?

Richard Mawer [00:45:30]:
Right. So thanks for joining me on the show. We've got a couple of questions to go. Okay. So I think it'd be great to maybe share what is on the road map for Ignite Growth and Lead Dynamics in the coming sort of 12 months or so.

Richard Mawer [00:45:42]:
Yeah. Well, the, I think Ignite Growth has been my consultancy business for the last 4 or 5 years. And, really, I want that to be my premium product. So when I wrote the book, I thought, how am I gonna monetize this without it always being me? And I think, again, an agency owner's watching this, you've got to start get to that point where you're taking yourself out of the business. Because there's gotta be an exit somewhere for you, you know, and somewhere in the future, you'll wanna do other things in life. And so that was really it with me. It was sort of how can I use everything I've learned, to add real value on my consultancy clients, but how can I be the final step in their journey with me? So go be remarkable, which was go be remarkable.com, is where everybody goes from my book to the resources section in there. I'll send them at the end of every chapter to at the end of every chapter to do an actual physical exercise in the book.

Richard Mawer [00:46:38]:
Yeah. So on there, I'm at the moment, I'm writing 6 paid courses. So I break down the different areas of the book into a real in-depth deep dive into how to do that area. So there's remarkable strategy growth is one of the that 3 months that I spend with the clients are broken into a course so people can buy it, so they can do it themselves. Now there's some people who do that and then approach me and say, right, Richard, can you come in for a few days? So it's sort of self fulfilling in that way. LeadNamic was really there, so they had software with everything they needed all in one platform. And I think that was that's how that's gonna grow. And, again, on an agency's, view to that, it's going to build me a long term very sticky revenue stream.

Richard Mawer [00:47:22]:
So people using the software are gonna use that software for 4, 5 years, 6 years. They're not once all your data's in a piece of software like that and you're using it, getting success with it. So that's really a long burn for me. It's not about making lots of money now with my software. It's about it building and building year on year and then me having a really nice revenue stream when I decide to take it even easier. So that's on the future. Things are interesting me in the space at the moment. I'm really getting into my funnels as you can tell.

Richard Mawer [00:47:51]:
I'm building out a book funnel at the moment so I can monetize at each stage of that, the book as well. Yeah. I'm doing a lot on lead magnet funnels, survey funnels. So with clients, I'm telling them to think of their website as their information source Yeah. But then build funnels for all the traffic to go through Yeah. So that there's Yeah. Definite points where that lead is getting educated, educated, educated, and then a conversation starts with you as a business or there's a product or an offer you can put in front of them at different stages of that funnel.

Richard Mawer [00:48:20]:
So you're very busy creating content then by the sound of it?

Richard Mawer [00:48:23]:
I'll I'll call the content. Yeah. I'm doing my podcast as you

Richard Mawer [00:48:26]:
know. Podcasting.

Richard Mawer [00:48:26]:
My, yeah, my remarkable business podcast being launched in January. I've got 12 guests lined up for that already for season 1. Yeah. I think content's just a massive part of it. And, you know, I think Gary Vaynerchuk says you you should become a media company, You know? And everyone is. You know? Yeah. All good agencies out there. You know? It's not just any more

Richard Mawer [00:48:46]:
That's great advice, isn't it? And for the agencies listening, you know, an element within your agency. You've got your own media company for your agency. Mhmm. Yeah. That's a great great takeaway.

Richard Mawer [00:48:55]:
You do that very well, don't you? You've got different people in the business who are constantly producing content, you know, really interested in engaging content as well. Remarkable. Let's say it's, it's all about something that sets you apart from every

Richard Mawer [00:49:08]:
Try not to laugh. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:49:09]:
Yeah. Remarkable content.

Richard Mawer [00:49:11]:
Producer in the background is like, that's me. That's me.

Richard Mawer [00:49:15]:
Remarkable content.

Richard Mawer [00:49:16]:
But he's so true. I saw a similar presentation. It was a UK guy. It wasn't terminated. Somebody else sort of sort of saying about the business, you know, and then building out a a media economy of any business. And that's what we've been busy doing this last few years is building our team to work on our own.

Richard Mawer [00:49:35]:
Yeah. Yeah. Because good agencies build partnerships with lots of other people. They don't just do it on their own. It's not, say, their own business that that's all they do. Yeah. You know, you're constantly reaching out.

Richard Mawer [00:49:46]:
Yep. And Part of network.

Richard Mawer [00:49:48]:
Yeah. Podcasting, interviewing people, live streams, all of those things are so powerful at doing that. You know? And I think of some of my best network best people in my network, and they were all through interviewing them. Yeah. You know, one guy who became a client Yeah. I just went down and video did a video interview with him about him getting to a certain point in his business. Yeah. And we worked with him for 3 years through to £28,000,000 exit at the end.

