SPEAKER_01 0:25

All right, all right. Uh we're here. Welcome everyone to our webinar today with Matt Skysbrook. Matt, how you doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Yeah, good. That's that's like the biggest intro I've ever seen, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

I know, man. I I felt that it was just missing live or the the live from Saturday Night Live. Yeah, I know. It was sort of missing that. I tried to do it, but uh, I I didn't feel like it was it was fitting the moment. How you doing today, man?

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Yeah, yeah, not too bad. Thank you. Not too bad.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Good, good. All right, so it looks like we just started on LinkedIn. Thank you, Jazz, who's in the controls today, helping us out. So you just missed the preamble. Uh, we were just joking about our little countdown effect, which is the first time we use it. So with that, Matt, welcome to our webinar, man. Thank you so much for making the time. I know that you've been pretty busy lately uh building your your new venture. Um, and uh we just wanted to take this opportunity to talk to you and um see what the journey was like from zero to exit in the world of CRO and agencies. Uh we I hope that we have everybody connected now. If not, why don't you give us a few remarks, Matt, about you know, a bit of what has been this past few weeks about. I know that you've been pretty active on LinkedIn, but tell us a little bit about that, the the new thing you're doing after exiting WeTeach CRO.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Yeah, so yeah, so I sold I sold WeTeach CRO uh well back end of Feb. Um, but uh not wasn't allowed to sort of talk about it publicly until uh until March. Um but yeah, I guess what what I've sort of launched into uh is some of the things that I have done for years uh as an owner and a and a manager, um, which is working on people's effectiveness. How do they make the most of the of the time that they're at work? Um and that's not just for the businesses they work for, it's not about you know doing everything for your employer, it's about recognizing that you know you do things for them in return for things that you want for yourself. Um and I spent a lot of time coaching that into my teams, um, some of which we'll probably cover uh a bit later on. Um, you know, it's under the list of things I did well. Uh and there's also a lot of things on the list that I didn't do well. Um we'll probably cover those as well uh in in time. Um but yeah, I found that I found that that work is very rewarding um for me. Well, one of the bits I struggled with in the in the later years of running my agency was understanding the impact uh of the work that we were doing, um, you know, making a lot of money for for businesses and then asking myself who benefited uh from that as a thing I struggled with a lot. Um when you know working on on with individuals on on their effectiveness, seeing them do things differently at work because of conversations we've had or coaching sessions that we've been through. Um, you know, getting messages back from people saying, oh, you know, that's helped me do these things, which means I can now, you know, start saving towards a house deposit. Uh, you know, someone, someone who finally agreed that they would start planning their wedding uh because they now felt that they were, you know, financially on a on a good footing in a good direction. Like those are impacts.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Uh yeah, those are things. It's got very rewarding at that moment, right? Like figuring out how big of an impact you were making in in those people's lives, not only on their business, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Yeah, and that that yeah, and that makes the world a difference to me. And it's like I said, one of the reasons why I've uh I guess done a pretty massive change of uh of direction in the last few months.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Good, good. Well, um, you know, like we have a lot to cover. I think that you were you and and and another colleague mentioned that we're gonna pack what was it, 13 years? Uh what like 13 minutes?

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Yeah, 12 years into 60 minutes. Yeah, it was Nikolai, wasn't it? I can't I can't remember how we worked out.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

I don't I don't see him. I see a few people here, Stefan, Adele, uh Michael, uh, Pierre, uh, Frederick, um uh Arnie also is in here, but I I don't see Nikolai. But uh yeah, we're gonna try to cover as much as we can. Uh we have uh a bit of a rundown here to uh that we put together for everyone, and we're gonna cover some questions. If at any point you guys have any questions, I we have uh Jasmine in the controls um as well monitoring the questions, and I have the chat open as well. So let's start with you know, how do you start how you started, Matt? Right? So from an employed CRO to an agency owner, right? I believe you started in-house, right? And then then it was that you you made the switch to becoming um like your own uh agency. When when did you think that was the moment? Like it's time and it's time I need to make the switch.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah, it was it was about uh three weeks into a new job, actually. Okay. So I um my first sort of agency side CRO role, uh, I worked for Web Trends Optimize. Um, and that was the the best salary job uh that that I'd ever had. I I really enjoyed it there. Great, great people. A lot of them are still there uh as well. They are really good people. Um hi guys. Uh yeah, um I left uh I left there to to go to uh Maximizer, Oracle Maximizer, uh as it was then. Um and yeah, I was about three weeks in to that job and I decided that uh something needed to change and a new job wasn't enough for that. You know, I I'd got more money from that job, I got I had more power, more strategy, bigger team, and it meant nothing to me. I didn't I didn't feel better uh about having those things. So I I felt I needed more uh from my work and I wasn't gonna get that um working for someone else. Uh so yeah, about three weeks into that job, I started plotting for how I was gonna leave.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Were there any like red flags or something like throughout those three weeks that were like, ooh, like it's time, it's time to pivot, or was it just something that you know organically happened and kind of you realized was there an ha moment?

SPEAKER_00 6:42

I I know uh I I guess I expected you know shifting from one job to another, uh, and you know, there being a a promotion in in the middle, you know, it's a diagonal move. I expected to feel different, like I was doing more or achieving more, or closer to my goals. Not that I at that age really actually understood what they were. Uh how old were you? Uh when I moved 25.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Uh so I was 26 when I started. Oh, hold on. No, I'd have been 26. Um, yeah, so I I didn't really know much about what I even wanted uh at that age, which is a whole another story, which we probably don't have time for. But um, yeah, I I expected I expected there to to feel I expected to feel different. I expected to feel closer to to you know goals, feeling like I'd I'd moved a step up and I didn't. Um it just it literally, you know, it's a cliche, but it was same shit, different company. Um good.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

And dropping dropping dropping the S bomb.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

I did I did make a promise uh to someone earlier about not swearing too often.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

No, no, but I mean it's fine with me. I don't know if it's gonna be fine later, but you can edit it out later, it's fine.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Uh yeah, it it really did that that's how it felt. Um, you know, and so I I needed I needed more from work. It wasn't um it just wasn't fulfilling enough. Uh and so you know, I'd worked client side uh for quite a few years before I moved agency side. So I'd done like call it the two sides of the fence. Um agency side was definitely a better fit um for me. I was never much good as a corporate employee. I wanted to move too fast and didn't like taking no for an answer. Um agency side fitted me a lot better. Uh, but then yeah, it was a a case of going, well, you know, you've you've you've tried to change, you've tried to go in a direction, do something, it hasn't made any difference. So you need to do something else.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

I also think that it goes along with the moment in your life, right? You're 25 and you're well, I think that everybody at that stage were trying to still figure out what what direction we're gonna go in. But in in in in your case, Matt, did you juggle between your full-time position and starting the agency, like doing some freelance on the side, or was it like a full stop, like I'm quitting and I'm starting my agency? Like, how did that come about?

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Yeah, no, I I binned off my job and jumped off a cliff, uh, basically. Yeah. Uh no, so uh I I had done I had done a reasonable amount of freelancing sort of in the in the past. I wasn't doing it at that uh at that particular time. Um but uh yeah, I reckon uh when when I left Maximizer, I I had about what I thought was about three months worth of money uh in the bank. Um turns out it was more like four because I was no longer commuting into London uh every day. And for anyone who who has done that, it's chucking expensive um to do. Uh but yeah, so I I had what I thought was three months money. Um and I was like, yeah, three months to know.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

So you had it, you had a safety net and and you had the ability to kind of like take take that dive, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:03

