How to Drive Profitable Growth with Daniel Priestley and Peter Czapp

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Beautiful Business podcast where today we are talking all about driving profitable growth. And I have just had a fantastic conversation with Daniel Priestley and Peter Chapp. Packed with insight and value that will really help you to push your business forward. Enjoy. Welcome to the Beautiful Business podcast from the wow. Company. If you're growing a UK business with a team of eight to 80 people, you're in the right place. Every fortnight we share honest conversations with brilliant business minds exploring the realities of leadership, the challenges that come with growth and the practical ideas that make a real difference from purpose to profit. People to process. This is your space for fresh thinking and down to earth, uh, inspiration. Hello everyone and welcome to the first Livewow webinar of 2026. We are very excited to be here today and even more excited that we are partnered with School Wrap, which means that I'm joined by not one, but two incredible people to be talking about our driving profitable growth topic of the day. And I'm joined by the one and only Daniel Priestley, international speaker, uh, best selling author, entrepreneur and the man that we know who has helped us to work on our lead gen, our positioning and our demand within our businesses. And joining Daniel as well, we have our very own Mr. Peter Chapp, founder, uh, of the wow. Company, founder of Bench press and a leading agency expert on profitability. He worked with agency owners day in, day out. And so today's discussion is going to be really honest, really open, um, and something that you can take away. Not just more stress and more noise, but it's something you can use to really drive that growth. I'm going to start off with a question I just love a bit of a headline answer to. If you can do it in one or two sentences. Sorry, it's going to be a tricky one. So many agency owners fail at profitable growth. Why?

Speaker B: The headline answer is, um, growth is hard and it sucks profit. You know, so when you're trying to grow, you often taking the cash and throwing it into ways of growing. Um, and uh, a lot of the times it's, it's kind of hard to, you know, accelerate a car and have good fuel efficiency. And you know, often if your real focus is growth, it's very hard to be profitable at the same time. And if your real focus is profitable, it's very hard to be growing at the same time.

Speaker C: So Peter, so you're right, it's not easy. And just to give you some context as to how particularly not easy it is right now, so we've been benchmarking agencies since 2012. As you know, and in a typical year, uh, I guess what we'll now refer to this as a good year, we'd expect between 70 and 80% of them to grow fee income. So roughly four out of five in the last three years, that's dropped to just 50 to 60%. So just over half are uh, actually growing. And profitability has dropped as well. So as the tensions, uh, in the economy increase, budgets are reducing and those hitting up fic, if so profit benchmark, gross profit benchmark has dropped. It used to be 38% three years ago. It's now dropped to uh, 24%. So growth is harder, profitability is harder. And so the message that it's hard is, is that would be true. The other thing why agencies I think particularly struggle with this is because right now to break through, you need discipline and rigor, uh, and focus. And I don't know many people that set up their businesses, particularly agencies who are traditionally creative and innovative, that went in for more discipline, focus and rigor. But that's what's required right now.

Speaker A: So before we can look at growth, I'd love to know what numbers really tell you whether a business is truly healthy and ready for growth or if they're just busy.

Speaker C: So my favorite one is I have to go to the profit metrics and particularly the gross profit metrics. So when I, when I look at a business, I look for that 50% gross profit and that 20% operated profit margin, particularly for agencies. Now the reason why gross profit is so telling is because if it's too high, then you're likely to be really stretching your team and going to lead to burnout too low. And you really don't want to grow that business because you're growing on um, um, profitability foundation. So a really good place to be is around about 50%. Now the caveat to all of this is you need to calculate it properly. And if you go and add a look at the bench press reports, do a search for gross profit, you'll see that the detail formula and a video about how to calculate this properly.

Speaker B: My, my favorite is, and I love those ones, my favorite is revenue per person, a measure that people think about how hard people are working or how productive people are being. So let's say you've got 10 people and they do 1.5 million of revenue. It's oh, 150,000 per person. If it was 2 million 10 people, 200,000 per person, and must be working a lot harder to get to that Number and actually what it tends to be is the amount of assets that are doing the work. So when a business has really high revenue per person, it normally means that they've got like a great YouTube channel that's helping bring in customers, and it normally means that they've got a really good lead generation farm. Uh, or it normally means that they've got a playbook that they just can repeat with clients very rapidly and they can take what they've already done and then just repeat that in a different way with a new client. Um, and it's the underlying assets of the business that they've figured out some playbooks, they've figured out some online digital assets that are really doing heavy lifting and therefore things are happening without lots of human, um, involvement. So you end up with a higher and higher revenue per person. So one of the things that like that implies is that if you can invest into a few key digital assets, you get this higher revenue per person. And of course with an agency, if you're doing higher revenue with fewer people, you end up with a bigger margin and you end up with profit. Um, so I always, I love, I love, for me personally, start with the back of a napkin. How many people are on your team? What's your revenue? It's kind of like that. It's a good little starting point.

Speaker A: Is there a decision that's made by agency owners that you've noticed often has made through the gut, just a gut decision which would be so much more powerful if it was backed by some sort of metrical data. Anything sort of spring to mind for either of you?

Speaker C: Well, uh, the simple answer is all of it, right? We should be making all decisions based on, on data. That would be a really smart thing to do. What I've noticed is as businesses evolve, they get more sophisticated, they gather more into, they make better decisions. But the one I think a lot of businesses, agencies in particular, have a blind spot over is conversion rates. They often tend to overestimate what their conversion rate is. And understanding that in detail, three different types of conversion rates, by the way, I think it's really powerful. So the first conversion rate is from your leads to your conversations. So how many leads do you need to result in one conversation? And then how many conversations do you need to result in a proposal? And then how many proposals do you need to result in a client? Often people just measure this last one proposal to clients, but there's a load of conversion rates that need to happen before that, before you actually end up with a client. And understanding Those three conversion rates will help you figure out if you know your average client value well, how many leads do I need to get, how many conversations to get, how many proposals to get, how many clients at this value to help me hit my objectives?

Speaker B: It's so fun. What you're saying there is what we measure internal, which is uh, laps, leads, appointments, presentations and sales or proposals and sales. So we've got a lapse dashboard. Very, very much the same. Very have been more successful when we have less conversion on leads to sales, where we generate more leads, but we're fussier about who we take on as a client in certain businesses. So like for example, when you have 30 leads and take on a customer, it can sometimes imply that you're just taking on a customer because they're there. And if you have a hundred leads for one customer, provided those leads are coming in in a cost efficient way, it means, it can mean that you're actually being very selective as to who you're taking on as a customer that you're looking for the needle in the haystack. Sometimes lower conversion can be more profitable if you're really looking for a particular type of customer. A counterintuitive thing that I see a lot of agencies do that doesn't work is selling to a customer that you feel most comfortable selling to as opposed to a customer who gets the most value from what you do. Young guy that I worked with, a guy called Lee Russell, he, um, he was very techy and, and he wanted to sell to tech startups that those tech startups were pre revenue and they were also quite techy. So they didn't see what he was doing as very valuable because they could do that sort of stuff themselves in house and they sort of saw it as a little bit commoditized. But when he went and sold the exact same thing to established accounting firms, law firms, um, you know, between 2 and 20 million they had revenue so they could spend. That wasn't their wheelhouse, it wasn't their thing that they were comfortable with. But the thing that was stopping him from doing that is he just didn't feel comfortable selling to that type of customer. He didn't know, you know, he didn't have the natural chemistry with that type of customer. So he had to push himself out of his comfort zone to sell to the customer who had the right money to spend and who had the right need, as opposed to the customer that he felt m most comfortable picking up the phone and talking to or having a meeting with. Um, I see that all the time

Speaker A: is that, does that come down to a bit of trial and error over who you then go to? Or is there some sort of formula people can use to find their perfect life?

