 Hello, hello, hello It's working Hello, we're Cam Europe. I'm David Locky founder of pragmatic. We're a Award-winning multi-million dollar Agency based in in the UK. We're about 50 people We work with global brands that you'd recognize and we specialize in building digital platforms with WordPress at their heart That creates strategic value for our clients I can't tell you what a privilege it is to be standing on the stage in front of the largest ever WordPress event in the world So I guess the question you're asking yourselves right now is how do I get myself into this situation? Let's rewind six years. I Was a freelancer one of hundreds working in around Brighton and Hove Co-working spaces building websites as fast as I could build them and I figure that's probably where a fair few of you are at right now It's really heartening to see so many people have turned up to talk and it gives me a lot of confidence about The WordPress economy that there are so many people that want to build a business in WordPress And so my aim today is to do the very best job I can of helping you understand what that journey looks like and see if I can help you Avoid some pitfalls or at least understand what you're embarking upon so everyone's journey is different It's the first thing to say so I I know my journey and I can talk a little bit about that But the way that I think that I can help you the most if you're thinking about or just starting to Run an agency is to ask you a whole bunch of questions The answers to which I've found Challenging and important along the way so I Guess at least if you can start thinking about these questions and answers now Then you'll be better prepared than I was so I'm going to talk about the vision I'm going to talk about a business journey. What does the business look like through time and also your personal journey and If I've got time I'll talk about some of the things that I wish I'd known so before you start any journey You need to know which direction to travel and unless you know Where you're going it's pretty hard to work out which way to go Hopefully these questions will help you understand your choices for me It all comes back to personal purpose. What's the change that you want to see in the world What is it that you want to manifest? What do you want to create? What do you want to fix? What do you want to achieve? Why are you here? What's going to be the thing that you look back at? When you're retired and go I did that that's what I wanted to do and I'm proud of it The next question. I think that's important is the lifestyle that you want along the way There are loads of different ways to run an agency I know some super smart people that work two days a week and have a really successful agency I know other people that work pretty much 24-7 and have a very different type of agency, but they're both successful I think with digital particularly we're very lucky and as long as you've got internet Access and some sort of device and you can do some sort of work So what do you want your day-to-day to look like do you want to work from home? Do you want to live in deepest darkest Cornwall and work from a cottage? Do you want to commute up to London? Do you want a team in house? Like what is that? What does that look like as a lifestyle? Do you want to party hard in London or do you want to do yoga on the beach? You need to know what you're good at and Sometimes that's hard to know when you're a freelancer because you have to kind of be good at everything otherwise you You won't succeed So whether you know you're a great designer or a great developer or a great all-rounder Bear that in mind because that's what you have to give to the world And if you don't know yourself what makes you different why your clients come back to you then ask them because they'll tell you They told me that I had good judgment and they liked the decisions that I helped them make and they said that I was pragmatic Next what will your Agency offer by way of services are you going to do UX design build hosting support? security there's Dazzling array of different services that you can offer in digital and you can do some of them You can do all of them or you can hide beneath down and each of those Choices have has very different outcomes in terms of who you need. How do you structure that? How do you scale? One that I don't think is talked about very much Maybe in sort of business in general, but digital life is risk. There's lots of different types of risk. There's The risk of running out of money and not being able to pay your staff and your business dying, but there's also other risks which Uncontrollable risks, so we work in the tech sector and we have this sort of Idea in our head that because we're in tech then it's all these other industries that are getting disrupted by tech But we'll be fine because we work in tech and it's just not true tech is disrupting itself constantly and I think we've seen that with WordPress particularly over the last sort of five years really where five years ago. We're all kind of arguing that WordPress wasn't just a blogging platform And it could do a bit more and now with other platforms coming along the niche for WordPress has changed a little bit and That's only going to accelerate You know in five years where we need to build websites as we know them now Well, we need to write CSS or will the robots do all these things so It's not just about the risk of running out of money. It's the risk of being able to execute a business strategy within sort of a relatively stable period of time this one's kind of about Ambition, but it's also about How big your agency needs to be to do what you want it to do so as I say You can be a one-person agency with a massive pool of freelancers and execute a