This month Ellie talks to Joe Perkins, Owner & MD of Chaptr. They discuss how Chaptr began, the benefits and downsides of working with (and developing) interns, how and why they chose their niche and what's next in 2023!
[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: So today on the podcast, I am joined by Joe Perkins from Chaptr. Thank you so much for being on the podcast, Joe. You have been a member of The Agency Collective for quite a while now, so I'm really interested to just have a chat to you about how you started, what inspires you and what's coming up next.
[00:00:27] Joe: I think the main reason I wanted to start an agency was I just didn't really want to work for anyone else, if I'm honest, Ellie. I went to uni, got the degree and didn't do the graduate thing afterwards. A lot of my mates from uni just didn't want to move to London. I think I was just still had a bit of a homing device and I did work for a company for a couple of years in software marketing and I remember thinking that I just didn't want to be confined to my desk between the hours of nine and six or whatever it was every day. Maybe I just might have inspiration, but I think working in a smaller company, big company now, I wouldn't name them, but doing well, I didn't always had this itch to want to start my own business.
[00:01:04] I had no idea what it entailed.
[00:01:06] Ellie: Do you feel like you always had that entrepreneurial spirit?
[00:01:08] Joe: No, is the answer to that. I probably started off quite risk averse in my life. There's no like entrepreneurs in my family or anything like that. I did a course in entrepreneurship at uni and it was actually quite fun.
[00:01:18] And the group that we were together with came out of a great idea and it almost became a business idea. So maybe that was what planted the seed. And then when you are working in a smaller business and you can communicate to directors, I think I could see maybe opportunities there, which I just didn't have the support for and I just felt that I could probably have a crack at it, really.
[00:01:36] I was maybe a little bit naive because it was harder than I thought, but actually just getting the first client was not as hard as I thought it was going to be. So it turned into an agency. We never really planned it that way and before you knew it, we had this little office in Southampton, this tiny little office we could barely fit three of us in there and it went from there, really.
[00:01:52] We were selling websites however we could, and the main way into the game then was just to be cheaper than anyone else and we could be. But also we could do a half decent job. There wasn't a great standard of design at the time, and that's something that we focused on, and then we just turned into an agency.
[00:02:06] When I realised that we were onto something, was when we got asked to pitch for a luxury goods company and the budget was pretty good. We went to meet them and everything, and in the end, we won that project and that made me realise that we were onto something. If we were able to win a project like that against other London based agencies, we had an agency and we could build on that, I think.
[00:02:24] Ellie: That's magic. So how has that developed from the three of you in the cupboard in Southampton to the Chaptr that we have today?
[00:02:31] Joe: It's developed in a number of ways. So when you're first starting off, you don't necessarily have the ability to hire employees. It's not something you really know much about.
[00:02:40] It's quite risky, especially we were young, I was the oldest of us and I was 25. So we were a young group and what we decided to do was accept some internships and some of them were funded by the EU. One of the guys that we took on them still works for a great agency now. He works with Pete at Steadfast.
[00:02:55] Pete was one of the original founders of what was BrightByte and is now Chaptr. And we took on another, a designer from the university on an internship and he's stuck around for probably five years and now he's moved on to another great agency in Winchester. So we took on a lot of interns, which had its pros and con really. They were really great to mould and instill your own agency's DNA on them about how you want to do things.
[00:03:16] But then it does take time as well, and you've gotta invest that time and show them that there's opportunities to progress.
[00:03:22] Ellie: What advice have you got for agency founders that might be thinking about internships but actually think: "Hang on. The team's too rammed at the moment, we don't have enough time to devote to it."
[00:03:31] They're maybe a bit skeptical of the whole internship route.
[00:03:35] Joe: I would say if you haven't got the time to do it, probably don't. I don't think it's fair on the intern either. You've got the opportunity to really shape someone and provide a launchpad for their career. They need to be able to learn from someone, and if that's someone's not up for it, or not on board, then wait until they are.