Speaker B: There's a little bit of both essentially. Are you doing something that this customer could not do for themselves? Like are you actually adding real serious value? Because you're a complementary opposite to what they do. The other thing too is, is there kind of a sensible idea that this customer can monetize what you do? Like that they can very rapidly get a return on investment because people pay for return on investment. So if you're selling to bigger customers, you know, they're very happy spending 80 grand because they get the return on investment. So you're looking for a customer who goes, oh, you know, it's really easy for me to monetize this or get a return on investment for this.

Speaker A: And I just want to highlight something that you mentioned there about, you know, kind of finding those uh, clients with bigger uh, budgets, better customers. Uh, we had lots of questions on that. So I am going to break that down in a minute. And that's really kind of a side note because I know so many people could be going tell us more, but we will come back to it. I want to come to what you talked about a minute ago actually. The kind of getting those leads in and being able to be selective over who you work with tactically. How would an agency owner bring uh, those leads in and find themselves, not to make too much of a pun here about the book, but find themselves over subscribed.

Speaker B: Like lead generation is probably one of the cornerstone skills for a great agency. One thing you want to try and avoid is being just another agencies that is responding to a request for proposal. So if like a big company's putting out an RFP and 50 companies are just responding to the RFP, you are just going to be one of many companies that is all commoditized, price sensitive. Everyone kind of says the same things, they're all responding. They've all used ChatGPT to understand the RFP quickly and all that sort of stuff. So you all kind of sound the same. If you do something like speak at a conference and you're a speaker on a stage as an agency owner, then forget about the RFP process. People come to you because you're the speaker on the stage and they say, oh, can we, can we work with you? Right? You bypass that whole process. If you've done something like an online assessment and people go on and fill in an online Assessment and highlight a problem that they have and they realize that problem's bigger than they thought. Forget, forget that kind of, you know, they just go straight to you because you helped them to diagnose the problem. So you've got to get a little bit creative about how are you going to avoid the traditional channels and kind of just, you know, essentially be front runner without any competition. Um, you know, so tactically my favorites are, uh, by the way, my probably my all time favorite is the never ending waiting list. So the never ending waiting list is essentially that the official policy of your agency is that we have a waiting list. It's one to three months before you can work with us. The first thing you need to do is fill in a detailed application, uh, to join our waiting list. Probably my favorite is the never ending waiting list that you are always waiting list first, then we'll get to you when we're ready. Um, and so that's great. My second favorite is the assessment. You so figure out what is the particular thing, the particular problem that you're very good at solving and then diagnose the problem through an assessment, Some sort of assessment process. Yeah.

Speaker A: If Navy C wanted more solid, solid inbound leads and not just, you know, more noise for people, what's one simple tactic that they can implement?

Speaker C: Say today, A simple tactic for today. I think a great place to go and look is your existing clients. There are absolutely wonderful opportunities there right underneath our noses. And it's probably best illustrated by a conversation I had with a client back in, in Covid, because all of their inbound stuff dried up. They were working with clients suddenly that just saying, look, it's Covid, we're going to have to just shut down. So they went to their existing clients and they would pitch to them. That's something I'd encourage everyone to do, is go and pitch to existing clients. And they'd say, right, we sat down with our teams, our creative teams, our technical teams, account managers, and we've got some ideas we'd love to share with you. Now, the worst thing that happens from that conversation with the client is that the client knows everything that you can do for them. Everything. Um, and by the way, if you're not doing that, then another agency is. If you're not pitching another agency is telling your client all the ways that they can help it. Now, a number of brilliant things happened. So first of all, Clyde saw everything they could do. Some said, yeah, look, we want to work on that project right away. But also so seeds for future budgets. So look, we can't do anything right now, but I really like those two ideas, and we're going to kind of chat to you about that in a few months. So if we can get into the habit of going to our existing clients and seeking out opportunities to help them, because that's what we're doing when we're pitching. We're helping them solve a challenge. We're deeply understanding their business, helping them solve a challenge. I think everyone listening to this will have a more successful year than if they don't. I'm still astonished by the number of agencies that don't have account plans for their key clients. They don't have a plan for generating more revenues. And by the way, generating more revenue means solving more problems, means helping them out. If you're not doing it someone else's.

Speaker A: So why do you think people aren't doing that? Do you think it's a kind of theory approaching these existing clients and kind of pushing it further, or is it just that they don't notice it?

Speaker C: I think there's just been so much new business, and new business pitching is seen as sexy, a fun thing to do, a noble art. And, uh, actually, account management is seen as a bit more kind of cranking the handle because you know, these clients, they know you, they like you. You're already, um, signed off by the procurement department. Go and seek opportunities to help them build those relationships and expand the account. It's not just about being in that department. The best agencies will look at their accounts and say, right, we're currently here. How do we expand to here, here, here, and here? And how do we expand to your European division? And what's going on over with the US and how can we work with your supply chain? So the, the other answer is, I don't know why. Maybe new business is seen as sexier. You need both.

Speaker B: I see a lot of agencies, they're waiting for the client to think up a problem, and they're waiting to respond. It's like, oh, when you've got something that you need, you'll come to me. And it's like, you need to go to them and, uh, show this is what we're doing with other clients. This is what we're noticing. These are new problems that we've figured out how to solve in a really powerful way. Let me showcase you a few options. Get, you know, be the one who prompts them, not the one who's waiting for, you know, the client to come up with it. Uh, whoever's doing the thinking is the One who's initiating the business. So you want to get in the driver's seat.

Speaker C: And also, things change pretty quickly for clients. So the challenges that you were solving when you picked them up, uh, are likely to be different now, three, six, 12 months down the line. So really understand that. Just a really great question to ask is, what are your priorities at the moment? What are your objectives for this year? What are your major challenges?

Speaker B: Especially at the moment? The board. The board will bang their hand on the table and go, why aren't we doing X, Y and Z? And everyone goes scurrying around the whole organization. And yeah, you exactly could be a complete 180 from what they were thinking three months ago.

Speaker C: And again, if you're not the one saying, ah, uh, we can help with this, then another email might land in their inbox at just the right time when they are scrolling around looking for those solutions. And then I go to an event and hear someone else speak.

Speaker A: Is there anything that agencies are doing that they should just stop where it comes? Lead gen is just ineffective. Just stop doing it.

Speaker B: I love trying to figure out how to get out of. We call the red ocean. You know, the red ocean is the highly competitive part of the industry, and blue ocean is the uncontested. And a great example of this is, uh, Rolls Royce, I think, tripled their sales when they stopped going to car shows and started going to boat shows. So when you go to the car show, you, uh, you basically, you're sitting next to all your competitors, and someone just saw an amazing Toyota for 50,000. Uh, and then they go, look at the rolls Royce for 500,000. They go, why is that one 10 times more expensive at the boat show, you look at a $5 million boat and go, wow, I'd only spend one day, and I'm from the $5 million boat. I'd be in the Rolls Royce every day. And it's one tenth the cost. And it's like, you're the only car at the boat show. And what Rolls Royce found is the people at the boat show would just pop it on their credit card because a, it's a cheap, cheap purchase. It's like, oh, half a mil. I was coming here to look at $5 million boats. So they figured out how to get out of the red ocean into the blue ocean. So, you know, the agencies, you. I really want them to do that. I want them to say, okay, I don't want to be in the competitive process. Uh, one way to not be in the competitive process is go back to your existing customers because you've already, you've already beat the competition. You're already in there. So that's a great way to be in the blue ocean or the red ocean.

Speaker C: And just to back that up, uh, I love, I love the concept of being the best in the world or something. If you're just doing the same stuff as everyone else, you will sit in that red ocean. How do you move up to a place where no competition exists, where you are the best in the world or something? Because if you're the best in the world, you can charge what you want. And that's the foundational bit that I keep nudging agency odds on. And uh, I will not stop because we said at them every year and we say which category in with this four categories.

Speaker A: I'm sure you know as well as I do that agency owners will kick back with. But what if I'm missing out on all of this other stuff over here by shutting it down and just going this way? So what do you expect?

