 Remember phones on silent, but tweet like mad things. That would be awesome So I think over to Adrian and alone now. Um, yeah, Adrian everybody Adrian alone at every loaner everybody Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Can you hear us? I have the microphones on Why Wi-Fi is met net and then you badges do the thing my best fellow Yeah, fire exit that way toilets over the ladies upstairs gents downstairs. Okay. I'm done. You carry on. Sorry. Okay, perfect So thank you very much for the introduction Hello, word cam. Good morning. Thank you for turning up for our talk in such a huge numbers. That's fantastic We are afraid the first dog. There won't be anybody but look at that. So thank you so much So before we go into our journey and before we give you some of our insights into how to build an innovative at Pras agency Let me introduce ourselves My name is Iluna Philippi. I'm the managing director and co-founder of move agency and together with my business partner Adrian restancia who's our director We built an agency of 12 people. We're spread across three locations so we're some sort of hybrid between remote teams and office-based environment and The journey that we will take you on spends past five years and this presentation is Dividing into two parts. So in the first part Adrian will walk you through the actual history and in the second part I'll summarize some sort of insights from co-founders perspective So now over to you. Okay. Cool. So It all starts with with this picture, which is actually a five-year-old selfie This image shows the first day of move It was taken off on a February morning in 2010 and it's the first day when me and Ilona started working working together as a team We were five years younger. I had more hair and Ilona had no gray hair so it it all starts with the humble beginnings and With these two beauties which were our first computers with bottom from from gumtree for 300 pounds And we proudly place them on a desk in our shared office space in East London. It was a good start We had yeah, we had some machines, but that was not it We also had the dotnet magazine subscription So we were keeping keeping up with the trends and with all the amazing things. They were they were done back then We were full of enthusiasm and positive energy, but had no idea how to run a creative business And we wanted to do everything like web print mobile and we knew that in order to get some work We needed a website So we created this beauty which was our first website and we title ourselves creative web design agency Then we start getting some inquiries happy days And because we were busy later in the year we've decided that we did some helping hands So we made our first additions to the team. So we've got our first interns an account manager and a designer We used to get like several type of projects and I'm gonna highlight three of them because I want to show how How diverse our portfolio was so this is one one website that we've created for for a company called mom you and Back then was quite an innovative project because basically we all know that five years ago The internet was slow pages took a lot of time to load and everything was like yeah kind of like moving slow So we thought okay, how can we find an innovative way to to show the content quicker to the to the users So what we did we just came up with an idea of a slider. So basically The navigation of the of the whole website was guided with with the use of the slider and everything was into one page So what you are looking at now? It's basically a one page website The only difference is that instead of going from up to down as it works now It was going from left to right so it's yeah, and we are talking about the internet six years ago So the client loved it We were really excited about it and it was a very very nice project that we actually kept in our portfolio for quite a while And as we just starting up everything was really interesting and it was we were very excited about every challenge So we were saying yes to everything. This is how we end up doing this this mobile app Which we really enjoyed working on and another example just to show how diverse the portfolio was we What you are looking at now. It's a preview of an online platform from trading options It was quite a complex project project and believe it or not. It's working even today in almost the same format Moving on 2011 was the era of the discoveries and that's right That's where we discover WordPress and we love it It all happened when we attended out the first work camp in Portmouth And we came back fully convinced that WordPress is the way to go We are super excited about this open source CMS and we start looking around for people that can help us to take Take our business to the next level The plan was to start delivering WordPress websites as a core service for our agency and That's where we meet this guy This guy is Lucas. He at that time he was a freelance WordPress developer and now he's the team leader of our check hub We also got our new office. It was quite a nice one actually But the wind the window view was not that great But it was quite nice and spacious. So yeah, good one So now we have a new office. We have a team of five people delivering WordPress websites to our clients So our WordPress agency now In 2012 we've entered what we like to call the top league and I'm saying this because that's when poker Stars selected move agency as one of their agency for supporting one of their WordPress websites And that was really amazing We went up working with poker stars for several years and we formed a successful partnership that we're really proud of So it all starts to feel that we are actually doing something right We're getting more work and find ourselves in the position of needing more helping hands So we've hired another developer and we started our check office and later in the year everything seems to go on on our way and by I'm saying this because we've partnered with a Social media agency and we've pitched and won both the design and built for Toyota and Lexus blogs That felt even better really so we really loved The feeling of pitching and we are always ready to go the extra mile to win to win a project we want to work on So we end up creating some awesome stuff for for Toyota and some really nice designs for for Lexus and We are also six as the air finishes. We made a few hires Just to expand the team and one cool thing. We bought a coffee machine So we are a real company now 2013 is the air of the coffee machine So the rumor spread around this London that move has this amazing coffee machine that is doing this super cool coffee. So