Growing Your Agency Using A Remote Workforce With Romans Ivanovs

Hey everybody, hope you're having a great week and welcome to the latest episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. Now this is another guest interview episode and actually we're revisiting a topic that we didn't talk about that long ago and that is all about growing your agency and managing a remote workforce. And we talked to one of my clients about how he is growing his agency and how he's building it with an external workforce. So let's lots of practical, interesting insights. So let's get on with today's episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast.

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Host agency owner and coach, Rob DaCosta. Today's episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast is sponsored by Cloudways. Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that simplifies the web hosting experience for agencies. The platform offers complete peace of mind and allows agencies to focus on their growth with 24. 7 support and easy to use features. Now Cloudways is launching its Agency Partnership program that's designed to help agencies grow to new Heights. So visit cloudways.com enagency and join the program to get access to extended technical support, discounts and co marketing opportunities with Cloudways. Okay, on with today's show. So welcome to today's episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast. I am really excited to have one of my clients with me, Roman's Ivanovs. And Roman is the founder of RIU Media, who is a digital marketing agency that helps e commerce businesses increase their revenue and their brand influence using social media and paid advertising strategies. Now Roman is also part of my group Mastermind program, the self funding agency. So we'll talk a little bit about that later on. But first of all, Romans, welcome to the podcast and is there anything else that you wanted to expand upon in terms of your introduction and what you do?

Hi everyone. It's a. First of all, it's a pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me and having me on the podcast. And yeah, you've got to nail it. It's pretty straightforward. I run an agency and we more or less specialize in helping direct to consumer and e commerce brands scale free paid media, paid advertising. We are now trying to take control of the entire end to end funnel which means we also help with creative content production, conversion, rate optimization because as a, as a, as a part of our job is not just only get quality traffic to our clients but make sure that they convert that traffic as well.

Now I was interested to have you on the podcast today because I've been talking quite A lot recently about working with a remote workforce. And you know, listeners to the podcast will know that I always talk about the importance of building an agency and looking at hiring those key staff in house. And I have always believed that it's quite difficult to build an agency using sort of freelancers. But you are one of those people that's bucking the trend. And since I've had that belief, I've spoken to a few people who have have built their business the way you did so or the way you are. So first of all, I'm interested to learn more about that and I guess the first question is why did you make that choice to build the agency that way?

Good question. I've never thought about that, to be honest. I've never been conscious of it because that was the only way for me to start an agency. I never wanted to. Well, I'm going to be quite honest, I never wanted to have an in house team in the first place because of the financial situation. I was bootstrapping my agency from scratch and didn't have much of a capital at a time. I started as a freelancer myself as a copywriter and then gradually transitioned into building a team of freelancers. And it made perfect sense because from one side of things I wanted to have a team and I always wanted to have a team. But financially I just decided that it would make much more sense to have better margins and I guess learn how to build a team with freelancers first if I want to, you know, if I decide to say move in house at some point, which I'd like, actually I'd like for that to happen because I strongly believe in a culture, in the cultural fit of each of each person that works on any given project. But it just, you know, it just made sense at a time. Still makes sense. I treat my team as a real in house team and it just feels right.

Yeah, okay, so there's a few things to unpack there. But first of all, I think many listeners will relate to your story of starting out freelancing and then getting busier and needing more capacity. So you then think, well, how do I serve that additional capacity and the natural next step, I think in terms of organic growth is to work with a resource, an outsourced team. So, and you've touched on one point which I want to talk about as well, which is like cultural fit and so on. But how do you manage them on a day to day basis when you can't see them across the desk? I mean, most of us are in a World at the moment where we can't see our team across the desk. But how do you manage them? When I think your team are all over the world. Right. So how do you manage those people?