Richard Mawer [00:50:10]:
Yeah. So and that was all from just going out and creating content with him. You know? It wasn't from

Richard Mawer [00:50:15]:
It's pretty easy, this podcasting game. It is. It is. I think yeah. Yeah. So content building out content for the different stages of the funnels. Absolutely. Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:50:26]:
And, obviously, you're building out leadNAMIC, you know, to help other agencies or other business owners. So I always like to end every podcast with a recommendation. Now rather than a book Yeah. Do you have a specific tool recommendation for running an agency? That's a tricky one because I know you're probably gonna say,

Richard Mawer [00:50:45]:
Oh, well, I think there was one tool stood out to me as a game changer in our in our agency.

Richard Mawer [00:50:51]:
Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:50:51]:
So I was thinking, you know, it didn't run the agency through it, but actually using Vidyard was a game changer to me. Yeah. So Yeah. Vidyard is anyone who knows Loom. The Vidyard's similar to Loom. You can basically do videos, and embed them into emails. Yeah. Send them out as Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:51:08]:
DM messages on LinkedIn

Richard Mawer [00:51:10]:
Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:51:10]:
With the thumbnail with an animated thumbnail.

Richard Mawer [00:51:12]:
Yeah.

Richard Mawer [00:51:13]:
Yeah. Our open rates just went through the roof. And because I personalized those videos as well, so every video I did, I'd be on someone's website that I wanted to talk to. So I'd go on their website. Their website. Yeah. Their website is there. So straight away, they they piques their interest.

Richard Mawer [00:51:27]:
And then I'd say, hi, John. Yeah. So I'll be talking to them direct.

Richard Mawer [00:51:31]:
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Richard Mawer [00:51:32]:
Just been on your website. Wants to give you a few ideas that might work for you, so I'll be giving value straight away. The open rates and the people that came back to me that said, I've never had anyone do that to me before, Richard. Yeah. And it started the conversation on the right footing. You've led with value. So So

Richard Mawer [00:51:46]:
Vidyard?

Richard Mawer [00:51:47]:
Vidyard for prospecting, but then also recapping every meeting. We'd recap what was just said in the meeting in a video rather than someone's just sending a long email saying, this is what we talked about.

Richard Mawer [00:51:58]:
So great meeting, guys. Just wanna step through. So, we've got 5 actions that are that'll be done by. Looking forward to meeting you again. I won't meeting you.

Richard Mawer [00:52:06]:
Yeah. Again, bring in the other people that who the other decision makers you needed in. So saying, look forward to meeting John.

Richard Mawer [00:52:11]:
That's a great

Richard Mawer [00:52:12]:
day.

Richard Mawer [00:52:12]:
Yeah. She has that's a takeaway.

Richard Mawer [00:52:14]:
Make a note. Yeah. Yeah. But Vidyard as a tool throughout your sales process is is a really powerful tool from prospecting and reaching out initially right through to recapping of meetings, and then, obviously, we would never send and again, this is a tip for every agency owner that I was given, which saved me hours of work, never send a proposal till you've done a presentation to them. Yeah. Because people send proposals far too early in the process. Convert. And young agencies are really guilty of this because we were, you know, in our first few years, every time you'd had an initial call, someone would say, oh, send me a proposal of what you can do.

Richard Mawer [00:52:50]:
And then I thought, never worked. We ended up ghosted

Richard Mawer [00:52:54]:
They're probably just chasing people. Yeah. Exactly. Price shopping, not And it's been

Richard Mawer [00:52:57]:
led to high price, Richard, isn't it? And that's it. Well, they're not coming to work with us because we can give real value and get them results. They're coming to work with us because they're comparing 3 other people.

Richard Mawer [00:53:07]:
Just looking at price maybe,

Richard Mawer [00:53:08]:
which is The Vidyard would be my tool, I would say. I've already talked about using Trello. Yeah. You know, again, for project management, I think Trello, if you learn how to use it properly, it's that can be a real game changer.

Richard Hill [00:53:19]:
So Well, thanks, Richard. It's been a pleasure having having you on the show. Those that wanna find out more about what you're doing in the in the agency and and maybe buy the ball. What's the best what's the best way to do that?

Richard Mawer [00:53:28]:
I would always connect with me on LinkedIn. I'd always say just look me up on LinkedIn. It's, linkedinforward/richard moore, and m a w e r. That is, connect with me on there and have a conversation on there. Always the best. Brilliant.

Richard Hill [00:53:41]:
Well, thanks for coming on the show.

Richard Mawer [00:53:42]:
And, Richard, thanks for having me on the show. Thank you. Take care.

Richard Hill [00:53:48]:
If you enjoyed this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you are listening to this podcast. So you're always the first to know when

Richard Hill [00:53:54]:
a new episode is released. Have a fantastic day, and

Richard Hill [00:53:57]:
I'll see you on the next one.