Staff retention can be hard at the best of times, but when you find yourself in the middle of a global pandemic and you are niched within the hospitality sector, just how can you hold on to your staff? Harry Fielder, Managing Director of Umi Digital joined to me to discuss exactly how he achieved this.
00:00:00:12 - 00:00:10:10
Intro
Welcome to the Agency Collective Tales with Ellie Hale, our podcast,
where we talk to our brilliant agency owners about all things agency
life.
00:00:11:02 - 00:00:16:00
Ellie
I am joined today by Harry Fielder from Umi Digital, thank you so
much for being on the podcast, Harry.
00:00:16:19 - 00:00:17:17
Harry
Lovely to be here.
00:00:17:23 - 00:00:21:11
Ellie
You were about to tell me, Umi Digital, where that came from.
00:00:21:21 - 00:00:53:22
Harry
Yeah. So it's an untypical origin. So Umi actually started its life
as a hotel company, so Umi Hotels predated Umi Digital. So my
business partner Steve Lowy founded Umi Hotels back in 2007. There
was one in Brighton, one in Moscow and one in London. The one in
Moscow was a franchise set up. Interesting experience. And Umi
Digital was actually formed out of the internal marketing department
breaking away and becoming its own thing back in 2007 through 2010.
00:00:53:23 - 00:01:09:10
Harry
The hotel itself built up a really good flow of direct bookings,
trying to pull bookings away from the online travel agents because
obviously they charge so much commission: It's 20% commission
through online travel agents. So the goal for hotels is really to
just drive their own business and there was a business in itself.
00:01:09:17 - 00:01:13:01
Ellie
They'd already laid the groundwork and then went off and started to
find clients.
00:01:13:02 - 00:01:35:13
Harry
Exactly. My first piece of work with the business was actually with
the central merged hotel and marketing setup. I then went back to
university, by which time when I came back, it had split off and
that's when I joined Steve as a co-founder and we ended up growing
the business as it is today. He then dipped out as a Day-To-Day
operational member of the team, sort of maybe in 2017 or so to run
an educational travel business, and we've grown it from there.
00:01:35:14 - 00:01:41:13
Harry
It's nice because when you're in a niche, it's very compelling to be
able to say you were once a client. You were once -
00:01:41:14 - 00:01:42:13
Ellie
Right in the heart of it!
00:01:42:13 - 00:01:59:21
Harry
Yeah, absolutely. And in all the methodologies and the processes and
everything that we have today actually stems from being a hotel
company and we can really track back what the needs were. There's a
few members of the team that overlapped, when Umi Hotels were still
involved, so we still have some company memory of that. Always
remained at the heart of what we do.
00:02:00:04 - 00:02:03:20
Ellie
So talk to me about the last two years. How has that affected the
agency?
00:02:04:05 - 00:02:31:22
Harry
March 2020, our revenue dropped 60% within a week. The split of our
services, I'd say it's probably 60% recurring marketing support,
advertising support, creative on those monthly retainers with 40%
being design and build and project based stuff. The project based
stuff a lot of it was put on ice. Just because we deal with
exclusively in hospitality and travel sector they literally shut up
shop overnight almost or if they didn't shut up shop overnight they
didn't have the confidence in which to base new investments in new
projects.
00:02:31:22 - 00:02:48:19
Harry
So we naturally had to keep things online. So there was an element
of basic income throughout that, but certainly not enough to feed
all the mouths and we had to use furlough a lot. The most painful
thing was that we have a relatively young team and everyone had been
used to a lot of growth. Over the last five years, we've been
doubling year on year since 2016 really.
00:02:48:19 - 00:03:01:11
Harry
So I think for people to get their heads around not making progress
was a really tough mental thing. You know, particularly for me, I'd
only really known growth but actually success in itself was just
staying alive and staying afloat.
00:03:01:23 - 00:03:04:06
Ellie
How did that affect you as an agency owner?
00:03:04:07 - 00:03:22:11
Harry
I've really torn because there's this feeling of wanting to protect
everyone. At the time we had a head count of about eight or nine.
That feeling of not wanting to panic anyone and being say, "Oh,
it'll be fine!" just because that's what you want to say. They've
got their mortgages they've got their lives, right? And then you're
split between being incredibly transparent and saying, "Right, this
is the reality of the situation.
00:03:22:11 - 00:03:43:01
Harry
I don't know if we're going to make it out of it." There were times
when I gave it a far higher probability of it not working out than
working out. So it was really tough to try and strike that balance
of not creating alarm or panic unduly, but also respecting people's
intelligence that clearly there's something at play here and clearly
there is something not right and it is bad.
00:03:43:01 - 00:03:46:21
Harry
That was probably the toughest thing of understanding how to
communicate in a crisis.