So yeah, we've got team members in, in England, in London, in Ukraine, in Bulgaria, in Canada, in India as well. And it's a good question. I've again, I've never thought of management as a, I guess as a business tool in the first place. I've always been interested in leadership and I'm quite big on development, leadership skills. It's something that I guess starts from the place where I started working quite a lot on my personal development and I recognized that true leadership or I guess management in that sense comes from being able to do what, do what you ask your team today. So if, if I have certain expectations of my team, I need to make sure that I fulfill these expectations in the first place. And I guess through that self, self leadership type of thing I perceive management. So we, I don't have micromanagement at this, at this stage of my business. We are relatively small and I've never considered any sort of tools or tracking or you know, I completely trust my team and how they do things. But mainly it's due to the fact that we are quite performance driven and most of the things that we do are revenue related and there is, you know, only one true measure. If, if everything goes right, then the client is happy, we're making them money in, in simple terms and then everyone's happy. But I guess, you know, in the near future once we start growing and there'll be more people involved in project management and so on. Yes, it would make much more sense to I guess introduce a management tool.

So, so what, what tools do you use at the moment and how many people? Two questions. How many people do you have working remotely and what kind of tools do you use to communicate and to project manage and so on? I know you say you don't have a lot of tools, but what do you do at the moment?

So we've got four people that work more or less full time on our client projects and currently we use only two tools, which is Slack and most of that obviously our communication comes, goes through Slack and a project management tool that is called ClickUp. It's quite similar to Asana but I find it, I don't know how to say that Asana is quite professional and it's quite sophisticated where ClickUp is more, it's a little more straightforward. Yeah. And it works, works well at this Stage, Obviously, it's inevitable to avoid admin work, but it's just. It is what it is.

Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm going through a process at the moment. I have a coach and I'm going through a process at the moment of time, tracking my time to look at, making sure I'm really efficient. And it is kind of surprising at how much admin time I'm still spending doing stuff. So it's a necessary evil if we want to have the smooth running of our business, but we obviously want to make sure we are automating as much of that as we can and delegating it where we, where we can. Now, you talked about the importance of cultural fit and the importance of like, the values for your agency. So how. Two questions really. How do you assess people when you're recruiting them remotely for that cultural fit? And then how do you make them feel part of a team, part of the RIU team?

First of all, I think I tried to have a professional attitude towards looking and finding the right freelancer to work with. And almost to the point that it's a sort of a gradual HR process for me and where I am taking time, I'm not rushing it. What I'm looking for is a. Is a cultural fit. It's a mindset fit. And the most important thing is obviously values, values feed. So am I going to get along with that person in the long term? It's the most important question for me. Are they a team player? Because, for example, I was onboarding a new media buyer for our team a couple of months ago and we've. I've received about hundreds, about 80 to 100 applications from social media. So basically, so Facebook or LinkedIn, this is the, the, the only place that kind of tries to get applications coming in. And only 20, I guess 20, 25 may more or less sense out of them. I've only interviewed eight or ten. Five of them were high performers.

And.

Only one of them was a team player and had a cultural fit. So you can imagine, like it's been. I'm, I'm taking it quite seriously, but in the same time I'm, I'm enjoying the process a lot. I enjoy talking to people, I enjoy finding out about them, skill sets, skill stacks, characteristics. Like if I just. It's, it's. I think I enjoy communicating to a lot of different people and trying to find out where they're about and where they're at, you know, I guess, yeah, I'm taking it quite slowly. I'm quite I'm being quite diligent and I play in the long term. I make, I try to make sure that this person is not gonna quit on me in the next year or two years even. Because usually what happens in our niche that you train the media buyer, you kind of open the opening doors at all your business, they learn the insides of your business and they can launch their own agency or they can do and launch their E commerce brand. So I try to make sure that they are in the long run with me. Yeah.