This is the entrance to our office after that So the coffee gives us more energy as well, we are winning more work and We need more people so we expanding again and we hire another developer in our check hub. So we are seven now We have to keep the steady course because we like the position where we were and 2014 is the year where we start getting more involved into work WordPress community and by we were really We were true WordPress fans at that point and we wanted to to give something back to the community That's when Ilona steps in and share some some of our company sites at the work in London in 2013 Business wise we are also winning some work With a strong team behind us. We are in a great position to get larger and more complex projects Our client-based changes from small companies to medium-sized businesses and we are becoming work for us experts It's not all about work We value our company culture as well and we take every opportunity to bring our team together So later in that year we organized our first in building any chapter in Czech Republic. I was really really good 2015 giving back to WordPress We continue to be fully involved with the word press community by speaking at both work camp London and work camp Europe And we are also part of the organizing team of work in London Early in the air we open our Romanian hub and we add two more members to the team And the best thing is we get the new home in London. So we are moving in this nice office space That's now branded with move colors. Also in Czech Republic. The Czech team is moving into into a larger office as well So we are growing 2015 was also the year when we've released our first open source WordPress plugin We are very excited about it because it's something that we wanted to do for a long time We've done bespoke plugins and complex integrations for a while But finally we found some time to do a proper release of a plug into the WordPress repository since then We've built a few others. So we have six plugins at the moment. So I encourage you to check them out They are on GitHub and there's also a link on our blog The big thing our client change has changed our client base has changed and our team has grown so We need to look different as well on the web So if we decide to give a complete facelift to our website, we look now like a mature company We have an amazing client portfolio and a great-looking site and we also Shared the move development kit on GitHub We usage as a starter team for happy development and that ties closely with our design workflow And last year I had the talk at this conference about our design workflow So it's on work WordPress TV if you want you can have a look there In terms of development we follow strict WordPress guidelines So move development kit is a mix of our development expertise and hours of work from our development teams. Please check it out That's that's the link and to keep the tradition alive We organize another team building retreat this time in Romania because we had the new office This is a picture of us doing a happy jump after we had the two-hour session of quite biking Which was really really good. So yeah, it was great And as a combination of a great team and exciting project I have all these lead to the production of innovative case studies that we are really proud of We always try to be creative showcase our work in interesting ways and also have some fun That's why that's what internal projects are for in the end One of those case studies that I want to show you today is the one we've produced for our client NACRO What we've tried to do with this we try to experiment and display the content in an interesting and unique way in order to showcase the Excellent work our team has done The case that is again based on a slide the concept supported by some great copy and some sleek animations So I'm going to show you now how this thing works So what and Adrian changes the screens? I'll say a couple of words. So essentially this NACRO case study What we wanted to achieve with it is that our case studies are Well quite quite complex quite advanced in terms of the content and what we're trying to communicate because the projects are quite large And what we wanted to make sure is that people actually read the content and they really Understand the message that we wanted to put across So this slider concept allowed us to take the whole the whole viewport of a user screen and Display one key message per slide On top of it. We have some nice animation some images So we believe the user engagement with the content was much higher. So one of those things that we wanted to achieve is Was was completed the second Because we were doing the case studies that are the usual scrolling scrolling case studies for a while We thought Can we do something else could we do something that would be a nice user experience for iPads for example So again, we revive this concept of more mu and we did this slider left an eye Which which we really like so these kind of internal projects really is Something that gives us a lot of energy and enthusiasm for our work Right and another project that we are really proud of Was the website for Q global software again? We try to showcase it in a different way So alongside the case study on our website. We created this video that I'm going to play right now Q global is a leading property and Management software supplier worldwide with nearly 40 years of trading industry over 200 employees and Offices around the world. They were the two great innovative work presentations. We might just be stood out because We saw we had some very skilled individuals That's where you want to be kind of small thing You can imagine the environment is quite advanced Digital savvy they get digital so they wanted a solution that allowed them to have absolute freedom That's why they wanted to work for us. That's why they wanted a content management system They've got a lot of just like to live we tuned into the design of the end user and committed ourselves to funding the most powerful way But then to engage and interact with the website To enable their marketing team to update the site's content with ease Utilize WordPress multi-site and set a new standard for managing the global website. I think it's a huge It's a much faster Running campaigns events. I feel like it's actually a tool that I can use now to promote those Quote overall was a quality project and we've been a fantastic job We have already seen an update from visitors. It's great. I'm also more importantly Right so Now we are five five years old We've created a very nice anniversary page on our website The journey has been amazing