This month, Ellie spoke to Charles Sladdin, founder and MD of Purple Banana. We talked about finding the balance between carving a niche that makes you unique but making sure that it's one that you love, why B Corps are the future of business and why stepping back from the day to day can be so difficult.
This month, Ellie spoke to Charles Sladdin, founder and MD of Purple Banana.
We talked about finding the balance between carving a niche that makes you unique but making sure that it's one that you love, why B Corps are the future of business and why stepping back from the day to day can be so difficult.
[00:00:00] VOICE OVER: Welcome to the Agency Collective Tales with Ellie Hale, our podcast where we talk to our brilliant agency owners about all things agency life.
[00:00:10] ELLIE: Today on the Agency Collective Tales, I am joined by Charles Sladdin from Purple Banana. Thank you so much for being on the podcast, Charles.
[00:00:18] CHARLES: Thanks for having me, Ellie.
[00:00:19] ELLIE: I'm really excited to talk to you because you've been through a period of change with your agency personally moving to a foreign land of Sheffield. So can we just start like we always do. On our podcast, which is at the very beginning, how did you get started and how was Purple Banana born?
[00:00:35] CHARLES: It's a question a lot of people ask me, and the first thing is there's no exciting story behind the name.
[00:00:39] That was really a random creation out of sitting next to the fruit bowl with my partner one evening, trying to think of something that wasn't Charles Sladdin designs or something really cheesy. But I suppose the start of it all came when I had my first proper part-time job when I was at university, working for a charity.
[00:00:54] I was a designer there. I started off in Data and Impact collection, but I had no idea what that was. I don't think the charity ever did either, I sat there looking at spreadsheets for a couple of months, before being asked to take on a design task by the CEO at the time, and there's me with no training in design or marketing.
[00:01:09] I thought: "Yeah, go on, then. We'll give it a try and see what happens. What's the worst can happen?"
[00:01:12] Was there for quite a few years. I think it's the classic freelance story of you get bored at looking the same thing every day in terms of a brand or a design and went freelance. Which was a bit of a bold move, cause I wasn't really sure what I was doing there either, but gave it a go and after about two years of freelancing whilst at university at the same time doing a history degree.
[00:01:29] Which has completely been parallel to what I do now, came out of university at the height of the pandemic almost, and had that option of shall I be a history teacher or shall I go and take freelancing full-time and properly? And I don't know what pushed me in the right direction. I think my partner had a big say in it.
[00:01:44] For me it was, do I want to do something that the world expects I should be doing with a history degree, or should I go and do something that I actually enjoy? That was about two odd years ago to start getting freelance full time, and then Purple Banana became limited about a year and two months ago, so I've been going 14 months as a proper company with a limited bit on the end to make it proper!
[00:02:03] ELLIE: Where did you get your design experience from them previously? Have you always had that creative flair? Where does that come from?
[00:02:09] CHARLES: I've always been quite a creative person. By trade, I suppose, I'm a musician. I've been a singer in my past life, and I played for trumpet for quite a while, and it's quite a family thing.
[00:02:17] We all play random bits of instruments, and so I suppose that's where that core bit of creativity came from. But yeah, in terms of actual design, I think almost through osmosis, just picking things up, but I was one of those young people who liked building websites for no apparent reason and just seeing what happens.
[00:02:32] I'm one of these people as well who likes breaking things deliberately just so I can fix them. I suppose that's where it came from, pure curiosity, and it was built up under the radar to an opportunity for me to actually explore it properly in this first job that I had. And I don't think I really realised it's exactly what I wanted to do, but I suppose that's probably what happens to a lot of people in their career is they find that they enjoy doing something that they never quite realised could actually be a full-time job properly.
[00:02:53] ELLIE: You're quite early on in your agency game, but you already seem to be ever so confident. I love how you position yourself on social media and LinkedIn. You've really positioned yourself as an expert in your field. How have you learned how to do that? How has your past year's experience changed? Maybe what you thought an agency was as to what you're currently running.
[00:03:14] CHARLES: The first thing is with a history degree. You learn to talk a lot of stuff about being able to talk about a subject , even when you don't know much about it. I'm glad that someone thinks that I'm some sort of expert. I can't say that I would classify myself as that almost, but I think that the hardest thing has been being able to position yourself as an expert in something.
[00:03:32] And for me, it took a very long time to work out not just what I thought I was good at, but also what I wanted to be. And I first started 12 months ago as a legit company. We were that the kind of agency. I think every agency starts off as doing everything for everybody and not really caring where the next bit of work came from, as long as the work came in, which was great.
[00:03:50] But I think then there was that difficulty. Obviously it was not very sustainable. So I think in terms of learning to position yourself, A lot of it is just looking at what other people do, like the AC's been fantastic and being able to get lots of different ideas from different people and some of them, wouldn't know where to start.
[00:04:04] Joe, who runs Chaptr, looking at arts and cultural organisations, I would have nowhere to start with that.
