Business Development Strategies (part 1) with Brad Smith

Hey everyone. Welcome to this issue of the Agency Accelerator podcast. Now I know that business development has been at the forefront of many clients minds over the past few months as perhaps word of mouth and referrals have dried up a bit. So they need to think about winning new business and they also need to think about how they might pivot their agencies and so on. So I'm really excited to have Brad Smith with me today who is a business development expert and we talk about everything to do with business development. How to nurture word of mouth referrals, how to explore new ideas and make sure that you are thoroughly researching and validating them before you move forward. And Brad is going to share with you five key questions that you should be asking your current clients to make sure that you are retaining and growing them and having a fantastic relationship for the long term. He also shares some of the typical mistakes he sees agencies making as well as some tips on some business development strategies that you should be focusing on. Now this is an action packed episode and let's get on with the show.

Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob DaCosta.

I know it's been a challenging environment for agencies in 2020 having to juggle providing excellent service to their current clients so they don't use lose any of them whilst also trying to find some time to do some business development to avoid that dreaded feast or famine. I also know that when people are in that famine position, they tend to panic and they make poor decisions such as taking on the wrong clients or discounting their fees, which is a a quick road to a lot of stress. So I was keen to do a podcast episode focusing on business development and particularly business development in this current 2020 environment that we are in. So I am really excited to have Brad Smith from Succeed Digital with me today. And Succeed Digital helps agencies generate quality leads. Brad, that's probably a really poor introduction, so you'll be better off if I hand over to you to tell a little bit about what Succeed Digital does.

No problem Rob. Well, thanks for the intro. I mean in a nutshell, that's certainly one of the key offerings that that we have a slightly elongated version of. That is to say that Succeed Digital helps with all aspects of new business growth strategy. So our strap line is consult support. Do we typically get brought in by agencies who want to either grow their new business pipeline, improve the quality of their short term midterm and long term pipeline, but we also get heavily involved in propositioning, positioning, pitch doctoring, proposal reviews. Basically helping agencies be the best version of themselves. Winning more, closing more and converting more than ever before.

Brilliant. Well, that's a good introduction. So you're the right person for the job today. So tell me, what have you seen? What are the biggest changes you've seen in the business landscape for agencies in this strange year of 2020?

It's been quite a few. I mean, Covid now has almost become just, you know, a piece of, a piece of modern history that we're living through. And it's almost hard to remember seven, eight months ago, it not being here. It's become so, so normal. And I'm not going to use the term new normal because I hate it, but you know what I mean? I think the thing, the thing that stood out for me is that agencies, there's sort of two different problems that have, that have arisen. There are those who went into literal lockdown mode and thought, we're always going to be okay, we'll keep doing what we're doing. We've got a client base, we'll be safe. And some of those clients and some of those agencies have literally fallen off of a cliff. And it's a real shame to see, especially in the likes of travel, hospitality, et cetera, sectors which have obviously been very, very well impacted, that's had a massive, massive negative impact on a lot of those agencies. And then there's another type of agency who has used this opportunity to say, okay, just because we've always done this, this isn't going to work moving forwards. And they've used the opportunity to really challenge their thinking, maybe even to question and challenge the industry or the sector or the type of work that they can look at, review and have a high propensity to win. And obviously everybody ends up having to do the second if the first fails. But it's a question of who does that from the beginning and who capitalizes on that opportunity, generally speaking, has a better chance, I think, of then being able to sort of get a foothold.

Get a leg, a leg up, get.

Ahead of the game and have a better chance of converting more of that business. They're the kind of two key things I've seen as real problems. And off the back of that, I think there have been some agencies who certainly in recent weeks and months have definitely seen a turnaround. In fact, I had a lovely conversation with an agency this morning who said a number of their projects that were all looking really likely pre covered, which literally did fall off a cliff, about 70% of those have come back over the last three or four weeks. So I think that's positive. But I've also had conversations with agencies in the last couple of weeks who said we've seen our pipeline go from £300,000 to zero. So there's definitely two extremes there, Rob.

