The One Where We Discuss Running And Scaling An Agency With Laura Hogan

WTSPodcast

In this week's episode, we chat with Laura Hogan, Owner of Sweet Digital Agency, about running and scaling an agency.

Where to find Laura:

LinkedIn

Twitter

Website

Resources from the episode:

Search Engine Journal

Search Engine Land

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Episode Sponsor:

This season is sponsored by Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog develop crawling and log file analysis software for the SEO industry, and wanted to support the WTSPodcast as listeners to the show. They’ve just released version 16 of their SEO Spider software, which includes - improved JavaScript crawling to help you identify dependencies, such as JavaScript content and links, automated crawl reports for Data Studio integration, advanced search and filtering, and the app is now available in Spanish, French, German and Italian. You can check out the latest version at Screaming Frog's website (screamingfrog.co.uk).

Where to find Screaming Frog:

Website

LinkedIn

Twitter

YouTube

Facebook

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Episode Transcript:

Areej AbuAli: Hey, everyone. Welcome to a new episode of the Women in Tech SEO Podcast. I'm Areej AbuAli and I'm the founder of Women in Tech SEO and I am your host today. Today's episode is all about running and scaling an agency and joining me is the brilliant Laura Hogan, who is the founder of Sweet Digital. Hey Laura?

Laura Hogan: Hey, are you all right?

Areej: Yes, I'm good. Thanks. How are you?

Laura: Good, thank you so much for having me on.

Areej: Yes. Thank you so much for joining. I'm really, really excited about today's episode. We've worked together before through Women in Techs SEO initiatives so thank you for jumping on the podcast with us.

Laura: Not a problem. Hopefully, I can give some useful information to people.

Areej: I'm sure you will. Can you give a little bit of an overview about yourself and what you do and everything we want to know about Sweet Digital?

Laura: Yes, so I launched Sweet two, two and a half, three years ago now. It started just me in my kitchen with my dog, and we're just under 10 people today. We've had some really lovely growth over the last couple of years. We're pretty much a full-service digital marketing agency. We have team members in the UK. One of our team members moved to Spain last year and then we've got a team in South Africa as well. Basically, anybody who's really good who wants a role, we don't really care where you live, which is brilliant.

Areej: I Love that.

Laura: Yes. It's so much fun.

Areej: I remember a few-- I think maybe it was right before COVID, you were definitely much smaller then. How was COVID for you with the agency growth and how did that go?

Laura: I think like every agency when it first hit and the UK closed down, there were definitely a few days of tears and a lot of panicking initially about what might happen. But you know what, I just put my big girl pants on and we knuckled down. There was only three of us in the company at the time that COVID first hit and we just knuckled down, and really worked on the sales, really worked on the partnerships that we had and really worked on making sure that we retained the client base that we did have. When COVID hit, our biggest clients were in leisure and hospitality and travel, which were probably-

Areej: Oh no.

Laura: -the hardest hit industries but we just supported our clients. I think that was the key thing. Nobody cancelled a contract with us, which we’re so fortunate of. We worked with them to scale down their retainers for a bit, and to be there as that support for them. Obviously, in the meantime, we were working to bring on new clients, because one of the things that we found was that companies that weren't online pre-COVID really realized that they needed to get online quickly and start moving during COVID.

We started working with a lot of clients that wanted to start being direct consumer that previously hadn't been. Overall, we've grown phenomenally in the last year or 18 months, and we didn't have a client leave us with COVID, which is unbelievable really. We were so fortunate in that respect.

Areej: That's amazing. I'm so glad to hear that. Before you started your own agency, what did you used to do before that?

Laura: I've been in-house on the agency side prior to starting my own. I did do a degree in journalism and that is what led me into SEO. My first job after uni was very-- it was actually really old school link building. It was very much about working with bloggers to get product reviews. It was so much fun. Then, as part of that, I was writing a lot and learned what SEO was. I'd never heard of it when I was in uni and then learned it on the go.

Areej: How did you make that decision? You have a stable job, a full-time job, and then you decided, actually, no, I want to start my own thing.

Laura: I had a lot of change in the six to eight months leading up to that decision. A lot of change in my personal life and just made me review everything that was going on in my life. I had a really long-term relationship end. I had to start the house that I was living in with my ex as part of that. It was almost like everything in my life was starting afresh, so it just made me reassess everything. I went, "You know what, if I'm ever going to do it, now's probably the time to do it."

Areej: I love that. Sometimes just that change is much needed. I'm really glad you made that decision because it looks like it's working out really, really well compared to if you were still doing your typical nine to five.

Laura: Yes, 100%. It's the best decision I've ever made. I think maybe I should probably thank my ex for cheating on me.

Areej: We're here today to talk about all things running and scaling an agency. I just want to start off by understanding a little bit more about what is the aim of scaling an agency? Because there are some people who, want to start their own thing, but they don't think too much about growing it or scaling it. They think about it continuing to be a one-woman show. What's the difference between that and going ahead and thinking about let's actually scale it?

Laura: I think a lot of it comes down to what you want to achieve. Are you building something because you want to sell in a few years' time? Are you building something because you want a bit of a lifestyle agency where you are not hugely involved in it and it's very team-based and you dip in and out? Or are you building something that you literally eat, sleep and breathe where you are heavily involved in everything, it's your job as always think of it and you’re building it to have just the life that you want from it?

I think that's probably one of the first decisions people have to make when they know what they want to do with it. I know that work-life balance wasn't something that was important to me. I don't have children. It's me and my other half in the house. It wasn't something that was hugely important to me. I wanted to be involved in every single thing in the agency and that's my plan going forward. I think it's knowing what you want from it. It depends then on how you build from there.

Areej: That makes a lot of sense, definitely, starting off by thinking that. Of course, it can be something that changes down the line, right?

Laura: Yes, 100%. It just gives you your starting point because if you're building to sell, I'd say you might start front loading and bring team members in really quickly into the agency. Whereas if you are building for something that's got the longevity of it and sustainability of it over time and you don't intend on selling it, you're probably more likely to be on your own for a longer period of time. Then when it gets to the point that actually, you are completely at capacity and you then need to bring people in. COVID has shown us that you can't really predict things 100%. The reason that you're doing it and how you want to scale definitely can change.

Areej: At what point did you make the decision that, I need to start hiring people in. I need to start growing a team.

Laura: It's very numbers-based. I live in the numbers a little bit. I was flat out myself and I was using two or three freelancers as well to support with work. It was very much looking at the bottom line. You need to know what are you billing out, what expenses do you have in the company, your tools, any freelancer salaries that you do and your own salary, all that information and then what your bottom line is. Also understanding from a client point of view, have you got anybody leaving in the next three to six months, what's your pipeline like, and when you can confidently go, “Okay, I'm absolutely maxed out. My client's retention's really strong. I don't have any clients going in the next few months. We've got a really good pipeline. We're confident that 75%, 80% of that's close."

Then you can look and it can become the time to bring somebody up. Particularly if you're already using freelancers at that point because it might be more cost-effective for you to bring somebody in full time rather than using freelancers too. It's a fine line. I think you just have to remember that you're responsible for that person's salary if you bring them on. You need to be confident that you're not be bringing somebody on and then letting them go in a couple of months' time because that's the last thing anybody wants to do.

Areej: Yes, definitely. How have you found setting up a remote working team?

Laura: It's been quite easy on the team side of things. We've been so fortunate in that I actually have quite a rigorous recruitment process, and I always pay people to do some work as part of the recruitment process just to make sure people can do what they say that they do because I think it's very easy to pretend that what you're talking about with SEO and PR, and PPC but actually, physically doing it is when you see whether people can do what they say.

We've just been so fortunate in finding that such lovely team members. Our first team member, Becca, I'd actually worked with before and knew before and Becca was freelancing for us, and then she agreed to come on full time. That was brilliant. We already had a relationship there. Everybody else on the team, we've just followed the same recruitment process in advertising the role and putting on boards like yours, boards like the remotest board as well, and people have applied through there. It's very much about everybody being competent and comfortable in what they're saying that they can do, but also just being a nice person.

Areej: I love the fact that you pay people for interview tasks. It just makes so much sense. You see a lot of people who, number one, the interview might feel very, very theoretical, in which case it's difficult to gauge whether someone can do something. Then secondly, there are some interviews where people are expecting these massive, massive audits, and it's like to do it for free as a candidate is very, very difficult.

Laura: Yes, 100%. You have to be respectful of everybody's time and also from my point of view as well. If you're being paid to do the task, I expect people to put 100% into it. Whereas if they're not being paid for it, they might not put as much effort into it because they're not being paid. We want to see exactly what you can do with it. You should always respect people's time and pay them for it accordingly.

Areej: How do you go about ensuring that you can retain your team members? What kind of things do you focus on from a cultural perspective?

Laura: The culture side of things is a little bit harder when you're remote because everybody's not in the office together. I think sometimes it probably can be more difficult to build up really close bonds as a team. We share a lot of stories on Slack, and things like that. We’re always hearing funny things that are going on in each other's lives, which is nice, but it's almost that at the same time, as a team, we're not living in each other's pockets and we're not so close that there's going to be friction.

I think, you can get a really nice balance being remote that you don't have that toxic-ass culture, feeling like if you're not going for drinks with the team, that you're not going to be part of things or selected for things. We also talk to each other every day, so we know what's going on in each other's lives.

Areej: Definitely sounds like there's a mixture of pros and cons there when it comes to setting up a team remotely. At the same time, I'm guessing, with COVID, you were already prepared, right? Whereas with a lot of other companies, you had to all of a sudden completely shift things. It was more difficult for them.

Laura: Yes. We were doing it before it was cool to be remote. Whoever applies for the role, know up front that that's what it is, and it is a remote role. People come into it knowing what to expect from it.

Areej: Let's talk a little bit about the sales and business development side. Is this something that you fully look after or do you have other people in the team who also help you with this? What's the process like for you?

Laura: We do have a team member that helps with it, but then I'm involved in all the sales processes as well. I think one of the biggest things that you learn when it's your own business is that you can say no to work. It pains me to do it. I don't like saying no to no to clients, but if it's not going to be a good fit for you, and it's not going to be a good fit for them, sometimes it's best to just say no and to walk away from it. We're also really fortunate in that I spend an awful lot of time at the start building up referral partnerships with other agencies and larger agencies. We do get a lot of our business through referrals, as well as through our organic leads.

It's quite a smooth process actually. We're always keeping track of our pipeline and what we've got coming in. When people are starting, we don't do too much project work, which makes it easier to keep track of that, because it's retained work. We put much more focus on retention than sales because it's 10 times easier to retain a client than it is to try and win a new client. We've worked really hard to have really strong client retention across the company, and that's what keeps us ticking.

Areej: In general, I think with a lot of people who are starting to scale their agency, or even starting out their own agency, one of the first questions that they tend to have is, "Oh, how do we decide on pricing? Do we charge things by the hour, by the day, by the value it provides?" How do you go about doing that?

Laura: We do a day rate to keep it easy and to keep it simple. I think pricing’s such a divisive topic in that you want to make sure you’ve paid for your expertise. You want to make sure that-- Everybody on our team, and it will always be the case, that because we are remote and have been, I don't hire grads in and that's just because we don't have the facility to train them properly. If you came to us with that with next no knowledge, we won't be able to get you up to scratch.

We've always gone down the route of hiring people with between three and five years of experience to bring in so that they don't need that training. With having that expertise does come a bit of a cost, but then on the flip of that, we don't have huge overheads. We don't have a fancy office in the city centre and things like that. I honestly think you just have to be realistic with your pricing. I think to know what your competitors are charging, know what your value is, and what your worth is, but also, don't be crazy about it.

You should know what you want your profit margin to be, and where you'd like it to be when you take all your costs off. I think you just need to be realistic with it. Sometimes I think in digital, we're probably a little bit unrealistic with what we want to charge earlier.

Areej: Were there certain things, whether it's related to your clients or your team, that you feel like you could have done differently? If you would go back two to three years in the past, is there anything that you would have liked to have done differently back then?

Laura: I think we could have brought team members on earlier. I was bringing 60-hour weeks, myself working 60-hour weeks before bringing people on. I probably could have brought people on a little bit sooner to support with things. There's always going to be the odd client that you think, "Maybe we could have kept them." Or there are people that you've turned away that you're going, "Maybe we could have worked with that one. Maybe we could have made it work." I always try not to live too far in the past and just think about what's going on now and what can you change now or impact now that's going to make a difference.

Areej: That definitely makes sense. When it comes to saying no, I can completely understand the idea of saying no to potential clients that you might take on. Have there been circumstances before, or what's your advice in general for making the decision to stop working with certain clients?

Laura: I think if it does not work, if you find that when you get an email from that client, you're huffing, or you're rolling your eyes, or you just don't want to deal with it, it's probably a sign that it might not be the right partnership. It may be your fault. It's not always the client’s fault. Sometimes people just don't gel and don't work well together. It's knowing when to call time on it. You have to think about the money, partly. They are part of their retainer. They are part of your lines, but is it worth it?

If it's not worth it, then stop it. If you're going to be happier by not working with that person, stop it but know that you need to put a concerted effort in to fill the void that they're going to leave in the figures.

Areej:...