Speaker C: And I do understand that that fear, right. And it's a fear that I've experienced myself. So when we started off at wow, we were an accountancy practice for everyone, literally everyone. Someone comes to us, yeah, of course we can do it. Even if we couldn't, we'd try and figure out a way. And we realized that that was a really expensive way of doing business because we were constantly trying to reinvent the wheel and figure stuff out. As we narrowed our focus, we became way more effective. And now we'll only work with you if you're a million pound plus agency. And typically our clients want, um, 1 to 10 million agencies.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: We can be and we are the best in the world about we can't be the best in the world at everything. And I can tell you by narrowing your focus, it just makes everything easier. You know exactly where your clients are going to be, you know exactly their challenges. You can speak to them in a way they really, really deeply understand. And by the way, it doesn't stop you. So speaking to agencies who have specialized have narrowed their focus either by what they do or who they do it for. And what they tell me is it really helps them focus their marketing, but it doesn't stop them taking it. What other work that comes in right, you don't have to turn it down if something comes in out the blue or referral from a friend or friend. You don't have to turn it down if it's still profitable. If you still think you can deliver it so everyone who's done this, I, uh, promise you a hundred out of a hundred say, I wish I'd done this sooner. Because it gives them that focus, that clarity. If you wake up tomorrow and you've got to service the whole world, where do you start? It's paralyzing.

Speaker B: And it doesn't mean that you have to do that forever. So, for example, uh, Nike, when they launched, they launched as a jogging shoe. They, they created the category of jogging, and that was, uh, they were originally called Blue Ribbon Sports. Um, and they ran a campaign saying, we're the best in the world at jogging shoes. They eventually said, well, we've figured out how to be best in the world for tennis shoes. We've got a campaign to tell people that figured out how to be best in the world for basketball shoes. We've got a campaign that says that we do that. So you can actually, people think that if you niche down or if you focus that that's a decision for life, that you've cemented your feet in the dirt. You cannot move from that point of view. You can say, uh, as a result of working with the top hedge funds in London, we've actually developed, uh, a methodology that's relevant to the top hedge funds in New York. And we've actually figured out that we've also, uh, we've actually got a methodology that we've found works for tech companies that work really well. So it's like, okay, we can focus, run a campaign, dedicate ourselves to invest in the world of this, and then pivot into something that makes good sense. The other interesting thing about Best in the World is if you really play this out, you can have a particular type thing that you do for a particular type of customer, and that customer could be anywhere in the world. Um, and agencies that, uh, start selling globally, they're going to make a lot more money because, uh, let's say you sell to Americans. Americans have a very, very different view of what things cost, uh, to the British, right? So at the moment we've had 15 years plus of no growth in the economy, which means we have, we don't have a growth mindset. Most people that you're selling to don't have a growth mindset. You know, that they can unlock added value. The American economy grew by five and a half percent in the last 12 months. They're a fast grow, They're a growing economy. The Americans are ambitious. They, they have a belief that if you spend money, you make money. So, um, and they also have a lot of Respect for British creativity and British agencies, um, and they now look at what we charge in the UK and they go that's cheap, that's way cheaper than I can get in the us. So the same thing delivered from an LA based agency is going to be half the price in the uk. The Californian agencies literally just charge double for the exact same things. So if there is a way that you can sell to anyone in the world, especially to Americans, uh, that could be, you know, that could double revenue with the same number of customers if they were just based in the US

Speaker A: just waking, I would just imagine in the shift of everyone now instantly going, let's get to America.

Speaker B: Yeah, well I mean we live in a world where you can, you know, most of the things you can do, you can do globally.

Speaker C: And you're saying it's not just uh, did the American market as, as a customer, you say as a potential acquirers of businesses as well. You notice the valuations are different than mine, sister.

Speaker B: Well, I've sold a couple of companies to Americans. Uh, most recently this week, um, we announced an acquisition to an American company that bought uh, one of my agencies here. Um, and the Americans tend to value businesses on multiples of revenue. Uh, they will do a deal on an agency for a couple of times revenue with 1 times revenue paid up front and the other one times revenue as like progress payments for smooth handover. That's their back of the napkin calculation. And the Americans, uh, they just kind of like, you know, oh, uh, we want, we want an office in London. Here's how much it would cost us to set that up and why don't we just pick up an agency and run with it and we'll figure out profitability later. They're in a very fast growth mindset. So you know, companies that are moving fast and growing fast, they often just move fast, pay what they need to pay and move on.

Speaker A: So I want to move on now to, well come back to the budgets. But also winning better work and low budgets. People not having the budget that you need and swimming in that pool is something that came up a lot in the questions that came in. So are low budgets a client problem, a positioning failure or something else?

Speaker C: There's a few ways to look at this, right? Um, so I think broadly agencies have two choices when faced with clients with, with low budgets. You either make uh, the best of that world or you shit. So really good example of the kind of shifted they work with local businesses. They realized that they were just not getting the returns. Working with small Businesses locally. So they, they had some previous expertise in uh, employee engagement and so they decided to reposition their agency focusing on, on employee engagement. So it was a big move and they decided to focus on m. On brands. They went from local businesses to employee engagement, big brands. Within six months they had started to gain traction and they, they'd never looked back and they've left that well behind. And I think that's extremely brave making that pivot. But sometimes you just need to look at what you have and go, well that served uh, us up to this point, but it's not going to take us to where we want to go and we need to focus on some, something different. We need to make a leap. So that's one option. The other option is uh, if you are in a world where your clients are struggling to pay what they previously paid, then it's on you to break down your offering and to give them something that is still profitable. That's, but it's easy to buy. I think that's really crucial. So if they're not signing off quarter million pound programs anymore, then what are the 30 to 50,000 pound projects that they can sign off a little easier? What are the, the key things that are going to get it past the finance director or the procurement department and really deeply understanding what, what those buttons that you can push with a client is going to be really, really powerful for you. So chunking it down, recognizing situation and, and adapting. Right, because there's real power in that. And actually you can create offerings that were even more profitable than, than before. So make a choice, either adapt what you're doing or, or change your change of Archie.

Speaker B: I always ask the question, why is there no such thing as mouse flavored cat food? Because cats would love mice flavored cat food if they could, if they, if the cat could design, uh, the flavor of the cat food, it would be mouse flavored. Um, they would love to have a little tin that you open up and there's a little dead mouse inside and you just give it to them. And that would be their dream. The reason this doesn't exist is because cat food companies have figured out that cats don't have credit cards, they don't go online and they don't go to shops and they don't buy anything. Um, so even though they want it really, really badly, they don't have any budget for it. Right. So who has budgets? Cat owners have budgets. What do they want to buy? Salmon flavored cat food, pate flavored cat food, roast chicken flavored cat Food, Right. So all the things that the cat owner, uh, has. So the message here is you sell to the person who has the budget, right. And figure out what they want. And you, you know, you're serving a customer who has budgets. I see a lot of agencies, they're like, but cats love mice flavored cat food. Okay. But they don't have any credit cards. So you know, unfortunately it's not going to be a business. Uh, primarily you're in business. So you're in business to sell to someone who has money to spend. You need to pick customers who have money to spend. Uh, they've got budgets. Now you might have to land and expand with the customer. Right? You might have to say, we're doing this 30 to 50 grand project because we know you've got bigger budgets, you can spend more money, but we need to prove ourselves and we need to land and expand. We need to fit your initial budget so that we can then expand into additional budgets.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker B: That's fine. Right. So I might win my salmon flavored cat food client, uh, by giving them a little sample size tin that they then try and they like. The cat likes it and eats it and they happily buy it and then they give us their cat food budget later on. Um, but there is no point trying to sell to a market that just doesn't have money. Now what you can do, if you're passionate about a particular market, you can set up a YouTube channel for that market so they can learn the skills to do it themselves. Right. Or you can create some free resources that you encourage people to download and use. You can write a book that, uh, that market, like, let's say you're super passionate about helping, helping startups. Great, right? Create some startup resources based upon your messages, go and give some talks for free at startup incubators and that sort of stuff out of the goodness of your heart, knowing that it's not going to turn into a valuable client. Um, but ultimately your business exists to sell to the people who've got a, who've got money to spend and also

Speaker C: just give people what they want and recognize that what people want now might be different to what they wanted three years ago. And so the more deeply you can understand about what your ideal client base wants, what their challenges are, what their hopes, their fears, their dreams are, what their objectives are for this year, then you can give them exactly what they want.

