10 Proven Strategies to Turbocharge New Business Development

Business development is a really hot topic at the moment. Agencies are being squeezed left, right and center by clients who want more for less, by AI that's making automation so much easier and potentially devaluing the services that agencies offer. So I wanted to revisit an episode with business development guru Katie Streets. So she shares a bunch of really useful insights and some great reminders of what we should be focusing on if we want a constant stream of of new ideal target clients. So let's jump back into this episode and remind ourselves of why business development is so important and what we should be focusing on.

I'm Rob Da Costa and this is the Agency Accelerator Podcast. As someone who has stood in your shoes, having started, grown and sold my own agency, I know just how it feels in the ups and downs of agency life. So this podcast aims to ease your journey just a little by sharing mine and my guests experiences and advice and as you navigate your way to growing a profitable, sustainable and enjoyable business. So welcome everybody to today's episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast. Today we are talking all things business development and I'm really excited to be joined by Katie Street. Now Katie runs the Street Agency, helping agencies with their new business but more than the typical agencies. So they help getting their positioning right, building marketing plans, outreach campaigns and lead gen and all that kind of stuff. And Katie also runs her podcast, Word on the street, helping agencies win more business. So I am really excited to have you on the podcast. You and I share so many sort of similar thoughts around this topic, so I'm excited to dig into it with you today. So first of all, welcome Katie and why don't you give us a bit of a potted history of how your journey has developed in the agency world.

Thank you Rob, and what a perfect introduction as well. And I am so shocked that we haven't spoken to before. So I'm really excited to dig into all things new business and a bit of agency growth stuff as well today.

Excellent.

So my history, where do I start? My goodness. Right, okay. So I was lucky enough to be thrown at a very young yet age actually because I didn't take the traditional route to, you know, life as I don't with anything really. So when I first started work I was only 17 years old and I'd actually just finished my, I was one, I'm one of the youngest, you know, in the year obviously and that's why I'm still so young now. But I, I went straight into work fresh out of doing a kind of GMVQ in Business because I didn't really know what I wanted to do and basically needed to earn some money because I wanted to get a mortgage at 18 because I was getting some inheritance and landed on my feet in a job that I just absolutely loved. So my first ever job was it for United Advertising and I worked for Exchange and Mart and I was actually their first ever field salesperson so they sent me out to go and meet all the motor traders. I moved very quickly up the ladder there started I was managing the evening sales teams at the grand old age of about 19, probably salesperson of the year, all that kind of stuff. So it was a great introduction into the world of sales for me. I had some fantastic training. I then ended up moving up to London, stayed in the world of publishing and went to work for fhm started working with agencies selling advertising space and sponsorship deals for things like the High Street Honeys and various other things which is great fun at a young age. Then actually went client side and got some funding from an employer that I was with at the time, Perna Rickard to do my post grad in marketing even though I wasn't a grad but I had enough work experience under my belt by that point to to be I guess put on the course and spent a few years there then had a child and by this age I'm only about 25 by the way so yeah I'd been doing doing ever so well in kind of sales and marketing then moved back down to Bournemouth from London and went into the agency world because down in Bournemouth there was a really fantastic creative hub and I think I've spent the last now so I'm going to show my age now 12, 13, 14 ish years leading new business and marketing for agencies and I've been really lucky and have you know, gone back up to London although been living in Bournemouth so I've been really lucky to work with agencies at every size for from sitting on the board of some quite small independent agencies with very high growth targets so that's agencies with sort of eight staff and also some with sort of 40, 50 staff where I kind of led the new business and marketing strategy and also big networked agencies. So I've got or I had a really good view on what worked at every single scale and then after years of being poached by lots of agencies to help them run their new business and working with lots of lead gen and new business agencies that I I guess got frustrated with I thought you know what, I'm going to take the leap And I'm going to go and do it myself. So got myself a good contract with my first client and and off I went. And here we are today, a very fast growing agency ourselves I guess because you know, we are street is an agency for agencies. So yeah, exciting.

And I'm sure loads of people, including me, will sort of relate to your journey of how you got into the agency world and you know, thinking like the thing that got me started in my agency back in 92 as a young arrogant marketing manager for a software company was the fact that I felt like we couldn't hire a decent agency that really understood what we did. So I thought, I know I'm going to do it myself. And I think for a lot of us that young naive innocence kind of helps us because I can't help but think now I'm old and gray, I wouldn't be brave enough to do some of the things I did back then. But you know, like for you and I it sort of worked well and here we are today. So I just wanted to sort of start off by asking you the question of what you think are some of the key difference differences between successful agencies and less successful agencies when it comes to, you know, growth and new business and so on.

