In the finale of this season of The Agency Collective Tales, Ellie speak to Tom Smith, Founder of Complete Online. They chatted about moving from using freelancers to permanent staff, how self enrichment and personal goals are just as important as professional ones and making the move to working abroad.
[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.
[00:00:09] Ellie: Today on the podcast, I'm joined by Tom Smith from Complete Online. Thanks so much for being on the podcast and telling us your tale today. Can we just start at the very beginning? How did you start your agency? What was the inspiration behind it and what had you done before?
[00:00:23] Tom: I did an apprenticeship at an agency in Preston not too far from where I am. As time went on, I gradually built myself up in the company to become their lead developer. And whilst that was happening, I was getting asked by everyone that I knew, could I do a website for them?
[00:00:37] Could I do this, could I do that? And it just literally got to the point where I was bursting at the seams to do both things. So I spoke to my boss at the agency and I just said, look I want to go on my own. Would you still want me to do work for you? So we came to an agreement where I worked on a retainer basis, which did help.
[00:00:52] So I've just got my first mortgage, there was a bit of risk there, going on your own. Is it going to work, when this work dries up where I'm going to get the rest of the work from? So it was almost like a bit of a buffer, which meant I did it with a bit less risk. Calculated risk I like to call it!
[00:01:04] That was 14 years ago in February. So it's been going from strength to strength since then.
[00:01:10] Ellie: That's amazing and what a good boss as well. Have you picked that up in your management style. So if you had any members of your team saying: "Look Tom, I want to go it alone", would you still be giving that level of support?
[00:01:22] Tom: If we still had the workload that we needed to do, then I'm all for entrepreneurship and trying to make the best out of it. I was always knocking on the door asking for a pay rise, I don't mind that same level of, entrepreneurship.
[00:01:32] Ellie: It's good to support it, isn't it? And pay it forward.
[00:01:34] Tom: Of course it is. I want them to learn as much as they can from me, like I learned from the people that I used to look up to when I was younger. So rather than being segregated, we're in an open office space where I want the people that work for me to be able to hear the way I'm liaising with clients, the way I'm closing deals.
[00:01:47] Rather than me be closed off, and them just being the developers or being the analysis or working on the PPC side of the business, I want them to learn how I learn. Cause I was a bit like a sponge when I was younger.
[00:01:57] I just picked different bits up off everyone. I wasn't the most academic person, but in terms of watching and doing and learning methods and way of dealing with certain situations and that's how I've grown the business and adapted them into what I think works.
[00:02:09] Ellie: Yeah. That's brilliant. How many people do you have in your office at the moment? How many people in the team? Are you all office based? Are you hybrid?
[00:02:15] Tom: No. Our marketing assistant works in Sheffield. She's moved there to be with her partner. She works remotely. There's five of us in the office and we have a admin assistant starting when I get back.
[00:02:26] Ellie: From when you first started it freelancing and then you had too much work, how has the agency merged, developed, and evolved over the past 14 years?
[00:02:35] Tom: For quite a while it was just me and the core team of freelancers that I worked with, which was great.
[00:02:39] It enabled me to grow with less risk, which is always a handy thing to be able to do, but the more and more clients and the higher end clients that I got, it was just hard to manage a team of freelancers. Cause they have their own stuff. They don't work for you necessarily.
[00:02:54] And then, we just started to bring stuff more in-house. We still have trusted freelancers that we've worked with for several years. The way that we do business now just works better having everyone together to bounce off ideas and to work as a collaborative.
[00:03:07] Ellie: And how do you describe yourselves in terms of your offer to your clients and what you're able to do? Do you try and do most in-house? Do you partner up with other agencies?
[00:03:16] Tom: We're a full service digital marketing agency. The way that we've managed to grow has been through partnering with other agencies.
[00:03:22] So we have a number of PR agencies that we work closely with. We have branding agencies that we work with, IT companies, any ones that we can liaise with, and we can do that. We work as their digital partner and then any times we can bring them in for certain sector-based work or photographers to do head shots and company photography, which is always a massive pain point to get the images. People just want to use stock imagery all the time. Partnering with companies like that has helped us evolve.