Speaker B: I'll make that more, I'll make that really real. What the customer who spends the money, the cat owner may want is they want A really great press release that happens at the end of the project. And ultimately the thing that matters most to them is that we put the press release out and the board loved it. And everyone that's seen my senior team loved seeing us featured in that particular way. Or they might want to win an award. It might be really, really important to them that we do the work that we ultimately enter and win an award. So you've got to figure out the person who's got the budget. How are they judged by their peers? How are they judged by. Right, some, some agencies do phenomenal work, but they're rubbish at reporting the value of the work. So they're just not good at like, like I know of an, I know of an agency that is unbelievable at social media, uh, execution. Absolutely rubbish at telling you the results that they got. So they don't circulate a report that can then be circulated that gets total buy in from the team. Where everyone at a senior level goes, oh my goodness, we got 5 million views last month and we got this and it translated to this many leads and we can track it with utms and oh, oh my goodness, it's look, it's all happening. So they're doing the stuff that would blow people away. They're failing to do half an hour of actually putting together the monthly report as to how well it did. And then people are questioning how much they're spending on that particular agency because they're not recognizing that the thing that actually gets sign off again and again and again is the reporting. It's not the work. The work's important, but the reporting is what the people see. So it's like you've got to figure out what is the magic moment that totally makes, makes it work for the person who has the budget. And that's the cat. That is the cat flavored cat food thing. People are sitting there going, um, but the cats love the mice flavored thing. It's like, yes, but the owner wants to see, you know, the, the, the, the little salmon dish on the packet. Okay, great.

Speaker C: I think you've been far too polite there. You said that agencies, some agencies were, were rubbish at this. And I think the vast majority of a, no, generally a vast majority are rubbish at this. And we, we know from our research only 15% actually track the ROI on projects. That's absolutely mad because right now that's what clients want to see. That's what people signing these things off want to see. They want to see what's the return on this investment. And if you can start with that, right? And it's not like a thing that you kind of figure out at the end. You go, right, what return would you want to see from this piece of work? And then figure out how you get that return M and build it in. And then say, look, we want to make sure that we build this as a case study. You track it throughout. You get buy in from the client to track the return on that investment throughout. You're going to. But even if you don't get that return, you'll learn a whole lot about why you didn't get that return to make it better next time. So your service will improve the results and the outcomes that we get will improve. And we've talked about this before, clients buy outcomes, they don't buy deliverables. And we need to focus on those outcomes and we need to showcase the uh, return that we're getting as a result of those outcomes. If we do that, you're going to win against every agency, the 85% who just say, oh look, come and just trust us. It'll, it'll all be great. Well, no, I've got case studies. I can show you the return that I'm going to get you. And I know exactly at every stage in the process how I'm going to get you that return. That's, that's the real path.

Speaker B: I love this idea of reverse engineering the outcome. Uh, so for example, I can think of an agency where the client, what they really, really, really wanted was to achieve a gold investors in people status. So they wanted like the agency wasn't at all working on that. Right. They do all sorts of stuff in the recruitment process and all this sort of stuff and they kind of bring all those materials to life and video. But the ultimate outcome is that we want to be a gold investors in people company. Right. So we want to hit that standard. And as an organization, if you're not reading, what are the entry criteria, what is the actual criteria for being a gold investors in people standard? If you're not figuring out, okay, if that's what the board want to pay for, how does my service hit these three major things that go towards being a gold investors and people company? And let me link, we're going to do this, which will get you closer to that goal. You're missing out on exactly why they're actually paying money for it for you. Right. It's, you're just thinking about your own needs. Oh, we do this. That's what we do. Right. So it's like, no No, I know what you're trying to achieve. Let me get you, Let me do as everything humanly possible to get you there.

Speaker C: The key to that is to really deeply understand what is important to them. So this is the, I think this is the fun bit where you just keep asking questions and once you discover something like, well, we want this gold investors and people standard, it's like this light bulb goes on, you go, well, we can just, we can help you do that. Lincoln Drive. Everything there was achieving that. And I don't think agencies are asking

Speaker B: enough questions or fun questions. So a fun question is, uh, if I could wave a magic wand and something wonderful would happen, uh, six months from now, what would you love me to wish for? Or uh, one of my favorite questions is I always ask the question. Imagine, uh, a year from now where we're celebrating, we open up a bottle of champagne, we clink glasses and we say we did it. What would you love to be celebrating 12 months from now? Um, you know, so it's kind of like park, park. The how to. What is the. What is the thing you want to celebrate in 12 months?

Speaker C: And you could do that on a big scale like that. 12 months, the length of our relationship, this project. You can also do that in a meeting. If this meeting goes really well. What would you want to achieve by

Speaker B: the end of it?

Speaker C: Just, just on a little micro level. So, just helping people think, oh, what, what do I want? What would be useful? Yeah, I love the idea of just expanding that thinking. And then you can.

Speaker B: Extraordinary. And the flip one too, with, especially with large, large corporate is you can also ask the question, imagine, uh, six months from now, we're in serious trouble. And the seniors, uh, the, the higher ups and the seniors are furious. They've banged their hand on the table and they've said, this thing has been a total waste of time and money. What would have caused that to happen? Because then you're addressing their biggest fear and they're saying, oh, well, if we couldn't show roi, if we didn't have a report that proved it, uh, if we had lost key team members as a result of it. So then they give you the list of the real things that they're freaking out. Most corporates make decisions based on mitigating fears and risks as opposed to trying to achieve growth and targets. Um, although growth and targets are important, but normally because of the underlying fears and risks associated with not hitting them. So it's good to also ask, kind of like if we achieved a worst case scenario, what would that look like.

Speaker C: And um, you can ask these questions of yourself as well. So I call this imagined hindsight. We'll know. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it's kind of helpful to have it before you don't have to go through the pain and actually imagine yourself in, well, at the end of this year and imagine that you have achieved everything you want to achieve as a business. What are you really, really glad that you did? And now imagine that you have failed and what do you really wish you had done? And those two things, they might be the same thing, but if you really explore that and uh, journal on it, yeah, you will, you will have the answers to unlock whatever it is that you're trying to achieve in your business.

Speaker A: So when we're talking about these higher budget clients, um, another, uh, uh, inundated questions around this as well is how do I speak to the right person? This is where I think a lot of people fall down, is actually like, how do I attract that CEO or that person that I need to really make this decision? It's lots of stunts around, kind of supply chain and all the rest of it.

Speaker B: Uh, anyone who's in a position of power is by definition a massive bottleneck. So what it feels like to be in a position of power is that you're constantly letting people down. You're constantly having to say no to things that are pretty damn good things that you would otherwise want to be saying yes to. Uh, your time is at a crazy premium. Um, a 20 minute meeting is so much more attractive than a one hour meeting. Um, catching up for a chat is like vile. The idea that someone says, hey, I want to catch up for a chat with you and, or someone who reaches out to ask a question that they could have found on a website if they had have done five minutes worth of research makes you want to punch them in the face. Because what you don't realize is that the reason that I'm using that kind of emotive, uh, language is that any bottleneck position where you're making decisions and you're guiding something, that you're in a position of power, it's unbelievable stress. It's, it's Your diary's booked two, three months in advance. Uh, everyone wants 15 minutes with you, right? Uh, you let someone down and it has cascading consequences. Uh, you say yes to something that has cascading consequences. Uh, you have people around you whose job is to filter your time. A lot of people do not have any empathy for what that feels like. Agency, uh, owners who are not in that position of being a, ah, major bottleneck. They've got zero empathy. So they say disgusting things like, can we catch up for a chat? Could I understand a few things that I could have found on your website? Right, those kind of things. Total, total lack of empathy of what it's like to be a decision maker at a large company. The people who get through high degree of research, high degree of specific information, uh, they, they come through and they, they just lay the cards out on the table in a way that respects time. That basically says, I noticed that you made an announcement last week on the company, uh, LinkedIn that this is a major priority. That's a very difficult project to achieve because of these three reasons. Right now, the way to achieve that is this, this, this. We've done this with three other customers. Would you like a conversation? I can brief you on how we did it in under 20 minutes. That's the kind of thing that gets cut through if you want big budgets. Anyone who's got big budgets, they're a bottleneck, right? So have the empathy for the fact they don't have available time to talk to. Just chitty chat.