So I mean such good advice there that you know, the challenge of recruiting needs to be taken slowly and you need to recruit against the skills, their competencies as well as that cultural fit. And I guess one of the things you're saying is that it's important to listen to your gut instinct as well because that tells you so much and yet sometimes we ignore it. You know, sometimes we've got this problem where we need to fill a role. There's someone that feels kind of good, but there's something in our gut that's telling us they may not be a good fit. We sort of ignore it because we've got that problem and then it comes back and bites us in the backside further down the road. And of course that creates a bigger problem for us and it ends up costing us way more money. So that sort of slow down to speed up, get to get the recruitment process right is such an important message, I think. Yeah. Do you, do you tie your, when, when you hire these people, you do get them to sign a contract just as they would if they were an employee in house with you?

Yes, it's a formal agreement. To be quite honest. Again, there is nothing sophisticated about it because I'm quite intuitive as you, as you, as you mentioned, I use my intuition quite a lot when I do pretty much anything in our business, but especially when it comes to people. I guess trust and verbal agreements is very important. Yeah, we sign things like non disclosure agreements and the formal agreements, but they're quite formal and I'm 98% sure that this is the right person to work with and only then, you know, I proceed to formal things. So yeah, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty. It's all tied in the trust and I guess at this stage I can afford, I can afford to spend that much time on doing things of that nature, digging deep and making sure it's all quality because I'm pro efficiency and your group is amazing that when we first talked, I guess a few months ago, it's been exactly what I was looking for. Because at this stage I'm not looking to scale things up rapidly. I'm looking to build systems, make sure that everything is efficient and then build the infrastructure and then make sure that we can scale further.

Yeah. So, yeah, I think a really key message for anybody from what you just said, like a summarization of that, is that if you are hiring freelancers or like a virtual assistant or a remote worker, you have to view them as though they were an in house employee. You have to treat them the same way and you have to communicate with them. And if I'm in a space of honesty, if I'm honest, I've got this wrong a few times in the past where I've hired a social media person or a virtual assistant to work with me and I haven't treated them the same way as if they were sitting in a desk in my office. So I think that's a learning for me and it's a good, good piece of advice for you. And as you just said, Romans, the way any business grows, especially in an organic business that's not taking on a lot of funding, is that they have to put the infrastructure in place in order to grow and then they put the next piece of infrastructure in place in order to grow. You know, a business grows in a stepped way, it doesn't actually grow in a curved way like you see on so many. So I guess the challenge is always like, what is that next bit of investment? What's that next infrastructure piece I need to put in place? How do you monitor and measure their performance? I know you said it's quite simple in a way because are they getting the results for the client? But are there any other things that you do to kind of keep your team focused on the straight and narrow?

Yes, again, it's more to do with communication. You know, our daily, weekly, weekly, weekly zoom calls that we've got daily messages with Slack. But it's, again, it's, you know, I guess at this stage I'm quite sensitive and to it. So if I clearly see if a person is on top of things at all, if he or she is not, and it's clear for me to understand that they're getting it, they're on top of the project. Again, you know, for us it's really data driven, quite a lot of things, data driven. Even the creatives that we produce based on the data and research. And I guess, yeah, it ties in back to what we talked about, the hiring process. I'm explicitly saying to Everyone that I'm looking for entrepreneurial driven people who willing to not just go extra step but they, the way they think about things is solving problems builds solve problems on the go. And if you know, I mean, I guess I'm being quite critical about googling things. If something is googleable, you should definitely do that before asking me or anyone else. And I'm guilty of that too. When I speak to people that I believe I can learn something from, I tried to triple check myself. That's a Google question or not. So I tried to build that culture within the same where everyone is self accountable and there are no quote to quote silly questions. We don't waste anyone's time and it's going back to the performance side of things. It all ties back with the personal development aspect. And you ask the question how do I take care or how do I, how do I make sure that they're taken care of again? You know, I guess every single individual's got their own unique needs and wants in life. So I try to dig deep and you know, go, go beyond that professional relationship and almost build a, I would say not friendship but a family like feeling where you know, I'm trying to really understand what you're about and where you're heading in life. You really want, do you do require personal development materials in order to get to the next step in your career? If your biggest ambition is to, you know, if I recognize that my agency is just a stepping stone to something bigger than they want to achieve in life, I'm totally cool with that as long as they're not going to leave me in the next one year. And I try to give them as much as possible what they truly need to excel at. Like it's whether it's personal development courses or coaching or my personal experience of running different businesses and if they have a high ambition to do something cool in their life that is a blink to them that I tried to help with that.