Yeah, and I think I complete, I completely concur with that. I think at the beginning of this pandemic there were some, some agencies who thought we'll just hold our nerve, get our heads down, wait this out, because it's only going to last a few months and then carry on as normal. And of course, well, first of all, they found out that this has gone on a lot longer than a few months. And second of all, you know, a lot of their clients were panicking and cutting costs, which often look like cutting out agencies. And as you say, then there's the other agencies that have thought, well, how do we continue to serve our audience and you know, maybe alter our offering slightly to continue to serve our audience so that we are seen as a really valued partner that can't be let go. So I sort of can completely concur with you. Now. I think another sort of dimension to that has been, and I'm interested to get your view on this because I saw a conversation going on on LinkedIn this morning about this. But I think before the pandemic there was a lot of businesses that would say, well, look, we, you know, rather proudly, that we get all our business through word of mouth and referrals. And I think the conversation I saw on LinkedIn, which I completely agreed with, is that during the pandemic where we've had a lot less face to face interactions, those word of mouth referrals have tended to dry up. So people who have relied on, you know, new business coming through word of mouth and referrals have suddenly found that as a channel that's no longer working. Is that something you've seen as well?

Yeah, 100%. I mean, look, my view on referrals is actually really, really clear cut. There is obviously no better way to win business or be introduced to business than from somebody that recommends you because they like you, they've worked with you, they know of you, they know you care about doing a quality job. We all know that that massively reduces the sales pipeline timescale. We know that it improves the likelihood of win and conversion. So to if you have never had a referral program in place or never had people referring you, you won't almost know what you're missing, if that makes sense. Having said that, if you have a business which a lot of agencies DO, which typically 70, 80% of their leads often come through that sort of referral, or they have ambassadors and advocates for their brand that will refer and recommend them in, suddenly when that goes, as you say, often as a result of not having the same level of opportunity for networking and face to face time, it does leave a massive hole. I refer to referrals. This is just my personal view on this. I refer to them as an inconsistent consistency. And what I mean by that is every single great business will consistently get referrals. If you do a good job, people know you, like you, trust you, happy with what you do, they will refer you to someone else at some point. That is the consistency. The inconsistent consistency is that you cannot base your business on a bunch of lovely people that would all recommend you and base a pipeline upon that just happening month in, month out and starting to have a really solid target that you rely will be met upon a whole bunch of really nice people who are all outside of your immediate, if you like, circle of control. So the law of averages is look after enough people, do enough great work and people will of course refer you in. But is that something you can actually, as a strategy, base your entire sales pipeline and do business focus on? I would say it should be a core part of it, but it probably in reality should make up 25, 30% of your overall new business strategy, not you becoming reliant upon 70, 75% of your business almost falling into your lap as a result of that work. And the problem is it's only when a problem, whether that's a pandemic or a change in industry or, or an external pressure that comes upon the business. So only when something massive like that happens, if someone suddenly turns around and goes, wow, we don't have that referral pipeline. When we look back over the last quarter, only one or two deals have come in and we don't have this nice warm, fuzzy feeling of we've got 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 quality deals in the pipeline for the next three or six months. Because actually we haven't been referred in for that period of time. So where's our next piece of business coming from? And by the time you realize that as an agency, it's actually too late because you've got to then spend that next three, four, five, six months doing what needed to have really been done three, four or six months ago prior to you realizing that point.

Yeah, and I couldn't agree with you more. I'm glad that you're singing on the same hymn sheet as me. I think the two fundamental issues with referrals are one that you have no control over when they come in. So as you say, you can't really rely that as part of your core growth strategy. And the second thing about referrals is you have no control over the quality of the referral or whether the referral fits in your niche or your ideal target customer. So you might get referrals but they might not be good quality ones. And I certainly experience that from time to time when I get referrals in. And it's interesting because it's probably the same for you Brad. When I get a new client and I start talking to a prospect and I will always ask them how do you get your business? And they will often tell me that they have got their business through referrals but it's dried up and that's one of their key pain points that they have which is sort of a lack of new business. And so that's one of the reasons why they're talking to me. And I think as you say that any, any new business strategy except for a re engagement campaign is going to be a medium to long term sort of return on investment. So if you're not doing it starting it today, then you're not going to see the results from that in sort of three to six months time. The only you might have a different view on this Brad, but the only thing I can think of that might give you a short term return on investment when you're in that famine place, which is not a good place to be to look inwards and to reach out to past clients and current clients to see if you can upsell or see if they can refer you in.