Speaker C: Being absolutely crystal clear on your ideal client profile, profile, your ICP and being really bold in sharing that with the world. So first of all, question for everyone listening to this, Ah, are you clear on your ideal client profile? And if you are, does every single piece of marketing you do talk to them, talk to their challenges, showcase your expertise, showcase the value that you add? Does your website, does every email? You said that, every event, every piece, uh, of content. I think it's really important to be bold with a very clear statement on your website, something like, we solve these challenges for these very specific clients by doing this very specific thing, or the alternative, that is, uh, when we solve these challenges, we get this outcome with these clients by doing this thing. So we help improve customer retention for telecoms companies through amazing video, something that just really clearly says, this is what we do and we're brilliant at it. And then does everything that you do showcase that you really understand the telecoms industry, uh, showcases the outcomes that you get, showcases how exactly you've, uh, improved customer retention and with case studies with returns and investments attached, uh, to them. And if you have worked out your return on investment, don't stick it at the bottom, uh, put it at the top of your credit stack, put at the top of your website. So put it at the top of every case study. We help this client achieve this outcome, get these returns so that Helps you get cut through. Right. And the clearer you are about your ideal client, then you can work out where they hang out. You can get yourself on, um, on stage. You can write content that they really, really want to get their hands on, and you can become that key person

Speaker B: and then they'll come to you and you can also influence their influences. So you can say, you can say, okay, this is my ideal customer that I know that it's very hard to get in front of them, but I know that these three or four people report into them. So I'm going to make sure that these people know to tell their boss.

Speaker A: And it feels like very much what you were just talking about is kind of a pre worked that being able to approach them and say, this is exactly what you were saying, you know, this is how we can help. And being really quick with that. Brilliant. Okay, I'm going to move us on, uh, just to talk about that kind of profitability side of things now. So, Peter, I want to come to you with this one. Um, what is one small financial habit that drives profitable growth and creates a big impact over time?

Speaker C: I love it when people make the switch from being reactive with profit to being highly intentional. So when you're reactive, profit is just a thing that just comes at the end of the day. So we'll do our work and peer over our accounts. Have we made money and keep our fingers crossed? Where does actually when you're intentional about it? And that is a mindset shift. You can start with profit first. You can say, well, how much profit do we want to make this year? And then you can build up from that and figure out, well, how many clients do we need? Or what budget, what costs are we going to have to maintain, um, within in order to hit that level of profit. But profit first and be intentional about it. And then look at where you're making money and where you're losing money. Which clients are your most profitable and your least profitable, which sectors are your most and your least profitable, um, which services that you are offered, perhaps even which individual people within your team are your most and least profitable. Now the thing with this data is once you see it, you can't unsee it, right? You're just compelled to take action. You know, if you see a client is unbelievably unprofitable, you will do something about it. And by the way, flip side of that is if you see a client that's super profitable, you should really spend more time with them and see if you can, um, generate additional, uh, Opportunities from them. So it's about being intentional, it's about being fanatical with the details. And if, if there was one habit to go into, it would be that just go into more detail than ever before. And as agencies mature like, this isn't just a one ah and done thing. You don't just get your profit reporting done. It's a journey. You get more and more detail to figure out where do I make money, where do I lose money?

Speaker A: Beautiful. Thank you. And I want to come to kind of a mindset piece on this as well, because I think a lot of what we've talked about has been really practical and useful advice when, uh, it comes to that mindset. I think that's something that can really quickly be overlooked and what shift will decide which agencies will win over the next couple of years, especially with it when it comes to mindset.

Speaker B: So rule one of economics is that demand must exceed supply if you are going to be profitable. So day one of every economics, uh, course is they show you this picture of a bunch of bananas and they say, uh, if you've got 10 bananas and a hundred people want bananas, you're going to make money selling bananas. And if you've got a hundred bananas and only 10 people want bananas, you're going to lose money with your banana business. And that's day one of economics. And they explain that profit is an unnatural consequence of demand, uh, exceeding supply. And that when markets hit equilibriums, then you make wages and that you just make a normal wage and you're in an equilibrium position of making wages. If supply exceeds demand, you make losses. So economists explain it very simply. Demand exceeds supply. Profit, demand and supply. Equilibrium, demand and wages. Supply exceeds demand, you'll make losses. Um, so the mindset is that it's natural if I want to be profitable to have waiting lists. It's natural to let people down. It's natural to have to tell people no, um, because demand exceeds supply. Uh, what I find is that a lot of agencies are people pleasers and they love the idea of hitting equilibrium. They love the idea of having just the right amount of clients and they got just the right amount of supply and they can just look after people and they fall into the trap of just being a comfortable little agency that makes payroll. What it feels like to be an agency that's making profit is often, we have way too much demand. We can't get to you in the next month. Uh, uh, we have a waiting list. We're very picky as to who we take on as Clients, Uh, we have, you know, we speak at the conference and there's a thousand people in the audience, and there's only 30 clients we can take on in the next six months. Um, they, they're very clear that, you know, their job as an agency owner is to put themselves in a position where demand will outstrip supply consistently. And that means, unfortunately, it means that you'll be a little bit picky. Uh, means that you'll have, with or without you, energy. We're going to be fine with or without you. You have to, if you have to go somewhere else, you have to go somewhere else. That this is our price and this is how we do things. Um, so you're trying to get into that weird position that feels uncomfortable for a lot of agencies.

Speaker C: And if you want to get to a situation where demand does outscript supply, you're going to need to focus only on what you can control. So I talked about this before, the three circles. So the circle of concern, which is massive, it's bigger than this because it is everything. It's everything that we're concerned about. Then there's a circle of influence. So those things that you can influence, but you can't directly control. So, so you can influence the number of inbound leads you get, but you can't completely control it. You can influence your conversion rate, it can't control. It can influence your average client value and so on, but you can't completely control it. So what is within our control? So what's within our control is the number of our activity, the habits that we get into, every single moment of every single day, that's within our control. Yeah. And focusing on the habits that will get you the results that will give you a chance to increase demand, I think is, is the key. So if ever anyone is feeling overwhelmed about where to start, um, or is in a funk, just write down what you can control. How can you build momentum? What can you do in the next. Well, today, what can you do today that will. Is in your control, that will lead you to a better place tomorrow, there's a better post next week, next month, and so on. So it's just focusing right now. What can I control? And you just watch. The stress disappears when we'll focus, calm, and then you can, you can attack.

Speaker A: Okay, um, I don't know how I feel about talking about AI but I feel like I can't miss it out. So I've got a question for you both on this. Uh, where does AI fit into our topic today? Dried and comfortable growth within the next year or so. Again, another one where we had loads and loads of questions about this and in particular one that I am going to draw on. Um, someone said, do we need to shift away from the traditional idea that headcount equals success? Which I thought was a lovely, um, thing to discuss. So let's talk about AI a little bit. And Peter, let's start with you.

Speaker C: So I've got some stats on this. So we surveyed last year in bench press, looked at AI usage amongst agencies. We've taken that up a notch this year. And I can tell you that the agencies that are using AI are absolutely driving profitability and efficiency. They're doing things faster than ever before. But there is an alternative side to that call, which is 40% of agencies are reporting that clients had brought work in house in the last 12 months and a third are saying that clients are expecting more for less. So there's a double side to this coin. On the one hand we could be more efficient using, uh, AI. On the other hand, clients want to more for less bring work in house. And I think we're going to reach an equilibrium. On the one hand we'll gain, on the other hand we'll lose. And uh, but what we are seeing, those that are getting ahead of the curve and adopting it across their businesses are getting better results. We saw that with research last year, we're seeing that again this year. So if you're using AI across your business, you are getting a first mover, uh, advantage. Now, in terms of what agencies can do, there's a piece of thinking that I think is really, really important but fundamental. So for the clients that you serve or might serve over the next few years, I just want you to just fast forward to three years time and think very carefully about what they will want to buy in three years and actually what they will not want to buy from you in three years. Because there will be some commoditized things that people listening to this are doing right now that their clients will not want to buy from them in three years time because they will have insourced it, AI would have taken care of it. But equally, there will be some things at the top that clients will be desperate to buy from them that will really need assistance with, that will perceive as incredibly high value and it's moving towards those services and adjusting, uh, our offering accordingly. That I think is the move that agencies need to think about right now. I spoke to one the other day, video production agency, he said, look, my world is being turned upside down. We don't need actors, we don't need cameras anymore to create videos. And what he is doing is completely reimagining his business for the future. And it's that thinking, it's that thinking that we need to do.

Speaker B: Every business on the whole planet is being tipped on its head by AI. Like this is the biggest change that's ever happened. Um, it changes the labor market, it changes the nature of business. Um, like this isn't just agencies, this is everything, Everything is being transformed by this. Um, if we fast forward just a couple of years from now, there will be wildly profitable agencies and fast growth agencies. They're not going to be the ones that ignored AI. They're not going to be the ones that said, oh, we'll just wait and see what happens with AI. They'll be the ones that really sat down and thought about how do we use AI to generate more demand, how do we use AI to get outcomes faster? How do we use AI to do something that's really special that we could never do before? Um, you know, so that it's, there's no question, uh, the idea of headcount, you know, essentially, uh, AI offers you free, uh, employees and also it offers you free upgrades for the employees that you've got. Uh, so there was recently Stanford did a research, uh, into five and a half thousand customer success, uh, employees. And they found that any employee that had been with the company for less than a year massively improved their output through AI tools. Any employee that had been around for more than five years had almost no impact on their productivity or their output. So if you had achieved a very high standard in the top 10%, 15%, AI didn't do a lot for you. If you're at the um, bottom, it brought you straight up to the middle. So what's interesting is that you want to make sure that your new and junior people are using AI tools to rapidly upskill fast forward, remove that first year of learning curve. You know, with AI tools, if you've got really experienced people, then you want to figure out what is it that like absolute awesome excellence looks like, uh, that AI can't do. And then really make sure that you're selling that, that you're telling people this is stuff that AI can't, this is the bit that AI will not do, cannot do. That's very, very important that you must get right. And we can, we, we've got that capability that I can't do. Um, so for example, like take a law firm. The drafting of contracts, the checking of contracts, the looking for loopholes, all of that stuff, very easy that a junior person could have done. I can do a lot of that sort of stuff. The sitting down with clients at a table and bringing a negotiation together and actually being around a table negotiating a price, negotiating terms, uh, having those conversations, very difficult AI to do that. So a law firm that specializes in the human part of doing the deal is going to, um, make. And if they make sure they emphasize that that's their focus, uh, they're going to do very well because they've identified the valuable bit.

Speaker A: Excellent. So, um, I'm actually going to move on now to some of the direct questions that came in. So, um, I'm probably going to butcher some names here and some agency names, but we going to go for it anyway. So, um, Andrea from PlayB, a nice easy one to start with, said how to avoid the pitch process because they are often purely based on pricing. Now I find that very interesting because even earlier you mentioned, like, pitch to your existing clients. Uh, is there a way to avoid pitching or should we just be looking at how we can position the pitch?

Speaker C: So, so in that phrase, pitch resisting clients, I was actually talking about sharing ideas, like sharing ideas from existing clients. And for some types of clients, uh, pitching unfortunately is unavoidable. How do you turn the odds in your favor with pitches? So when, when you are presented with an opportunity, I think it's really important that we ask some questions like, okay, who's involved in this pitch process? How many people are you inviting? What criteria are you using to decide? What's your budget? Um, who are the key decision makers? How will you make your decision? Is there an incumbent and almost you can score it. You can ask questions and give yourself a score as to figure out whether you want to engage in this process or not. But that's a pitch process or whether it's a tendering process. Ultimately, we need to do what you've been talking about for years, which is to get to a place where people are coming to you, where you are seen as the expert and they are asking you to help solve that problem. And, um, they might go out and get a cursory other quote, but essentially it's yours to lose. That is ultimately what we're trying to do. If you keep finding yourself in pitch situations, um, well, that the odds are stacked against you. Even if you find a way using the scoring system to move the odds up a level, it's still nowhere near the same as being the best in the world or something and having people come come to you. So have a think about how you can create the situation where demand does outstrip your supply and people are coming to you. But I do acknowledge that if you want to win big accounts, you have to go. Sometimes you will have to go through pitching and you will have to go through procurement.

Speaker B: Two ways to get in control of that is like, uh, very tactically, one thing that I see a lot of really great growing businesses do is hosting a monthly zoom call, uh, where they are actually in control of inviting people onto the Zoom presentation. Um, and they invite people on, they do a presentation, they present something that's going on, something that's happening, some case studies, some data, some research. And now they've got a. Let's say they've got 40, 50 people on the zoom call. They're creating their own market. So, so rather than, um, you being one of 40 people pitching for something, you've got 40 people who are seeing you as the source of information. So now you're the one who's in demand, and they can see that there are other people interested, um, speaking at conferences. Once again, if you're the speaker at a conference, there's people in the audience who hear what you're saying and go, I need to. I wish I could be a customer for that person. So you're creating scenarios where there's one of you and lots of them. That's what you're trying to do. You, you don't want to be in a scenario where there's one of them and lots of you. Um, that's the opposite of what you want to be in. Um, the. If it really does come down to a pitch process and that's the only way that you're going to win these big buns. My recommendation is to be really ballsy and go for big, big clients that normally don't work with little agencies and where the bigger agencies are the ones that are pitching against each other. Because if it really does come down to price, the big agencies, they don't have the unit economics to be able to take on at a lower price. They have to win a 3 million, uh, engagement. Whereas you might come in and say, oh, we can do that for 600 grand, which is a big deal for you, but you blow them out the water. But if you go in where all the other agencies of a similar size go in, um, then, uh, there's a very high chance that they're all going to be priced right, roughly the same. So your only opportunity to blow people out the water and be very different is where you really do uh, jump in the deep end, um, and you're the only little agency that's pitching, but you've got the ability to do it at a cheaper price potentially and still be profitable.

Speaker A: So um, another question about tools here as well. So Saher from Hackmasters said, well, what tools do you use to manage profitability or projects without doing ton of admin to stay on top? And this is, I mean I haven't asked you about this yet. Have you got any ideas on kind of key tools or kind of things that people can use or really help them with that?

Speaker B: So once again the demand and supply thing is like for me I come back to profitability. Is demand and supply the number one like tools? Uh, I like things like putting videos on YouTube and most agencies don't think about YouTube as a tool. You know, if you put a really good video on YouTube and lots of people see it, that's going to drive demand and it's going to build a long tail of digital assets. Hosting, uh, your own workshops on Zoom, uh, you know, so like I'm not going to talk about accounting tools and all that sort of stuff, but I'm going to say demand driving tools, uh, are the ones that uh, ultimately why is profit happening? Because you've got lots of demand and you can select and then filtering that demand. So filtering is anywhere where you can ask questions of customers to figure out which uh, segment they fit into and then you can double down on the, on the people who really have a lot to gain. Um, so uh, you know, of course I would say this but Score app allows you to set up a quiz or a questionnaire, um, or ask a series of questions from your potential customers. So you can then segment the list and you can go, okay, this is, these are the types of, you know, these are the eight people I should talk to out of the 80 people who filled in the scorecard.