Yeah, great answers and I really like that. Is it Googleable? I think I might have to borrow that because it drives me crazy. I mean we all want our team to be responsible and accountable and use their initiative. And I had a situation recently where someone who was doing some work for me reached out to me with a social media post and said, hey, this post is Too long for LinkedIn. Can you edit it? And I'm like, it was about five words too long. It's like, surely you can figure that out yourself. And I was pulling what hair I've got left out drives Me crazy. So how do you know when to hire the next person? So you're growing your agency slowly but surely in an organic way. What's the. This is probably a difficult question because the answer might not be the one, the one you want to share, but I didn't know.

Yeah, it's.

I'm sure everyone else is in the same boat, which is why I'm asking the question.

I don't know. This is where. This is why I've come to you. I think this is one of the questions that I'm, you know, that I'm still learning to, to answer at this stage, it's pretty straightforward. I, I look at the revenue or the amount of. So I guess this stage I'm. Yes, I'm trying to say to make sure that we're as stretched as possible, but without sacrificing the quality of, of our work. If I see that it's, it's becoming quite mentally demanding and it affects the output. That's the time when we need to hire someone, the next person, and that's usually the indicate. Indication that that's the right time. Plus, obviously, you know, I need to make sure that there is enough margin. But usually in our current situation it's, it's always the case if we get enough of clients, prospective clients, and I see that there is quite big demand and it's an obvious step forward. Yeah. But apart from that, don't know.

Well, those are reasonably good metrics and there are some other things you can put in place. But I appreciate your sort of openness and honesty about that. Tell me about the future for reu. What's your ambition over the next few years?

So first thing is to work with big direct to consumer brands in the sense of earn credibility. We're still in the stage where we're earning credibility as a small agency. However, I've kind of already understood how to take that to the next level in terms of client acquisition for the agency in partnership with our clients. What I'm looking for is, I guess, industry credibility, where we're recognized by either magazines or industry influences so we can then proceed and kind of get more exciting, more challenging work. Because at the end of the day, for me and for people that I try to work with, it's about finding something more challenging that we worked on.

Before.

And hopefully one day we'll get an office in London and now it's completely the opposite of being with a remote team. But I still believe that there has to be some sort of a balance of having a Remote team, but also someone to work with. But it's more to do with my personality because I still crave that I guess in house, face to face communication and something that I guess a lot of people can relate to as well.

Yeah, sure. I think that balance of having like a core in house team and then, you know, building on other remote workers is probably a really good aspiration for you and yeah, exciting times ahead then.

Yeah, definitely.

So now you joined my mastermind program, the self running Agency Implementation Group, I guess about six months or so ago. So I was just really interested to understand why you joined the program, what you hope to get from it and what are some of the benefits that you've got so far.

The reason why I joined is because I saw the opportunity to network. Well the first of all I saw the opportunity to network with other agencies from that, from a wide variety of different fields. Not just because we've got a small sort of a networking hub of E commerce agencies. But I was quite. You get to learn what other agencies do or more established agencies in the uk. And second of all is accountability and I don't know how to call it leveling up, you know, like ability to level up with someone else, someone else's guidance and also building systems. I guess that's the third one because last year I tried to scale the agency I guess a little too quick than I should have which resulted in mistakes and bad decisions. But when I spoke with you I was quite clear that it's about building systems first. As you said, it's sort of a step by step process rather than the curve that we see online. Yeah, and, and what was it been three. Yeah, three, three months. So far the biggest change that I've seen, it actually has less to do with the agency itself, but it's to do with me. I've started paying more attention and I started actually seeing the results coming from me in the first place, how I communicate, but the same what I focus for in the first, what I focus for, how I approach certain, certain business principles. What does it mean to build business foundations in the first place? Because again I was coming from a freelancer mindset and still running an agency like a freelancer. What your group gives is that support knowing that you need to level up in terms of your mindset first in order to, you know, in order to build the agency.