and we grown from a team of two to an amazing company of 12 people But the most important thing is that we are feeling great and we are really enthusiastic about all all everything that we are doing We'll never stop discovering innovating and most importantly keep our standards high to deliver the best work If any of you guys Wanna wish us send us some nice wishes. That's the URL. We've launched this a few months ago We thought we are going to receive wishes from our family and friends, but we actually got 150 so far So we are really really excited for for that and thank you very much for all of you who send us a nice A nice wish to the website And now I'm going to hang over to Ilona for the second part of our talk Which is The insights again sites. Thank you so much Adrian All right, so what are the insights? I try to summarize things that we learned over our five-year journey and there'll be Insights from their founders perspective if you're thinking about starting an agency or if you're already running an agency Maybe you'll find them useful. It's something we came across and we wished if we started an agency again That we knew some of those things that I'll walk you through so first one Timeline because I do a lot of project management at move. I like timelines and In this case, however the timeline relates to how long it takes to build Successful, maybe even inspirational agency and when me me and Adrian started the agency back in the days We never really thought about the time frame so much all we knew is we want to work for ourselves and We just wanted to get get to work as soon as possible But now five years into the journey Knowing more looking around other agencies the inspirational agencies the kind of businesses that we aspire to be one day We do notice that they're on a market for at least 10 to 15 years So if there is something to consider Before setting up an agency or if you're thinking about it the time frame is quite large agency type of business is not Something that you can do overnight. It won't be overnight success There won't be quick exit in a few years It might be a journey of 10 to 15 years or more and for many of us it is Probably our lives project really So that's on that timeline the second success criteria it's something I would say quite important because Defining your own success criteria will help you to build your agency That will eventually Fulfill your dreams and will become what you want it to be so Define your own in terms of move agency One of those success criteria That's really really important for us is the quality of the work so every year we look back at our portfolio and We really critically look at the work we've done and we have to feel like we've done something that was much better than the year Before we're always after a bigger more complex more emotive projects. We always try to do something different the concept of more muted Either ensure back in the days again It came out of the idea that why the websites have to take so long to load every time you click on a link It takes five seconds and the whole page reloads. That's why we came with the concept of slider Everything was one page websites and back in the days. Nobody was doing it. So these kind of things really Fulfill our passion for what we do And the second is the work life balance and that's really important to us Because Bosnia and Adrian believe that we all should have a life outside of work And we're very proud that that move agency we can bring that not only to ourselves as founders, but to the whole team So things like we never work weekends. We close our agency for two weeks over Christmas. We literally shut down We don't do anything We have we don't take projects that have stressful timelines because we don't want it for ourselves for our team So this this this kind of sexes criteria is very always very important for us from the beginning and that's how we build the agency So defining your own That would be my advice because then you will create something that really pleases you and that fulfills What you wanted to achieve when you started out so the next one finances If you're only thinking about starting agency, you might be wondering where to take the money to start a business and Luckily in our industry, you probably know you don't need that much all you need is internet access and a laptop your skill and The hard work determination and the time you put into it So essentially the initial investment into the company will be done in the form of you putting much more work into it Then you get paid for that's You can't go around it if you're not prepared to do that then maybe it's not a good idea to start business But on the other hand if you're enthusiastic, it that's what you want to do. It's not a problem. You do that When me and Adrian started we paid ourselves I think thousand pounds or less per month Because we wanted to withdraw from the company as little as we could so that everything else could be reinvested back to the business Then after six months I came to Adrian. I said Adrian my personal expenses are 1500 pounds per month. I don't think I'll be able to do this for very long So we increased our salary to 1500 and finally we were breaking even so there was a big big milestone but at the end of the day you can't build the agency with no budget but The thing you have to do always is to reinvest the money back and that's what we do with Adrian until today Fortunately, we can pay ourselves the market value for our skills But everything else we put back to the business. So that's either it's a better equipment Larger office space team retreats competitive salaries all that is always reinvested back to the business and we believe that's really important if you want the agency to grow So next one marketing So how to market your agency from my perspective there are what I call three pillars of that One is the obvious portfolio your portfolio will always get you the next project So that's why we put so much emphasis on on trying to find the best possible project We can and always thinking that the project We're currently working or will get us to the next level and we don't worry to put extra effort into it And go the extra mile because we know the portfolio is really what does the talking for us the second is what I call The marketing is the total sum of everything we do at move agency and that means The way we answer the phone calls how fast we respond to the clients How reliable they are delivering on time all of these things I believe are doing the talking for us and as you know the best marketing method is the word of months So if your clients are satisfied, they're going to tell other people and you really don't have to worry about marketing And the last pillar is sharing your knowledge as you know inbound marketing or content marketing I truly believe this is one of the most powerful ways to market yourself So we try to write blog posts do presentation Share resources such as our development guidelines, etc. And we never pay for any Advertising the only sponsorship we do is for word camps because we know the money goes right back to the community So that that's all we do So that's on marketing the next one team and culture There has been so much said about team and culture that I won't go into too many details I'll just summarize a couple of key points from our perspective So as you know being in a service industry the work is eventually delivered by the people who work for you or work with you So the team is really the crucial asset or the most important asset that you have So how to build a great team and culture? It all starts with successful hiring, of course So for us we always look for people who are very good in what they do They have the skill, but at the same time they're reliable accountable They get things done and they're nice people to be around the best hires We've done we've done where people who are incredibly good Incredibly good in what they do and at the same time very humble people That's the combination that works for us and fit our team culture And the second part of building the the team is obviously nurturing talent. So once you Once you find find the right people in how do you make sure that they stay with you and they're happy? So in our industry as we know We are very fortunate because the kind of benefits that we get I don't think many other industries have so Work from wherever you want whatever hours you want however you want Unlimited teas coffees parties retreats, you know, you name it and I think that's all great But at the same time I believe that smart driven people are looking for more and again That comes back to the type of work that they're working on and that's why we Me and Adrian we take it as our biggest job responsibility to make sure that we bring to the agency the best possible projects We can so that our people Really really love coming to work and feeling like they're growing professionally technically creatively so Investing into team and culture of course one of those most important things The next one innovation so that's something I'm personally passionate about and it's part of the DNA at move agency We really try to innovate and improve everything. So it starts obviously with the work But it doesn't finish is that we look at every single Touchpoint that a client has with our business or every single process that we have internally and we really try to improve it So that goes from improving even our pitches every time we do a new pitch We want it to be better than the one before So that's that's how we judge our sixes against and that's what I personally believe ensures that Or helps us to move the agency forward Okay Rewards so why should you even start the agency? From my perspective It's it's a very unique journey You can't have the same kind of experience doing something else It's similar to that once in a lifetime trip around the world No amount of reading will give you the experience You really have to go and do it and it's the same with running a business or agency if you truly believe That this is what you want to do then I encourage you up do it. It's exhilarating. It's fantastic. It's it's good fun It's challenging as well. You'll be growing as a person and it's the best job in the world If that's what you really want to do Okay, and before I go I'll leave you with words of a month you or take a I hope I read his name correctly Most of you probably don't know who he is However, he's the founder of many fashion brands one of the most famous is Zara. Maybe you're his customers as well So Amancio is now 80 years old, but he still goes to work every day Which I think is testament to the company that he created and he he left us with the four Advices about how to build successful business which really aligned with what I believe about business So I will read it to you in case you can read the small writing So first of all very important give customers what they want and give it to them quickly Second sell goods of highest quality and you will not have to pay for advertising The best marketing will be done for you by your satisfied customers Free your fortune is in your hands. Work on yourself Do what you enjoy and go after your goals relentlessly For stay with your feet on the ground and stay yourself All right, so I hope we've given you some useful insights. I hope we entertain you with our journey We wish you all the best enjoy yours celebrate your successes have lots of fun and good luck Thank you very much That was a really fascinating journey to join you on and thank you very much as well for their Great insights and the learnings you've had along the way. Do we have any questions from the floor now? I'm I'm mindful that okay. We'll jump straight into questions from the floor. That's great There was if you just Hi, my name is Carl and That's a fantastic journey and and I've seen a handful of agencies who followed a similar path But you make it sound like you just opened up the shop and the customers turned up What were the key things that you did to get those initial first few customers? Well, we we were both freelancing for a while. So we had a Bunch of projects that we've already done before so what we did we just we put together a portfolio and We build a website and that was it we haven't done any sort of like promotion or something it was all through Google and It was the good part was that some of our freelance clients we've put them into the business straight away So they they kept in paying us and we had some money to move on initially Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's a good question and good point. We didn't start overnight We were freelancers full-time freelancers already. So we had our income stream, but when we came together For the idea of building an agency we slowly moved over our freelance kind of streams of incomes and projects into one port And that's how we launched. Yeah, I can concur. That's actually how the human-made story works as well Freelance stuff coming in. It's quite cool. I will take some from more and here as well here in here But if there's people outside, actually, there's a lot of people outside watching on screens as well So could you just check if anyone wants to ask a question outside? We might come to that afterwards. Yes, sir Hi, my name is Ross McIntyre. I'm actually looking to start my freelancing in in wordpress When you were starting out, you've just told us that you were freelancers form Move was born. Were you subcontracting any workouts? Did you find any difficulties at work was coming in? You didn't really know how to fulfill it Yeah, well initially it was just me and Adrian So I was more on the project management side and Adrian was designed so we didn't have development So that's how we started to work with our currently team lead of Check-up and he was a freelance web developer and because we didn't have enough work to sustain anybody full-time We used freelancers at that point But then when the work picked up and we could see that we're essentially utilizing Lucas full-time We all came together and we said well, we need to do something and that's how we set up our check-up He had our first developer and the rest is history. We just kept adding people Great, okay Okay, do we have any questions from outside yet? No, sir. There's a question there or okay? Just over there Yes, hi First thank you for sharing your journey. I had a quick question in your experience What is one of the most common mistakes that most new agencies make and kind of how did you go about avoiding making that mistake? Yourselves or what did you learn from possibly making that mistake yourselves? Well Sometimes some projects might sound way more exciting that they are What I think The way how we work now is we have to like the client as well and the client have to like us too I think some mistakes that we've made was we started working with some people that initially Everything was looking nice and shiny and then after we started the projects They started to like put more tasks expand the specs and everything and the project turned up being a nightmare And this doesn't happen now anymore. It's actually we fixed that but initially we were just like yeah Newbies and excited about any kind of work. So we didn't really think okay Does this project have a future for us or not? We just went for it just just to have it now We are looking very differently. We're saying okay. Is this going to turn up in a really nice case study? Yes or no Do we like the client we actually ask them? Why do you want to work with us and if they come up with a nice answer then yeah, happy days if not? Yeah, it's yeah, it's a minus Great. Thanks Okay, do you have any more questions from the floor? Oh, yes, just over there just behind you Hi guys, thanks very much for the talk and you mentioned That you Set up like a street strategic partnership With I think a social media company that helped you get those big jobs with Toyota and Lexus Can you tell us a little bit more about how that came about? Did you go and search out that kind of relationship or did that kind of just happen or how did that come about? Well, we we've built a website for For a guy it was called the tennis space and it was just word of mouth Like we built his wordpress website for this guy this guy knew the owner of the social media agency So he introduces us to him. They were looking for world press developers and this is how it all started We had a meeting and since then So the word of mouth marketing yeah, so have you since since that was a success have you gone out and Tried to form more of those kind of partnerships Well We didn't really ever in the movie story make too much effort for in proactive marketing We really rely on people finding us or clients telling other clients or clients coming back We never really did Look out for for other agencies Yeah, we're not against it but currently What our ambition is to talk to clients directly so Move being serving these big lines directly, so that's where we put our efforts now rather Thank you Did you find the transition from being freelancers and developers yourselves to business owners and responsible for the accounts and Business development and your sales pipeline that whole process. Did you find that a difficult transition and how did you manage that? Yeah, but a good question so Well somehow naturally because Adrienne is more creative so he was always Doing the creative part of the business. I was more the project management business Something that I really like naturally and that's what I want to do always and even more so so We didn't find it difficult in terms of that We I would be developer and then I would be torn away from development and had to do that That's what I always wanted to do. I'm more business woman And anything else so we didn't find it that difficult and we always knew that we need to create The team that will be able to to deliver the works. So that particular Problem wasn't wasn't our challenge a dream was designer and he always said very clearly I don't have anything to do with business which really helped us to define the roles Early on very very nicely and that's probably one of those Advices maybe next time I can I can add to our insights when you Have co-founders. It's good to separate the roles very clearly. So that Somebody's responsible for part of the business fully. So I don't give Advices to Adrienne about how to do our direction at all. Maybe he asked me for opinion, but that's it Yes And on the other on the other end I have almost total freedom with business and all of those things related to that Okay Well, we're about five minutes before we finish. Actually, I have one question So you've given us a journey about the last five years Have you get any particular objectives or things you really want to hit in the next five years? Well, we want we want to expand the client base That's the first thing and our dream is to work with big names, but also create amazing work So this is really what drives us through and this is what you want to do. We just want to grow obviously Win win better projects to do something for like bigger clients But also one of my personal goals is I really like to work surrounded by talented people So I would be really happy if the team is going to expand and is going to acquire really really talented people Because this is how you you can deliver the best work really it's all about the team Yeah, I guess keep on doing what we've been doing so far Increasing the team nurturing the talent as I spoke about it trying to speak to big global brands directly when their projects and Continue on the journey. We think five years in an agency where they're still quite young. So If you look some time in front of us, okay, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Adrian Thank you alone. Do we have real questions from outside? No, okay. Well, thank you very much and good luck for the next five years