Speaker C: So you're right, demand, appstrappy, supply will generate profit. But if you, if you want to know where you are making money and not making quite so much money, the things I talked about earlier, I think the question asked, can you do it without loads of admin? No, you need to do the work, you need to put in the timesheets, otherwise you're not going to have the data. And so we're not just encouraging, just making sure that everyone is completing the timesheets because what that will give you is allow you to work out unequivocally who uh, are your most, uh, profitable clients. Most Profitable projects, sectors and even teams and individuals. Great, um, tools to do that. There's lots out there. So there's, you know, if you just want to start off with individual apps, there's timesheeting and project management stuff like Harvest and Resource Guru. Then there's uh, agency management systems like Scoro, uh, Stream Time, Synergist, Productive cmap. They're all great tools and they all do things in slightly different ways. There's a tool called Supo that will sit over the top of them and sort of suck data in. But you need to use something right, and you need to put the data in to give you the intel. Once you have that intel, it's unbelievably powerful. So think, uh, our jobs. So I chapter an agency, own one of our clients, and he was telling me about how he had a big client and these are the exact words he used, keeping the lights up. Thank goodness we got this big client keeping the lights on. So we did some analysis with, with that business and we discovered that actually that client was hugely unprofitable and it was slowly dimming the lights in his business. And once we showed that to him, it doesn't matter about the revenue, it's about the profitability is it's costing you money to service this client. And uh, that's the opportunity that this data provides.

Speaker A: I think you've unknowingly moved on to the next question to talk about revenue. And actually I've said I'm going to reword it slightly just to make it about more about profit. So AJP and Fortune 369 said if your only goal was to reach, I mean AJ said 100k revenue, but let's just insert any number there, uh, that's relevant to the per anyone watching. Uh, if your only goal is to reach that revenue in the next nine to 12 months, what would you stop, start and double down on immediately? And the one thing that I just want to add it is if you wanted to reach that revenue profitably in the next nine to 12 months, what would you start, stop and double down?

Speaker C: So, uh, honestly, in the end it sounds like it is just starting out right? At first hundred grand of revenue, you just need to sell stuff, right? You just need to find ways to sell stuff because in doing so you're going to get some direct feedback. Don't bother doing market research. Best market research you can do is try and sell stuff. So number one, what I would do, and by the way, this applies not just for the first hundred grand, it applies with the Next hundred grand to the next million. It works every agency of every size. Weekly leading indicators. You need to figure out what it is that makes the biggest difference to your future success right now. So for agencies, probably will be something very early in the sales pipeline.

Speaker B: Leads, appointments, proposals, sales.

Speaker C: So either leads or maybe, uh, appointments. I really like appointments. Uh, appointment setting is a game changer

Speaker B: that hardly ever gets talked about.

Speaker C: Yeah, go. But, but setting that as a weekly objective. Yeah, uh, it just gives you such clarity because we can all go out and affect that right now. We can go and look at people who've engaged with our content recently and see if we can find a way to book an appointment with them. And that's really powerful. And the reason why weekly is important is because monthly's too late. Right? You have a bad first month, you make excuses, the second month, it happens again. You have to wait until the third month to figure out something's wrong. You do it weekly, you figured it out by week three, and you're able to do something about it. So weekly indicators this target for number of appointments. Next up, uh, have a pricing strategy where you've got three pricing options. Okay, small, a medium, a large, or actually a large medium. So then it's easy for people to buy from you, but they can see the range of what you do. And then thirdly, find some way to build in some recurring income so that you're not. This isn't just throwing tissues on fires and it rolls up and then dies down. That, that initial interaction ideally leads to recurring revenue because that can build and build and build. You do that and you're going to have a great year. Weekly leading, enter cases, street pricing options. Find a way to build in recurring or repeat income and ideally sub it in as part of the initial, um, uh, engagement.

Speaker B: Superpower. Powerful. And then to sort of lock it in. See if you can build, uh, the founder's brand as a, as a key person of influence. See if you can get a bit of a founder brand going. Halo effect around the founder. Um, if, if you are, uh, once you've got your leads and appointments and presentations and sales flowing, uh, if you can be perceived as thought leader, industry expert, speaker, ah, podcast guest author, any of those things you almost lock in long term, the ability to have a steady stream of profitable business.

Speaker A: I don't know if you guys are sneakily looking at these questions, but that leads me on to one of the other ones that came in. So Babette from Projectify just said, do you believe an agency owner should become a Key person of influence. Um, Babette said, my clients are architects and I feel like they don't like to be told what to do. But that's a really interesting point. So you think, yeah, it's the Kamaki keep out of inflow.

Speaker B: Yeah, I would really challenge that. They don't like to be told what to do, they don't like to be told what to do in some circumstances. But architects go along to conferences and listen to people on stages and get told what to do and they listen to podcasts and the person who is there tells them what to do. So they do. But they want to be told what to do by someone who they really respect and admire and look up to and who's on a platform and who's been filtered and all of those sorts of things. Truth is that agencies that have a iconic founder, they're locked in like they're good, they're going to be great for years to come. Um, you know, like the biggest agencies in the world are agencies, um, like Ogilvy, because of the iconic nature of the founder. And it still happens to this day, uh, that you get these iconic leaders of the business who are perceived as authors, speakers, thought leaders in demand, key people of influence, um, and you know, they essentially have longevity, they have a long term ability to be highly in demand, highly profitable. The biggest issue with agencies is that agencies are almost always started by people who love the supply of what they do. They love, they are, uh, supply side focused. They love making films, they love creating websites, they love tinkering, they love building, they love doing the work. A great sentence to think of is in order to do the work that you love and that's profitable, you have to win the work that you love and that's profitable. Um, you are in the, once you become an agency owner, you are the one whose job is to feed the team. You're the whale hunter, you're the one who's out there trying to bring in the business. The team are not going to do it. They do the work. Your job is to win the work. So ultimately if you just want to sit there with the team tinkering away on the work, you're not going to be a profitable agent, uh, agency, the agency founder's job is whale hunting, getting out there and winning, winning work. And in order to do that you need to be perceived as someone who can do that.

Speaker C: Let's just go back to the architects example. If, if you can be the person that is famous for growing architects practices, they will come to you and they will love, um, they're you to tell them what to do.

Speaker B: They'll pay you to be the speaker at the conference. Yeah.

Speaker A: Suzanne from SQL Group asked, ah, we need to increase profitability on core services that are budget sensitive and considered transactional services by clients. Any, uh, advice on how we can improve?

Speaker C: That's hard because the key phrase there is they're considered transactional services by clients. And if they consider transactional services by clients, then they're only going to pay transactional things. So I guess the question I have for anyone who finds himself in that situation is how can you use those transactional services as leverage as a springboard to maybe more value based services? So is nothing wrong with having transactional based services as long as you're not losing money of them if they are a springboard for something else? Um, so something more creative, more strategic. And so what is it the clients that you're working with right now would pay a premium price for that would allow you to make premium profits accepting that, you know what, we're not going to make them from this particular group of services. And that's fine, that's okay. As long as it's a springboard for something else.

Speaker B: Yeah. In the shops, they always have the loss leader. They say, oh, the pint of milk is cheap, but you've got to walk past all the other, the expensive stuff in order to get to the pint of milk. And it's like, and it's going to be sitting next to all of those French cheeses, right? And it's like, okay, we know we're gonna lose a few pennies on the pint of milk, but you're gonna pick up one of those, uh, nice, uh, breeze fighting in commoditized markets for its own sake is a race to the bottom. All right, we know that, uh, and you know the only way that you win that game is to be ruthless. Ruthless. You strip out every penny. You replace every person with a system, with a, with a, with a piece of technology. You outsource everything to a low cost labor country if you can. You have to become absolutely ruthless if you want to be the winner of that game. Sounds rubbish. Who would want that? What's the prize to the winner?

Speaker A: Another one from Rory. Uh, Atomlfa. Um, Rory asked, as high profile business people, you both must have heaving inboxes and endless requests for whatever, how do you avoid your time getting it? Now, I know we talk about this, right? About, you know, not getting sucked into the day to day, all the rest of it. So any tips for anyone that. That might need some help?

Speaker B: Uh, look, for me personally, I don't make any decisions around how I spend my time. It has to go through an independent person called my executive assistant. So I have meetings with my executive assistant, who understands what my values are for the month ahead and understands, um, what I'm trying to achieve longer term. And then all scheduling decisions happen through my executive assistant. Uh, and the reason for that is I'm rubbish at saying no. Right. If someone says, uh, you know, we really, really, really would love you to do this thing. Oh, okay, all right. Um, so the only way I can handle this is by saying I don't make decisions about that. That has to go to my executive assistant, who'll make a decision. She's great at saying that. All right. She's totally fine being the bad bad guy. Uh, and that's. That. That's the only thing that works. I think in the early days, you might even want to create an email account called executive assistant so that you can be the bad person, uh, without being the bad person, if that makes sense.

Speaker A: All right, so Daniel's got a bodyguard for you, Peter.

Speaker C: Well, I'm really clear on my priorities. And I'm also clear on what, um, really lights me up personally, how I love spending my time. So from a work perspective, I love working with bright people at a high level in an entrepreneurial way, solving big challenges that make a big impact. That is my happy place. If I'm doing that or on stage, I'm, um, just got a big smile on my face. So I broadly assess how I spend my time based on those criteria. But it doesn't stop me getting sucked into things. And what I've noticed is I have a little flaw, which is if I see sub pick, I often pull on that threat. And so what I, um, do to prevent me doing that is I make sure I don't see stuff. So I completely remove myself from things so that I don't see it. Only look at the headlights and avoid getting sucked into things that perhaps don't tick quite so many of those. Those boxes. Securing priorities, clear about what gives me joy and how I want to spend my time and how I will be most impactful as well. Because it's not just about putting a smile on my face. I think if I'm doing those things, I'm most impactful.

Speaker A: I can't believe that we're here already, but we've only got a few minutes left, so I want to just look at some of the live Questions that have come in as we've been talking and first one is from Jake. He said with regards to niching, the tricky thing is the transition, AKA going from where you are now and into that sweet spot, keeping the levels of revenue you need, keeping the lights on, etc. Any advice on that transition?

Speaker B: I um, think for starters change the word niching, uh, niching down to the words campaigning for. So rather than niching down to accountants, we're going to campaign for accountants. We're not going to niche down for architects, we're going to campaign for architects. So it has a different energy about that. So um, niching down has this feeling of contracting the business down around a particular type of customer campaigning, four has a feeling of expanding the business with a really clear focus. And as you expand you're picking up these customers and you're getting more and more clear, more and more focus. So um, Nike don't niche down around basketball, they campaign into the basketball shoe market. They don't niche down around tennis, they campaign for tennis.

Speaker C: And when you're doing it just uh, often you will be campaigning for something that you already have some experience with. You won't be starting from, from scratch. And so gathering up those case studies. Well actually just looking around your whole business generally and going well hang on, I can group that lot into that bucket and that into that bucket and suddenly I've got a sort of a fintech gathering over there and professional services gathering over here and then start building those case studies, adapting your, your marketing to put it literally in those buckets. We work with fintech, professional services and, and maybe uh, other and start. That gives you the buckets for which you can campaign for but build out or case studies. I had a question that actually came in to me on the train. Someone who said um, that they were looking forward to this and I actually answered that question on the train already but I'll answer here. They said well, how do you um, break into an area where you don't have uh, those case studies? And I talked about the early days of wow. How the first two clients we picked up, we said well look, we're gonna, we're not gonna charge you for this but when return we'd like really detailed feedback on what we do and we'd like it to be a case study. And those first two case studies got us the next two clients at half price. And then, well, we've never discounted since. So that was how we built the business. We said well look, we have no track record, um, but you can help us build one with that confidence and using that as a springboard.

Speaker A: Okay, Alison, um, on the live stream, she said, how do you measure the ROI on creative and brand design?

Speaker C: So I honestly think when someone comes to you and say, I would like a new website, I'd like a new brand, the next question you should ask is, why? Why? What are you hoping to achieve from that? Well, we're freshening up a look. Okay. What will that freshen look give you? What would you want to achieve from it? Going back to your question, what would successor play? This new brand, new design, new thing that you are doing, asking us to be creative for was wildly successful? What would be some of the outcomes? So it's in the quality of the questions when we get asked to do something creative that we really unearth what people, what's really driving that, that decision. And that's when the deeper you go, you get to the roi.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker C: So what you're really looking for isn't just a refresh. It's actually you're looking to use this to, to drive growth or to break into this sector or to improve your employee retention or to get new, uh, recruits.

Speaker B: And once you've figured that out, really, really powerful is go to the, your favorite AI tools and ask them the question, is there any academic research that proves that premium branding and design translates into premium pricing? And what you'll discover is, yes, here's 15 papers that actually prove that that's actually true. Um, is there any risks that you could do this in a way that doesn't result in that? Yeah, these are the eight things that we, these papers say you shouldn't do or you should avoid, often very, very rapidly using AI, you can go back to the client and say, actually you said that what you're really trying to achieve is premium pricing. You want to be able to put your prices up. So what we actually found is that Stanford, Harvard, uh, Boston. Right. That these guys are all, all figured out that actually for every 18 you spend on this, you get a $27 return down the, down the line. Oh, okay. And here's. They looked at 5,000 companies that did what you're trying to achieve, and they found these are the risks, these are the things to do. And now you've translated, using AI tools. You've translated what they're trying to achieve, and you've linked it to what you do, and you've actually demonstrated, demonstrated some of that.

Speaker A: Roi San sent an email in to say, Peter, can you give us any sneak peeks into the upcoming bench press reports. Surely 2026 can't be as tough as the past couple of years in just a couple of words.

Speaker B: So one of the things we've noticed

Speaker C: is every year we ask a question about confidence. So you have to regal confidence on a scale from 0 to 100. And we've been doing this pretty much since the dormer time. And we get a score. And what we've noticed is that that score, if you overlay that graph versus the number of vacancies that grew at the end of the year, they're pretty much identical. So agencies have got a very good sense collectively if they think it's going to be a good year or they think it's going to be a bad year. Individually, if you think you're going to have a good year or a bad year, we've noticed that that, uh, tends to be true as well. So if you score above 70, you're much more likely to be highly profitable and very quickly than if you score below 50. What I can tell you about confidence over the last few years is it's been pretty flat, um, hovering around about 66. Normally would expect it to be certainly above 70, 70 up to 73. And that doesn't sound like much, but those points do make a big difference. What I can tell you is that confidence, particularly amongst larger agencies, has increased like it's higher this year in, uh, January than it was this time last year. Um, confidence in much larger agencies is higher than smaller ones. And we'll be delving into the data why that is. Haven't figured that out yet. We still need a few more agencies to take part in the survey, but we'll be looking at exactly why are the larger agencies confident? The of those. What the highly confident ones are doing to give them that confidence. But overall, that confidence score this year is higher than last year. Which means if agencies have still got their spidey senses on that, this year will be better than last year. So looking forward to that.

Speaker A: Yeah. And what a note to leave it on. Thank you so much to Daniel and Peter for joining us. I've loved this discussion and I really hope that everyone watching has a as well. I really enjoyed that conversation and I hope you did too. Thank you so much for joining us on season three of the Beautiful Business Podcast. We can't wait to start on season four. We have a new look, new studio. Fantastic guests. See you there. Thank you for listening to the Beautiful Business podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, then please remember to subscribe and leave us a review. For more for advice and practical tips on what it's really like to build a beautiful business, visit our content hub@, uh, wowco.uk hub or check out the link in the show notes.