Yeah, and that's something, I think a few meetings ago that we talked about the difference between a freelancer mindset and an entrepreneurial mindset and how if you want to grow. It starts with that. Because if you don't have that right growth mindset, then nothing's going to work. It doesn't matter what systems you put in place, you'll always find reasons to not make it work. And what's it like being. I think we've got about 28 other agencies in the program at the moment. What's it like being surrounded by those people and just hearing their stories and their challenges and, you know, and so on and so on?

It feels like you're in the same boat. Like, I mean, that's the first thing that comes to my head, is that it feels like you are not alone. Your problems and the challenge that you're facing is not. Is not unique. And just the feeling of that, it provides a lot of support and I guess internal. It creates that confidence internally that, hey, there's someone else that is going through similar things or went through similar things that you can turn to and ask questions. So, you know, it becomes less of a kind of limiting belief or a thing that you think about on a daily basis. You kind of just. It's just there somewhere, and you kind of just, you know, move forward.

Sure. Yeah. I think that's a huge thing, isn't it? Just sometimes we can. It can be easy to think we're on our own or we're the only person that's suffering with this challenge, but just sometimes, just to hear that other people are going through exactly the same thing is a huge kind of block shifter. And then obviously hearing those people that have been there and got through that challenge, I think is also good to learn from. And like you say, you know, people in the program run PR agencies, digital agencies, web design agencies, and so on and so on. So it's a broad range of people. So. So. So one of the questions I always ask my guests, and Roman's not very old and he doesn't have any gray hair like me, but if you go back in time and give your younger self just starting out, which might only be a few years ago, I don't know. One piece of advice. What would that piece of advice be?

I haven't had any sort of regrets or disappointments, to be honest. I've made the right decisions. It's been great so far. I guess the only one thing I would probably reinforce the belief that everything's going to be all right. 98, 99% of things that I've been afraid of never realized. It's just been in my head just knowing that most of the things that you Worry about whether it's business or how it's going to affect your personal life will never become a reality. It's just a bit of illusion, imagination, I guess.

Yeah. Well, that's a good piece of advice for all of us because it's amazing how we tell ourselves stories and those stories we believe are true and they keep us in our comfort zone or they keep us stuck where we are. So that's a good piece of advice. And I almost say this every episode when I have a guest on that. I always expect to hear the same advice and I never hear the same advice, so I always hear something different. No one's ever said that before. So that is a good piece of insight and it's a good bit of advice that we could all do with listening to. Just remember that that voice that's talking to you isn't real. It's just, you know, and you decide how much you're going to let that voice control you or whether you are not going to let it control you at all. So, Romans, I really appreciate your time today and if any listeners want to find more out more about RIU Media or get in touc with you, what would their best course of action be?

Well, the best thing they can do is to find me on LinkedIn, romantoffs or email me@romansru media.com okay.

And we will put both of those links into the show notes. So just last thing to say, thank you so much for joining me today. I think that's been a really interesting to hear your story and I really appreciate your honesty about it. I know a lot of our listeners are going to really relate to what you said and so I want to.

Say thank you for that. Thank you for having me.

Okay. I hope you found that episode useful and insightful. I think it's always interesting to hear about other agency owners journeys and how they went down a certain route because that's all they knew and that's led them to evolve their agency in the way that they have. So I hope you found that useful. And as as ever, please make sure that you smash the subscribe button, share the episode with your colleagues and if you found it valuable, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Okay, that's it. Have a fantastic weekend and I will be back with you next week for the next episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast.