How I'd Start a 1-Person AI Agency With Claude AI (2026) | Ricky Solanki | #35

You launched Push in 2007. You've now got over 50 team members and you've won best use of AI as an award for agencies for the last 2 years running. >> We were at one point managing about 400 different clients. >> If you were starting from zero, how would you build the business differently? >> I believe one person could do it. I would start with the premise with can One person manage an entire client? What tools is needed to do that? They need to manage their AI employees or AI agents. Claude's a great place to just

start. Pick one process that is fairly time-consuming [music] that you'd like to shorten. Just start with something small. Then you're going to be so much more efficient and profitable. [music] If they thought about what they needed and they built all the agents and the infrastructure, you obviously would need To have that technology skill or look to buy it from somewhere or [music] get someone in to do it. >> Best AI tool right now that isn't yours and not Claude. >> We have this new set of services now within the agency AI reactivation bots via SMS

or WhatsApp. It's branching out of marketing more into operations and sales. >> One thing you wish you learned earlier as a founder. >> Not everything's in your control. We need to change to be able to be innovative and find new products to market. >> Most underrated agency growth strategy. >> It's the most underused marketing channel. It's very low cost. You don't need a huge budget to start building that email list up. >> Ricky, welcome to Agency Giants. >> Thanks for having me. >> You launched Push in 2007. You've now got over 50 team members and

you've won best use of AI as an award for agencies for the last 2 years running. When you look back at that journey as a whole, where do you see the biggest period of growth was for you? >> I'd probably say it was 2016 to 2020. Um that was about 2012 we made a a decision to focus in on Google Ads. Before that we were doing website development, SEO, affiliate marketing, Email marketing. It was pretty the early stages of digital marketing as a you know, as a product and as a service. So, 2012 we started

to focus in on Google Ads. That's what we were really good at. That's what we really liked. Search and paid social. And then 2016 was a time where we started to see our case studies, our awards, brands coming to us and we had a we had a really good marketing channel, really Good growth. We're on a Google Channel Partner Program as well. And so yeah, we were at one point managing about 400 different different clients in that period. >> Awesome. It's quite interesting to like it's like 10 years really after kind of establishing the business

or 9 years after establishing. If we go back to the early stages, like what did the early period of the business look like? >> Day one was me and my co-founder retraining ourselves to even know what what is the internet? How do we use it? I remember basically both of us had signed up for this kind of like a franchise of being an internet consultant and having these offshore centers to support you with the work. So, I remember where as I was leaving my job, I said told people I was going to do and they

were like, "Oh, so you're going to be working with you know, Platforms like Google." And I went, "Well, what's Google?" I didn't literally I didn't know what it was. So, I had to go through a period of learning, understanding, figuring out how to how to build things myself, build a website, understanding mechanics mechanics of marketing. So, I think the first few years were really just us learning you know, the industry, learning what's Out there. How could we apply this to help businesses grow? And then figuring out actually what is the products what do we enjoy

doing? And we definite definitely didn't enjoy building websites. So, so [laughter] we how we ended up into that paid side of things. >> So, did you have like an IT background before the agency? Like what what what was the experience that then triggered you to want to start an agency business In the first place? >> Yeah, no, I not really a technology background. I used I used to work for a computer computer component distributor selling memory chips, the likes of AMD and uh um Samsung, SanDisk, all these products which if you follow the stock market

are doing incredibly well at the moment. And I've kind of missed time getting in those quite quite early. If I had just held them for the last [laughter] 20 years, I'd be in a be in a Really good spot. But um yes, I was working in computer component distribution, but I just had this calling to become an entrepreneur. But I didn't know what I needed to do, which is kind of why I ended up in this kind of franchise route because I picked something where I thought, "Okay, I can actually can see there's a lot

of growth in that sector." And I'd been in a fast growth sector of computer component distribution from when I graduated Literally seeing businesses putting in computers into their workplace. So we were selling the components for those. And I could see that and that was becoming quite commoditized. So I could see there was this new avenue of internet opening up an instant marketing. The some of the brands that we used to sell to from the computer component distributor were the likes of if you you might know of a brand called like Ebuyer. I think they're actually

in In from Sheffield. Um and they had an e-com business and they're one of the first e-commerce retailers. And I saw what they were doing. I was like, "Wow, okay, they got this, you know, they they got this engine. They're generating a lot of sales." And I thought, "Okay, this could be the next growth area." >> That's interesting. And so you have uh well, I mean, where did you start with the agency? Where did you Who did you Work with initially? Were you working with those companies and the distributors or and e-commerce or was it

local business marketing? Like where did you start as far as client base was concerned? >> Yeah, yeah. So a few actually a few of the contacts I had from that industry I started working with. Um maybe doing SEO for some uh for system builders or some retailers. But yeah, I focus in on the local Marketing. I would literally walk around to shops and offices with a something printed out saying this is, you know, this is what I do. I'm an insect [clears throat] consultant and I can help you get positioned on on the insect. This

is why you need a website cuz at that time people still didn't really appreciate the fact that you need a website. And then once I'd figured out what actually what Google was and how you could use it, explained to people Well, if you got a website, you can advertise on these things like Google and it's going to replace the yellow pages and you know, you'll be able to get sales leads, whatever you whatever your kind of end objective was. >> Big up door-to-door. It's how I started in the agency as well. So, >> Oh, yeah,

I think you yeah, give me a puts it puts hairs on your chest. I think >> so. I think it's coming full circle as Well in this AI world we live in where everyone hides behind their email outreach comfortably. People want to see people. >> Yeah. >> So, in you you went from this period of kind of fumbling your way through it, failing forward with the agency in the early stages. You had this kind of catalyst moment in 2016 where you decided to introduce Google. Have you observed other major changes in the Industry over your

time, being the industry for 17 years now, that made you think of we need to make a big pivot, we need to make big changes to continue growing and thriving in what we're doing? >> Yeah, so the the the one would be the one that's most recent, which is in 2023. We were went off to America. Went for a internet traffic conference, which got changed at the very last minute to this Now needs to be an AI conference. Because, you know, ChatGPT had just launched about 6 months earlier. And we went to that and we

saw what some of these American agencies were doing. And we were using the APIs for like ChatGPT in our technology products, but what I started to see how it was being used not just in kind of performance marketing, but across the board, email marketing, email newsletters, technology builds. Me and my co-founder Steve, we Came back from that and we were like, "Right, we need to we need to now re- And we were already in this position where we knew we needed to reposition the business, but we didn't know what to. And it gave us that

That was the catalyst moment where we were like, "Right, okay, this is this is the future. We can see really clearly now this is going to change the way, you know, all of us behave in in you know, operating our workplace, but also, you Know, how businesses are going to operate as well." >> So, initially to you, did that mean coming back and just making what you were already doing more efficient? Or did Was it a complete pivot in the way that you deliver services as well? >> Yeah, it's a great question. I think at

the beginning it was, "Right, let's implement this within our own organization. Let's make sure everybody is on board with it, understands it, why Why we're doing it, and then start putting processes in place." We started off doing things like uh survey with the team how comfortable they felt about AI, what what were they afraid of. We built like AI responsible policies, manifestos, and then we started to go, "Right, we're going to now take apart our different processes and we're going to rebuild them in an AI world. We're going to start to look at what type

of operating system we want to use. Um do We build something in-house? Do we buy something?" And we just started started on that journey. Always with the mind that, "Okay, once we've done that for ourselves, we'll be able to go, 'Right, okay, now we can start to build other products for the businesses that we're already working with and maybe a new set of businesses as well.'" >> So, you're predominantly using AI to make your performance marketing service better initially in the agency. What can You, just for people that aren't familiar with Perceptua watching this, just