[00:03:47]
[00:03:47] Ellie: Was that always your strategy to begin with, to partner?
[00:03:50] Tom: It started quite early on, obviously the collab with my old agency and then I just kept seeing different gaps. I reached out to a few when we knew deed services and it's still what I do now.
[00:04:00] It's what I've been doing even over here in Dubai. I partnered with a PR agency this morning. Cause they do things that we don't in-house. And one of our clients actually needs their services. It was a bit like you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours type thing.
[00:04:13] But I would only do it with ones that I knew that were trusted and that I knew the quality of the work was good enough for me to recommend them.
[00:04:19] Ellie: Yeah, that's the thing. You have to check the caliber of your Agency partners. So talk to me about where you are right now at this exact moment in time.
[00:04:27] Tom: I'm currently on Dubai Marina. We ended up, ironically we ended up partnering with a branding agency over in Dubai. We've been doing work over here for a couple of years now. It's a bit of a gray area, invoicing Dubai from the UK business. So the more work we were getting and the more opportunity that I saw when I came out here in February, my wife and daughter, she was pregnant with my second child at the time.
[00:04:48] I met up with David, who's the MD of the branding agency, and he was like: "You should really look at getting settled properly here." And then they introduced me to a group out here called the British Business Group. They're like the Chamber of Commerce, but for expat businesses out here.
[00:05:01] So I got introduced to Katie, who's the general manager. We did a bit of a deal where we've refreshed the front end of their website in return for a business level membership and that's created a strong number of leads for us over here.
[00:05:13] Ellie: Oh, amazing. I bet it clever strategy.
[00:05:16] Tom: And the website is actually getting launched and announced on LinkedIn tomorrow. They've got 17,000 members or something like that. So it should be pretty big for us. It's something we've been working on for some time. They've passed us quite a few strong leads already.
[00:05:28] And with us being recommended by them, a trusted group, it's exciting times.
[00:05:32] Ellie: It sounds absolutely terrible for you, Tom, you poor bugger! In the sunshine playing golf building another brilliant business. It sounds really exciting, mate.
[00:05:41] Tom: Before we took the risk of doing it, we did a lot of market research and it soon became apparent that the agencies out here, have got someone like me at the front, then they outsource to India.
[00:05:50] Then the communication's not there, the quality of the work's not there. They find it hard to communicate through various different mediums through the language barriers and a lot of people want to deal with one agency. Most of the meetings I've had out here over the last two weeks, say we've met them about lead generation.
[00:06:03] They're like: "Oh, do you do SEO as well? Could you give us a proposal for that?" So it's nice when you've done your due diligence and it's actually right for once.
[00:06:09] Ellie: As an agency founder, what would you say have been your key learnings? Is there anything that's knocked you sideways where you've gone: "I had no idea about that." What have you had to develop within yourself to lead your agency?
[00:06:22] Tom: I'm big into personal development. So I think helping broaden my mind by listening to other inspirational people and even just having decisions challenged. It's a lonely place, being a sole director of an agency, at times.
[00:06:33] Because you speak to your parents, you speak to your wife, they're going to have your best interests at heart, aren't they? So they're never going to disagree with you, really.
[00:06:39] So I got a business mentor for a little bit of time, which helped me think outside the box with certain things. Joining yourselves you can bounce ideas off certain people when you're struggling to counteract a problem. But I think mainly the biggest thing was bringing people in-house.
[00:06:52] It relinquished the stress of me working with freelancers, which was bad, especially if they were working on other projects. I was having to work with They were UK based, but a lot of creatives tend to work late at night, so they like night hours.
[00:07:03] So it meant that I was working at 11 o'clock at night when I'm still doing normal hours and then doing that and then liaising with them at weekends. It just put a strain on my family life it just wasn't enjoyable. Since I've brought everyone in house, I've relinquished a bit of control, which was always something that I was a bit wary of.