I 100% concur and agree with everything you just said. I think there are other ways of creating short term pipeline. But before perhaps I go into that, there is a caveat to this short term midterm and long term pipeline without, you know, we could spend a couple of hours just going through that in itself. But to kind of give a very quick whistle stop tour of how I break those things down. A lot of agencies, whether they're branding, design, development systems integrators, design and build, whatever digital marketing agencies will often, even if it's subconsciously, they may not be as blunt about it as I'm being with you, will often really only care about what comes in the next three months. A lot in the subconscious have A short termist view. And the reason why this happens is because we've all got bills to pay. We've all got, you know, a number of us have got families to feed. So where is the next piece of revenue coming from is always a question that any md, founder, owner, you know, cto, sales director type person is going to want to know the answer to. Now if you say if you're in, if you're in sales, ultimately what you want to know is what have you got coming in the business that's going to generate revenue? So I can pay everybody in my agency and you don't ever ask the question or very rarely do you ask the question, what have you got scheduled for 12 months time or 9 months time, you'll very, very rarely hear it. All sales meetings are typically focused around that month and that quarter. So it drives a quarterly focus, it drives a quarterly behavior where everybody is thinking, what can I get in? And what starts to happen is you Rob Peter to pay Paul. So you, you know, you, you've probably heard of the terminology where you get salespeople, for instance, that will sandbag stuff, they'll put stuff into quarters because it suits them, either from a commission perspective or from a target perspective. Or you'll get people that will, under pressure, be able to bring a deal forward. But the question is at what cost to the business? So if closing a piece of business a month early means you make 24% less revenue than you would have done had you held it off for a month, was that actually a wise business decision or should that have been a midterm pipeline deal that came in the month when it should have come in at 24% higher than it would have done had you not tried to push it through. Now the counterbalance to that, of course, is that needs must every agency owner at some point in their life will have had, I think you use the term at the beginning, feast or famine. If it's a famine month, let's be honest about this, Rob. People want to bring the revenue in and therefore they will make those business decisions. To say this needs to be short term pipeline, we need it, we need it. But if you don't put the planning and the preparation into at least having a strategy for what does our midterm and long term pipeline actually look like? You actually live agency life in short term pipeline mentality for forever. You always review things as a month and a quarterly basis because you can't get out of that cycle. And that's what makes it really hard to grow it's what makes it really hard to see the bigger, wider opportunity. One of the agencies I work with at the moment, we doing content strategy for them, we're doing lead generation for them, we've done proposition and positioning for them. I'm doing a partner growth program for them, we're running events for them. You know, I'll have four or five channels of work, not one or two. Because if I spread their risk and spread the opportunity for revenue to come in through multiple sources, I automatically by default start to place things into short term, midterm and longer term pipeline, which gives them confidence. They still see some of the stuff coming through now, but they also see how their business is able to then grow and expand beyond that sort of quarterly mindset.

Yeah, no, that's, that's a really, really good, valid point. So let's just switch tact a bit to think about our typical listener. So they might be running a small agency, maybe with four or five staff. They are the owner, they are trying to keep their clients happy, they're trying to manage the team, they're trying to put a little bit of their eye towards the future of the agency and they're trying to bring in new business as well. And so, you know, one of the challenges every small agency has is this sort of juggling skill that they need to have. What would you say to them in terms of like two or three strategies that they should focus on that will generate some good results for them in the short, medium, long term?