[00:03:50] But that said, it's a great way to get affordable talent, which is something that we all struggle with when we're starting off as an agency. You start spending on employees soon becomes that recurring cost and that HR consideration and everything else that's important about working with people. You need to be ready for that, I think.
[00:04:08] Otherwise, I would say if you can afford it, go for someone more experienced. If you don't have the time to dedicate, because they'll just jump straight in and they can probably help your agency grow and surprise you in many ways. So I've been on two ends of the spectrum when it comes to recruiting from people more experienced than myself and interns.
[00:04:23] So I've figured out how it can work in both capacities really.
[00:04:27] Ellie: It sounds like you really enjoy nurturing young talent.
[00:04:30] Joe: Definitely. To be able to see the result of the interns we've had over the years. I think they all work at good agencies now, so they've come into Chaptr and they've had a real chance to get stuck in and learn about design and clients and things like that.
[00:04:43] And now they're working for some great agencies. And one of the other things to consider is that when you bring in an intern, you might think you've got a great agency to work for, but they don't know any different. So they might come in and you might find that there's a bit of naivety there around what they expect, what they want from you, and that can be frustrating, I think, because when you've got the benefit of knowing what other agencies offer and how your current team feels about your agency.
[00:05:06] If they don't feel that you're giving enough, that can be hard to take, I think. So, there is an element there that we found that people that have been to other places and then come to Chaptr have been like, this is a breath of fresh air. But there is an expectation thing to manage when you've got interns because some of them are really gased up by what they're told they should expect and the kind of salaries they should expect and they're promised the world with their graduate programs.
[00:05:29] And then the reality is you're not ready as a graduate, I don't think. I want to say this without sounding patronising, but to be able to roll with the punches and stand on your own two feet, you're going to need support. So I think it's important to be humble if an intern's listening to this.
[00:05:43] Ellie: No, I think that's really right.
[00:05:44] And I think, I certainly have seen it leading a business, and you must have seen it, that there seems to be maybe less resilience in younger talent. So I think perhaps that's something that needs to be taken into consideration as well.
[00:05:53] Joe: Yeah.
[00:05:54] Ellie: In terms of work ethic, the graft that it entails.
[00:05:57] Joe: It feels like that's an old ditty that's making its way down the generations, doesn't it?
[00:06:02] Because our parents will say that we don't work hard enough. I'm aware of that. I'm aware that things change, that the new generations expect more, and I guess it's on us as leaders to try and find a way to harness the best out of them. To get the best from them because it's not actually their fault.
[00:06:17] Those are the kind of things to consider when you're weighing up the benefits and the drawbacks of hiring interns is that they're different to us. We got different ideas and it's even moved on a lot since we did it.
[00:06:29] Ellie: You have got a really interesting niche, Chaptr, so talk to me about what that is and how you discovered it and how it's going.
[00:06:37] Joe: Probably three or four years ago, I was interested in the idea of nicheing. So we've not always been in a niche sector as an agency, and I remember having a conversation with someone who had niched already, and I didn't come away from the conversation necessarily feeling convinced. I think they were early on in their nicheing journey and talked about the benefits of it.
[00:06:52] What I realised during the pandemic was, even if we're not nicheing, you need a strong proposition. And you need to be clear about what you do and who you do it for. If that's not immediately clear, through your marketing communications, through how you talk to people, then I don't know how you can expect to stand out in a competitive pitch anymore.
[00:07:09] There are loads of agencies out there and there are loads of great agencies out there. They've all got great portfolios. So if you're not differentiating yourself, what can you expect, really? You've got the ability to try and win people over through conversation, and maybe that's what we've relied on for many years.
[00:07:23] But when costs becomes a consideration, conversation ain't going to cut either. If you want to maintain your profitability and not work for projects that aren't going to pay you, you need to have that compelling offer, I think because where's the value from the client's point of view, if you haven't got that?
[00:07:39] We're already heading into another recession. That's been confirmed, so budgets are going to be getting cut again. Other agencies like you will be doing it for cheaper because they might not have the benefit of hindsight where you realise that doesn't ever work out because it just costs you.