[00:04:09] There's been a lot of learning from others, just watching from the sidelines and just dipping your toe in and support from various different people in various parts of agency life as well. I connect with a lot of people who have been doing it for 10, 15, 20 years.
[00:04:22] And I get connected with some people who've been doing it even for a short time of me and seem to be doing fairly well? That's the important thing, it's that the community aspect and that's shared learning, which is really important.
[00:04:31] ELLIE: Yeah, that's brilliant that you've got a value from it. So how would you define Purple Banana now?
[00:04:36] What's your key focus? What's your passion? What's really driving it forward?
[00:04:39] CHARLES: That's probably been the biggest question that I've been tackling for the last 12 months. When we became limited year ago and we took on our first employee. The first task I set was to rebrand us, because I was aware we were getting a little bit dated.
[00:04:52] But that starts: "What is it we fundamentally want to do?" And it's been about 12 months of really having to work out what it is we want to do. We've all got the background in the charity world, the third sector social organisation. So we have that purpose and wanting to do good at our heart. And I think that's what's driven us forward.
[00:05:07] So it's taken various iterations, but it's good timing because we've landed on it almost perfectly last week where we've decided the big message that we're putting out is we want to be the agency for charities and B CORPs, because we love working with charities and we never want to give that up. But we also know that B CORPs are the future of better businesses, and that's who we want to work with, that's who we have the experience of working with. And working with them on their branding and their websites and their campaigns is what we love doing.
[00:05:31] And I think, not trying to blow it up, but what we're good at. That's where Purple Banana now is, and that's where I want it to go. It's what drives us all personally inside the agency and it's also what we love doing at work. So it's a really nice combination.
[00:05:43] ELLIE: I think if you are leading from the heart, you can't go wrong.
[00:05:46] You've got to enjoy the sector that you pick, right? Yeah. There's no picking to work with law firms or deciding your. Solely going to work in the financial sector if you've got no passion for it or drive for it.
[00:05:57] CHARLES: It's exactly right. As I said earlier, we've done a lot for a lot of different people and we've kissed a few frogs as we've gone through.
[00:06:02] We've had some really good clients and we've had some, um, questionable clients, and it's been good because we've got an experience. With so many different sectors, B2B, B2C, although I'm not a massive fan of those terms. Law firms, we've done work with them. SEN organisations, we've had such a broad amount of experience that has made it easier in some ways by being able to tick off what we don't want to do.
[00:06:21] But it's also really difficult when you're trying to work out who is it you really want to focus on, when you look at the last 12 months, and you could have been in basically every sector known to man, so you're just trying to pick one. But I think, like you said, when you lead with your heart, there's something other than just a drive from making the business work in terms of driving it with leads and money, having a real purpose at your heart, which is what I bang on about on LinkedIn all the time.
[00:06:42] It's what drives any brand. But I think it's more important as well with agencies because we're working with other people to help them better, and so we have to have an almost an even bigger passion for what they're doing than they do sometimes, because they can be a little bit blinkered. But...
[00:06:55] ELLIE: Yeah, you're right.
[00:06:56] That is so true, isn't it? Do you have a team that you work with?
[00:06:59] CHARLES: If you include me, we've got two and a half. There's me and our designer, Rhona, who's been with us since we went limited a year ago, and then four months in, we took on a part-time user interface and user experience designer. A lot of our work came with websites and that was something that I was doing a lot of, but then to free me up to work on the business rather than in the business, we took on Philip.
[00:07:18] So yeah, there's two and a half of us, but we work a lot with freelancers, other consultants over agencies because we like being able to have a smaller core team of people. Work on the design aspect, but things like SEO and PPC charities in particular, wanting some of that work or other businesses. We are able to either send them in the right direction, or work with someone else, which is quite nice, really.
[00:07:38] ELLIE: How have you found not just leading a business, but leading an actual team of people?
[00:07:42] CHARLES: I think it's probably been the hardest thing, and it's been the thing that I've seriously underestimated, I think a lot of people do, because it is really hard, particularly when it's your own business and you've been doing it by yourself for some time.
[00:07:53] It's quite hard to let go. And for me, I think the difficulty I had was letting go of a couple of things and knowing that someone else could actually better than me doing them, but not micromanaging them. That was the hardest aspect. Obviously all of the paperwork and everything else that comes to running a business that no one tells you about, sneakily!
[00:08:10] Finance in particular, my finance and my numbers are fairly good, but not as good as they probably could be. And whilst that's an ongoing focus, my accountants are my best friends! [LAUGHS] And I think any agency owner who tells you otherwise is a liar, because it's been hard. It's been a really interesting and good learning curve and we've got such a good team behind us now once I let go, they really have powered stuff on the last six/12 months.
[00:08:31] ELLIE: Wonderful. What's been the best pieces of advice that you've received since you've been running your agency?
[00:08:37] CHARLES: Both from making the business better and driving it forward, but also doing what you love? I think it was positioning yourself in the right way, which has come from so many different people in so many different places.
[00:08:46] A lot of the AC's consultants and advisors like Jonathan Leaf and Oliver Duffy Lee, so many people out there who talk about this sort of stuff and actually once you can really get to grips with it, I think that is the most valuable piece of advice I've been given. But you need to find something that sets you out from everybody else.
[00:09:03] But like we said earlier, is driven from the heart because I could go and specialise in web design for dentists, but I hate dentists [LAUGHS] personally, and it's not what my passion is.
[00:09:13] So it's being told to position yourself, but position yourself doing something that you love is really important. And I think I'm probably the best bit of advice alongside let your team do the stuff they need to do and help them to learn and develop.
[00:09:24] That's another piece of advice I got from Jonathan. Training and development I think is something I didn't get my first job, and it's been quite apparent that people who get an opportunity to learn and develop their skills, work so much harder and because if they enjoy what they're doing and stay for longer.
[00:09:38] I think those two bits of advice is certainly the ones that linger with me quite a lot and have driven a lot of the work we've done the last six months.
[00:09:44] ELLIE: Awesome. Charles, what's coming up next for you guys?
[00:09:48] CHARLES: We've just landed on what we want to do and who we want to work with. So after 14 months of a very long rebranding exercise, we're launching the new brand and our new website in the new year, along with a new message of who we want to work with and what we want to do.
[00:10:02] We're focusing on B CORPs and charities. We've got a really nice, interesting campaign and message that's going to come out, which we can look at for 2023. We've got some exciting projects in the pipeline, but I'm quite keen to try it and step even further back. And let our team do more of the day-to-day work so I can focus on a bit more of the overview and the strategy and see where we want to be at the end of 2023.
[00:10:22] Cause at the moment, I think small business, covid, it's been month by month, day by day, almost. As long as I wake up the next day and the business hasn't fallen on its face than that's a success. But thinking longer term is what I want to do.
[00:10:33] ELLIE: Have you got any projects that you are working on at the moment that you are super duper excited about?
[00:10:37] CHARLES: Yeah, we've got a couple and we've got quite a few of the different charities. We've got one with a long term charity we've been with for quite a few years now, and we're working on doing stage two of their branding and their website that we did initially about 18 months ago. So they've gone through a massive period of growth.
[00:10:51] And so we're supporting them get to the next stage and looking at some campaigns they're going to launch in 2023. We're working with Julian at the moment on an interesting project for another client. He might be able to tell you more at later point when it's all finished. It's a bit hush at the moment.
[00:11:03] And then there's a couple of charities. We're working with some startup charities, which is really exciting because I think the most passionate people are the ones, I find the ones from Startup charities, or startups. So we've got one or two of those that we're supporting with their branding at the moment, particularly with some brand strategy.
[00:11:17] So there's some really exciting stuff.
[00:11:19] ELLIE: That's really good to hear. Have you considered becoming a B Corp as well?
[00:11:22] CHARLES: Yeah, it's on my list at the moment that I'm working on. I was very honest when, about two or three months ago when we started on that journey of trying to get to B Corp and we did the self assessment and I think we got a score of somthing like 68, which was better than I expected, but obviously not quite the magic number yet.
[00:11:37] And so for me working on getting to that stage is really important for us, because although one of the bits of feedback we got on our new message of working with BCORPs is how can you work with BCORPs if you're not a B CORP, which was an interesting one to scatter around. And although we're not a B CORP yet, we know how they work and we know what kind of people run them, and we love them for it because it's how we think businesses should be as a small business.
[00:11:57] It's a huge undertaking. I know obviously you've gone through that process. It's something I think people think that you fill in a couple of forms and off it goes. You pay your cheque and happy days, but actually there's so much underlying work that needs to go into it.
[00:12:08] So we're very transparent that we're not there yet, but I'm working very hard on it, and that's probably one of the biggest things in 2023, is we want either get to that stage of being one or at least in a stage where we can apply and know fairly confidently that we can get there.
[00:12:20] There's a lot of policies that I'm working on at the moment. A lot of initiatives from an HR perspective and wellbeing, it's quite nice as well, cause letting the team take on some more of the work has freed me up to think a little bit more about not just how the business should run, but internally in terms of the culture, which is so important for me because I've had previous jobs where that culture and that support for staff wasn't there.
[00:12:39] I think this is probably where starting my business has come from is I want to make sure that everything that I went through in various different jobs, it doesn't happen here and I create something that people actually really enjoy working with, not just for.
[00:12:50] ELLIE: Brilliant charles, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
[00:12:53] It's been really great chatting and finding out a bit more about you in Purple Banana.
[00:12:57] VOICE OVER: Thanks so much for listening. Please don't forget to subscribe. Stay in touch, and if you like what you hear, find out more at theagencycollective.co.uk.