Okay, great question. So a couple of things. First thing, if you decide as a business that you are going to sell something, it could be a product, it could be a service. So let's take your point. Four, five man agency owner, they want to start offering a new service. Why? Well, deep down they want to be more valuable to their client. They want to have the opportunity to upsell and cross sell more work. They want to be more established and therefore harder to potentially rip out. Of course the risk is the more services you add in or the more products you add in, if you then don't deliver consistently across the board, across a range of services, you actually only become as strong as the weakest offering you have. Actually, it can become the very thing that kind of gets you kicked out and replaced by another agency. So there's a real balance there. But if we go with the fact that maybe this four or five man agency, or even slightly bigger is looking to increase their services, the simplest thing you can do, and it's so often forgotten, is go back to your existing customers and ask them would they perceive you to be even more valuable, more helpful to them if you offered this service and is it something that they would actually benefit from seeing or from using or from having? And it, it sounds like such a simple question. It's like, well surely that's obvious. I can promise you faithfully. It's so often not asked. It's assumed by an owner or an agency founder or director. Well, this is a great idea of why wouldn't people like it, Others are doing it and then they go out to sell this product or service to their clients and you know, one or two maybe bite on it, or maybe one or two new business prospects bite on it, but it doesn't have quite the take up that perhaps they thought it would. And that's because actually they don't know their customers needs as well as perhaps they thought they did. So one of the things for me, and it's an awkward set of questions, I'll be honest with you, to ask, but it creates fantastic results in terms of getting to the heart of, you know, what do your customers really want? Is to sit down with them. And at some point, you know, you could do this as a quarterly review meeting. I'll give you five questions that you should ask as an agency owner. How about that? I mean there's hundreds, but I'll give you five straight away that as an agency owner, if you ask these five, you will open the doorway to much, much better conversations around the types of things you should consider selling or offering your client base. So the first question, so there's an easy to remember process. I wrote this about 18 years ago and it stood me in brie instead. So it's one of the methodologies I've stuck with. So it's a needs process, but not spelled N, E, E, D, S. It's N, E, A D, S. The N stands for now, the E stands for enjoy, the A stands for alter or change, and the D stands for decide and the S stands for stay. So they're the five key things you need to know from your existing client base. And it also works for new opportunities as well. So the questions would go something like this, the end the now. Of all the things we do for you now, what's the most valuable service we provide to you? You want to understand right here, right now, where is your value to your customer? If there was something that we've delivered for you really well in the past, you know, what is it? That's what you're ultimately trying to Understand what do we need to keep doing more? So you need to get that sort of common understanding, stake in the ground. Where do you like us now? If they're pausing, umming and ahhing and can't think of something straight away, that's a great insight into the fact that maybe right here, right now, they're not perhaps seeing the value that maybe you hoped or they'd hoped that they would. So that in itself could be a trigger point for future discussion. Once you've understood where they're at now and what they're feeling is about you as an agency, the next question then is, what do you really enjoy? What do you really like? So the reason why the enjoyment bit is important is because people do what they enjoy, it becomes a repeatable process. So if, for instance, and this is a very simple example, I really enjoy the fact that you're really proactive. Month on month, you tell me where my account is at, you tell me what we need to do. Well, I don't see you as a reactive agency where you only pick up the phone when we ring you. We see you as really proactive and you, you get the balance right. You're not pushy, you're not salesy, you're just a really nice, forward thinking agency. You know what you need to keep doing? Those two things help you really understand what you're doing well. And that's like a nice way for an agency owner to feel like there's a positive, there's something good that they can take away from this and go back to the team with. But the ultimate questions start really from the A. So what would you most like to alter or change about the way we work? Now? This is a really painful question. And it's painful because you're not saying, is there anything we could do better? Because British people will often be very blunt saying, no, no, everything's great, thank you, it's all okay. And then you'll find out, you know, two and a half months down the line they chose someone else and you're thinking, well, hang on, what happened to the whole everything was great conversation? So what would you most like to alter or change? I'll tell you what, the answers you get back from that question alone are incredible. And if you just sit down, shut up and let them talk, it's amazing how people tell you where their frustrations are, either with you as an individual or you as a business, or your product or your service. And you listen and you take it away, you refine it, you go back, you show Them how you've listened. And guess what, they really appreciate you for it because they know that you've taken an interest in them. The D question, the decide, that's what made you decide to go with us. Why of all the 22,000 plus agencies in the UK did you decide to actually work with us in the first instance? Now that might seem like a slightly unusual question when you've had a client on board for a year, maybe two or three years, but you know what, if you understand why someone decided to go with you, you can then remember what their core buying behavioral trait is and make sure that you always match to that. You always continually service that need, that reason for buying, that emotional attachment or engagement they found in working with you. So every single time you do a proposal or a quote, or every single time you have a discussion around an upsell or a cross sell or whatever it is that you're trying to put in there as an agency, you can make sure that you ask yourselves, well, does this tie back to the reason why they would decide to work with us? And another D question which is really painful is what would make you decide to leave us now? I very, very rarely have heard an agency owner ever ask that question and it opens up a dialogue which is really actually again eye opening because sometimes people go, to be honest, if your account management doesn't get better, we'll be leaving you in three months time. We've already been planning it or actually we find your support is appalling. It's, you know, I just wish there was a ruddy system that we could sort of use and work with you on instead of having some sporadic males going back and forth. You know, I'm making the scenarios up, you get the idea. Understanding what it is that would make them decide to leave you means, you know, what you need to change. And then the final one, what would make you stay with us for the next two, three, four years and beyond? Get them to think longer term. How can you build a midterm or a long term pipeline if you don't know what's going to help your clients to stick with you longer term? That's a great question which leads back to the first point of what service or product do we need to offer to keep your interest in us and to make sure that we remain your preferred agency of choice? So what do you have now? What do you enjoy about what you've got? What would you most like to alter or change about what you've got? What made you decide to go with us? What would make you decide to leave us and what would make you stay with us longer term and at what.