brilliant business and manifest change Or you can be a super agency with hundreds of people churning out media plans on the South Bank in a massive steel and concrete building Or you can be something in between And how how long do you want to spend getting to that point? Is this like your? Lifetime magnum opus or is this your like next five or ten years? What part of your life does the agency play and this one we could talk about all day What's your strategy? What are the strengths and weaknesses the industry trends? What's the market look like who your competitors? How can you stand out? How are you going to win the fight that you go into fight? and I think once you've thought about all those things and you've Got at least some sort of answer and that's crystallized down then you shall have a vision for what your agency is Mine was I want to build a team of amazing people. I love coming to work spending time with them in the same room I love everything to do with wordpress I'm I have pragmatism to bring to the world of digital I'm not afraid to take some risks I'd like pragmatic to get Bigger than it is now, but certainly not thousands of people. I don't think I could I Could persuade my wife that that was something to chase And we we've slowly developed a strategy that stands us in really good stead. So what about the business? How does that look over a period of going from one person to? 10 12 15 50 people All of the key stages So this is obviously based on my journey a little bit, but you know, what do you do when you've got too much to do? I mean I used to work Pretty hard as a freelancer 60-hour weeks pretty common I wanted to do everything I could do but they there comes a point when if there's a crisis or there's just sort of a chronic overload of opportunity and You have to figure out what you're gonna do Are you gonna put your rates up turn some of the work down get some contractors in to help you or are you gonna hire somebody and for me I kind of tried all those things and in the end I Wanted to have somebody that I could rely on To to help me every day. They come up Come to work. They're being the same place and I could depend on them to get done the things that I needed to help with But then suddenly you're a manager right because you've got an employee So you have to learn quite a lot of management skills quite quickly and the reality is that there's two people here But the productivity you get is More like one and a half if you're lucky because half your time is spent managing the other person and training onboarding them and It's unusual at this size of a business for you to be able to go and hire somebody that's In every way more experienced and a better developer than you are right So often you'll hire a peer and you've both got your holes So you kind of cover for each other, but it's really one and a half people and that hurts with your Cash because you can only charge one and a half times but you have to pay for two people So then you hire another person because then at least you've got two billable people and you might as well manage to if you're managing one And you kind of think well, it's only one more person but the reality of teams and human dynamics is that Given the unit of complexity of one when you've got one person You've got one unit when you've got two people You've actually got four units of complexity because there are four different ways that those people can interact and when you've got three You've got nine and so actually by adding two people You've made your life eight times more complex and complicated and that's um It's something you kind of don't realize until it's there and if you managed to sort of deal with that stage of Complexity, you know, you probably start using some tools like base camp or something like that to stay aligned and if you do that well, then your naturally start growing because The same reasons that you wanted to grow as a freelancer had too much work will manifest itself into needing more people to do the work and This is a really scary stage. I woke up one morning and I realized that If all the projects that we were working on went wrong for some reason even if I work literally 24 7 There's no way that I could backfill things and fix them and plow through. There's just like Below a certain number of people You can pretty much just dive in and fix stuff and crack on By sheer brute force, but above a certain number of people. There's too much work There's so much going on that there's no way that you as one person can can fix problems So it's critical to make sure that you're aligned and focused and you're all going in the same way to at least a reasonable degree and You all know what what's going on and then you get more people Because you've cracked that problem and he's still throwing off more work, but then suddenly you've got a box of receipts and You don't know anyone's address and you can't remember which employment contract you were using and your accountant saying There's gonna be a tax bill coming up. I hope you're saving for it And I've got proposals in my inbox that I can't respond to and so suddenly you need help Specialist help so rather than just being six billable people, you know, you need a sales Person at least to support you may be a marketing person Sometimes you do bookkeeping and accounting and HR Otherwise you spend your time doing all of these things which other people can do and therefore you should not do Because you should be spending your time adding value to the business doing the things that are hard and that nobody else can or will do and Here You've got people that aren't billable So you went from six billable people more or less to Six billable people and three unbillable people and this is another kind of crisis point in your business Because unless you have sufficient cash reserves or you're throwing off enough cash How are you gonna pay for those three extra people who aren't bringing in any money? You need them to execute the business and they'll free up some of your time, but they have to be fed Legally and if you if you get through that stage Then at some point everything breaks like everything breaks and it's really painful and The faster you get to the point where you've got a structure in your business Marketing sales operations Finance the faster you get there with a good structure people understanding what they're doing how to work together The better because that's like a super risky time. You've probably got decent sized projects With enough budget behind them that people get pretty angry if they don't go well You've got misalignment you've got onboarding new people you've got people have been with you from the start wondering how they fit in you know, it's It's another really risky time that transition between sort of you know We're a bunch of people sitting in the room. We can all kind of talk to each other It's a bit crazy to know here's a business function the marketing team are doing that. Here's a sales function They're doing that and then all the client services stuff the building the support the design All happens in one department And then the rest of it is all the stuff that you need that is supporting the business your HR your legal Your IT systems which we all kind of discount because we're IT people so we can do it right But actually over time it becomes a role that somebody needs to take care of Especially with things like the new GDPR Stuff coming in from the EU like next year Really serious legislation if you don't have somebody working on making sure that you're compliant as a business And it's going to be a huge risk And if you get to this point Then you have people doing all the things that you were doing as a freelancer and you realize How many plates you were spinning? And you no longer need to listen to me because if you've got here then you're on your own way I'm really lucky to have got here, but I certainly didn't get here on my own and I want to say a massive thanks to the pragmatic team for giving me their support so that we can get here as a As a team together So how about you personally as a person forget a business What does it feel? Like what are the challenges that you're going to go through from? Turning up to work sticking on your headphones playing through some code to the point where you've got a room full of people and You're responsible for them drinking problem So What do you want to do day-to-day? What does your perfect day look like I? Say perfect work day, but if you get the right role is it work? What do you actually love doing? About the freelancing that you do is it that you love the code is it that you love the design or do you love helping people? Do you love the internet do you love support do you love hosting? Understand what it is that you need to create around you with the business so that you can do what you love because that's the only way that you're gonna have the energy to persist with what you're doing day in day out Payroll by payroll year by year And what are you willing to put in you need to be realistic about this if you've got a family or you've got Like other priorities you also teach yoga or something like this then there's a limit to how much you're going to be willing to put into the business The energy you're going to expend How hard you're going to work and how smart you can work I remember as a freelancer Thinking I am Outputting so much work here There is nobody in the world that is more productive than me. I was doing sales doing marketing smashing websites The whole lot. It's like nobody could ever do more than this and I was just so wrong Just so so wrong You have to stop doing things because you can't get it all done and you have to stop doing the things that Drag you down and grind you down Focus on the stuff that you love, but If nothing else an agency will teach you how to be Ruthlessly, ruthlessly productive you have to be so efficient at getting through stuff hundreds of emails tens of to-dos Thousands of meetings A day it feels like And What are you willing to give up to get there to your vision? Are you willing to sacrifice time with your family time with your friends the hobbies that you like doing? Maybe even your health you don't have to But you have to understand whether you're willing to or not and this is a this is not an overnight thing, right? This takes years and years of continued persistent hard work of discipline And so how do you look after yourself through that time? How do you look after your body so that you don't have to stop work because you've got a creaky back and a Mouse elbow. How do you look after your mind so that you find a way to de-stress and that you don't? Lose all your friends because all you talk about is work and how do you look after yourself? Spiritually, how do you say this is connected? I feel connected with what I'm doing I feel like I've got a purpose and this is me for me We go to the gym. I read books. I make time for myself and I'm happy with the balance of things I have going in my life, but it would look totally different for somebody else who would say right well I'm gonna Go and live in Brazil for three months and surf and that's the way that I'm gonna make sure that I'm a good I'm good with myself. I mean this says responsibility, but it really means stress as well because If you want to manifest change in the world if you believe in your purpose and what you want your agency to do Then you need the power to do that as well and as everyone knows with great power comes great responsibility and having a team