Yeah, I mean, gosh, big question and there's probably lots of things that obviously derive success but from a new business and marketing point of view, I think there's two things that I personally think are really important. So first of all is well, I guess just doing things. There's so many agencies. The biggest struggle that most agencies have and all of you guys listening out there will hopefully empathize with this is just making the time for new business and marketing content activity, outreach, whatever it might be. Because as soon as your clients are shouting and you're busy delivering client work, that is the priority. And it, and it should be the priority. It's what's paying the bills. But what tends to happen is that you know, then new business and the marketing activity, whatever it may be, gets pushed to the back and it's very easy to get forgotten. And you really need that. You know, from my point of view, you really need that always on approach. So it's agencies that respect that, I think initially that do well that you invest time and money into developing a in house team usually. And I, you know, although we are an agency for agencies, I don't, you know, most of our clients do have a team also. It's not always just us. Some clients, you know, do just use us, but majority of them do have an in house team as well. So I think initially, you know, most agencies go wrong because they don't actually reserve the time or give new business the time, respect, money that it needs to really flourish.

And then I couldn't agree more off.

The back of that become a whole load of other things. But the biggest thing is also giving up too early. You know, it's so frustrating for, for me and you. Gosh, anyone out there who's listening, who's been involved with either hiring a new business person or is a new business person themselves is, I think often that new business person is looked upon as the kind of solution to all their problems. And I'm sure people feel the same about agencies like us. And I'm not saying that person isn't going to be the solution to your problems. But to my mind, new business and marketing for an agency is everyone's business within the agency. It is not one person's job to deliver all of the new business. It's a team effort. So you can't, you know, put the, and, and we do, you know, I, I felt the weight of it on my shoulders many a time thinking, oh my goodness, if we don't win this, you know, big deal that we've got coming in, I'm going to, my neck's on the line, I'm going to lose my job. And that's not a nice way for anyone to feel. And it wouldn't have, you know, necessarily necessarily even been my fault if we didn't win it. You know, there's a big team involved usually in, you know, coming up with the strategy, quoting the job here and then, you know, you're selling all of your people, not just your new business person. So I think that's also something and not giving them enough time I guess. So that's a third extra one is, you know, it's expected that within six months you'll see fantastic results and a lot of new business people turn up with a fantastic little black book. I've got one, I've had one. And they, they will hopefully get some leads through and opportunities in early doors that hopefully you'll be able to convert. But the reality is new business works best when it's always on and it's been running for over a year. So I just think agencies don't give the new business people, person, agency or process enough time sometimes because once you've been doing it and it's consistent and you and I both know this Rob, and I'm sure we're going to talk about it today because I do actually practice what I preach. It works so beautifully and it just gets so easy and it shouldn't become a chore anymore. So yeah, hopefully we can share some ideas around that today.

Yeah, I mean, listen, you, you could. It almost looks like I've given you a script of what to say which trust me everybody, because I, you know, otherwise what happens is agencies lurch from feast to famine, right? They're in the place of feast. They've got absolutely no time to do anything but service clients. They're trying to juggle 20 different demands. The business development goes out the window, the marketing goes out the window. Projects come to an end often through no fault of the, of your own because things happen and then suddenly you're looking at an empty order book and you panic at that point because you need to pay your bills. And so, and that panic leads to, as far as I can see, two things that often happen. One is that you take on any kind of client and if you take on the wrong kind of client that doesn't fit in your core niche then, or your sweet spot, then they are really difficult to keep happy and so you end up over servicing them. That creates more stress in the agenc. And the second thing people do is they discount because they're desperate to win business so they discount their services. Now I'm filling our time with less profitable work and again that leads to stress. I talk about being stuck on the client service hamster Wheel of Doom and I need to trademark that term because I talk about all the time to my clients. And this is the thing, like if you're stuck on that client service hamster Wheel of Doom, you've got no time to do any marketing or any business development. So you have to, as Katie says, you have to protect that time. And doesn't matter how busy you get, you just have to think this is how much time I've got for servicing clients. I really like this expression that you use the always on kind of mentality towards your sales and marketing.