00:03:47:03 - 00:03:55:22
Ellie
Yeah, I guess you never had to learn that lesson before, right? Did
you just follow instinct or did you seek advice on it? Did you speak
to other agency owners about how they were managing it?
00:03:56:03 - 00:04:13:22
Harry
I did have some advice. It was probably more given to me than me
actively seeking it out, which I think has changed my approach to
seeking advice. Actually, in the last few years, as well, because it
made me realise just how valuable an external opinion is. Maybe that
slight arrogance moving away when you realise you can't control
anything.
00:04:13:22 - 00:04:27:06
Harry
Yes, it was more about that pushed me towards the 'Just be very
transparent." You don't have to go into all the details of the
numbers, but show them the basic overview of where we're at, how
much it costs to keep the lights on. This is where we're at from a
cash point of view. This is the money coming in.
00:04:27:19 - 00:04:46:04
Harry
Here's a best case scenario, here's a median case scenario, here's a
worst case scenario, and this is how we can all pull together to
make this thing work. That in itself, transitioned my thinking away
from "I'm the only one that can solve this problem" to "Actually we
can collectively solve this problem", which, irrespective of the
pandemic, was another really important lesson as well.
00:04:46:04 - 00:05:10:17
Harry
Because at the size of eight people, very director-led sales, pretty
much all revenue goes through me. I have a hand on a lot of the
projects not delivering them necessarily, not account managing them
per se, but I have a relationship with most people and I think it
told me to let go a little bit and realise that you can't control
everything all the time and the sooner you can trust people and
share the responsibility of success, then it is a weight off your
heart and your head.
00:05:11:04 - 00:05:12:19
Ellie
Yeah, definitely easier said than done though, hey?
00:05:13:04 - 00:05:15:14
Harry
Oh, massively, but it was quite a liberating experience.
00:05:15:16 - 00:05:20:01
Ellie
Absolutely. So did you just have to do it bit by bit? This task,
this project.
00:05:20:17 - 00:05:38:17
Harry
Initially it was: "Right. I need you to all find areas that we can
save some money. What tools are we paying for that we're not using?
How much are we chucking down the drain on random marketing bits and
bobs? All these tools that we've subscribed to, that weren't really
that important." We managed to find so many savings around servers
just because traffic was so much lower.
00:05:38:17 - 00:05:55:21
Harry
We could. The requirement of us having all these advanced tools was
just so much lower because business operationally had become a lot
slower. So that was the first thing. The second thing was getting
people buying into the whole furlough thing. Those furlough
conversations to me, because I've never had to let anyone go before
Almost felt like I was letting someone go
00:05:55:21 - 00:05:56:08
Ellie
I bet.
00:05:56:17 - 00:06:06:22
Harry
And you look back on it and you think from an HR perspective, that's
probably the easiest thing you're ever going to do. Tell someone
that you can go and earn a good chunk of money by not doing
anything. At the time, it was just so hard.
00:06:06:22 - 00:06:22:05
Ellie
But nobody knew what it meant though, did they? And I guess nobody
knew two years later, we'd still be in all sorts of mayhem because
of it. And I guess to be told you were going on furlough two years
ago, it was the unknown, wasn't it? Is this the first step to me
losing my job? What's going to happen?
00:06:22:05 - 00:06:38:24
Harry
Exactly! And why some people were furloughed and not others? And
then that comparison of going, why am I less important? So when you
look back on it, yes, it was a wonderful scheme and the scheme
itself made sure that we could continue operating and these people
could continue their jobs. So for us, it did exactly what it was
designed to do, given the industry we're in and everything.
00:06:39:02 - 00:06:39:18
Harry
Yeah, it was tough.
00:06:40:07 - 00:06:46:16
Ellie
Especially then. I guess another HR perspective is dealing with the
staff that are left behind to do all of the work.
00:06:47:00 - 00:07:05:10
Harry
There was left to do. But it was more panic messaging. Every client
that we were speaking to, it was never a nice conversation to have.
Even if the relationship between us and them was fine, all their
communication was out of panic and they weren't having a fun time of
it at all. So trying to support them through that panic and that
distress was also quite draining.
00:07:05:10 - 00:07:34:15
Harry
You're never celebrating big wins, and certainly in the agency
world, you latch onto your client's successes. If they win an award.
It's fantastic because you've had a part in that. If they have an
amazing year and you helped support them to that, you feel really
good about it. So deriving a sense of value in what you're doing,
both as an owner and manager and everything of it my sense of self
satisfaction in work is completely linked to the success of the
business, but for the staff as well, their sense of value is
delivering cool stuff for clients and clients being really happy and
grateful and seeing the results of it.