Point in the relationship, like how far down the road in the relationship would you have these kind of conversations?

If I was inheriting a new client, I'd have them at the very beginning. So if I was taking on a client from another agency or it was at the start of a relationship where perhaps they were engaging with us as a first time of moving away from, say, an internal team, I'd have all those discussions very early on. Secondly, if I was, if I had an existing client base, I'd be wanting to know the answers to those questions at least yearly. I mean, I may ask them in slightly different ways. I wouldn't want it be to sound like an inquisition or a repetitive interview, but I'd be wanting to keep on top of that at least yearly, if not six. Monthly.

Yeah, it's really interesting because I think a lot of people bury their heads in the sand about this and then they get fired and they are surprised when they get feedback that they haven't had because they haven't sort of elicited that feedback. I also think that a lot of people kind of arrogantly assume they know what their customers customers want. I guess that's what you were saying earlier. And so they go ahead and they invest a lot of time producing that new product or service to find that actually very few people want it. And I've been guilty of this myself before, so I've actually written a book around the whole research and validation phase to sort of help people understand what you really need to do. Before you spend one second developing anything, whether it be a physical product, a software product or a service, is you need to go and research the market. And then when you've researched the market and you've got an outline of your product, like a minimum viable offer of your product, you need to then go and validate it. And one of the ways that you validate is by actually pre selling something because some people will tell you that they are interested in this idea, but that doesn't mean they'll buy it. Completely agree with what you said there. Whether it be researching a new idea that you want to sell to your existing clients or. Or whether it be just checking in with your clients to make sure that you are retaining your clients and growing them for the long term, rather than having a sort of revolving door of new clients in and new clients out. Like the sort of mobile phone utilities world lives by, which I've never really understood because it's such a poor business model and it certainly doesn't work in the agency space. If someone's listening to this at the moment and they're thinking, well, actually I have relied on referrals and word of mouth. I totally get that. I can't rely on that. What, what other two or three business development things should I be thinking about right now? What would you advise them?

So I think there's a couple of things to consider. So I will always trial and test myself. Anything before I just go and tell other people. There's nothing worse than a consultant that consults on theory rather than actually on something that he or she knows works. It can live and breathe it. Hence my strap line mentioned at the outset of Consult support. Do so during COVID Let's. Let's use this as a very relevant and very specific example because it's pertinent to the podcast today. I obviously like most realized at the start of COVID that there was going to be potentially a shortfall of business. I could obviously see that the hatches were going to be battened down and people maybe were going to have an aversion to some spending or certainly want to hang on to their revenue they did have for a longer period of time until such time where they were comfortable as to. As to where the world was going. So with that in mind, I made a decision which was personally right for my business. But at the time I had to test that to know that I would go and give away some of my expertise, my resource and my time. And it's interesting because there's some really quite varied schools of thought on this, but I am convinced on this point that this is the right approach. And I would happily compete with anybody who says it's not the right way of doing it, because I believe I've proven it's the right way of doing it. So my view is this. If you have something of immense value, everything you ever learn in sales and marketing and consultancy tells you, you make sure that you gain the maximum revenue back for that. You don't give away things of immense value because that's madness. That's your ip, especially in consultancy, your advice and your knowledge in your head is really your value, right? I'm gonna buck the trend and say, I fundamentally disagree with that. I think you give away something that leaves the person you're giving it away to in no doubt that there is nobody else in the world that they should pick. So my view is, at the beginning of COVID I ran a campaign Very simple post. I put a post out on LinkedIn and I said, I'll help 30 agencies in 30 days. You come to me with your challenge and I'll give you three hours, four hours, five hours of my time for free. And I will help you and I will start solving that problem and if we can finish it in the time and it solves the whole problem, fantastic. If it puts you on the right trajectory for then knowing how to solve the problem yourself, then that's fine as well. In five days I'd had eight and a half thousand views, 30 signups, and I then spent five weeks of my life giving away that time for free. And it was the best thing I ever did. Eight weeks after that, I won eight deals in eight weeks. I then subsequently, off the back of that, have had business after business coming back and ordering all through Covid. Some of those businesses I went out and helped initially, other businesses who referred in me as a result of the work that I'd done with them to businesses that I'd never ever had an engagement with. And I'm the busiest I've ever been in my working career. And I'm not saying this in any way to say, you know, wow, you know, look at me, isn't that amazing? What I'm saying is don't be afraid to buck trends. So if you've got something of value and you can give it away, stop selling, start solving people's problems, start giving away your value. Because when they realize how valuable they are, you are, they will remember you as the person that helped them and they will come back to you, they will work with you whether it's in a week, in a month, in six months, in a year. The methodology I use is this. It's four stages. Know me, like me, trust me, help me. If I am not at the table and you don't know me, I don't ever get invited to stay for pudding, for dessert, whatever. If you know who I am, you know what I do. You have an opportunity to hopefully get to like me. You have an opportunity to trust me. And then you have an opportunity to either use my services or you have an opportunity to refer me on to someone who you know will benefit from my services. And then those inconsistent consistencies that we mentioned earlier on actually become far more consistent than ever before. But at the same time, you're continually building on your own short term midterm and long term pipeline. Because not only are you getting referred into places, you're generating your own opportunities by continually providing value and Help to people. And all you've got to do and decide is at what point do I want to turn the tab on and off. So you capitalize in a year, how many days or hours or weeks you're willing to give of your value and of your time and you do it without extra expecting anything back, turn the tap on, help people and watch what happens.

I completely agree with you. I always tell my audience that when they are focused on their external comms, it should be a balance of 80% providing value and 20% selling. And a lot of people are thinking, yeah, but if I give away the value for free, then they won't need me. But I, as I tell people everything is out there. There's nothing original. If someone can be bothered to say, spend hours and hours and hours searching on the Internet, they can probably piece together the things that you do for them and do it themselves. But that would take time, which is usually their most valuable commodity. So people are not paying you necessarily to do the thing, they're paying you to lead them through that process. And so we shouldn't be scared of giving away value. And you know, one of my key lead magnets for my getting people into my world and getting them into my know like traffic Trust funnel is giving away my book which I sell on Amazon for six quid, and then giving away three training sessions that are providing even more value, that dig into the topics of the book and even more depth. And that's just giving away a ton of value. Because of course, if you can demonstrate to somebody that you know what you're talking about, that you can help them, you understand the pains and the challenges they face and you can help solve them through giving away this value, then there's no doubt that at some point they're going to come back to you when they are in enough pain that they need your help to get rid.