of incredible people that will follow you and Help you do what you want to do also means looking after those people. So we have like 50 people on the payroll, but Really, that's a hundred miles that depend to a greater or lesser extent and unless you are willing to Wake up in the dark early hours and Suddenly realize how much money you have to make every month to pay everyone to fill your Fulfill your obligation your responsibility to all those people Then you shouldn't hire them because it's it's a sincere responsibility It's very difficult for me to feel like I'm Separate from pragmatic a lot of the time because I have to feel like it's a part of me. Otherwise. I can't Thrive personally and in business at the same time I have to find the things I love doing and I'm good at and Do those and find a way to do those within the business for the clients because growing an agency is really Hard it's really good It's definitely something you should do but at times. It's really hard and then unless you Unless you're aligned with it and you understand what you need out of the business as well It's gonna start controlling you and Then that's a really powerfully bad situation to be in so make sure that the agency you're planning to build It's gonna be something to support you rather than the other way around and learning. You know, what do you want to learn? How can you create time and space in your day-to-day schedule to learn? How can you do you listen to audiobooks? Do you meet up with people your peers your mentors? Do you just research stuff online? There's a lot of kind of execution that goes along with the business There's always stuff to do massive to do this loads of clients stuff to do the whole time and you learn a lot from clients But you also have to learn outside of that. Otherwise, you're always just chasing to do the next to do so you have to understand that There's very little that's new that we do as a business, you know There are huge businesses that have been doing this for 10 and 20 years as an agency So if you find yourself going oh a status report, I wonder what I should put in that Don't you know, there are project management status reports out there. There are templates and Before you trash the stuff that you've found Learn why it's there in the first place So if you've thought about these things and you understand where your boundaries are with them all Then you've got a pretty good chance of making sure that your personal journey and your business journey align as you head towards your vision for the business so we've talked a little bit about where we want to go how you get there is sort of From the business side of things and personally, so I'm gonna finish off with like a few things that Yeah, I mean these are they're all very personal to you and like your strengths the mistakes that we all make But these are things that I would go back in time and tell myself The first one is about learning Always been quite resistant about business books up until very recently. I love reading. I have a kinder. I read I Would say fairly trashy books But I read them at a really high rate and I really enjoy reading something that I love and having to read a business book During what I count as sort of personal time for me I don't want to think about work when I'm going to sleep or and I've got ten minutes to chill out. So how do you? But surely there's good business books, you know, there's clever people they've written stuff I can learn it So, how'd you do that? And in the end it was really simple Just got audio books stuck on all my headphones when I'm down the gym or in the car or walking anywhere I can listen on I can learn. I don't have to read them Just simple hacks like that and suddenly I've got access to all this stuff that I wish I'd done two or three years ago or longer and I would definitely commend you to learn how other agencies operate It's um, it's always really tempting especially when you're short of time to throw something together yourself and to like build something in you, but if you can create the time and the space to For example, look at the templates that Microsoft Office ships with you know Those things are on those templates because they're needed For us Jira was a classic example of this so Jira is a project management software development tool You can create tickets you can customize it any which way you want And so of course the first thing that we do is like totally customize it with all the stuff that we are sure that we need I would totally broke it. It was still recovering from it now actually So learn to use what's there and how to get the most out of it because it's there for a reason Because people that really know what they're doing have put that together Oops, sorry Make sure you've got a strong support network for yourself and your business So I have a business coach We have non-execs who are like mentors and I have I'm really lucky to have an amazing Network of agency peers who I can trust to give me good anonymous device But also personally, you know your friends your family make sure that they understand the decisions that you're making To start an agency what that's going to mean, you know where their boundaries are with you Because you'll need them you'll need them at times My next one is quite a simple one, which is to hire a project manager In fact like car two or maybe three as many as you possibly can afford because We struggled I struggled trying to manage projects It was kind of like a blind spot because I'm quite good at getting stuff done so I could just organize them The first project managers we are this is amazing. Why did I not do that two years ago? I Still want more now This one is something I learned from that peer group of Agency founders and it's the concept of a playbook. So even if you're a freelancer, you know You've got a bunch of templates and a bunch of things and processes and checklists and all this stuff that you have to do to be Efficient so you put it all into a wiki and keep it updated make it cool to everything that you do You know all the logins that you use all of the Templates all of the tools all the processes everything put it in a wiki and put time and energy into it because It pays itself back like every single day and it's a great way of a Great way of building some collective Knowledge and IP in the business, you know, how do these things work? What's this process look like? How do we on board people? How do you find stuff? I just said follow your instincts as well. Actually, it's easy to kind of question yourself when you're making decisions on the hoof left right and center and you kind of It can cause you some anxiety. You know, should I do this? Should we go for this deal? Should we not? But You'll make a good decision. So just go with it. I would have sold more recurring revenue line items Recurring revenue is a really good thing for businesses like us if you sell services, you're selling by the time then making the Money in numbers every month match the money out numbers every month becomes Challenging and so if you can take 20 30 50% of that sort of month-to-month variance off the table by selling things that are recurring then they give you a much More powerful way to predict what you're going to need in your business and scale it up and I think that's the challenge that We all face in service industries today, you know, people that don't want to buy professional services They want to buy a service look after my website make these updates Give me this support follow this SLA. They don't really care how long it takes you to do it. That's your job to figure out That's your job to manage over the gaps and to make sure that you can offer something that's simple and consistent and at a fixed price So that's something that we're working pretty hard on and I guess my final one would be that The systems that underpin your business that they're called systems of records so they are your finance and accounting system your CRM system your Project management system these things which you use day-to-day every day People are always using them spend some time to choose the right tools and invest in them learn how to use them because changing them is Is really hard I think one of the low points for me in pragmatic was migrating from base camp to Jira and I think we had about 20 or 30 projects and to do this And that was like a weekend blown copy and pasting stuff You know if I've done it when it was five could have done it in an afternoon so don't put off those kind of investments because They'll pay themselves back And that's it really questions and answers, please. Thanks for listening Thank you so much David. That was so inspiring and interesting and valuable at the same time Then I'm pretty sure that there are some questions. Oh, I see the first one over there. So please go on Hello. Hello. Hey David great talk. My name is Raleigh. Leslie. I'm with code wolf and I just want to say that you really covered this extra Comprehensively you really looked at the whole picture of things that you consider when you're looking to start in any agency and Codable we have about 50 of our freelancers or experts that are attending today And I know I heard from at least 10 of them that they're really excited for this talk And I hope that they all go back and listen to it and take notes what resonates with them but I want to drill into a Certain point of your talk and that's when you're getting ready to take the leap and you're considering everything and and you spoke about that briefly But is that something you? Would recommend they kind of go with their gut feeling they wait for the right opportunity Kind of what is it that kind of pushes you to make the leap because for example many of them Do you know they're at their capacity right you reach your capacity you're working hard? But you end up you want to help more people you want to make more money and feed more miles and all that and so for them capacity is What they're looking to expand and so kind of that and what that looks like if you can add any more value there And thank you very much on behalf of them as well Thanks for the question great question. I'll do my best to answer it I think this is a little bit about luck in business and How luck doesn't actually matter or vary between bad businesses good businesses and Great businesses what matters is your return on luck? How do you make the most of the opportunity or survive the bad luck? That's what differentiates good and bad and in fact good and great businesses and usually Growth comes from an opportunity when you're a freelancer if you get a 10 or 15 grand project that you can smash her and throw off enough cash to pay for Your first employee for a month or two, then that's the opportunity so but that 10 or 15 grand project is probably like super Neuracking it's a lot of money You don't know if you can quite do it all because it's like an integration that you don't know or you have to pretend that you Know how to do APIs and stuff and you just go for it and it's a little bit like There's a crazy raging bull Running past and you're like it's going in the right way. Do I jump on it? Or do I not and that comes back to some of those questions about risk as well You know if you're not prepared to take a bit of a risk in a gamble That you can figure something out that you don't know how to do Then it's super hard to generate enough cash to grow Okay, and Marina was that useful I was just gonna say thank you very much part of my job is helping ensure the success of them and helping them grow And so I'm gonna definitely come back to your speech and and pull everything again from it. So yeah, thanks a ton David cool Thank you That's a question of a Marina Hey, David, so I wondered about if you can remember the first time you had to turn down business as pragmatic And like how you decided that when to say no to things and just what that looks like Not very good at doing that if I'm honest Yeah, I Kind of had a rule of never turning down work as long as there was it It was something I could do or I could probably do and there was enough money to make it worthwhile So the only times I've ever turned things down really Because there's not enough money. Otherwise, we tend to take it on and make it work Agency life is pretty insane a lot of the time, you know 50 50 projects happening That means you've got like 200 stakeholders. Most of them might know what they're doing They'll have their own dependencies things change day to day And that's the reality of like trying to do projects in real life Let alone digital projects where a lot of the people that you're working with Developing their own skills in how to do projects as well, so there's a lot of change and I Found early on that if I turned a piece of work down then guaranteed the next week. I'd be like Quiet on work whereas previously I've been stacked because this stuff had slipped back as well And suddenly I had like an afternoon free, but Yeah, I now don't make decisions about what work we do and don't do because I tend to take on too much Thank you. We have a question over here Yeah My question split in two you mentioned the bitch a business coach So my first question is how often do you have the business coach? Coaching you and second question is do you have a specific and a specific as possible thing that you would Take up with a bitch business coach and what kind of an answer that could come out of it Thanks, that's a good question. I meet up with My business coach and my mentors on the sort of monthly cadence so every month And it's it's a hard but very interesting process to do because you meet up with the client And they say please go and do all these things and I'll give you some money and the business coach says Okay, you need to go away and do all these things and then you're gonna give me some money So it's kind of like getting homework and a lot of the things that they ask you to do are quite difficult You know you have to Really soul search they're not quick questions that you can knock off Every coach is different the way that My coach work was to start at the top of like, you know, what's my purpose what I want to get to what's that end state look like and then build out the sears from there and make sure that The things that I said were important two years ago We're still respecting those now because it's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day of like Oh, suddenly this is new or shiny or I want to do that and actually having the discipline To stay Like stay with the plan and execute it You see just having somebody that can keep you in check that you can ask Even just for a bit of an emotional support, you know, so we meet up every month But if I've had like a tough client meeting or a tough day for some reason I might be like I Just need somebody to talk to that understands the journey that I'm on because if I mean if you're like if you have co-founders then you're on that journey together as the sole founder I Don't have anyone that's been on that journey except my coach and And the team and sometimes you need a safe space outside of your team to be able to talk and even if you work with co-founders Having somebody that's external to that process that can mediate that can Give you a bit of insight unblock things is super valuable But yeah, it's just um You need to find the right coach for you There's a lot of different people out there a lot of different styles and don't be afraid to kiss a few frogs We have a queue here, but I'm afraid it's only one question and then we are out of time So please okay, you were the first one. Yeah had many questions, but Thank you first. They have to share your journey with us I'm very curious What is then now? What is your role in the company now that you are doing now since you grow so big? That's a good question. So at the moment I have three seats that I fill one of them sort of interim as we hand over to somebody else, but I'm CEO MD and I'm also kind of still an account director in one of our kind of one of our teams So I'm with clients But that's only is a sort of temporary thing whilst we get somebody in to do that because there are people are much better at doing that than me So then my role is really MD which is integrating and leading the management team. So making sure that All the business functions are reporting the things that each other need to know that we're making decisions and Moving forward towards the company's goals Which are clearly laid out and work through with the leadership team That's a role that I want to hand off at some point as well the role that The last role that I have and the one that I want to keep is as a CEO. So that's the person that holds the vision Creates the culture does the strategy Does things like this if I'm invited to talk at other things that would be great Um, but yeah talking meeting understanding learning the market identifying opportunities Making sure that Where we're heading over the next year or two or five or ten Makes sense with the rest of the market. So that's the bit that I'm the motivates me So no coding for you anymore. They don't know me I've been banned from coding Sometimes I play in the console in Chrome just to like keep my eye in but It's all gone with the browser refresh Thank you so much David lucky