00:07:34:15 - 00:07:55:03
Harry
And when you can't see any of that. both from a progress point of
view, it's going backwards and from an individual client project
based thing. It's not backwards, but it's just not happening. The
motivation was really tough. We had one person move. For only one
person to leave in all of that time was great in hindsight, and that
was purely just because they were at a point in their career when
they really wanted to push on and do some cool stuff from a
development point of view.
00:07:55:03 - 00:08:13:09
Harry
They wanted to learn new technologies, deliver cool web apps and
everything, and that just wasn't the opportunity at the time. And
therein lies another dilemma. If someone's clearly not happy, to
what extent do you keep saying, Just hang on, we can do it because
you don't know that, and it's not very respectful to them as well.
If you keep trying to fit them into a job that, you know, they're
not quite00:08:13:15 - 00:08:14:22
Ellie
Yeah, dangling some carrots.
00:08:14:22 - 00:08:32:10
Harry
And that was another really tricky thing to learn. How do you try
and keep people without being able to promise anything, without
being to actually set milestones? Because everyone loves to know, if
I do this by then this will happen. You couldn't do any of that. So
incentive schemes or career progress or anything was not really
possible
00:08:32:10 - 00:08:34:01
Ellie
So how did you navigate through that?
00:08:34:12 - 00:08:57:14
Harry
I think that transparency came in very useful and the ability to say
"This is where we're at and if we can sign, we will unfurlough all
these people." And I said, "Right, every single project we get, it's
going to result in an unfurloughed person" or "This year is not
about making money that's long gone. But the mission of this is to
try and get everyone back in a role, get the team back", because
that's when everyone feels motivated as well, when they've got lots
of people to bounce off.
00:08:57:21 - 00:09:17:07
Harry
If you're the only person holding up your department it's pretty
depressing. In that furlough time. We spent so much time building
cool stuff. We had so much time to use so we built check in
applications for hotels, we did digital menus, we did track and
trace apps. We did all sorts of things. So we created a thing called
Umi Labs, which was just a playground really, that we had all these
hotels to test things on.
00:09:17:08 - 00:09:32:12
Harry
We don't really charge any money for it. It was just a playground,
really. For a year or two. That's actually resulted in some great PR
and some have gone forward. We created just a WordPress plugin, but
it was like a one click install and you could sell vouchers on your
site, so you didn't have to sign up for one of these big gift
voucher platforms that take a big commission.
00:09:32:12 - 00:09:46:04
Harry
It was just worked with Stripe, worked with Wordpress, off you go.
What vouchers you want to sell? And we have one hotel who covered
all non furloughed overheads through that - Afternoon teas and stays
and all that sort of stuff. So and that just came out of: "Oh, let's
just mess around with WordPress plug ins for a week or so."
00:09:46:10 - 00:09:47:03
Ellie
That's incredible.
00:09:47:03 - 00:09:47:19
Harry
That was cool.
00:09:47:19 - 00:09:54:12
Ellie
So when did you guys feel that you were coming out of the Dark? When
did things start picking up for you, travel wise?
00:09:54:12 - 00:10:12:12
Harry
I think there's been a few little upticks, definitely one big uptick
was we worked with a company called Northcote Hotel slash Michelin
Star Restaurant up north. They sold Michelin star food boxes and
that was just crazy. Everyone was at home, each one was very
expensive. They had about 4000 people wanting 400 boxes in the space
of 20 minutes.
00:10:12:12 - 00:10:30:02
Harry
There was lots of little spikes of activity and excitement which
kept our minds sharp. I guess but properly I would say SeptemberOctober. 21 was went across the board, started having people really
interested in kickstarting their marketing campaigns again, feeling
confident enough to build new platforms, new systems, launch new
products.
00:10:30:09 - 00:10:31:17
Ellie
Long time to hold your breath.
00:10:31:17 - 00:10:49:20
Harry
Yeah, it was. And again, we're not on the frontline of hospitality,
so we're not the hotel itself, but our fortunes are almost entirely
linked to it, much like other people in the industry. You've got
booking engine providers, you've got their model is they just take
three to 5% commission on any bookings at a hotel makes. Again,
they're not on the frontline, but they are directly linked to the
success of the industry.
00:10:50:05 - 00:10:56:19
Ellie
Yeah, lots of other people affected. So coming into this year, we've
finished the first quarter, now. What is next for Umi?
00:10:57:02 - 00:11:17:22
Harry
COVID probably taught us or taught me that pre-pandemic we'd landed
some really big projects, cool projects that should have probably
kickstarted a snowball for us and instead we were quite cautious
about it. We were very defensive and banked, that as a great
experience but didn't necessarily use it as a platform on which to
go and win loads of other big projects.
00:11:17:22 - 00:11:38:08
Harry
Now, in one way it meant that we didn't overstretch ourselves prepandemic and in hindsight probably was a contributing factor to
getting through it because we were so defensive and had a little war
chest to keep us going. However, it did show to me that we had
opportunities and didn't take them in the past. Since October, we've
had our most successful series of four months or whatever it is in
history.