Yeah, or at least I thought I did. You know, I was looking at it, it's this is something I I've I've spoken about quite a lot with people, is is that the the size of the risk that you perceive is much lower in reality than it is in your mind, you know. If I if I played that whole scenario out, you know, I I'd I'd got uh the my first ever mortgage the summer before. Um, you know, it's pretty chunky and it was pretty expensive to do. But you know, if I if I'd have failed to you know make any money, I had savings a bit that I could fall back on. Um then if uh you know if I was still struggling to make money, you know, to be honest, my well, she was my girlfriend at the time, she's now my wife, but uh, you know, she would have been able to cover us for a while, and then if that had gone badly, I'd have been able to, you know, move in with family for a time. Like basically something that that might seem like a disaster scenario, like, oh god, if this doesn't work out, like it's a serious problem. On a scale of one to ten, it might have been like a three or a four. Okay. But yeah, the perception that it is uh that the risk you're taking is much larger is something that stops people making changes that they actually really need to make.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. So at this point, um, I'm I'm sure that we're just you know passing through a lot of memories here, but at that point, you're 26, you start your own agency, right? Um at that moment or throughout being that agency owner for you know, how long was it that you had with each other? Seven years. Yeah, let's let's get a little tactical here. What was the skill that you lacked the most throughout those seven years? And if you overcome it at all or not, can you unpack that a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Yeah. Um to be honest, I lack most of them when I started it. Uh the the the the challenge is that running being a good CRO doesn't mean you can run a CRO agency. It's the same as being, you know, a good designer doesn't mean you can run a design agency. It's not the same job. Um and it'll never be the same job again. So if you love if you love the job that you're doing, you know, and you're a you're a practitioner right now, uh jumping into running an agency, it won't be the same job. Um running an agency is is soft skill uh predominantly, you know, it is people skills, it's uh nurturing, influencing, encouraging, um, setting uh processes for things like in in the early years, like yeah, sure, I was still consulting uh with with clients, um but uh you know frankly there were other people that I could hire who could do that job, but there was nobody else who could run the business uh because it's mine. Yeah, you know, so um when you if if it's something that that you're considering doing, you have to remember that the job will never be the same again. Um I'd reached a point when I look to move where you know when I look to start the agency, where I was like, do you know what? I have done a lot of the doing um now. And maybe I was wrong, by the way, about that. I may well have jumped pretty early and gone, yeah, I've been doing this for like five or six years, whatever it was by that point. Like, yeah, yeah, I know loads, like everyone thinks they know a lot at a certain point. You know, you look back later on and go, wow, there's so much I didn't know. Um, but yeah, that in terms of the the skills, the being a good CRO doesn't mean you can run a CRO agency. They're not even they're not even close to to being the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Yeah. So and what what do you feel? And I'm reading off of your outline here because I I want to make sure that we hit the high points. Um what's the most underrated skill that uh you need to run the agency?

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Yeah, I would say actually giving a shit about sorry, I've done it again. Uh actually caring about the people that you bring in to it. You'll go you'll go nowhere but fast, you know, if you if you try and do everything yourself. You will need other people. Some of those will uh be freelancers who work for you, some of those will be employees, some of those might just be people, you know, who are on the periphery, people that you've worked with in other companies, you know, might even just be people that you interact with on LinkedIn every day. Uh you know, um but actually like caring about all of the people who have some sort of involvement peripheral or not makes a big difference. Um I I know a lot of independent agency owners, and one of the almost universal factors with them is that they really want to do the best for people. Um that is what uh helps you keep the soul of what you uh create uh in there. If you end up with a reputation for not looking after your people, you have high turnover. You can't keep a client happy if you have a high turnover of people. You know, it's a service business, a people business. You know, clients, you know, in my agency, we spoke to most clients most days. You can't build effective relationships if you're chopping and changing uh people all the time. Um so yeah, the the biggest for me, the the most underrated bit is actually like genuinely caring uh for the for the people that are that are in your sphere.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Now, now Matt, let me ask you something because I I've you know I've also done freelancing work and I do some consulting uh from time to time when the project's right and and I have time. I I I see that a lot of the struggle in the agencies that are just starting out, and I have I have one example in particular that is pretty close to home, that a lot of the challenges that that that come about is when do you know it's time to bring somebody in? When is it when what was there a time in which you said, okay, I need to bring somebody in, but I don't, I am not there yet? What was the threshold for you? When was the time that you said it's time? Uh knowing you from from what I know and what you've shared already, I know that you're not risk averse. So you might have said, I'm just gonna hire somebody and then figure it out later. But I want to hear from you. And also, what was that first hire that you made in the company? And when was the time? When did you know that it was time to hire somebody?

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Yeah, so I I think one of the challenges people have with CRO in particular and starting a CRO agency is it it's a multidisciplinary industry. Like you need you need multiple skill sets, and there are very, very few people out there who can do the consultancy side of the job, you know, the research and the analysis side, and do the the technical dev side of it as well. I certainly can't. Um, you know, I I read JavaScript a hell of a lot better than I write it. Um, you know, don't do that stuff much. So when well when I started, um I already had uh I had a freelance dev uh on board um from the off. Now I was able to do that because prior to the business sort of starting to trade, I'd already signed um I'd already signed our first client. Uh and we started on everything being on fixed uh fixed price retainers um because it meant I knew what money was coming in. Um so without going too too deep into the you know how does one plan out you know the the cash flow of a business, um if you're gonna if you're going to to guarantee that money's going out, i.e. you have freelancers or uh or employees as it was later on, you know, that's money that you know that you're going to be spending. You have to know that money is coming in. Um so that's how I did it. I signed clients on fixed price retainers, so I knew what was coming in, that then de-risked uh de-risked the hires. Um my first uh employee hire um was about six months in, and that was another dev. Um because again, that's a skill set that I didn't have. Um so I could continue to do the consultancy side of it and have other people uh handle that part of it. Um because you won't do the you won't do you won't do high quality work without specialists in those different areas.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Of course. And then the challenge becomes to get more clients and more clients so that you can keep that people around, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Yeah. You know, the the the the sales side of things winning business is is a challenge for every for every business out there, regardless of of what you uh of what you do. But one of the ones that gets overlooked a lot is the retention of the clients that you have. Um I I my agency was never brilliant at sales, I was never brilliant at sales. Um what we were good at is retention. So I I mentioned earlier about the the client that we signed, I signed before we actually started trading. They're still with my agency now. Um Wow Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

That speaks volumes.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Yeah, and that that side of things makes makes a big difference. You know, you can't just go from one sale and then go, right, I'm gonna go and sell again. I'm gonna go, you actually have to again take care of of what you've spent all that time and effort trying to win. Um because that builds reputation.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Uh and then in terms in and and in terms of CRO, I think that it's important to to talk about the fact that delivering results and the definition of results is very different from one project to another, uh, maybe not for you, the agents in this case, but for the clients. So in that game of retention that you're referring to, what was key outside of caring about you know your employees plus having not having a big turnover with your employees? And what what do you think was let's try to name two, three things that were key. I know it's I'm putting in the spot, man. Um, but I I told you that I was gonna do that. So let's let's let's think about let's try to unpack two, three things that led to that retention uh metric that that that KPI that you're mentioning.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

Yeah, I mean I I've I've I've said this a few times uh over the years that if you build good relationships, uh you can uh have that relationship last even when the results aren't going well. But really good results won't make up for the fact that a relationship is poor because the minute that something doesn't work the way that you intended, you're done. Um so what we were good at um and what enabled us to have that that retention rate was effectively the fundamentals of good business. Keep your word, deliver stuff on time, help because you can. Um, you know, and I know that that may sound really noddy, uh, and it's not CRO specific.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Um, but it's part of it, right? It is part of managing the agency. I mean, at the end, there's as an agency owner and and as a freelancer or what have you, that you're not in-house in this case, uh, there's a lot of project management going on, right? It's not Only the experiments, the hypothesis, the analysis. It's also about being good at managing projects and managing client, that soft skill that you mentioned. It's super important, especially when you're an agency. It's it's it's hard to manage clients.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

I think it's a critical aspect of being able to take clients through you know the maturity uh curve. Most of them when you know my agency almost exclusively worked with clients who for whose CRO was not something they'd ever done. So we were there, we were their first experience of it, not in all cases, but in most. So they're starting at a fairly low level. You know, you want to take them through because you know there's greater value further down that, further down that path. But in order for them to take some of the risks that you're asking them to take, with in the end, with their business, not you know, if it if a test goes badly and they lose a few thousand sales like this month, it doesn't hurt my business, it hurts theirs. So you're asking them to take, you know, you're asking them to take calculated risks, sure, but still risks uh with it. You won't get them to take those risks if they don't trust you. And the fundamentals of trust are doing things that you said you'd do when you said you would do them.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