Of that pain 100%. And alongside that strategy, because you said were there two or three, a very simple and obvious one is aside from your referral strategy and your partnership, who are our partners, who are affiliates, who can we lean on and work with to have a joint go to market strategy to win more business, you need to have an inbound strategy and an outbound strategy. Far too many agencies are caught in the mindset of thinking we don't do outbound, we don't do outreach, we won't do cold calling, we're not going to do email blasts. That is not all outbound is about. You know, today's podcast doesn't Give us time to go into all the specifics. But Outbound is about how do you provide value to the world? How do you provide a solution to a problem that exists among a target audience that you're trying to resonate with? And will you go about showing how you solve that problem? So then that generates an inquiry of either, yes, I'd love to know more. I'd love to talk to you about this. We're suffering from this problem. Or it generates inbound inquiries off the back of the thought leadership and the content strategy stuff that you're writing and putting out there.

Yeah, that's, that's good advice. I mean, I, I've done podcasts in this series before about the importance of building a mailing list and how if you are truly adding value to your audience, why would you not be mailing them regularly? It's when you're spamming them and just trying to sell that it doesn't work. And I also think, which is kind of what you're saying is that, you know, do do a few things really well and really consistently rather than trying a couple of things, deciding very quickly they don't work, and then moving on to the next shiny new object. Because as we said earlier, all of these strategies really are medium to long term. So if you don't invest in doing them consistently over the medium to long term, you're not going to get any return from those efforts. So let me ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, Brad, which is if you could go back in time and give your younger self who's just starting out in business one piece of advice, what would it be?

Start earlier.

What's that mean?

So I've been in digital for, I'm currently almost 39 and I joined the World Digital when I was 20 and it took until it took me at least, I should say, in just over two, two and a quarter years ago now to go, I should just be doing this for myself. I'm so busy, you know, kind of helping everybody else. And actually I love what I do, you know, every single day I genuinely get up and I love making a difference. I love working with agencies. I love tackling their problems and their challenges and helping to solve them. My simple summary is if you've got an idea in your head and you think it can work, go make it happen and be willing to fail fast. Learn from it, pick yourself up and go at it again.

I mean, I've been self employed since 1992, so a long time. I think when times are tough. Like at the moment, you know, when you're self employed, your success is your success and your failure is your failure. And when you're working in an organization and you have no idea about the politics and what their concerns are in terms of this pandemic and redundancies, you don't have a lot of control over that. So I I'm very happy to be self employed right now. And I always say if someone offered me half a million pounds to take a job, I'd say no because I still love what I do after all these years. So Brad, it's been really, really good talking to you. I there's so much we could talk about on this topic, but I think you've provided some really good nuggets of information that people can take from this and go and start applying. And that's what I love about having guests that can provide practical advice. If someone wanted to contact you, what would be the best way for them to reach you?

Happy to be connected to on LinkedIn or my email address is simply braducceed digital b r a d succeedsu c c e E D Digital and just to say, even if people want to reach out and just ask a couple of questions, you know, you don't feel like you've got to have a retainer or a contract in place. If you just want to bounce my ideas off me, look, pick up the phone, send me an email. I'm genuinely happy.

I'll make sure we put all those contact details into the show notes so people have got access to them there. And I just wanted to say thanks again for taking the time out and joining me today on the Agency Accelerator podcast and providing some super practical advice on what agencies should be doing right now to focus on their business development.

Thanks for having me, Rob. It's been very enjoyable and I appreciate you bringing me on.

Okay, so there you have it. That was a super interesting episode. I particularly like Brad's acronym of needs, which helps you go and actually talk to your clients and understand why they buy from you and how you can improve. As ever, if you've enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and consider leaving a review, and I look forward to seeing you on next week's episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast.