Thomas Byrne, CEO @ RocketMill

Welcome back to another episode of The Graduate Guide. Today we're joined by Tom. Tom is the CEO of Rocket Mill, and we're very lucky to have you here. Welcome to podcast.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, so I think an interesting place to start off for our listeners is, you know, Rockmill is a very established company within the advertising space, but it may not be known by every student out there of what you actually do. So how would you explain Rockmill and what you do within it?

So we're an integrated performance marketing agency, which basically means that we do the creative production, so we'll produce the ads. That might be a TV ad, an ad for radio, an ad for digital, but when we produce the ad, we'll produce it with all in mind, as opposed to just looking to put together a 30-second TV slot and then butchering it later for social media. We're a media agency, so we buy media across the digital platforms which is things like Google, Meta, which is Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snap, those sort of things. But we'll also do connected TV, so Amazon, right the way through into linear TV, which is the sort of standard telly box that everyone knows about, and then things like print and radio. So the, and then the third is experience, which is, it's a sort of catch-all term for when you go to a website, How does it— do you have a frictionless experience with the site to serve your need state? Things like the surround sound content literature. And then we have an analytics agency that sort of measures all of that. So most of the clients that come to work with us will work right the way across the board, and so we'll write the theme tune, sing the theme tune, work out with a theme tune. We don't actually do any theme tunes, but we're an advertising agency basically.

Sure, and obviously you're now a CEO of this company, and throughout this episode we're going to try and sort of decode how you ended up in the place you are now in your career. So I think we can take it back to your time at university, you know, you're at Newcastle. What did you think your career was going to turn out being then? What were you thinking your first steps were going to be?

Well, I didn't really think that much, if I'm honest. I come from a family where my dad's a brain surgeon, my mum's an artist, and we're all hideously dyslexic. So getting to university was a challenge. I sort of scraped in through clearing. And I did a sort of— I did pharma— I ended up doing pharmacology, which was this sort of medical thing, pressurised mainly by my dad, I think, or wanting to follow my dad's footsteps. And then I realised that I really didn't like the medical environment, like hospitals are just not a place for me. And so I just wanted a degree, if I'm honest. And I, after uni, I sort of became a bit of a ski bum. And then found myself wanting a job, and I was in this trap where I couldn't get a job because I didn't have experience, I couldn't get experience because I didn't have a job, and I really didn't know what to do. And at the time, my girlfriend had a very difficult family environment, so we were, like, bunking at my parents' house, and we wanted to get out. And so I ended up going to one of these companies that assesses you for your sales skills to put you into an environment where you sell stuff for other people. And they ended up offering me a job, and that was on the Thursday, and I was due to start on the Monday, so I had to sort of pack up everything and move to London over the weekend. And my starting salary was less than my rent, but they pay commission, so I had to learn how to sell stuff.

And is that something that before you applied you thought, okay, this could suit me?

No, I was motivated by making sure that I could provide a home for my then-girlfriend Vicki where she didn't have to go back to her home. So I was just trying to find a house. Okay. And so it was, yeah.

I imagine your motivations in a career sense might have changed slightly since then, you know, maybe you're not trying to pay your ex-girlfriend's rent anymore, but—

My wife would find that a difficult concept, I think.

So I guess Fast forward a little bit on from, you know, you starting a sales job, and although I imagine that was quite formative in a lot of ways, it probably wasn't filled with passion or what you probably wanted to stay in.

Not at all, but the company I joined, what they were amazing at was fostering a culture. They made the workplace fun, and it was a pretty— cold calling people is a pretty gruesome thing to do. And so putting sort of joy and buoyancy into the workforce. They were astonishingly good at it. And I think that if you're going to become a CEO, you either come into company leadership either through sales or through finance. And the tone of the company, like a marketing agency, really is selling stuff. You're either selling yourself or you're selling stuff on behalf of other people. And so, or you're selling ideas, you're selling stories, you're selling concepts, you're selling a creative. Like, this picture is going to sell your breakfast cereal. Yeah. And why? And so you're always trying to influence. So I think understanding how you can sell yourself in an interview, or how you can sell yourself in any environment, it's a really fundamental skill. And I acknowledge that a lot of— it's not a skill that anyone likes, right? You have to stretch beyond your comfort zone and put yourself in environments that scare you, and your environments grow. This is not a new concept, but it's one that you have to do. And this notion of doing as opposed to procrastinating about it— my brother wants to start a sherry company, and he he spent 4 years, like, building this amazing business plan. You're not a sherry company until you sell your first bottle of sherry. And so, you know, it's like, so yeah, it was just a case of that building those skills, just put yourself into the world and said, hello world, this is me, and went out and kissed loads of frogs, basically.

Well, I think that is quite a refreshing, you know, outlook and perspective for a CEO who has a big team working underneath them say like, listen, I've been there once, you know, I've done probably everything that you've done at least once. And I think you're right, just like that ability to sell does trickle into like whether that's a job interview or anything. I think like it's an integral skill that will probably serve you well throughout your whole career. So talk me through the next step from there then in your, in your career, because you know, you ended up before even being a CEO now the Vice President of massive companies internationally, and, you know, I'm sure there's a big chunk in the middle that we haven't touched yet.

There is. So, um, I, I, I moved from selling salespeople to selling, um, training programs, computer-based learning, uh, and then I founded a company that was a sort of amalgam of what I'd learned before, um, and all of that was anchored in selling, basically. And we exited that company, and in the exit, there were some restrictions on the fact that I wasn't allowed to work as part of the deal, that when we sold the company, it was all anchored together. And so I had to change industry. And there is a— I mean, a lot of my success is based on luck, right? But in that I got into digital digital marketing very early. But the other reality is that I pushed myself into digital marketing, right, in that I cold-called all the companies in the space that I wanted to work for and try to get them to offer me a job. And then they were like, they all wanted to hire people that had media sales experience, and I had not media sales experience. And so I set up a website for myself which I wanted to do PPC, which is the Google Ads. Yeah. And I sort of thought it was the same as SEO, which is getting your organic listing. And so I bought seosales.com because I couldn't buy PPCsales.com. And I actually just put my CV online and I said— and then I built a PPC ad saying I want to— all of it was being super clear that this is what I wanted to do, and I was being very conspicuous about my motivation. And in the end, I joined a company called Periscopics, and I was employee number 8. And they, the two founders, were incredibly strong at hiring good people and leaving them alone. And I mean that in the nicest possible way in that—

Maybe empowering is the right word.

Yeah, that's a great articulation. In that often small companies, there's a sort of cult of personality around the founder, and they very much built a team. Mentality. And that company was phenomenally successful. We only hired initially grads, didn't hire anyone from the market, and we built an academy program that grew our own talent. And we— that company grew to about 450 people, and we sold that to an American firm that didn't have anything outside the US, and that company grew to about 3,500 people in Europe, about 10,000 people globally. And then that was sold to one of the bigger advertising agencies, that's about 60,000 people globally. And so it was this sort of Russian doll situation, and in doing so, all of the people that started as grads or early careers—we didn't specify you had to have a degree actually—they, I look at them across the industry now and they make up the sort of a lot of the sort of core power base in in the digital advertising arena.

Yeah, I'd love to dive into that a little bit deeper. You said your prior company, it focused solely on recruiting the best grads possible, essentially, and I wonder what the difference in, you know, maybe the job market for graduates looks like then versus now as a, you know, CEO who, you know, you're overseeing your team, you're maybe not involved as much in the recruitment process. I still interview every person. You do? That's amazing.

Every single person, I do their last interview. I see them on the first day, I see them after month 3, and I see them after month 12. And every Monday I have an open block in my diary where anyone in the company can book time with me. And so you, you, you, like, we're in an advertising space, you're only as good as your team, right? So I care absolutely that my team are the best, most supported, most enabled, most empowered people in the industry.

See, I think it's, you know, incredible that you're saying this, but for some reason I don't think this is normally the case for every CEO, you know, even ones I've met, or often a lot of people in companies are very daunted by the prospect of having any relationship with their CEO, and, you know, maybe often feel superior to them, whatever. But what is it for you that makes it so integral and important that you are doing these, you know, these such frequent meetings and actually having that relationship established with all your employees?

Well, it's showing your team that they're the most important thing. I often say, "I have no one more important to speak to than you," to my team, right? And so part of it is avoiding the issue you just described, and it's one of accessibility that I want. So if I look at advertising, the thing that's most important about for us in the future is that we are integrated, that our creative team are talking to our media team, they're talking to our analytics team, and they're building new and innovative solutions. So if I can keep the culture as flat as possible, take ego and a power dynamic out of it, I foster deeper collaboration. And so if that has to start at the top, if I think I'm more superior than anyone else, then you create a degree of superiority. So I fucking hate that we're a family thing, because we're not. Like, if it comes down to someone in the team or my children, trust me, you are not even close, right? So I describe— we're much more like a team sport, yeah, in that we win and lose together. And what I say to my team is like, our social contract is you grow when we grow, and we grow when you grow. Like, we can't promote you, we can't invest in your personal development if we're not a growing business. And if you're not growing as an individual, we are not relevant in our market. So we have this absolute shared responsibility. And so that comes from respect and keeping it, like, you know, human.

I read a post recently which I think is interesting, led to this conversation, which is like, it's that sort of chicken and the egg element of, okay, But you've got to train your, your talent to make them the best possible. But you can't in this day and age train talent but then just leave, and it seems like a not a great return on investment. However, what it does sound like, and through lots of learning I'm sure in your career, you've come into this role as CEO and you've established, okay, this is how we're going to go forward, and it's ended up, you know, you're listed in all the top places to work for in the UK and in London and And I think that must be, you know, a lot down to your mindset. So what would you say to, you know, a company, or, you know, maybe if we look at it from a student's perspective more so, you know, you're trying to go on this journey together of, you know, helping them grow instead of like leapfrogging and, you know, hopping around in their career. So how can a student coming into your company make the most of growing in your company?

So I think if I look at the 3 things that people we speak to at the beginning of their career that value most at the moment, one is money, one is flexibility, and one is, well, the other is learning and development. Well, the reality is that you have to— money is not a right, it's an earned privilege, right? So we So I think it boils down to the reason I do— it's back to your last point— the reason I do the last interview is to look at attitude. And you can see small benefits by hopping between jobs, but you build a reputation. If I interview someone and I see on their CV that they've moved between jobs, I'm not investing in that person. We have a transactional relationship. I'm employing you to do a job, right? I'm not going to invest in your career because it's a shitty investment, right? If you're going to commit to me, then I'm going to commit to you. And so we as an organization try to institutionalize that. And up until last year, we were an employee-owned business, so everyone in the company owned the company, and we sold the company in December, and every person in the agency benefited from the sale. So the deal was very straightforward. The deal hasn't changed. It's just what we— the reason we chose to sell the company was to enable more career opportunity for everyone going forward and a bigger platform. The reality, I mean, the hard reality in life, and one that I'm a beneficiary of, is that if I hadn't committed to Periscopics for 12 years, I wouldn't be where I am now because my platform grew. My reputation grew, my experience grew, and all of that was through the investment of trust. And without the investment of trust, I wouldn't have built a platform that allowed me to be more influential, to be more wealthy, to, you know, these other things. If I just moved jobs and maybe got an extra 5 grand here or 5 grand there, I might be earning half of what I'm earning now, And I would have less opportunity because the trust would not have led to the investment, and the investment leads to the opportunities, and the opportunities lead to the value.

Do you think I'm wrong for believing this is quite a novel outlook as a company?

I don't think you're wrong. I think I think most advertising agencies see their client as the asset. So if you've got, I don't know, Coca-Cola as a client, right, and they pay you £10 million a year in fees or £100 million a year in fees, right, I've got to focus on keeping Coca-Cola happy, right? If you do that, you see the people as a commodity. So if I change the people, I change the people because I care about Coca-Cola. Well, my attitude is I care about the people, and if I care about the people, like, Coca-Cola might resign us as an agency. That's my asset, right? These are the people that the knowledge that they have and how well they collaborate together is what is the core of our success. Because we're like, an ad agency is just its people. Like, we don't make anything, our people make stuff. Yeah, you know, so if I want to have creativity, if I want to foster innovation, I want to foster a progressive attitude, I focus on them. I focus on building an ecosystem that enables them to do the best possible work. They focus on them, right? It seems completely illogical that anyone would think otherwise, and it boils down to short-termism. You lose Coke, you fire all them, you get Pepsi, you hire a load of other people. Well, just use the ones that learn everything on Coke to do Pepsi.

I mean, it's just No, and that you put it really nicely, and I think, um, well, again, like I've said already, but it is a refreshing outlook to hear, and, and have someone in your position actually like preaching and practicing that is great to hear for the graduates. And I wonder, um, you know, in, in this world where authenticity of what people are actually doing can get lost in the world of AI, and, um, I know that's something you speak quite a lot about, but in the actual advertising space and standing out, I guess there's an element of harnessing all that's good about AI and not using it to the detriment of the authenticity and the, yeah, how an advertisement could stand out, for example. So how are you currently, you know, balancing that and adapting to the ever-changing landscape?

AI is an enabler. It's not going to take away. If you look through the history of modernity, when the weaving loom was invented, everyone was like, we're not going to be able to hand weave stuff anymore. I saw this lovely article which I posted on LinkedIn about teachers striking against the use of calculators, and like, there's a repeating pattern here. I think part of the challenge that as an industry we're facing is the way that you grow, historically how we've grown talent is you get people who have got, from university, they've got a good learning mindset, they've been taught through the university system how to learn, and you then screen them for attitude, and you take the ones that have got the right sort of attitude, and then you invest in them. And you invest in them, so you pour lots of resource into them, and you give them lots of opportunity. But you also have to give them practical experience. So they learn in-platform, in digital, or they learn by doing the jobs that are the more routine jobs, right? The 10,000 hours is a thing, right? So you have to go through that because it's also about making sure that you're testing attitude as well as delivering real-time value at your skills level. AI is going to do a lot of that, that sort of repetitive work, and the critical thing for that is that actually what that doing the repetitive work historically has done is build confidence. That you can go into a room knowing a very small area and being master of that tiny little molehill. And so you speak to a CMO, you speak to a CEO, and you say, I know this because my confidence is anchored in my absolute knowledge that I'm right. Yeah. Over time and circumstance, you build experience, perspective, and confidence. And so it's really easy if backed by data, you're saying this is true. When you're selling an idea or you're selling a creative piece of— you're selling a strategy, right? Someone quite fairly is going to say, I'm going to challenge that, I don't believe it. You have to be able to defend your ideas, much harder thing to do, and you're opening yourself up to vulnerability. And so AI is going to change that paradigm, and our reaction to it is we've built a career pathway mechanism called— we call it Apollo, But basically what it does is it says, okay, if this is you in the middle and we look at— we divide the way that you might grow into different directions and we say, okay, you're going to influence around business, which is things like sales or client leadership, so who works with the clients and translates their strategy, or you're going to go into pure strategy, which is you're going to sell ideas, or you're going to go into management. And one of the, one of the massive issues that all agencies, all organizations fail is that as you develop this thinking that you have to manage people to grow, it's some— you, you are either a good manager or a bad manager, right? If you're a bad manager, do something else. Yeah, you have to care, you have to care about people. You can't fake it. You have to really care about them. So Or you go into, like, mastery, which is you're going to progress the craft, the agenda. You're going to be the expert on TikTok, you're going to be the expert on radio. Like, that's about really understanding the craft. And so we say these are 4 directions you can go in. How do we skills develop you based on your knowledge and your experiential skills in order to ensure that you're equipped? If you're going into influence, which is those two, right, I want to build your confidence. If you're going into Impact, which is these ones, I want to build your knowledge. It doesn't mean that you— I don't need to build your confidence as well, but the graphic equalizer of your skills are slightly different. So it's about trying to give people agency over their own career. Like, what we're building is like the road system, and so you can be successful and you have to be responsible for your own development. Like, we're not your parent, we're providing an environment within which you can flourish, and you take ownership over that.

Yeah, I think that is really cool. One thing that sort of stood out to me, what you were saying there, was about being a good manager or not being a good manager, and I think it is strange in a lot of career paths, like, if you're really good and talented at what you do, for some reason the next step of promotion is to being a manager, which is then taking you, stopping you from being a talent and putting you into a role that you have no idea if you're any good at. And I wonder what your view is on that in terms of what does a manager actually play as a role in your company?

So, coach, like, so there's some functional components of management, which is making sure that you're helping support the people through— the bureaucracy is probably the wrong way to say it, but like, are you delivering against making sure that there's a PDP? Are you delivering against the structural things that we need to do to skills assess and provide a sort of care framework around an individual? And there are a lot of people that just don't do it, right? So do you care enough to deliver against your obligation to that person? The second part of it is, do you inspire them? And that's where, you know, people who are really good at stuff are inspirational. But there are lots of people that are really good at stuff that look down, and that's not a criticism, right? They are the ones that generally drive our entire agenda forward. But if that happens in a vacuum, you've got to bring everyone with you, right? So just running over the hill and not looking back that's not a great leader, because the one thing great leaders have in common is they've all got followers. And so it's about looking back and then coaching the people and saying, hey, let's make sure that we're all moving together, and also having the bravery to say to the ones that are lagging right at the back, saying, this probably isn't for you.

It comes back to that team sport analogy that you used, and I think, yeah, you articulate that really nicely and And my final question to you of this interview, which I ask every single one of my guests, is that when you first started off your career coming out of Newcastle, you would have had a certain idea of what a successful career would look like to you at the time. And fast forward with all that you've learned and all the different companies you've worked at, the bottom, the top, and everything in between, what would you define as your definition of success?

Happiness is like the journey. It's only when you look back on it that you realize it's about the journey. It's not about the destination. Because if you think about it in really cold, hard terms, the destination's death, right? Like, so have— make choices that are going to give you a good journey. And for me, it doesn't matter what you do. It matters who you do it with, and what you do it for. Because that's all about the journey. And if you're enjoying the journey, you spend a third of your life sleeping, a third of your life working, a third of your life playing. If you don't enjoy the journey, you've only got a third of a life.

That's great. Thanks so much for coming on, appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.