[00:07:52] But we had a conversation last week and I said: "Look, we probably are going to be a little bit more expensive than some of the other quotes you're getting in.
[00:07:59] This is because we specialise in your sector. We understand the challenges, we understand the context of what you're trying to do in your audience. And we've done it many times before and we've been successful."
[00:08:09] And their response was: "Well, please don't let that put you off, responding to our tender." And I thought, what a great indictment, really for me to say that and them not be like: "Oh, that's going to be a problem for us."
[00:08:19] But actually: "No, no, we still want to see what you come back with..."
[00:08:21] [THEY TALK OVER EACH OTHER]
[00:08:21] Ellie: ...the process? Yeah.
[00:08:22] Joe: Yeah.
[00:08:22] Ellie: Because you set your boundaries. And you've positioned yourselves as experts in terms of culture and the arts. Has that always been a passion of yours? Did it come from the team? Where did the love of it come from?
[00:08:32] Joe: I think there's a certain romance about arts and culture anyway, isn't there? It's a part of society that we need really to balance everything else out. So we had worked with a couple of clients in that sector. And the team have got an interest in arts and culture. One of the directors has got a degree in fine arts.
[00:08:49] I think one of the designers has got a degree in the same. It made sense. If you're trying to pitch who's going to be working on a project and you can say: "This is who's going to be working on your project. Their background is in art. These are the kind of exhibitions they attend." I think it helps instill that trust and like you said, that expertise could have ended up, but we went down food and beverage if that's what resonated with most.
[00:09:09] But actually you've got to consider, is there a market for what you are selling and can you still work on profitable projects? Are the budgets big enough? So it's important to look back at your existing clients and say, yeah, we made a profit there. They pay us well. They never squabble about what we charge, and actually they respect us.
[00:09:25] They value us. That's important too for the team. Because we were working on projects where people didn't value us just because they paid well. And it's a difficult one as a director, if you haven't got that clear proposition to confidently say, we're not going to do this work anymore, even though it's going to pay us X amount of a month, we're not going to do it.
[00:09:41] But if you've got that vision of who you are as an agency and where you want to be, it creates a nice filter for those decisions. You can be like, no, that's all right, because it's not going to lead us closer to our goal of being the premier agency for brands engaged in arts and culture, right?
[00:09:54] Ellie: How many do you have on your team?
[00:09:55] Joe: We have five full-time, one non-exec, and the rest is made up of other agencies and contractors. We talk mainly about UX and design, because UX design and accessibility is a big thing in our sector.
[00:10:08] Ellie: Yeah, of course.
[00:10:08] Joe: That's part of the specialism that we bring, I think within our niche. But the development part, yeah, we do that in-house too.
[00:10:14] We do work with some great contractors when we need them. Very much a case of just translating what we've already done into a working product. So the value part has already been done and then we're delivering the output then, which is the website. That's how we see it.
[00:10:26] Ellie: What is coming up next at Chaptr? What are you really excited about?
[00:10:29] Joe: I think just looking at our pipeline at the moment and 90% of it being the good projects within arts and culture, we're excited to grow into that space. We're building a community in that space. We really want to keep the Chaptr brand front and center in the minds of the marketing professionals in that space.
[00:10:46] We don't have any lofty growth ambitions. The market's too volatile for that at the moment for us. Stability was our main goal for the past 12 months, and we've achieved that. So we just want to keep on with the organic growth, keep giving the team more great work to work on as we do grow, intelligently invest that back into the team and keep them benefiting from what we're doing.
[00:11:05] Including myself. I've not been a greedy director over the years, so it's nice to finally be able to take a bit from the agency to have it work for me a bit more. So, what we want to do is when a brand, an organisation within arts and culture thinks about needing a new website, they think about inviting Chaptr to pitch.
[00:11:22] I want to be on the invitees list rather than finding the tenders and going for them. And it is happening. We've made some great progress in the last year and a half, but that's where we want to be, I think.
[00:11:31] Ellie: Exciting times ahead. Oh, cheers. Joe, it's been great chatting to you.
[00:11:36] Voice Over: Thanks so much for listening.
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