00:11:38:08 - 00:11:56:15
Harry
We've hired four people in the last four months, and so this year is
about really kicking on. It's using the platform of both all the
learning that we've done so not necessarily project based stuff, but
we've learnt a huge amount in the last two years and have also
landed some great projects in the last few months and it's now using
that platform to set up quite an aggressive growth strategy for the
next year, really.
00:11:56:15 - 00:12:14:10
Harry
So. while we've been incrementally ticking up, I've set a budget to
really kick on this year. The other big change I think as well has
been in 2020, we still had a pretty junior team. I would say. We'd
done some good stuff, but we didn't have many really experienced
people. We still have never hired ex-senior people, ex-big agency.
00:12:14:15 - 00:12:37:10
Harry
We haven't done that. We still have grown quite organically and
people have grown within their roles. But another HR thing, going
back to HR, was there comes a point where someone's done something
very well even having started Junior is now no longer junior, and if
you just keep incrementing them, this is the next level up, this is
the next level up, and there's like a small tick, small tick, small
tick, their next logical step would be to jump sideways.
00:12:37:10 - 00:12:54:03
Harry
And so March this year, we almost like a rebalancing of just taking
a fresh perspective on everyone and start treating ourselves as more
of a small to medium sized business as opposed to a small business.
Just taking stock again, if this person was on the open market, what
does it look like and recalibrating.
00:12:54:03 - 00:13:05:03
Harry
Now, you could get away with: "We're in a pandemic. We can't do
anything. I understand you need more or want more or... Yes, you've
learnt a lot, but there's not a huge amount I can do now." But this
was a chance to try and rebalance it and recalibrate ourselves.
00:13:05:06 - 00:13:06:20
Ellie
Retention is so important.
00:13:06:20 - 00:13:26:04
Harry
Absolutely. It's such a dream to have someone start junior and go
all the way through because they've got so much history in the
company. They know all the quirks and the little details, such an
invaluable addition to the culture, unless there's a definite step
that they can take, particularly having grown from a small team,
they're probably at the top of their department all the way through
so there's not like, "Oh, I can take your job!"
00:13:26:04 - 00:13:42:15
Harry
"I'm the developer. Now I have a couple of developers underneath me,
now I know a lot more, what now? What do I do with that? There's not
a designed career ladder in this particular instance. In bigger
agencies, yes, you can have the normal steps. Wheras, for us, there
were no normal steps. I've got a wonderful operations director,
Dana, she's been my number two all the way through.
00:13:42:15 - 00:13:58:18
Harry
But what's next step? I don't want to do what I do. But also, we're
both complete yin and yang in the sense that she's got operations
and process and everything on complete lockdown. I'm not that at
all. For her, what's that next step when you're growing within a
company, but you've already at the top of something small, but
underneath you, things are getting bigger.
00:13:59:00 - 00:13:59:24
Harry
So that's been quite an interesting one.
00:14:00:09 - 00:14:02:18
Ellie
Yeah. So you still in the midst of working that out?
00:14:03:02 - 00:14:14:02
Harry
No, I think we had a good recalibration at the beginning of March,
and we also did a rebrand at the same time. Fresh brand, new HR
system, revised contracts. I think it's created a bit of a clean
slate in a way for setting quite an aggressive growth plan.
00:14:14:08 - 00:14:19:15
Ellie
And you've unified the team, right? You've got everyone on board.
You know, everyone's committed, now you can push.
00:14:19:22 - 00:14:36:05
Harry
Particularly post-COVID. If all the team start seeing the company do
very well, because we are transparent with revenue and profit and
all that kind of stuff, we're very transparent about that, if they
suddenly start seeing all of that and nothing's really changing for
them. You have the old school businesses where it might be 100%
owned by someone.
00:14:36:06 - 00:14:54:07
Harry
The profit that comes out of it at the end of the day is what they
live on and that's their thing and that can be huge, that can be
vast, they can be small it doesn't matter what it is, but all profit
is essentially pocketed. That attitude. I get it. I fully understand
it, but I think to a younger workforce it's really tough to get your
head around.
00:14:54:14 - 00:14:54:22
Ellie
Yeah.
00:14:55:05 - 00:15:08:21
Harry
It just doesn't really fly anymore. If you were to say if you made
all of this profit, what are we putting back in this next year? And
I think a younger staff member is going to want to know that people
really want to be working for something bigger. I don't really know
how it was before because I've been ever really been involved in a
young team, I guess.
00:15:08:21 - 00:15:09:15
Harry
But interesting one.
00:15:09:24 - 00:15:15:24
Ellie
So exciting things ahead for you guys. Thank you so much for sharing
that with us. Harry, it's been great talking to you.