Yeah. And I think you've got to, you've got to look at it like that. Now I know your audience tends to be sort of between, you know, smaller agencies from sort of one person all the way up to sort of 25 and we sit bang in the middle of that. I think we've just recruited our 14th member of staff will probably be about 20. Hopefully we're, we're aiming, we'll probably by the end of our financial year we'll probably be at about 25. So, you know, the reason that we're growing is because from day one. Well, I say day one, that's the fib. I. I am a new business and marketing person and I know the importance of it. So maybe not from day one, but within the first six months I had recruited someone to solely do our marketing and I know the importance of that. And it feels risky. You know, at one stage There were only four of us and this person, you know, is 25% of my agencies. You know, staff costs are going on, someone that isn't delivering work for me, but it has been absolutely essential to us growing. And now we have a team of two, if you exclude me, we've just, we're just moving one of the, One of the other staff, actually, into a new business role to support me on the new business. And we're recruiting another digital marketing exec. So we will actually have, you know, for a relatively small agency, four employees dedicated to our sales and marketing, which is brilliant for me. So important. And, and most agencies that we work with, you know, three times the size of us don't have four people in their team. But it does work. You've got, but you've got to, you've, you know, I mean, there's, you know, smart things we do, you know, work, use digital marketing apprentices, etc. So I'm not saying that we're, you know, spending. Well, we are, of course, spending thousands, but we're being clever about how we're, how we're doing it and I'm certainly leading that team. But I think, you know, if you don't, if you don't recruit for that team, it will always happen that, you know, client work will come first. Even if you're trying to segregate partial time from one of your staff members.

Which is what a lot of people do, right? They say, right, one of your clients is us. And then of course, that client goes to the back of the queue. So I listen, I know loads of people are going to relate to this and they're probably shouting at the computer or their phone as they listen to this driving along, going, that's all very well in theory, but I'm stuck on the client service Hamster wheel of doom. What do I do to get off? What. So what would be your tip to someone, an agency who's, who's really busy, who's super stretched, who is not thinking about this because they've got enough money coming today, but of course, they're not thinking about the future, enough what advice would you give them? What would be your words of wisdom?

So I think it's one, it's to do something. Always doing something is better than doing nothing. And I mean, I talk a lot on my podcast about solving and not selling. So again, one of the big reasons that agencies often don't do well is they don't think about the needs of their audience and they just start pushing out, you know, doing cold calling or recruiting a lead gen agencies that's gonna, a Legion agency that's gonna bash the phones and you know, basically sell to them, going, look at us, look how great we are. Totally the wrong approach. I'm not saying that you won't get some potential leads from that, but they won't be, they certainly won't be quality leads. So the biggest piece of advice that I can give is one, first of all, think about your audience, what their problems are. And you'll know this because your audience are your clients. So if you're solving problems for your clients all the time, you'll start to see trends, because that is what U.S. agencies do. We do solve problems usually. And you'll know, you know, what the key topics and things that you should be talking about are. So first of all, think about your content strategy. What are the problems your audience have? How can you help solve them and develop content around that? And that doesn't have to mean you waiting for your next, next project to go live and going, oh, I can't write a case study for that doesn't. You don't need case study content. I've built my whole agency without having a single case study on my website. Not saying that we're not redoing our website at the moment and about to publish a whole lot of case studies. But I have got to this stage without publishing any case studies on my website. So it's funny.

Sorry to interrupt you. It's funny how people put these roadblocks in their way because I can hear some people saying, oh, I can't start doing this because I don't have the case studies to back it up. And that doesn't really matter, does it? It's like you say, if you understand the pain that someone in that you can solve and that's what you talk about, then people are going to be interested in listening to you and that is it.

And if you can start developing and think about, you know, the way that I have structured our content is so it's easy and manageable for us to develop it. So I mean, I don't Think my marketing team would agree with this, but it feels easy to me, maybe not so much to them because it's a full time job for them. However, what we have done is made sure that, you know, we develop content that is reusable and that we can shatter down. So try and think of something that's going to be easy for you as a business owner or someone responsible or leading the sales and marketing or responsible for getting new clients in. You know, things that you can do that are going to be easy and repeatable because you want to have consistent content that's continually being pushed out to market. So think about what you can use or what you can do to help you develop that. So for some people that's writing content and insights posts. For some people that's recording a podcast. For some people that's hosting webinars. For some people that might be hosting physical events. For some people that might be recording YouTube videos, whatever it might be, or you know, creating some form of social content, whatever it is, just start. And if you start small, then that's absolutely fine. You test it, you see what the engagement's like and you just start doing something. Doing something is better than nothing. And yeah, do things that are going to be like I say, we're all different. Do something that's going to be easy for you and think about how you can reuse that content. You know, again, another thing that I see agencies do. So, Rob, I'm going off on the right tangent here. I've got so many things that's all right.

And I want to touch upon that whole what you're about to go into now. So let's go with that because just before we came on air, Katie and I were talking about some of the webinars that, that Katie runs every month and how well they're doing. And Katie was talking to me about how they taking that content and reusing it. So just talk us a bit about that and inspire people how they can do the same thing with their content.

Yes. So the webinar is something that we do once a month, but it probably produces us at least 10 pieces of content a month. So. So it's a live event itself. So we host it on Zoom. As a Zoom webinar we have usually, in fact, we've got 1200 people signed up now, which is so amazing boast about that. But you know, we record it live. We usually now probably, you know, on a. We probably have around 25% attendance and then we push it out via, you know, YouTube and on, on video and people go back and watch them. But that produces us a live event. It produces us a video which we edit and put onto YouTube. So there's two different assets. We then use that video and cut it up into social clips that we will push out throughout the month. And to promote next month's webinar, so we might do three or four video clips. We also, in fact, one of the most valuable pieces of content that we have found in the past few months in terms of growth and engagement are the really nice value slideshares. So you'll see them on LinkedIn and Instagram where you're giving a statement or extra piece of information or some value add on each slide. So we create a value post out of it and we also write up the whole, you know, webinar itself and pop that onto our website. Now we, and we also don't just leave it there. We then use email marketing and we'll put pull things out, you know, in the email to push that out to our engaged dataset. So, you know, we use one. We do one thing which takes me an hour to record. And then I'm not saying, you know, that it's not, you know, it's not the easiest thing to do to cut or cut up all that content, but there's so many great platforms out there, like, I don't know if you know, lately that, you know, enables you. I think that's what Gary Vernacek and I'm going to check that lately is the right platform. But that enables you to cut that corner content up and produce you. It will actually even. It will learn the language and the things that your audience want to hear about and the things that from a marketing perspective are going to help get you noticed. And it will then pick out the right time codes for you. It will write your post for you, and it will cut the video into the section that you want it. All you've then got to do is publish it. I mean, there's so many things out there. And what we do is, you know, we try to make it easy for ourselves. On the lookout for cool new tech like that as well. That helps.

It's amazing. And listen, it's if, I guess if people are feeling overwhelmed by this, you need to take Katie's advice, which is do one thing, do it really well, and then think about how many different ways you can cut it. I mean, in a more simplistic way, if you take this podcast, well, we're recording this podcast, so it will go on onto the Podcast channel and you know, distributed via the various channels like Apple Podcasts. But we're also recording a video of it so we can post that onto YouTube. We'll also cut up some of this video to promote a social media. We'll also create an audiogram that we can use to promote on social media and so on and so on and so on. So even with a simple thing, well, it's not simple, but a thing like this wheel finding five or six ways of reusing the content. And I think what I see. I showed this. I have a. My group coaching program. I showed them this diagram last time we had a group called. Which was a circle with a big warning sign in the middle of it. And at the top of the circle it says new marketing or business development idea. The second box was try it for a while and implement it. The third box was, oh, well, Rob, it might work for you, but it's not working for me. And then it goes back to the top and moves on to the next shiny new object. I think this goes back to your point earlier, which is you have to be consistent and persistent with stuff. There is almost no. Despite what crazy people on Instagram and Facebook will tell you, there is no magic bullet to this. You have to do a few things, do them really consistently and stick out them. Even if you feel like you're not getting anywhere, as long as you're being smart, looking at analytics and so on, and refining things and understanding your audience, you have to be persistent with that.

Yeah, it's so true. In fact, I had the lovely Lucy Mann on my podcast recently and she said something that I can totally resonate with is you speak to agencies now. We did a webinar, but we just didn't really get anything from it. Yes, because you did it once and you didn't reuse the content. You didn't let it live and breathe. And you did it once and you're hoping to get what, 10 leads and 10 meetings and it look, I mean, obviously, you know, we have had occasions where we've done that. We did a webinar for a client and we've had, you know, four or five meetings straight off the back of it. And luckily, you know, they've had two opportunities which they've managed to convert. But you've got to look at the whole of your new business yo funnel and cycle in your pipeline. And if you've got half a brain, you'll realize you're doing that one thing. It might take you six months to a year to convert Any actual paid work from that it might not do and you can get lucky. We've done some fantastic physical events for clients where within a few months they've converted three or four clients. But you've got to give it the time and it always works better if you're consistent and you've got that always on approach.

Yeah, people, I guess people want a shortcut. We live in a very sort of impatient society now, an immediate society, and they want that gratification immediately. And you don't, you're not going to get it. So let me just ask you a bit of a controversial, well, it might not be controversial question, but this is sort of my experience and my view with my clients around new business so often they try to outsource the complete new business problem as they see it to someone else. So they might hire a new biz agency or a lead gen agency. They might even try something like telemarketing, which I'm not sure works at all anymore. Or they might hire in an expensive business development manager and often, often, often ends up costing them a lot of money and a lot of time and it doesn't deliver the results. And I always end up telling my clients that the best people to sell your agency are you the agency owner or the senior team. So, and I'm sure that's a bit of a polarized black and white view and I'm sure there is a lot of, there's some gray there. But what's your view on that? What's your response to that?

Well, do you know what, it's why I set up my own agency because I always did better at leading new business than any of the kind of lead gen new biz agencies that we recruited. So I knew that there was a better way to do it. And I'm not saying that we are the problem, the problem, the answer to all of the agency's new business problems. You do have to look holistically at, you know, the new business process from beginning to end and make sure, you know, for instance, I think a lot of agencies, and I hear this all the time, we just need leads. We're fantastic at converting. We just need, you know, qualified good leads. So, you know, if you can get us some leads, we'll, we'll smash converting them. And some of the agencies, you know, do do that. But more often than not there needs to be some work done on the conversion process as well. So actually we've started doing some consultancy with a lot of our clients on that and helping them with that. Opportunity to win process as well as, you know, the attraction side of things. So I think 100%, you cannot rely on someone like, you know, street agency or the various other new biz consultancies, marketing agencies, technologies that are out there to come in and solve all of your problems. You've got to, you've got to give it enough time, love and respect internally as well. And I think certainly, you know, some of the smaller agencies that we work with, you know, will be starting to get them some fantastic leads and opportunities and then they'll be like, oh, we're really busy. We can't have that meeting until next week. I'm like, that's why you're going to lose the opportunity, because you're not giving it the love. You know, we've worked really hard to get you these meetings and opportunities and then you're going, oh, we're really busy. Yeah, yeah, I might be able to have a call with them next week. Well, they've gone to someone else by then. You need you. You have to give new business the respect it deserves. And if you've got the wrong attitude to it, and I think, you know, new business, sales, whatever you want to call, you know, what we do, I often refer to what we do more is actually marketing than I do sales. But it, you know, it does achieve sales. At the end of the day, it's what we're all working towards. So if you don't give it the time or respect at any stage of the journey and you don't treat it right, it. You won't, you won't win because there'll always be an agency that are faster, smarter, working harder, going there. You've all, you know, you've always got to think, what is the extra that I can deliver? How can I be asking better questions, delivering a more exciting response to an RFP or a more elaborate pitch that really shows that I care? You've got to go extra at every stage in the journey and if you don't, then there'll always be someone else that is.

Yeah, it's so true. I really like. When I was sort of prepping for today's podcast, I was looking at your website and LinkedIn profile and so on. I really like your holistic approach. And it's funny, as you were saying holistic, I was writing that word down on my pad because you don't just look at the lead gen piece, you look at the whole thing from the agency's positioning. And I guess often you must see the situation where an agency asks you to go and solve problem A, but, like, generate more leads for us. But when you look under the hood, you realize that actually they've got problem B that needs solving. Like, for example, they don't have a clear proposition. They're trying to be too generalized. They don't have a clear niche. They think they're special, but they're not. And you've got to burst their bubble. So I guess you must have to look at all of that stuff before you can actually start implementing anything.