[00:07:18] When it's your business and it's your name on the door, so to speak. And it is been the best thing I've ever done. The next step's for me to get an office admin/PA for me, which again, will relinquish even more control.
[00:07:28] But I'm looking forward to being able to focus even more than I already am doing on the business and having the little things taken care of.
[00:07:34] Ellie: How do you push yourself to delegate? Because I think all agency founders know you can't hold all the cards because you're just one person.
[00:07:42] But that's a key challenge. So how have you managed to overcome that to start delegating so you can grow?
[00:07:48] Tom: It's more going with my gut. I'm a great believer in trusting your gut, and knowing when to pivot. And I've always made the right decision at the right time. Not always, we all make mistakes.
[00:07:58] I'm not perfect, but it's just letting go and trusting the process, I think more than anything.
[00:08:03] Ellie: That's good advice. What is it that you are most excited about right now? Is there a particular industry you are working on or a particular side of the business, Dubai agency aside, that you are really excited about right now?
[00:08:14] Tom: I'm excited the direction that the business is going.
[00:08:16] We've got a couple of exciting things launching at the moment. We've created a new lead generation service called Complete Leads that we're going to be launching tomorrow, I think. We've created this software where we drive potential clients to a dedicated landing page and then we pre-qualify the leads for them.
[00:08:31] So we're already doing it for a few clients in the uk, but it's something that's solely focused on lead generation. The landing page and LinkedIn lead generation, and then targeting that to specific sectors.
[00:08:42] This is something we've been working on for some time, aside from the digital marketing, Complete Online business. It's something that we offer as a service for our clients, but it's something that I've got a separate site for and that's exciting.
[00:08:53] It's like a new prospect, that we can look to try and push.
[00:08:56] Ellie: That's so exciting. You've just got that entrepreneurial spirit, haven't you? Just to see opportunities. And do you think it's because of the luck that you've had in your life, or do you think it's something innate in you that you're not held back, are you're just thinking: I've got an idea, let's try it."
[00:09:09] Tom: I am quite risk averse. Everything I do is for my family. And it's always been my main driver. I've got with my wife and then got my first kid. I want them to have the best life they possibly can. So I'm always looking for opportunities and avenues.
[00:09:21] And like I said earlier on, I am like a sponge. When I see opportunity, I think: "How can I make that work for us?"
[00:09:26] I am very determined and I'm a bit of a stickler for not switching off. I just want to grow the business to do the best it can be.
[00:09:33] It has to be the right opportunities and we have to be able to do it to the best of our ability. We've got a company ethos that it's worth doing right first time. I wouldn't do it if I knew we were going into it in a half-arsed way.
[00:09:43] Ellie: That's awesome. And just finally, what would be your one key bit of advice that you've either received throughout your journey or that you've discovered yourself and that you want to pass on to other agency founders?
[00:09:56] Tom: I think setting goals. I think they're very important. Me and my wife do it on New Year's Eve and we make goals for the next year.
[00:10:02] Whether they be, I call them digital partnerships. So the clients that we've got, rather than just being transactional business: "Here's your website speak to you in 12 months." We try and develop and nurture those business relationships.
[00:10:13] " Here's your website, how can we help you going forward?" So we call them digital partnerships, whether it's the amount of those that we take on each year that we have capacity for, or whether it's the, turnover. Whether it's: "Who else do we want growing in the team?" Personal goals. When we just had another baby, it was: "What do you want from this year?" " I want another child." it doesn't have to be monetary, it doesn't have to be business related. I'm learning golf at the moment. Mine last year was learn to play golf. Just things that help you grow and develop as a human being and just remembering that it's not all about spreadsheets and figures and business.
[00:10:45] You need to be able to grow as a person, as well as a business.
[00:10:48] Ellie: Absolutely. You've got to enjoy the journey that you are on, haven't you?
[00:10:51] Thanks so much, Tom. It's been so lovely talking to you and I'm so thrilled about everything you guys are doing next.
[00:10:57] Tom: Thank you.
[00:10:58] 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 theagencycollective.co.uk.