00:15:16:07 - 00:15:18:09
Harry
Thank you very much for all your lovely questions.
00:15:19:01 - 00:15:29:15
Intro
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
00:00:00:12 - 00:00:10:10
Intro
Welcome to the Agency Collective Tales with Ellie Hale, our podcast,
where we talk to our brilliant agency owners about all things agency
life.
00:00:11:02 - 00:00:16:00
Ellie
I am joined today by Harry Fielder from Umi Digital, thank you so
much for being on the podcast, Harry.
00:00:16:19 - 00:00:17:17
Harry
Lovely to be here.
00:00:17:23 - 00:00:21:11
Ellie
You were about to tell me, Umi Digital, where that came from.
00:00:21:21 - 00:00:53:22
Harry
Yeah. So it's an untypical origin. So Umi actually started its life
as a hotel company, so Umi Hotels predated Umi Digital. So my
business partner Steve Lowy founded Umi Hotels back in 2007. There
was one in Brighton, one in Moscow and one in London. The one in
Moscow was a franchise set up. Interesting experience. And Umi
Digital was actually formed out of the internal marketing department
breaking away and becoming its own thing back in 2007 through 2010.
00:00:53:23 - 00:01:09:10
Harry
The hotel itself built up a really good flow of direct bookings,
trying to pull bookings away from the online travel agents because
obviously they charge so much commission: It's 20% commission
through online travel agents. So the goal for hotels is really to
just drive their own business and there was a business in itself.
00:01:09:17 - 00:01:13:01
Ellie
They'd already laid the groundwork and then went off and started to
find clients.
00:01:13:02 - 00:01:35:13
Harry
Exactly. My first piece of work with the business was actually with
the central merged hotel and marketing setup. I then went back to
university, by which time when I came back, it had split off and
that's when I joined Steve as a co-founder and we ended up growing
the business as it is today. He then dipped out as a Day-To-Day
operational member of the team, sort of maybe in 2017 or so to run
an educational travel business, and we've grown it from there.
00:01:35:14 - 00:01:41:13
Harry
It's nice because when you're in a niche, it's very compelling to be
able to say you were once a client. You were once -
00:01:41:14 - 00:01:42:13
Ellie
Right in the heart of it!
00:01:42:13 - 00:01:59:21
Harry
Yeah, absolutely. And in all the methodologies and the processes and
everything that we have today actually stems from being a hotel
company and we can really track back what the needs were. There's a
few members of the team that overlapped, when Umi Hotels were still
involved, so we still have some company memory of that. Always
remained at the heart of what we do.
00:02:00:04 - 00:02:03:20
Ellie
So talk to me about the last two years. How has that affected the
agency?
00:02:04:05 - 00:02:31:22
Harry
March 2020, our revenue dropped 60% within a week. The split of our
services, I'd say it's probably 60% recurring marketing support,
advertising support, creative on those monthly retainers with 40%
being design and build and project based stuff. The project based
stuff a lot of it was put on ice. Just because we deal with
exclusively in hospitality and travel sector they literally shut up
shop overnight almost or if they didn't shut up shop overnight they
didn't have the confidence in which to base new investments in new
projects.
00:02:31:22 - 00:02:48:19
Harry
So we naturally had to keep things online. So there was an element
of basic income throughout that, but certainly not enough to feed
all the mouths and we had to use furlough a lot. The most painful
thing was that we have a relatively young team and everyone had been
used to a lot of growth. Over the last five years, we've been
doubling year on year since 2016 really.
00:02:48:19 - 00:03:01:11
Harry
So I think for people to get their heads around not making progress
was a really tough mental thing. You know, particularly for me, I'd
only really known growth but actually success in itself was just
staying alive and staying afloat.
00:03:01:23 - 00:03:04:06
Ellie
How did that affect you as an agency owner?
00:03:04:07 - 00:03:22:11
Harry
I've really torn because there's this feeling of wanting to protect
everyone. At the time we had a head count of about eight or nine.
That feeling of not wanting to panic anyone and being say, "Oh,
it'll be fine!" just because that's what you want to say. They've
got their mortgages they've got their lives, right? And then you're
split between being incredibly transparent and saying, "Right, this
is the reality of the situation.
00:03:22:11 - 00:03:43:01
Harry
I don't know if we're going to make it out of it." There were times
when I gave it a far higher probability of it not working out than
working out. So it was really tough to try and strike that balance
of not creating alarm or panic unduly, but also respecting people's
intelligence that clearly there's something at play here and clearly
there is something not right and it is bad.
00:03:43:01 - 00:03:46:21
Harry
That was probably the toughest thing of understanding how to
communicate in a crisis.
00:03:47:03 - 00:03:55:22
Ellie
Yeah, I guess you never had to learn that lesson before, right? Did
you just follow instinct or did you seek advice on it? Did you speak
to other agency owners about how they were managing it?