Definitely. Oh, gosh, Rob, there's so much I want to talk about, but definitely that first piece is so important. If strategically you don't understand who the audience that really need you are, that need you more than any other audience, and you don't understand the problems that they have, the whole thing's going to fall flat on its face because you're going to be talking to the wrong people and attracting the wrong kind of leads potentially. So that initial strategic piece, I guess, is where, you know, we, we focus so much more time and energy, and a lot of our clients will say to us, gosh, you said you were different to the others. And, you know, a lot of them have often worked with the others, and they're like, gosh, you really are. You really, you really do treat this differently because you have to understand the right, you know, messaging and approach right up front. Because if you don't, what you're going to do and where I believe, you know, a lot of agencies go wrong is attract the wrong leads, that's going to waste you a lot of time. But also, you know, agencies that often haven't done this before, they don't have that kind of nice, big, you know, I always refer to it like a snowball. We start, we start small. And, you know, the agencies that we've been working with for two years do so much better with us than the ones that have been working with for six months. And I'm quite honest with our clients about that, saying that the longer and the more you do this, the better it will get. But also it enables them to, to not qualify in on what you were talking about earlier, which are those really terrible leads and opportunities that aren't the right fit for them or they're going to have to heavily discount because, you know, the, they're desperate for work because they haven't got a strong amount of, or, you know, a hot pipeline of leads. And, and, you know, people that they can talk to, they don't know where their next lead is coming from. So they get desperate, they discount, they, they, you know, work with the wrong kind of clients that maybe haven't got the right attitude or aren't the perfect fit for them. So if you do this right, and I really, you know, I can't say this enough, if you do this right, you invest the time and you approach it strategically, you, it will just get easier. It's no effort for us now, you know, we get 20, between 20 and 30 new business inquiries a month. We do qualify out of obviously the majority of them, otherwise I would be a millionaire.

You wouldn't have time to.

Yeah, but yeah, we do qualify out of a lot of them. However, you know, it does mean I, we can do that really quickly and we can refer those leads to the right kind of partners for them. But I have so many leads because we've been doing this consistently for a long time, basically.

Yeah, there's nothing like practicing what you preach and I guess you have to find the right kind of client that gets this, that is willing for you to take a broader view of their business rather than just coming in and generating some leads. I've got just a quick story of a client, a London agency I worked with years ago. And they contacted me originally and said, hey Rob, can you come and do some sales training with us? And I'm not really do sales training, but I went and chatted to them and they said their problem was that they had a sales team of about four people who were getting a lot of leads and they weren't closing them, so they thought they needed some sales training for those salespeople. So I said, look, before we do any of that, what I need to do is do a bit of fact, find and look a bit broader around your agency. And the issue turned out to be not that they, the salespeople weren't any good, but they weren't, they were. Their qualification process further up the sales funnel was really poor. So they were handing really inappropriate leads to the sales team who of course couldn't close them. And so I said, actually what you need to do is have a better filtering process, a better qualification process so that your sales team have left less leads to deal with, which meant they're not flying all over the place and, but they close a high rate. And that was the issue. And that's. We were able to figure that out just because we look broader in the agency, which I guess is what you need to do at the beginning of your engagement with clients.

Definitely. And you know, we've, we onboarded a lot of Clients actually, especially recently, that have been doing exactly that, they've actually been doing some new business activity and developing content, but maybe it's just not quite right and therefore they're not getting the right type of leads. So they're, you know, they're either qualifying out of them because they're not right for them or they're going for them and not winning them because they're not quite right for them. So that strategy piece, super important.

Yeah. I just want to dig into one other question. I'm conscious of time today, but you and I could probably talk for another two hours. Yeah. What, what changes did you see during the pandemic? What, what was the attitude towards new business and how did agencies respond and how did it impact you?

Good question. Well, it's impacted my business personally brilliantly, because I think quite early doors. I knew that lots of agencies had a problem or were going to have a problem, so we started producing helpful content. And of course I did think this is going to be good for us from a new business point of view. I want to help as many agencies as I can because I know that it will come back tenfold. But we've never for street and I'm not saying this is going to be forever. We will change this. You know, we've never had to do any sales outreach. All of our marketing means that the right kind of opportunities actually come to us. So it does make life very. I'm saying, I'm not saying we don't do any outreach. We do do outreach, but we only push out our marketing and help.

Listen, I, and I tell everybody that's what, that's the best way of getting new business. And it's exactly what I do. I don't do, you know, I put my marketing out there and I get inbound inquiries. I do very little direct outreach to people. So, you know, good for you. That's, you know, I completely concur with that.