summarize what core services you offer to the majority of your clients at the moment? >> Yeah, sure. So, that would be um paid marketing across, you know, Google, Microsoft, then the social channels, Meta, Pinterest, and TikTok. We then have organic services, which is actually our biggest area of growth at the moment, which is SEO {stroke} GEO, Helping businesses getting um visibility and ranked on the LLMs. That's where we're seeing the most interest. We've been doing a lot of talks about explaining to people how the the search market is changing, how people are searching differently, and

how our results are appearing differently. Then we do creative optimization as well. So, all the kind of standard performance marketing um Services. But, then we have this new set of services now within within the agency, which could be for example AI reactivation bots via SMS or or WhatsApp. It can be AI workflows put into an organization to help them with their task management or their sales processes as well. So, it's bridging out of marketing more into operations and sales, I'd say, at the moment as well. >> I want to unpack all of the kind of

the tech side of things and and what you've been building and so on as we as we get through this. But, before we kind of segue into that, I'd love to understand in offering so many different services cuz it sounds like you do an awful lot for people. How does the the client acquisition process look today? Are most of your clients coming inbound and therefore they have a specific need and therefore You're you're you're creating a pitch for them and going for that? Or are you outbounding any clients and and if so, what do you

lead forward with? >> Yeah, good great question. So, I think if I tell you what I was doing before and then tell you how it changed as well cuz I think that'll be useful. So, when we had that huge period of growth, we were running Google Ads and Meta at the time as well and leading with a PPC type audit, we can improve your results by 20% and we just had huge volume of leads. We were one of the first people to run these PPC type audits. And they would come in, we would do the

audit, and then we would sell online. We were we were selling online before people would as in via a Meet link, you know, way before it happened after post-COVID time. So, that was really working for us in that period. Obviously, that's become a very crowded crowded space. And plus, people don't Really need that anymore. You know, they kind of that the Google AI is doing a good enough job. They don't they don't need one person to do you know, or an agency to come in and just work on that one area. So, now um how

we lead with with the marketing, we don't do a huge amount of outbound. What we do do is try and put us in front of the type of businesses with that we want to work with. And we'll run things like webinars, we'll do Talks, a lot of events. Um we'll work with some different associations as well. And that way we can get across really all the different things that we that we do. And then the next point if someone's interested in working with us is then we would then do some form of we call it

internally a discovery, but for a client, it's a a growth road map. And that's the way we can really get across all of our knowledge, all the different things that we do, and then Give them a a plan of saying yeah, we do all these things, but you can't do all of them in one go. And this is actually actually how we would structure over a 12-month period. So, it that for us does two things. It means that any of the clients we're going to work with are really invested in us for a long period

of time as opposed to the old days, which is like yep, come in, fix my Google Ads, bye Mike, get rid of you in three or four months. You know, if it's Not working so well or or I feel I can take over myself. So, we're trying to find stickier clients that understand that we do all these services, but we can drop in services in and out. And I think the way for me the way agencies need to work changes a little bit. It's not about I'm going to sell you this retainer for this service

and this retainer for that service. Keep adding, adding, adding. It's like, okay, well, if your budget's X, maybe we'll do these Two services for these two three months, but then we'll drop this one out, we'll drop another one in. And I think the dynamics of the way agencies and clients are working is changing because we know that clients can now take on a lot more themselves, especially with AI as well. >> You charge for those growth road maps as well, don't you? Or I believe I read that somewhere. You charge to pitch in the process

rather Than done the conventional kind of free sales call. >> Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you know, I'm sure you know, a lot of agency owners who experience the same thing. You put a lot of time in in pitches and you're not going to win you're not going to win all of them. And one thing actually we we haven't actually firmly done this, but we're probably going to say no to any pitches where it's like, are you Coming into pitch against four people? You know, you've got a you've got maybe an equal chance. But we

find those kind of pitch processes where you know, you're going in for a over one or two days. The people who are receiving the pitch are exhausted. They just and they're pretty much hearing the same thing from all four. So either they're going to be like, oh maybe we'll just stay with the incumbent agency because we know them. We feel a risk change and a lot of it's just done on feeling. Oh, yeah, we got on with those guys. We had a good energy. Let's go with them. But and you've got an hour to get

across how you're going to spend whatever it is, half a million pounds or you know, a million pounds a year across multiple channels. And we just don't think it's enough time to get across exactly your approach, how you want to do things and and the results that they Might get. So going down this going down this route of having some kind of paid road growth road map really what really works well for us because it allows us to invest the right amount of time, get paid for it and at the end they've got something they

can actually take away and implement if they want as well. So that's part of the sell to the clients. Look, we're going to do this, but it doesn't mean at the end of it You've got to engage with us. You can take that away and go and do it yourself, find another agency, but we'll give you an option to work with us as well. >> Nice. You mentioned webinars. Is that a really significant part of the of the getting people onto those road maps? >> Uh yeah, not immediately, but >> [snorts] >> building an email

list and then marketing to that email list, Definitely. So you know, we found the I would say the the type of customers that we want to work with are the ones that come on those webinars where you really put in some good education out, especially if it's on a new innovative content. And so those people will sign up so you can you know we can send something out and they'll be like wow I've got these three four brands that everyone would have heard of that have inquired back that are interested in Speaking to us on

what you know whatever we've positioned in the email. We obviously send email newsletters out and then you two years later you might hear from somebody saying right we we've got the challenge. Would you be able to come in and and speak to us and and talk to us about this. So yeah it's a it's a long term strategy it's not something I you know I know people who could have been successful doing that with a webinar and then an immediate upsell. Uh we've never we've tried it a few times never quite worked for us. So

I think really our marketing now is really based around this kind of long term long term marketing and building our reputation in the market. >> So if we were to like visualize the funnel you've you've got organics and and referrals and so on kind of feeding. Presumably there's a some kind of lead magnet also on that's getting people onto the onto the email List in the first place and then you have the conversion mechanisms like the webinars and so on and so forth. Would that be a fair assessment? >> Yeah that's right. So for example

take the GEO generative engine optimization product. So we had a we had a guide to to GEO put out kind of before anybody was doing it. So the other thing is like trying to be ahead of the market. So I you know this is everything you need to know about GEO. What's changed? How to Make sure you get ranked? What tools you can use? So we built that out. So that was a really good lead magnet that worked for us. And then from the back of that exactly that right we're going to now going to

run a webinar with more up to date up to date information. >> Nice. Nice. Nice. And as far as bringing people onto that email list how many emails a day you or a week are you sending at the moment? >> Uh not a huge amount. Just so that would Just be probably yeah probably on a monthly basis about two emails. >> Interesting. >> Interesting. I think it's one of those things that a lot of agencies don't do that is just always a a very slept on strategy is like that long term email list nurture. A

lot of people forget to do that from lead magnets. And so it's interesting that that is really a main part of your acquisition strategy With that. And I can see that through having so many different services, it allows you to open up through many different verticals with different lead magnets for all different things. >> Yeah, exactly. So, you can you can do a and obviously depending on if how how your list is segmented, if you something if you've got a e-commerce specific, you can put some e-commerce or retail specific content out um as well. We

have experimented actually With sending more frequent emails and we saw our unsubscribe rate go up. So, we kind of found found the balance a little bit. You know, you know, you once you if you start to go to one a week then the yeah, they people kind of they get a bit of blindness to it as well. So, they'll they'll miss the important stuff that comes through. >> Do you find that and have you found that over the years with acquisition specifically, you look for that one kind Of halo message or service rather that people