00:03:56:03 - 00:04:13:22
Harry
I did have some advice. It was probably more given to me than me
actively seeking it out, which I think has changed my approach to
seeking advice. Actually, in the last few years, as well, because it
made me realise just how valuable an external opinion is. Maybe that
slight arrogance moving away when you realise you can't control
anything.
00:04:13:22 - 00:04:27:06
Harry
Yes, it was more about that pushed me towards the 'Just be very
transparent." You don't have to go into all the details of the
numbers, but show them the basic overview of where we're at, how
much it costs to keep the lights on. This is where we're at from a
cash point of view. This is the money coming in.
00:04:27:19 - 00:04:46:04
Harry
Here's a best case scenario, here's a median case scenario, here's a
worst case scenario, and this is how we can all pull together to
make this thing work. That in itself, transitioned my thinking away
from "I'm the only one that can solve this problem" to "Actually we
can collectively solve this problem", which, irrespective of the
pandemic, was another really important lesson as well.
00:04:46:04 - 00:05:10:17
Harry
Because at the size of eight people, very director-led sales, pretty
much all revenue goes through me. I have a hand on a lot of the
projects not delivering them necessarily, not account managing them
per se, but I have a relationship with most people and I think it
told me to let go a little bit and realise that you can't control
everything all the time and the sooner you can trust people and
share the responsibility of success, then it is a weight off your
heart and your head.
00:05:11:04 - 00:05:12:19
Ellie
Yeah, definitely easier said than done though, hey?
00:05:13:04 - 00:05:15:14
Harry
Oh, massively, but it was quite a liberating experience.
00:05:15:16 - 00:05:20:01
Ellie
Absolutely. So did you just have to do it bit by bit? This task,
this project.
00:05:20:17 - 00:05:38:17
Harry
Initially it was: "Right. I need you to all find areas that we can
save some money. What tools are we paying for that we're not using?
How much are we chucking down the drain on random marketing bits and
bobs? All these tools that we've subscribed to, that weren't really
that important." We managed to find so many savings around servers
just because traffic was so much lower.
00:05:38:17 - 00:05:55:21
Harry
We could. The requirement of us having all these advanced tools was
just so much lower because business operationally had become a lot
slower. So that was the first thing. The second thing was getting
people buying into the whole furlough thing. Those furlough
conversations to me, because I've never had to let anyone go before
Almost felt like I was letting someone go
00:05:55:21 - 00:05:56:08
Ellie
I bet.
00:05:56:17 - 00:06:06:22
Harry
And you look back on it and you think from an HR perspective, that's
probably the easiest thing you're ever going to do. Tell someone
that you can go and earn a good chunk of money by not doing
anything. At the time, it was just so hard.
00:06:06:22 - 00:06:22:05
Ellie
But nobody knew what it meant though, did they? And I guess nobody
knew two years later, we'd still be in all sorts of mayhem because
of it. And I guess to be told you were going on furlough two years
ago, it was the unknown, wasn't it? Is this the first step to me
losing my job? What's going to happen?
00:06:22:05 - 00:06:38:24
Harry
Exactly! And why some people were furloughed and not others? And
then that comparison of going, why am I less important? So when you
look back on it, yes, it was a wonderful scheme and the scheme
itself made sure that we could continue operating and these people
could continue their jobs. So for us, it did exactly what it was
designed to do, given the industry we're in and everything.
00:06:39:02 - 00:06:39:18
Harry
Yeah, it was tough.
00:06:40:07 - 00:06:46:16
Ellie
Especially then. I guess another HR perspective is dealing with the
staff that are left behind to do all of the work.
00:06:47:00 - 00:07:05:10
Harry
There was left to do. But it was more panic messaging. Every client
that we were speaking to, it was never a nice conversation to have.
Even if the relationship between us and them was fine, all their
communication was out of panic and they weren't having a fun time of
it at all. So trying to support them through that panic and that
distress was also quite draining.
00:07:05:10 - 00:07:34:15
Harry
You're never celebrating big wins, and certainly in the agency
world, you latch onto your client's successes. If they win an award.
It's fantastic because you've had a part in that. If they have an
amazing year and you helped support them to that, you feel really
good about it. So deriving a sense of value in what you're doing,
both as an owner and manager and everything of it my sense of self
satisfaction in work is completely linked to the success of the
business, but for the staff as well, their sense of value is
delivering cool stuff for clients and clients being really happy and
grateful and seeing the results of it.
00:07:34:15 - 00:07:55:03
Harry
And when you can't see any of that. both from a progress point of
view, it's going backwards and from an individual client project
based thing. It's not backwards, but it's just not happening. The
motivation was really tough. We had one person move. For only one
person to leave in all of that time was great in hindsight, and that
was purely just because they were at a point in their career when
they really wanted to push on and do some cool stuff from a
development point of view.