It works. I'm not saying that we'll do that forever because we will probably start to transition now and we've got, we know the type of agency that we can work really well for. So we are going to have a bit of a, a step change, I guess, in that direction. But I think, you know, the biggest thing that, that I saw is the agencies that, and there were many of them that turned off their sales and marketing early do and stopped doing anything because they thought it was the easiest thing to cut. And, you know, some of these agencies I actually used to work with or for are really Struggling now. You know, their teams have shrunk because there's been other agencies out there that have continued with their marketing outreach, and they have continued, like we have done, to push out helpful content that now their share of voice is so much bigger than the ones that didn't. So I think that's something, you know, that I saw and of course, doing what I do, you know, I guessed that that would be the case. I mean, it's obvious. You look at any historical stats, those that you have kind of marketed themselves through, whether it be a recession or, you know, World War II or whatever it might be, have come out on top because their share of voice was bigger, especially because there were less people talking. So I think that, for me, is. Is one of the biggest things. And actually, we had. We didn't. It took a little bit longer at the beginning of the pandemic for deals to come through. So there's been quite a flurry of, you know, agencies that we've been working with over last year that stuck with it, that maybe didn't win as many opportunities last year because it was slower for people to make decisions. Everyone was, you know, you know, within the. The brand world that we're usually marketing our agencies to, everyone was, you know, taking longer to get there, or, you know, their CFOs were getting involved. Everything was. Was taking longer. But those that stuck with it and stuck with their marketing, you know, we've got clients that have already won just from their work with us, five or six clients this year, because this year everyone's taking action. So I think the market out there, you know, a bit like the property market at the moment, seems to be very buoyant and there seems to be a lot of positivity out there. But, yeah, those, those. Yeah. This is why I say the biggest thing is to just do. If you can start, you'll do brilliantly.

Yeah, I completely agree with that. I've got a really interesting client who's part of my group coaching program, and they do PR for health and beauty and spas and. And that kind of thing. And of course, the minute pandemic hit, they literally lost all their clients, bar one, which was the body that looks after spas. And we sat down and put a strategy together, and it was exactly like that. Keep serving your audience, keep providing value to your audience, keep inspiring them about how they can keep serving their aud. And then as things came out of the pandemic, her business is flying now because of that. She's on so much business and I just want to. I really love your solving not selling. I might have to nick that because I always talk to people about you have to get the A. I can see you have to get the 80, 20 rule apply to all of your marketing, which is 80 provide value, 20 sell. And you have to get that balance right. And if you don't, then you're either going to be seen as a fantastic resource but no one will ever buy from you or you're going to piss everybody off and they're going to unsubscribe from you because you're just trying to sell, sell, sell, which doesn't work. So, you know, it's great to have someone who's kind of singing off exactly the same hinge sheet. So listen, I'm conscious of time. Katie, I really appreciate your time today and we should get together again. And there's lots more we could have talked about. But the question I ask all of my guests at the end of an interview is if they could go back in time and give their younger business self a piece of advice, what would it be?

I think the biggest thing that I've probably learned is just to be more. Well, I am very action focused but to be braver. And I'm very much someone that goes with my gut feeling in life. But I think when I was younger I would look to other people for reassurance and maybe hold back and wait before I took action. So I would say the biggest thing is just to try things. Your worst thing is something might not work quite right but you'll learn very quickly that it's not going to work right. So yeah, take action as quickly as you can and do things would be my advice to my younger self.

Great. And yeah, I think it's a really good piece of advice. It applies to all of us today. And being brave, I think as well, and putting yourself out there, whether that means, you know, getting on a podcast interview or doing a webinar and all that kind of stuff, or standing up and talking, get out and do stuff. Katie, thanks so much for your time today. If people wanted to reach you, what would be the best way for them to get hold of you?

Yeah, pop me an email. Quite easy. So and my email is quite easy. So it's Katie with an IE street agency. Yes, just pop me an email or find me on LinkedIn. Katie Street.

We'll, we'll share the both of those links in the show notes and also if we can find that lately platform that you mentioned as well, then I'll list that, because I'm going to go and have a look at that as soon as we get off here. So thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate the advice that you're providing our audience, and I'm sure lots of people will hopefully take action after today's episode.

Brilliant. Thank you for having me, Rob.