are really interested in like you had the PPC order then you've got like the the GEO order and and so on and so forth. Do you do you find that you're always looking for those or do you have a variety of different angles in which to bring people into the business be that across multiple different services? >> No, it's the that the halo approach definitely. Yeah, yeah. Really what's what's topical at that time, what people Really interested in and we we're trying to gauge we get it wrong sometimes but trying to gauge that ahead of

the market so that you know, as soon as that demand builds up. One thing I've learned in doing, you know, working in the agency for 20 years is that as much as we can build a product and we like it and we think it's great unless unless the the brand want to buy it, it's not really that exciting. It would get it's much harder to much harder to sell. So, part Of it is about making time and thinking, okay, actually, when is this product going to mature where people are actually going to want it as

well. >> Nice. I notice that you expand internationally as well. Do you have a physical presence in in in other regions or just mainly getting international clients across? >> Yeah, so we've got international clients for example, we have clients in the US where we don't have Any we have a like a virtual office there. Some somewhere we'd like to do do a bit more with. We've got European clients as well. That's kind of all serviced out of the UK office. Uh, in Greece, we have somebody who used to work with us here. He graduated, worked

with us here. He's from from Greece. He's moved back to Athens. So, we have a physical office there. It's about 10 people. It's been doing really well. Um, they use the brand, the Positioning, the processes. They look after some UK clients as well because we have a a fee threshold in in the UK. So, some of the smaller clients, the Greece team can manage out there as well. And we also have a a team in Dubai in the Middle East as well. >> How did you find expanding internationally? And how have you found the impact

on the business? Is it something that you you wish you did sooner in the business? Because a lot of companies like to stay very regional. I actually think it's something that that agencies get very limited by. They have a physical presence in the UK. They think they then can't expand to signing out international clients and kind of forget there is a whole world of businesses that will work with agencies overseas if they deliver the right Service and have the right message. >> Yeah, actually there was a report. I don't know if you've come across the

Wow Benchmark report. >> I'm familiar with them. I know Peter who owns that. >> Yeah, so recently they the one they just put out I think it's cuz it's an annually comes out. There was a really interesting stat I picked up in there that all the the top performing agencies By margin and revenue growth were operating outside the UK. And I think UK's a quite a competitive landscape at the moment. There's not a lot of growth in the UK. So, yeah, I definitely think there's something to people do even if they don't go for a

in you know, an office presence in there. We had a couple of failed attempts, one in Copenhagen and Romania as well. And these have kind of been They haven't been I wouldn't say there's ever been a Real strategy behind it. They've kind of been opportunities that have arisen by people either who've worked with us moving to another area or someone reaching out to us saying, "Could I Could I set something up?" So, I think with the first two that didn't work, we learned that actually what you need is to have somebody who is culturally aligned

with the region. Because the sales process and how to do Business is the most important thing. And if like if you if you send someone from the UK to somewhere like Copenhagen, they're going to find it difficult because there's a language barrier, they don't understand how to do how business is transacted. Whereas because we've got someone in Greece who's Greek, he knows how that works. And the things just operate slightly differently. So he understands he can take the message, he can take the the Marketing that you know angles that we want to take, he can

he can change it and apply it for for that individual market. Um having the UK operational resource has been really useful. So they just can tap into the UK for like HR support, technology support and all of that. So they just focus on okay, servicing the clients and the leads, but you know they they operate from with our Own Slack and all that type of thing. So it's been it's been actually quite quite seamless to get it set up and running. It's been established now about 5 years doing like I said doing doing really well.

I think the one thing that we underestimated in all them is you still need to have if you're going to put on a physical presence, you need to have some capital aside for it. You can't just go right, we'll start it and hope that the revenue Will start start day one and we'll be be able to manage it. You kind of need to you say right, okay, we've going to put aside some money to make sure we've got enough to to make sure we've got a team to support that founder in that region, maybe an

office presence to start or you know, answer marketing budget as well. >> I think it's depending on the sophistication of the ICP that you're working with. I think if you're if you're Going for big corporates, that physical presence matters to them a little bit more and I didn't kind of SMBs, let's say that I I've distilled it down to really just need a good account manager and a good sales person in that region. And if you've got both of those two things, you can get away with a lot. The service delivery team doesn't necessarily need

to be there, but the person maintaining and building that relationship ship does. I'd love to get into the AI stuff. So you um one best use of AI and you've won amongst 50 other awards over the past years. And I'd like to understand from you your perspective, being a very established agency at the point of choosing to to pivot into AI or focus your time into AI more so, how did the team initially react when you brought that to them? Because I know normally it creates a lot of a lot of anxiety and can create

a lot of anxiety in a team where they're now thinking oh this my employer is now thinking about AI. What does this mean for me and my future in the company? >> Yeah, I think probably the first thing would have been right, okay, they've gone off to a founders have gone off to a conference and come back with >> [laughter] >> with another with with another idea and you know, just like we're another idea. Let's see how far this one how this one this this one goes. So, that that's probably their that's probably their first

thought. Uh I think once they realized we were quite what quite serious about it, they some people did did leave if not immediately, but they some people were just resistant to change. And I think actually out of everything about AI, the technology is The technology. I don't think we need any more advancements in the technology because it's already can do so much and no one's using it to the capability that we can use it to. Um but change management is the biggest part of it. Like actually getting people to change the way they you know,

they they operate day-to-day and the way they think and how they're Going to do their tasks. And some people were just resistant to that. And if they if they're resistant to it, they're just going to think well, actually you know, I don't feel aligned with this. I'm going to you know, I'm going to move on. So, we we did lose some people through that that transition. The the way we tried to manage that was okay, let's let's put this survey out first and see how you're feeling about it. Are you using it? What tools are

you Using? Do you feel scared about it? How do you think this might impact your role? So, it gave us an answer and we was I I thought everybody would be excited, but no, there were people who were scared about it. Now, obviously anonymous survey, so I don't know if those were the people that that left or some maybe some of them actually were then found a way to to get on board with it and understand It. And even like even today, like yesterday we had a 3-hour AI training session on our AI operating system

because we could still see some people some people are super users and some people are still struggling, but that's okay. Like we you know, we just continue to have these training sessions and uh let people know it's okay to not know that they don't know how to do things. Um and there's there's variances. You've Got you would think oh maybe all the younger people are just like much better at it. And it's not always the case. So, you can it's not really like an age thing. It's just I think different preferences and personality types on

how people adapt to it. >> I often talk about the difference between agencies that use AI that just kind of bolt on additional tools and so on and and have a regular workflow with an LLM And agencies that are AI-led or now what I believe we're moving to is more AI-native agencies. We're seeing that transition. To you, what does it mean to be an AI-led agency? >> So, the first thing would be yeah, do we have all of all of the data from our clients in one place where we can apply our AI to it.

So, yeah, with the you know, the base level would be yeah, we've got a process where we can run AI agents to get Personas and we can build creative ad copy and we can do all those things right from workflows and LLMs, but I think truly to be AI, you need to have the data points from all the different platforms. Of course, Google, Meta are going to do their own thing within their own platform. What we Luckily, we built our own technology platform where we've taken data from all the different platforms into um into into

BigQuery into our own database And then had that on our own platform. So, then we were at cuz we had normalized all our data, it made it easier for us to layer AI on top of it and interrogate that data and start putting analysis out and anom- anomaly detection and all all type of thing and suggestions on what should should do next. So, I think that's really been AI-led. It's like you you're not only using it in your day-to-day process to be more efficient, so it's better for The clients, you can get more output and

deliver faster, but are you truly using AI to analyze the work that you're doing and and get better output for the client as well. >> Lots of agencies will skip straight through to the function part, where they'll try and build something that they perceive to be useful, but they skip those context and data layers that actually make function useful in the first place. And I know you build a lot Of internal tech, which I'd I'd love to unpack. You've mentioned the word AI operating system, which a lot of companies have built their own operating system,

but also somewhat become this ambiguous [snorts] term that that not everybody understands what it means. And so, to you, what does your AI operating system do? What function does it serve in Push? >> Yeah, so we call it we call it Dial Agents, which is our digital innovation Acceleration lab. It's kind of like our framework of how we how we have an idea, hypothesis, test it, and then launch it. So, that's where Dial comes from. So, we call it we call it Dial Agents. And within there, what we have is all of every time we've

built something, like so a process, it becomes becomes an agent, and people will responsible for a Google Ad Copy Assistant or a creative ideation agent. So, we have all these kind of mini functions stroke employees That are integrated into this AI operating system. So, that means anyone within the organization can go into the operating system, pick the client, and the client will have all their knowledge-based documents. So, we'll have all the calls recorded in there, so all the recent calls, so we can understand client objectives, challenges that happening. It'll also have the data layer in

there As well, so we've got actually got data performance. So, we we've got MCPs tied into to Google, Meta, and everything as well. Then we've got maybe their tone of voice, their brand documentation, what we've pitched them, their proposal. So, everything's in one place. So, and anyone can go in and say, "Right, I need to create They've got this new product being launched." Let's say if it's a a retail brand. New product being launched and we need to build campaign assets for these and campaign strategy across these platforms. And because all that data just sits

there and it's maintained and it's and it's updated and it's automatically pulled in from a weekly call, everything can be they I can go across all of that. You can also pull the real and then it uses our best practices of this is our campaign framework. And then It will produce produce the output. So, it's taking a long time to get there, but you have to have all the parts in, you know, we have to put all our best practices in. We have to make sure there's governance [clears throat] in terms of what information from

the account management teams is going into the AI operating system. But, it means yeah, anybody can go and pick any client they're assigned to, run Assistance, workflows, and get output kind of, you know, in a matter of seconds, really. >> How did you tackle the problem of um of building that in the first place? Did you govern that as the founder? Did you were you quite hands-on with that or did you someone decentralize the development of the of the product across the whole team? >> Yeah, so my my main function really over the past, you

know, 10 years has been to Lead out kind of technology innovation. So, yeah, I'm I'm always looking out there and going, "Right, how's the market changing? What technology is out there? And what what could really really help us?" I think it helps for us it helps us from a positioning standpoint. So, if we do go into even if we're doing these growth roadmaps or in a pitch, we want to have something a point of difference. So, having our own platform which we've built which is unique to us And people can see the benefit of that

is important. So, I've always led the development of that, what I wanted what I wanted to look like. So, one of the things that came when we came back from this event in America was I could see like the start of this kind of AI operating systems being built up by some American companies. And then I started to investigate a bit more in terms of like what are what products are out there. We Tested a few products that were out in the marketplace. And they just didn't do all the things that I would want it

to do. So, yeah, then we ended up ended up building it building ourselves. >> I think we're going to move to a place in the market where every agency has their own form of an operating system and and there's there's really kind of big debate at the moment on like what do we buy something? Do we build it in House? Like do we And that's actually something I want to In fact, we can skip to that and we can come back to this. When it comes to making that decision on cuz when you build the

initial benefit of okay, originally we look at the business, how can we make this more efficient? How can we make what we're already doing better by analyzing the data and just just being a lot better than we are and increasing consistency Across the board. You then start to look at okay, what are the new things that we can do? How can we How can we prove I know you've built like an AI sales agent system for example for your clients. How have you found and have you found it hard to decide whether or not to

build something internally or whether to continue paying for external software? Because I know for me I just looked at that massive bill at the end of every month on the software we're paying and I'm ticking off softwares. Almost like a game of what can I get rid of? What can we build? What can we build? Um but it also is very time-consuming to do that. >> Yeah, it's to be honest, not something we've we've solved and it is exactly it's like exactly what you said. Reviewing constantly cuz the software costs go up, right? That's the

other thing. It's like you can go oh actually let's buy this software and then For example take our um We we have another product called Dial 360, which is basically our performance marketing where all the data goes in, right? So, the AI operating system connects into Dial 360, which is where all the data is, all the campaign data, budget management, that type of creative performance analysis. Even though we paid quite a lot for that product, every time I've gone to the Market to think, "Oh, actually, could we replace it?" I could probably get about 80%

of the functionality that we've got. But then when you start cuz we're quite large agency in terms of number of clients and ad spend, once you get the cost back from a a platform, you're like, "Well, actually now the price difference is not so big." Cuz it looks cheaper when you look on the website. You're like, "Oh, this is going to I could save 10,000 Pounds a month just for example." But once you get into the nitty-gritty and you need all the extra layers of governance and support and account management and your extra connectors and

that type of thing, the the cost can go up. So, I think what we always trying to do is have a look at the how that changes over time. But I think what we see now is with with AI, there's more and more platforms coming out which are AI Native, which are at a much lower cost, right? Now, obviously, you've got the costs of the tokens and the usage of OpenAI or or or Claude, which then can also increase the cost a lot and there are a bit of unknowns about that. Um but yeah, I

think I think what I think what we'll see is a lot of software that agencies are using either the agencies will start to build in themselves in like Claude code or, you Know, lovable or replit. We have done that with a few small things like, "Oh, we're we're spending" I'll give you another example. We're spend We were spending 800 pounds a month on an AI creative tool that, you know, makes UGCs, image creation, that type of thing. So, one of the team who's really really kind of understands Claude code rebuilt a platform that does all

of that and more. And okay, with the token cost, it costs about 400 pounds, but it got better functionality. >> Mhm. >> But I think there's a, you know, I think you'll find in within agencies people going out and going, "Actually, okay, they it might be easier to tackle the smaller projects rather than the big one. Maybe the big one you still invest in and the smaller ones you kind of, you know, You're deciding that actually we can build this build this ourselves. But, yeah, I think we I don't think you can have everything like

you know, you build everything or you actually you know, you're you're building everything yourself. So, there's yeah, a little bit of a difference. >> I I mentioned to you off off camera I'm a software co-founder myself and We're we're constantly trying to predict what what's actually going to happen and in the market. And I think really the only solution for software companies, especially these big guys like the big CRMs and so on, like we have companies have in the software space have to move to a place where you are building UI for convenience for the

people that don't want to custom build, but you have to be able to facilitate the people that want to be Able to custom build and be able to use your software on the back end. So, for example, your team member who's built a creative a creative generation system, maybe that was Higgsfield or something like that that you were using before. Arc Ads one of those companies. And you are able to build your own creative system because you're using the same LLMs that they are, but you've got all This data. You've got all this context. You've

got your unique way of doing things. You've got all of your ad frameworks. And so, you can create something better than these out-of-the-box solutions that look better cuz the UI is great and it's had this this development team that's been building it for a long time. But, those companies are at a danger if they don't facilitate people like you or your team being able to just create Their own custom version of it, adding context, adding data layers, and plugging that into the software itself. And so, I think that's going to be really interesting to observe.

And I also believe that agencies might move to and fall to the same fate as those software companies in the sense that if software is going to be driven down by price because of that people's ability to to to practically do things, I believe agencies will probably be Driven down on price over the long term if and depending on the the market that you're operating because of the the frequency in which work is being put out and the ability and the ease to actually produce good work. How do you feel about that? >> I think

on the soft first the soft the software point totally agree. I think that yeah, if you had the ability to work within a platform and create something of of your own it would be it Would work amazing. Like for example, we just canceled HubSpot. >> Mhm. >> And then cuz we were mainly using the pipeline feature and built built it ourselves. You know, we didn't need [clears throat] to we we didn't need to use that anymore. >> And expensive. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um yeah, definitely definitely agree with that. I think

and then to your Point on uh agencies and margin pressure and how we're going to feel that. I think I just think it's inevitable like that and I think we've seen that seen that for a while, which is why I mentioned this model of really trying to the brand you're working with, help them understand that you can help them across a multitude of things. Now, and we never wanted to be a full-service Agency cuz it's more it's complex. It's hard. You got to you got to be really good at everything that you do in you

know, that each each segment that you're working in. But I think as for to survive as a as an agency, you're going to need to be able to do that across everything because otherwise you will just be driven down in the the segment that you're in and you need and you need to have open what we're trying to become is Open conversations about okay, right, well, how can we best use your budget that you've assigned for agency? How can we provide you the best value? And that might even mean building something for them to put

internally so they can be more self-sufficient. >> Mhm. >> And I think that for me, that's the big shift that we're trying to make and I think that if agencies make it, it will Be a much better way for agencies and brands to work together because there's always this yeah, as an agency and you're always worried, oh my god, they're going to they've just hired a new CMO. They've got a new person. It seems like they're going to take it in-house. So, you never but we never have that open conversation. We're always you're just you're

trying to say, no, you need to use agency. So stay with us. And they're Probably thinking oh God, I would love to take this in-house, but can we? But they can now. That's the reality. They somebody says we want to take in-house and we've couple of people we've gone to visit for our AI integration work have left agencies paying the where they were paying 30,000 pounds, 25,000 pounds retainers across, you know, creative, paid, um, and SEO. And there's two people running it within Their organization using Clod. >> Yeah. I believe that. There's two transitional phases

to that, I suppose, and that is number one, licensing the tech that you've built to other companies. So, hey look, instead of you building this thing that we've spent the last 2 years developing, then license our data, license our IP. I think we'll see a lot of that. I think actually even away from the software And licensing the the interface, people will license the data itself. So, okay, you've ran X amount of ads and they got X amount of performance. So, I believe that we'll see that. And but also just facilitating companies bringing things in-house.

I've always been in the mindset whilst as an agency, we don't want people to do that. We but churn is inevitable at some point with in business. So, I'm thinking if they're going to Churn anyway, I might as well facilitate the churn and try and catch it early and actually call it out and be like, hey, I think you're trying to move this in-house. If you want to, by the way, I can make it a lot easier for you. Here's a package to go ahead and do that. So, is that something you've experimented with at

all? >> Yeah, we we we we actually we put that up front in our So, when we do these growth road maps, that's actually part Of the proposition. So, just call it out from the from day one that yep, this is what we're going to do all this for you and at some point you're going to probably want to take this in-house and we can help you because we've got training packages and we'll support you through it. The actually the likelihood of them doing that early on is quite low. But the just them knowing that

that's on the Table and is an option and you'll help facilitate it also shifts you out from being just another agency provider and turns you into a different partner. You know, like we never set out to be an agency. I'll be really honest with you, when we started the company, I didn't know what an agency was. At some point someone said, "Are you an agency?" I was like, "I don't really know." "Are you an agency?" I was like, "Am I?" Like it didn't really understand, you know, over Time I realized, yeah, we are an we

are an agency. And you kind of have to be called that to run your marketing to some extent, but we really want to be a we want to be there kind of marketing partner support them through their marketing journey, whatever that means. >> Even them being aware of the fact that you they could bring it in-house probably increases LTV in the sense that it removes the anxiety or the thing Being in the back of their mind thinking, "I've just been paying this agency this much. Should we bring this in-house?" They know it's an option. And

so it removes that anxiety in doing that, which I think is quite an interesting thought. So, I'd like to explore, and I think this would be really beneficial to people who are starting to move kind of more multi-stack because they're able to do More with AI. How are you tackling pricing? Like how are you approaching pricing when things are so you're building a road map for someone and it's so varied? If you're not doing it like the classic, okay, meta is this and UGC is this for this much and yada yada. >> Yeah, so we

we still have, you know, we still have the kind of effort-based pricing models where we'll we'll estimate according to role how Many how many hours people are going to need to spend on it. And by by segment where this meta fits. So, we have we have templates for that, so so we understand that quite well. So, we can we can give broad ideas about if we're going to manage a channel that this is how much it's going to be. I think for agencies you know, margin pressure is always a thing. You know, we we end

up over over service over servicing at Times, especially if you're trying to keep a client happy and results aren't going in the right way, or client's quite demanding. We'll just take it on board and be like, "Right, we've got to keep this client. We'll just do it." So, how do we kind of reverse that? As much as we've tried to as best estimate how much time we want to spend, we know that's not the we know that's not the reality we're going to potentially get caught out of that. So, we try and move More things

to a value-based pricing model where the client's not when they're buying those traditional services, they kind of know they're buying time to some extent. They know what they they know, right, you're going to be doing this for me. I can see how much time you're going to spend and they value it according to that because they think, okay, well, if I employed someone, how much would it cost me? And then that's how they kind of make the Trade-off. So, some of the ways we try to adapt and move pricing is to think about different commercial

models. So, one might be, okay, look, we're going to do this at this price, but what your actual commercial goals? What's your revenue overall revenue target, whether it's leads or e-commerce, what you're trying to achieve? Okay, if we hit that number and we're within a ROAS target or a CPA Target, could we get a bonus? And if we do a bit more than that, so if we hit your revenue target and we're at 400% ROAS, could we get a yearly bonus of X? But if we get a 500% ROAS, that means you're going to make

an extra Y, can we get another, you know, another ticker on top of that? That does two things. One, it changes you again from being like every other agency because you're now we all say, Oh, we're invested in your growth and you know, we want to make this make it work for you, but now we're actually putting our you know, our cards on the table and saying, right, okay, let's work on this together. We'll give you a really competitive price to work on, but we want to share in the upside. And it also means that

you've got a long-term view now because if you've got a year if you've got a year target You're working towards, your risk of being turned is going to be lower because now you're working to some real real commercial goals. So, that's one one model we've got. Another way that we've approached pricing is that with some in some clients we do this in the finance and insurance space. What we do is we actually have our own assets and we generate >> [snorts] >> um into our own assets and then we sell The leads to multiple buyers.

So, we'll do it, for example, in insurance. We'll get through hundreds of leads a day. We'll have buyers buying 50, 30, 20, and it goes on a round-robin sends us sends us leads out. And off the back of those, we can do two commercial models. We can either make a markup on the on the lead, or we can do a commission deal based on those as well. So, you need to have good You need to You wouldn't do that straight away. You Would sell the leads first, get a good They know they're good quality, and

that does two things. And the lead the call it a paper lead industry is, I would say, it's not as professional as it should be. There's a lot of like fake leads going on, all this type of stuff. But so, if you offer them a service where you're saying, "Right, we're going to We're going to build So, we'll give you leads, but we're going to make sure the leads are really good quality. And If they're good quality, we're going to end up getting more of a kickback from it. Everybody's on Everyone's on board with it."

So, we're just trying to find different commercial models that are outside of the standard agency pricing that are much more kind of value value-driven. And it It's a bit more exciting for our internal team as well. They know now when they're working on a client, they're like, "Well, okay, actually, if this client does really Well, we're going to We're going to get an additional bonus." Obviously, they get a percentage of that bonus as well. >> Mhm. It's outcome-based pricing is a is a big movement in the industry at the moment. Of course, all kind of

online industry, I would I would say. And I I And I think software experiences that, tech experiences that, agencies definitely experiences that. I think it gets tricky When we start thinking about incentivized base incentivizing based on revenue. Have you found a a model that works on the lead generation side that incentivizes you on revenue, or is is paper lead basically the best model that you attribute to at the moment? >> Um Well, what So, on the lead side, we do do a revenue-based. So, for example, take the insurance one. Um what we'll do on that

is um if the person we're selling the leads to, they sell an Insurance policy, they'll get, um, their their commission, then we get a share of share of that commission back >> How do you track that? >> So, that yeah, so that's where you've got to have really good relationship with the the the client you're working with. We've been working with a couple of these clients for like three, four years now, or maybe even longer. So, they the best paper lead models work where just you they feed back Information to you with the, you know,

the the IDs from Google or Meta, so we can feed it back to the system. So, we work So, it's not really a siloed approach. We we sell the leads, but they tell us the leads that have converted into sales. So, we're feeding that back into Google, feeding that back into Meta. And because of that transparency, they're transparent then with what's what's turned into revenue and what hasn't. So, there's a level of There's a level of trust with that with the with the client that you're working with as well. >> Makes sense. So, as your

systems get more sophisticated, as your ability to deliver better service is more consistent, and you get get stronger, how are you thinking about maintaining human brilliance across the team and Protecting them from over-reliance on everything that you've built in the company? >> Yes, good good good question actually, because we had we had that with a some new starters recently. So, I think either the operating system was down or the tokens had run out or something. The the some of the new starters were literally like, "Okay, well, I don't know how to write ad copy. Like,

how >> [laughter] >> How would I do How would I do it?" So, we've we've gone back to some of the new starters and gone back through the let's call it old school one-on-one training. Like, "Okay, this is how you do things. This is why you would do it in this way." So, that they unders- really understand the fundamentals and then go go back to it. We always tell everybody not to deploy anything directly. So, everything is human review um, at this stage. You know, there's There's a few people in the company pushing for like,

okay, maybe we can start just pushing stuff now without without review, but yeah, maybe we'll get there, but at the moment everything's still got human review, so it's your your critical thinking. How do you interpret what's come out? Is this right? Is this You know, you were on the call, you you understood the client's objectives. Does this feel right? And I think that intuition piece is something We still try and challenge the team on and ask probing questions as opposed to just relying on whatever's coming coming back from an and and AI analysis AI operating

system. We We do a lot around human skills training and commercial training as well, commercial acumen. So, I think where we Like, if you think about structures within agencies, what we've seen is you'd have that this we call it like the We call it a diamond structure now, whereas before we'd have a typical, you know, kind of triangle structure with a lot of executives, account managers, strategists, account managers kind of going up in that pyramid structure. And now it's more of a diamond. There's less executives because the other executives are AI essentially. And you've got

a wider middle layer. These people who are strategists and Commercial and can speak to clients and and build human relationships with whoever they're whoever they're working with. I think that layer is the most most important because they now need to be They need to manage their AI employees or AI agents. Everyone's got their own that they have to look after. But they have to be really good with clients. They have to be really good on still sales, have to be really good at Going to QBRs and and managing that. So, I think we QBRs as

an example, whenever we have those, we really push to have them in person. Lot of brands and clients still say, "Oh, can we do it online?" We're like, "No, can we come and can we come and see you?" Why don't you come and see us? Can we go for lunch? We try and keep that kind of human human connection so that we don't lose all those things, I think, which is Actually what makes an agency great, right? It's not just the technology. That's just That just supports us in what we do. >> Yeah, it's just

the trust that you've got a team that have that have got your best interest at heart. What do you think is the best system that you've built outside of your AIOS? >> I would say the early stages of Google Script system. So, when we when we used to have the Hundreds of accounts we were managing on Google and Google Scripts were launched. That So, that again was one of the projects I did. I was like, "Right, we can use scripts here to do X, Y, and Z." Before you would take a script and you'd put

it individually into each account and say, "I want to run this script to tell me about hourly performance or pause a campaign or do something, right?" So, that again was like, "Oh, this This is a Bit clunky." Like, and not everybody's doing it. So, we built this really complicated system of you Google Sheets with like a dashboard of all the scripts that are available and you could go into any client and go, "Right, I want to enable this script and I want to change my um hourly pattern to this because of this So, you can

control everything from a spreadsheet within the Google account, but it's all tied into Google Scripts, But it started to break. So, it was great for a period of time. That's actually why we built Technology Project and we went from just being Google-centric to then social as well and meta. So, we were like, "Right, we need to take that learning and build it into a platform." But, yeah, that those were exciting and at the time it was a great sales thing. People would see this in a pitch and be like, "Wow, this is How you how

you manage what you're doing on there." >> Is anything client-facing or is everything back-end? >> No, so we give we give clients the same access to a not the AI operating system, but the Dial 360, which is all the performance data. They have the same access our team has Access to. >> Interesting, but none of the agents that that >> Yeah, none of the agents at the moment, yeah. So, that might that might change that might change over time. Um there is some functionality within the Dial 360 suite, so they could do some AI analysis

of their data with it within there. And I would actually like it if clients went into it more. >> Mhm. >> It's surprising that, you know, you have some who go every day and others who don't go in at all. And we try and educate them at the beginning. Look, this is cuz one, it gives them again more more power. It gives them information at their fingertips and reduces them asking for stuff and waiting for and getting delays if they they've got certain information in there. But sometimes I think brands Are like they they're happy

that they know they've got it, but they trust you that you're doing the job. >> Yeah. >> Other people they they want to say it kind of it serves it works then for whoever whoever wants it. But yeah, it's the same access. They can do the same thing. So, again, it's a a point of transparency as well. It's like we're not hiding behind anything. So, if you See something in there where you're not happy with a a performance drop or something across a channel, you can raise it with your with your team that you're working

with. >> Nice. If someone's watching this and they feel quite overwhelmed by the idea of being AI-led in an existing agency with a good team with good clients, like what would you say are the foundational steps? Like where should they start rather than just Going ahead and building an operating system from day one? >> Um I'd probably start first of all to look with look at Claude. And Claude's done an an amazing job over the last 6 months. For me, it's becoming the choice of AI operating systems for business and then for, you know, by

de facto by for for agencies as well. Uh I'm sure a lot agencies have all seen This. Like if I go on my LinkedIn LinkedIn feed, it's like it's like AI overwhelm of you you know, agency's dead and you know, this is you only need these 10 skills to run your agency and you're just kind of like and then it becomes I I think there probably are a lot of agency owners who got overwhelmed with that. They're like, "Okay, well, that's great. What do I What do I do?" I'd just go into Claude's own training

program. They're we put our some of our team through that as well. Cuz we use Claude as well as our own AI operating system. Kind of got multiple and I I that all I think also agencies are going to need to have multiple operating systems that they're using. Uh but Claude's a great place to just just start go into that just understand what is beyond just chat if you're not there yet. What is what is an agent which is Like a skill in in Claude? What is a knowledge base? Just get those base I think

once you've got the foundational understanding of okay, what is a knowledge base? How that how can that help an AI tool? Okay, what what is a skill agent? How can that help me deliver some processes that I do today? And just start with pick one process that is fairly time-consuming that you'd like to shorten or you want to deliver faster. And just just try and automate it and and and build it out and just there's nothing like just testing it yourself and doing things. And that can be anyone. It can be a executive, it could

be the CEO. We try to encourage everybody all levels to be able to know how to build an agent. I think everyone needs to know the foundational skill of it because then if you're using like a no-code system to build it, you still Want to know is that right? Like you don't you can't just trust it. It's like oh yeah, it's built the agent for me. You need to understand how it works. So things a bit of just training to get the basics foundations. The technology piece can come afterwards. I think everyone's trying to do

the big thing first or they're like oh if I could get AI to talk to all of my nine different operating like nine different tools and HubSpot talks to Zero and zero you like then life don't try any of that. Like there's no point doing all of those things. Just start with something small. >> Mhm, nice. Are you or do you feel prepared for the future, the next 5 years in the business? And where do you see things going in the next 5 years in agency? >> I think I feel pretty good and pretty pretty

prepared. I think that's because We've been through this period of you know, we've we've become leaner over the last last few years. Um we've we've restructured the the both like the administration and operation side of things with within the business. And we are the moment going through a program with with our strategists, account directors, where we're we're we're trying to get them ready for the next 5 years. And so, what that means is that that's that piece about that human Brilliance. Okay, look, we think where you're going to add a lot of value is being

more involved in the sales process than before. And understanding how you can go into an organization and help them with their AI integration across marketing, sales, and operations. And the the the good thing is the markets they are there more and more people asking about it, but it's not it's not mature yet at all. It's not, You know, people aren't there yet. So, I think if we if we all agency owners had the have a bit of time to to get up to speed so that when that I think when the market opens up and

there's people looking for these type of services, they've got a team able to able to deliver it. So, at at the moment, feel feel feel confident we're we're we're in the right place. Uh, I what was the second part of the question To that? >> Where do you think it's going to be in 5 years? >> I I think us as a business and we haven't made this move yet. We're we're providing these AI, let's call it AI integration services. We're providing them alongside our performance marketing services. In 5 years, I think there's a strong

likelihood that there'll be two probably before 5 years. There'll be two distinct two distinct businesses. Uh, they they'll be, you know, they'll they'll may share the same um, OPEX, for example. They might have same HR teams and had and finance teams, but I think they'll be two very different delivery teams where at the moment at the moment there there's one. And I don't know part of me is doing that because I don't know the future of performance Marketing. Like I don't know I don't know if it will be what it is today. It will certainly

be different. >> Mhm. >> But I don't know if everyone will be able to just do stuff themselves in-house. So, part of it is a protection mechanism uh for us to have because I think that other AI integration piece, there'll be a lot of demand for it. I'm I'm I'm sure of it. I've I've seen it seen for and people can I use the same analogy for Google Ads. Everybody would like, "Well, oh, when I used to tell people I run the Google Ads, they're like, "Well, I can go and run Google Ads myself." But

we, you know, we built a whole industry out of this, right? Like, people still want experts and they still want people to hold their hand and they still want people to do it for you. So, I think the same thing will happen with AI integration where people will be like, "Okay, I need someone to help me with an AI operating system with Claude and and and help set that up." So, I think we're just trying to get ready for that, but I think that's if you you know, ask me to put a bet on it,

I reckon that part might be bigger than a performance marketing agency in the future. >> Mhm. Which part excites you more? >> For me, it would be the AI integration piece, but that's because I think I'm an entrepreneur, you know, that I'm always looking at the next the next shiny thing. I'm a I'm a quick start, not a finisher. So, I'm always on to I'm always on to the next thing and trying to create something. So, yeah, that there's a there's a there's a bias in that, but I still like going in the odd Meta

and Google account and >> [laughter] >> having a look at how performance is doing. I've learned not to touch the campaigns now. The team get very annoyed with me. >> The gap's too [laughter] large now. >> [gasps] >> Nice. Are you have you got plans for actually going to the market with that AI Integration piece? So, at the moment, it sounds like it's somewhat of a, you know, the performance marketing is there and it's not a Trojan horse, of course. It's it's there. People need that, but then people are coming naturally and finding the integrate

AI integration piece afterwards. Uh are you are you planning on being forthcoming with that and just going direct to the market with that side. >> Yes. Yeah, so what one of the questions and we I think we're talking about this just before we started is like, actually do we need to build a separate website brand and put that on there because it we've got it in within our current website, but there you know, just from an SEO perspective and all the things that we want to put on there is like I count on this actually

have quite a lot of content and pages we want to put out. So, do we need to separate it And make it its own thing? And then also the value proposition becomes a bit muddled as well. And we have had that feedback to be honest where some people be like, not quite sure what you you like you're talking about AI integration and are you better your are you still just a performance marketing? So, I can see how it might be confusing for for the, you know, the end end buyer, you know, the brands that we're

that that we're trying to trying to work With. So, yeah, I think we're I would say by the end of this year ready for next year, we will probably have a a go-to-market strategy for that that AI integration piece, but you know, touch wood at the moment we're getting enough opportunities through just our network and and the webinars and things that we're doing. >> Mhm. What do you think You are going to I'm going to reframe that. If you were to start an agency today and you don't have what you've got at the moment with

all of the team members that you've got, all of the services that you have. In many cases like us agency owners we create this complexity for ourselves. >> And I think at least the agencies that Are the biggest danger are the real big agencies that have got this, you know, hundreds and hundreds of team members that cross all these different offices and they're like moving to an AI world is it it's a scary place to be. I spoke to one of the big CRMs a couple of weeks ago that came to one of our events.

I won't name them, but they're 2,000 team members and they were like, our biggest fear at the moment is these new CRMs that we're it's so hard For us to unravel this. So, kind of understanding what that's like and making that transition in yourself. If you were starting from zero now, how would you build the business differently to how you build New York currently running it? >> I would I would probably look at from from a if I think first as a service layer, right? How are we going to service clients? I would start with

the premise with can one person manage an entire client. And then work out, okay, what tools is needed to do that. Because with with the the possibilities of AI, I do believe that if you started from scratch and said, right, this is the client, these are objectives, your job is to understand their objectives and deliver performance for them and look at The other services. From a performance marketing standpoint, this is not the not the AI integration side. Um I believe what I believe one person could do it. Well, and if they thought about what they

needed and they built all the agents and the infrastructure, you obviously need to have that technology skill or look to buy it from somewhere or or get someone in to do it. That would be a almost better investment, I think, to Build it with that from that premise, because then you're going to be so much more efficient and profitable in in any of the work work that you do. And then I think also from a from a marketing marketing standpoint, again, build these marketing funnels that can be fully fully automated. I think I think the

possibility again is again to do that. You know, you can whatever you're doing, you can just you can automate the entire flow. Like Something we're work I was just working on today with we're we're trying to improve our posting on on Instagram. And we get daily news on AI and we got this faceless carousel builder that builds the the content and then builds the assets and then can deploy it straight to Now, I haven't put them all together yet, but they're all individuals. I was like, "Hold on, why don't we just now we're at to

point about human Intervention, maybe we don't need to be involved in this piece. So, we could make automate this out news and information every day going out. Well, I could probably automate the email out as well, build the email I think email we talked about earlier is the most underused marketing channel. And actually, if I was a new brand thinking about it now, I would probably focus everything on building my email list. And thinking about strategies and Content I can put out. I could make 10 lead magnets if I if I didn't have all the

other complexities like that we've got, I could probably build 10 10 lead magnets tomorrow or tonight and put them out and start marketing them and, you know, run ads to them and put them out and and email email sign up on Matter is actually or and even Google you can it's very low cost. You don't need a huge budget to start building that email list Up. And then you and then you automate the emails out to those and you would you could I think you could, you know, it's probably something we should do I should

do actually, but yeah, but cuz I think those things all a lot of these things we don't do are not not done we I find in my case because it feels like too much effort. It's like, "Okay, who am I going to get involved to do it? How much time is going to take?" But I think All those barriers don't don't really exist anymore. >> Mhm. I would agree. And then it's just being able to ruthlessly prioritize which are the things that matter the most. How are you how are you finding that with yourself personally

like being able to prioritize the right things and not context switch so much from from doing different things? >> Yeah, so I mean, it's a lifelong challenge. >> [laughter] >> I think cuz all the especially my personality type. So, yeah, I um I try to pick the pick the battles I think we're going to win in both internally. Like so, I might have a great idea, but if everybody's not on board with it, it's like, "Okay, let's let's not tackle that." I've learned to take a bit of pressure off and like, "Okay, that seems like

a good idea, but Maybe now's not the right time. Let's let's do that in Let's do that in six Let's Let's do that in six months. I think for us for us now like everything that we're trying to focus the projects on are if we do this project internally, for example, let's say it's a an AI optimization optimization project, could we turn that into a product that we could market? So, that's kind of the framing that we've got. So, if someone comes up with something like, "Okay, we could do that, but could is that valuable

as a product outcome?" Then we then we probably wouldn't do it. So, we're we're trying to build things that we think we could productize and and market because they become lead magnets and that type of thing. So, whereas an example, we've we've built one for create this this creative UGC um creator that we've built. We've built on top of that a whole creative pipeline that takes all the ad data, finds the patterns, finds the data points, and produces a brief that you could give to a client that they could give to a creative team, or

you could use the creative builder. So, that whole workflow is optimized for us to help serve better for our clients. But we know we can take that to market. So, that's going to be the next product That we take to take to market and with a with a white paper and webinar and that type of thing as well. >> Nice. And when you say take it to market, are you going to sell it, or are you just going to use it as a a free lead magnet to get people into the funnel? >> So, we'll

we'll give the how you can run like why you need to run lots of Creatives something like Meta with the Andromeda update and how you can do it to kind of give the the theory behind it and some of the steps towards it. But if you want us to run it for you and set it up for you, we could do that for you and then that that would become a paid paid part. And then if then they want the production of it, then there'll be the production at at the end of it. And then

you might have then the Trojan horse which is like, "Okay, actually do you Want to take over the Meta account and manage that?" Or "Actually, could you help me with my overall growth strategy?" >> Yeah, makes sense. It's interesting. I was thinking about this the other day, just the idea that if everybody's got the buff, no one has the buff. And so, if anybody everybody now in theory can create sophisticated lead magnets, which are micro SaaS of in themselves, we we get extremely excited about these Things. And and and actually, I think there's probably a

a good few years or or or maybe at least 12 months, I'd like to think, where you know, agencies like you and I and and other agencies that are thinking about it on a more advanced sense and building in these really great assets have this unique advantage in the marketplace. But at some point, everyone's going to be doing it. At some point, someone will take that system That you've built, upload it into their iOS, and say, "Replicate this for me." And it'll be able to do that. And I think that's going to be interesting at

that point to observe what happens. But at least for now, I think there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a window >> There's a window, yeah. >> There's a window. [laughter] >> Yeah. And I And yeah, and I think that yeah, to put exactly that, I think, you Know, we You asked the question about 5 years. Like, yeah, I think, okay, well, what what what do we know we can There's going to work for 6 or 12 months. Let's do that. And we have to I think we all will have to be really

nimble and adapt adaptable to how the market's changing. And you know, at the moment, GEOs are great products in terms of this what everybody wants working well. But who knows in 12 months, it might be Something completely different that that that that changes it. But I For me, I think the good thing is I don't know if you felt this. Post-COVID, I felt like there was no change in the industry. Nothing happened. Mm. Everything was just the same. Like, the odd new type of campaign type, but there was nothing really that exciting. And we need

change to be able to be Innovative and find new products to market and sell and talk to businesses about. So, everyone cuz then also, the brands get excited. Whereas, I felt for a while it was just, "Oh, nothing's changed. So, we'll just change agency, or maybe we'll do it nothing. And it wasn't really that enjoyable. So, actually, it whilst it's like these small windows, I think it it's creative in this bit of, you know, I think we should enjoy the journey as Well. >> Yeah, I agree. I agree. Are you motivated by an exit in

a business and does the kind of uncertainty I suppose of of the next 5 to 10 years drive you towards that or are you you know you're you're you're on this ship regardless of where it goes? >> No, I think we I think we've always had a an an exit in mind. Now, that might not Mean exiting as a sale or might mean exiting and staying on as a you know, we're still quite involved in the business both myself and uh Steve the other co-founder. It might mean being less less in less involved and having

having the team running it. I mean, we're we're quite fortunate we've got a kind of the senior management team have been with us a really long time. They've Been with us through that growth period in 2000 from 2016. They've been there. They understand the culture of the company, understand how we work, you know, what we like, what we don't like. They can challenge us as well. So, I think there's a team there that we could, you know, hand over the reins to um that have, you know, got a lot of loyalty, you know, understand what

we'd want from From the business and how we want it to grow. So, I think either two things will happen over the next next 5 years. I think there will either be some some form of an exit or maybe us taking less of a less of a day-to-day um involvement in the business. I think Yeah, the the beach is calling me >> [laughter] >> at some point. So, I'll be I'm I'm trying to What I'm Trying to do now is spend spend more time doing those things like I think as you as you start to

get older I I I hit 50 last year. So, you I look at this decade as being, you know, hopefully my health is really good for a long time, but like I think 50 to 60 it might be the the best you know, best healthy years for me now. Hopefully it's not, but so I don't really I want to I personally want to Make the most of that. So, that might mean we have a working from anywhere policy. Anyone can go for a month and work from anywhere. So, you know, I'll I'll be using that

in to go into India and going to go. I've got a place that I can do some traveling in India as well. So, I think taking some of these some of those advantages, I think with because of the nature of our business, we have that ability now to to be able To go and work remotely. And I think so, part of it is maybe if I do more of that, I haven't done as much as I would have liked to. Maybe if I start to do that a bit more and we'll go and go to

the UK. I love the coast. I love the cold water swimming. If I If I do that more often then I can work and still get my walks in. Do that may maybe a maybe I can carry on and, you know, still have a still have a good involvement as well. >> Nice. I've got some rapid-fire questions for you. >> Okay, good. >> One of which you've already answered. Uh the first one is uh one brand that you'd love to work with that you haven't already. >> Vivo Barefoot. >> Nice. I'm wearing >> Yeah, there

you go. Yeah. >> that. Come on. >> We did a we we we work with the British Footwear Association and we did a GEO workshop and I used Vivo Barefoot as my examples. I said, "If anybody knows Vivo Barefoot, can you put them in touch?" So. >> That's good, yeah. I've been I've been only Vivos now for the past like 4 years. >> Oh, amazing. >> Yeah, there you go. So, what about you? >> [laughter] >> I I've had them for 4 years, but I've I I don't know what happens. Sometimes I just stop wearing

them. I'm like, "Why am I stop wearing my Vivos?" So, but I've got these and I've got the Vivo sandals now. So, I've got them set now, yeah. >> Nice. Nice. Nice. Nice. And you kind of already answered this, but most underrated agency growth strategy. You said email, but I wondered if something else comes to mind when I say that. >> Yeah, email marketing. >> Mhm. Best AI tool right now that isn't yours. >> Oh. >> [sighs] >> And not Claude. >> [laughter] >> Arcades. >> Mhm. Arcades over Hixfield? Have you tried Hixfield? >> I

haven't tried Hixfield. I know the Team use use Hixfield, but I think still it's still good. If someone's used it, that's a great one. >> I just wondered if there was a an argument. >> No, yeah. >> Okay. One thing every agency owner should stop doing. >> Micromanaging. >> One thing you wish you learned earlier as a founder. >> Not everything's in your control. >> Ricky, thanks so much. >> Thank you.