00:07:55:03 - 00:08:13:09
Harry
They wanted to learn new technologies, deliver cool web apps and
everything, and that just wasn't the opportunity at the time. And
therein lies another dilemma. If someone's clearly not happy, to
what extent do you keep saying, Just hang on, we can do it because
you don't know that, and it's not very respectful to them as well.
If you keep trying to fit them into a job that, you know, they're
not quite00:08:13:15 - 00:08:14:22
Ellie
Yeah, dangling some carrots.
00:08:14:22 - 00:08:32:10
Harry
And that was another really tricky thing to learn. How do you try
and keep people without being able to promise anything, without
being to actually set milestones? Because everyone loves to know, if
I do this by then this will happen. You couldn't do any of that. So
incentive schemes or career progress or anything was not really
possible
00:08:32:10 - 00:08:34:01
Ellie
So how did you navigate through that?
00:08:34:12 - 00:08:57:14
Harry
I think that transparency came in very useful and the ability to say
"This is where we're at and if we can sign, we will unfurlough all
these people." And I said, "Right, every single project we get, it's
going to result in an unfurloughed person" or "This year is not
about making money that's long gone. But the mission of this is to
try and get everyone back in a role, get the team back", because
that's when everyone feels motivated as well, when they've got lots
of people to bounce off.
00:08:57:21 - 00:09:17:07
Harry
If you're the only person holding up your department it's pretty
depressing. In that furlough time. We spent so much time building
cool stuff. We had so much time to use so we built check in
applications for hotels, we did digital menus, we did track and
trace apps. We did all sorts of things. So we created a thing called
Umi Labs, which was just a playground really, that we had all these
hotels to test things on.
00:09:17:08 - 00:09:32:12
Harry
We don't really charge any money for it. It was just a playground,
really. For a year or two. That's actually resulted in some great PR
and some have gone forward. We created just a WordPress plugin, but
it was like a one click install and you could sell vouchers on your
site, so you didn't have to sign up for one of these big gift
voucher platforms that take a big commission.
00:09:32:12 - 00:09:46:04
Harry
It was just worked with Stripe, worked with Wordpress, off you go.
What vouchers you want to sell? And we have one hotel who covered
all non furloughed overheads through that - Afternoon teas and stays
and all that sort of stuff. So and that just came out of: "Oh, let's
just mess around with WordPress plug ins for a week or so."
00:09:46:10 - 00:09:47:03
Ellie
That's incredible.
00:09:47:03 - 00:09:47:19
Harry
That was cool.
00:09:47:19 - 00:09:54:12
Ellie
So when did you guys feel that you were coming out of the Dark? When
did things start picking up for you, travel wise?
00:09:54:12 - 00:10:12:12
Harry
I think there's been a few little upticks, definitely one big uptick
was we worked with a company called Northcote Hotel slash Michelin
Star Restaurant up north. They sold Michelin star food boxes and
that was just crazy. Everyone was at home, each one was very
expensive. They had about 4000 people wanting 400 boxes in the space
of 20 minutes.
00:10:12:12 - 00:10:30:02
Harry
There was lots of little spikes of activity and excitement which
kept our minds sharp. I guess but properly I would say SeptemberOctober. 21 was went across the board, started having people really
interested in kickstarting their marketing campaigns again, feeling
confident enough to build new platforms, new systems, launch new
products.
00:10:30:09 - 00:10:31:17
Ellie
Long time to hold your breath.
00:10:31:17 - 00:10:49:20
Harry
Yeah, it was. And again, we're not on the frontline of hospitality,
so we're not the hotel itself, but our fortunes are almost entirely
linked to it, much like other people in the industry. You've got
booking engine providers, you've got their model is they just take
three to 5% commission on any bookings at a hotel makes. Again,
they're not on the frontline, but they are directly linked to the
success of the industry.
00:10:50:05 - 00:10:56:19
Ellie
Yeah, lots of other people affected. So coming into this year, we've
finished the first quarter, now. What is next for Umi?
00:10:57:02 - 00:11:17:22
Harry
COVID probably taught us or taught me that pre-pandemic we'd landed
some really big projects, cool projects that should have probably
kickstarted a snowball for us and instead we were quite cautious
about it. We were very defensive and banked, that as a great
experience but didn't necessarily use it as a platform on which to
go and win loads of other big projects.
00:11:17:22 - 00:11:38:08
Harry
Now, in one way it meant that we didn't overstretch ourselves prepandemic and in hindsight probably was a contributing factor to
getting through it because we were so defensive and had a little war
chest to keep us going. However, it did show to me that we had
opportunities and didn't take them in the past. Since October, we've
had our most successful series of four months or whatever it is in
history.
00:11:38:08 - 00:11:56:15
Harry
We've hired four people in the last four months, and so this year is
about really kicking on. It's using the platform of both all the
learning that we've done so not necessarily project based stuff, but
we've learnt a huge amount in the last two years and have also
landed some great projects in the last few months and it's now using
that platform to set up quite an aggressive growth strategy for the
next year, really.
00:11:56:15 - 00:12:14:10
Harry
So. while we've been incrementally ticking up, I've set a budget to
really kick on this year. The other big change I think as well has
been in 2020, we still had a pretty junior team. I would say. We'd
done some good stuff, but we didn't have many really experienced
people. We still have never hired ex-senior people, ex-big agency.
00:12:14:15 - 00:12:37:10
Harry
We haven't done that. We still have grown quite organically and
people have grown within their roles. But another HR thing, going
back to HR, was there comes a point where someone's done something
very well even having started Junior is now no longer junior, and if
you just keep incrementing them, this is the next level up, this is
the next level up, and there's like a small tick, small tick, small
tick, their next logical step would be to jump sideways.
00:12:37:10 - 00:12:54:03
Harry
And so March this year, we almost like a rebalancing of just taking
a fresh perspective on everyone and start treating ourselves as more
of a small to medium sized business as opposed to a small business.
Just taking stock again, if this person was on the open market, what
does it look like and recalibrating.
00:12:54:03 - 00:13:05:03
Harry
Now, you could get away with: "We're in a pandemic. We can't do
anything. I understand you need more or want more or... Yes, you've
learnt a lot, but there's not a huge amount I can do now." But this
was a chance to try and rebalance it and recalibrate ourselves.
00:13:05:06 - 00:13:06:20
Ellie
Retention is so important.
00:13:06:20 - 00:13:26:04
Harry
Absolutely. It's such a dream to have someone start junior and go
all the way through because they've got so much history in the
company. They know all the quirks and the little details, such an
invaluable addition to the culture, unless there's a definite step
that they can take, particularly having grown from a small team,
they're probably at the top of their department all the way through
so there's not like, "Oh, I can take your job!"
00:13:26:04 - 00:13:42:15
Harry
"I'm the developer. Now I have a couple of developers underneath me,
now I know a lot more, what now? What do I do with that? There's not
a designed career ladder in this particular instance. In bigger
agencies, yes, you can have the normal steps. Wheras, for us, there
were no normal steps. I've got a wonderful operations director,
Dana, she's been my number two all the way through.
00:13:42:15 - 00:13:58:18
Harry
But what's next step? I don't want to do what I do. But also, we're
both complete yin and yang in the sense that she's got operations
and process and everything on complete lockdown. I'm not that at
all. For her, what's that next step when you're growing within a
company, but you've already at the top of something small, but
underneath you, things are getting bigger.
00:13:59:00 - 00:13:59:24
Harry
So that's been quite an interesting one.
00:14:00:09 - 00:14:02:18
Ellie
Yeah. So you still in the midst of working that out?
00:14:03:02 - 00:14:14:02
Harry
No, I think we had a good recalibration at the beginning of March,
and we also did a rebrand at the same time. Fresh brand, new HR
system, revised contracts. I think it's created a bit of a clean
slate in a way for setting quite an aggressive growth plan.
00:14:14:08 - 00:14:19:15
Ellie
And you've unified the team, right? You've got everyone on board.
You know, everyone's committed, now you can push.
00:14:19:22 - 00:14:36:05
Harry
Particularly post-COVID. If all the team start seeing the company do
very well, because we are transparent with revenue and profit and
all that kind of stuff, we're very transparent about that, if they
suddenly start seeing all of that and nothing's really changing for
them. You have the old school businesses where it might be 100%
owned by someone.
00:14:36:06 - 00:14:54:07
Harry
The profit that comes out of it at the end of the day is what they
live on and that's their thing and that can be huge, that can be
vast, they can be small it doesn't matter what it is, but all profit
is essentially pocketed. That attitude. I get it. I fully understand
it, but I think to a younger workforce it's really tough to get your
head around.
00:14:54:14 - 00:14:54:22
Ellie
Yeah.
00:14:55:05 - 00:15:08:21
Harry
It just doesn't really fly anymore. If you were to say if you made
all of this profit, what are we putting back in this next year? And
I think a younger staff member is going to want to know that people
really want to be working for something bigger. I don't really know
how it was before because I've been ever really been involved in a
young team, I guess.
00:15:08:21 - 00:15:09:15
Harry
But interesting one.
00:15:09:24 - 00:15:15:24
Ellie
So exciting things ahead for you guys. Thank you so much for sharing
that with us. Harry, it's been great talking to you.
00:15:16:07 - 00:15:18:09
Harry
Thank you very much for all your lovely questions.
00:15:19:01 - 00:15:29:15
Intro
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