You know, it is something that I think is so simple and yet overlooked so frequently. If you if you ask people about frustrations with their agency, and it has nothing against not a CRO specific thing. Um one of the big ones is when stuff gets delivered, you know. Well, the deadline was this and it was delivered, you know, a day later, or they said close of play and we got it at half past eight in the evening. Um, you know, that's a that that one drives my wife nuts. Uh but yeah, it's it's that sort of, you know, it's that sort of thing because you you you're building a foundation of of trust because in future you're going to be asking them to take effectively bigger and and bigger risks. Um, you know, they might that might be because they're spending more money uh with you. Um, but it's also because you're gonna say, right, well, you know, I know we're focused on things that might be relatively safe, but if we want to have meaningful impact, we're gonna have to make meaningful changes. You know, those meaningful changes will result in an impact. I just can't tell you which one it is.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

You know, it's gonna be it might it's gonna be five percent, but is it that way or that way?

SPEAKER_01 24:31

That way, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:32

I can't I can't tell you for that. But to do that, you need trust.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Yeah, and and so I think that one of the things that that I've seen, especially with CRO or or maybe in our line of business in behavioral analytics, most of the time when people are are are looking out for this type of services, or um, it's just because something is not going well, right? And and they need to scale, or they need to, you know, meet their goals, etc. etc. Or something's not working and they don't know what it is, or analytics is telling one thing, but then the reality is another. I I see that one of the most crucial skills, um, or one of the most crucial aspects that that need to happen is that the client needs to be patient, right? Sometimes did you face a lot of impatient clients where they hired CRO, they hired you, and they were expecting results in the first experiment, second experiment, that they didn't understand that this is a long, you know, it's a it's a longer game that experimentation is not a one-off. How did you manage that?

SPEAKER_00 25:36

Uh badly in some cases. Uh, you know, in the tell, do tell that's that's what the audience is here for. So I I think so. I mentioned earlier about you know, did I did I leap out of uh you know employed world and into running an agency too early? Yeah, maybe. Um because in reality, when I when when I started my agency, I knew how to run tests. I knew that stuff pretty well. I can't honestly say I knew how to run programs. I learned that um as I uh as I built the agency and and made mistakes. Um also sales was something I'd had some involvement in in salaried world, but not much. Um, and where those uh call it those impatient clients as you referred to it, in later years, those got weeded out during the sales process because you could see it a mile off. Like, but when is this going to deliver X within Y period? It's like I cannot guarantee you that, and anyone who says that they can is a liar. Um but uh in the early stages I didn't do that enough, you know. I knew that their I knew that their view on what CRO was capable of was flawed. Um I wasn't confident enough to challenge it. Uh and so yeah, there were there were occasions where where as I said the relationship wasn't being built, and so it was all based on results. So test one went well, test two went well, test three, not so well. Suddenly they're up in arms, like you know, like you've done something wrong. Wrong, and it's not the case, it should be guaranteed at every point. Um, yeah, I mean that that sort of thing probably stopped maybe maybe two and a half, three years in, um where I uh realized, I guess, slow, real slow and painful realization that taking those clients on would do more damage.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Um taking them right, yeah, like client fit is quite important even at the early stages, right? Because even though and I understand this because you might need the money, you might need to scale the business, right? Because you you need to make money, but at the at the end of the day, they actually are making you spend more money and resources than they would if they're had better fit between the program or the agency and the client, right? So I think that's that's that's one of it's a it's a leading question to now uh talk about three issues, yeah, uh, that you face uh scaling with teach CRO.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

Um I guess the the common ones, um sales, recruitment, cash flow, uh those are those are the three uh the three biggest uh in just about any probably business, uh actually, not just not just agencies. I mean sales is always a is always a balancing act. Um, you know, as an owner, you have to put a certain amount of time into it. Um one of the reasons I didn't do so well uh on that front um in the early stages was that I spent too much time doing client work. Um and not an you know the stuff that was getting us paid, sure, but I spent virtually all my time doing that and not running a business. Um, you know, I said earlier about being a good CRO doesn't mean that you can run a CRO agency in those, you know, in those first probably 18 months um or so, I I was basically still a consultant just with a different label uh over the top of my head.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

So you were pretty hands-on in the process and the experimentation, etc.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

And there was nothing, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just you have to carve out time to do the stuff that is not the stuff that you know how to do. And that that there therein comes the lure because you're like, oh yeah, but I'm gonna focus on this stuff because I'm good at it. You know, these are things that I've done before. What I needed to do was accept that I was gonna be crap at something for quite some time, but I wasn't gonna get any better if I didn't do it. Um what one of the one of the things from you know, there are effectively two types of agency, ones that sell projects and or that are predominantly project-based, and ones that are predominantly retainer-based. Most CRO agencies are retainer-based. Um, so when you're selling retainers, uh you almost don't have to you have to sell as often. Um, because in theory, if you do your your retention job well, you're selling one retainer on top of the ones that you've already got. And so it's actually reasonably easy to build up uh a good chunk of recurring income.

SPEAKER_02 30:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:26

If you run a project-based business, you have to get good at selling early because if you don't, you'll go bust very quickly. And so I I remember talking to people, um, you know, uh other agency owners at the time, and and telling them, you know, you know, virtually all of our revenue is retained, and they would say, Oh, you know, we'd we'd love for we'd love for ours to be like that. We're, you know, 85, 90% project. And at the time I thought, ah, you know, well done, me, that's a massive advantage. But what the the the the issue it led me to was I because we had, you know, call it this relatively safe income, I didn't invest anywhere near enough time in building a reliable, call it sales engine, because I didn't need it, or I think thought I didn't need it. And then in later years, I saw the deficit that I'd created by doing that, and then spent end up having to spend a lot of time and a fair chunk of money trying to get back to you know, arguably where we should have been well past by that point. Um, yeah. Sorry, that's number one. Uh those of those things. Um recruitment, uh recruitment's not just like bums on seats, your people are they are what you sell. Um and they beyond like the provision of services, they'll also dictate to a large extent how much you enjoy what you do. Um you know, if you're moving from an employed world to a to an independent one for the first time, like I did, it will be the first time ever that you get to hand pick every single person that you work with every day, um, which is a joy in itself, like being able to go, do you know what? This person is ace and I want them, and then finding a way to, you know, to bring them on board. But recruitment, I I tried to look at recruitment like I looked at sales. It needs it needs a pipeline, you know. You need to talk to people that you might want to hire even when you don't have a job to bring them into. Um, you know, the my head of optimization uh WeTeach CRO, uh Aline, um she and I had worked together uh at Web Trends years before. It took me almost three years to hire her. Um I knew I wanted her, uh I just couldn't afford her because you know she's she's very good. Um and she was exactly the the kind of person that I needed to allow me to spend more time on you know on business stuff, but I couldn't afford her. Um and I knew I couldn't. Um, but we kept, you know, we kept in touch about things, we talked about it um, you know, on occasion. Um so at the point when the money was there and and the business wasn't the right place to bring her in, I already knew you know what what she wanted, you know, conditions, all of that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

You've done a fair a fair share of prospecting at this point.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Yeah, exactly. Um the the worst the worst time to look for somebody to hire is when you actually need to. Because you know, if you get five people applied for the job and not one of them is better than five out of ten, you'll end up hiring the person who's five out of ten because you need them.

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

But they're still only five out of ten. Just because the fact that the others were like two out of ten doesn't make that person any better. If you if you treat it like a pipeline where you talk to people, you know, relatively continuously, you know, you might have people senior level, mid-level, junior, whatever else, you know, across dev and uh and consultancy, QA, design, whatever else that you're that you're looking for, at the point where you are ready to do it, you already know who you're gonna go and talk to. So you don't waste time in that, and you get the people you want, as opposed to settling for the people who are available at the exact moment that you need them.

unknown 34:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:16

Um there was a third with cash flow. Uh yeah, probably boring to most people, but I guess this again goes back to my point about you know, running an agency is not like you know, being being good at CRO doesn't mean you can run an agency. Most owners don't like finance. Um almost all of them actually don't like finance. Um but businesses don't go out of business because they don't have customers, they go out of business because they run out of cash. You know, there is a bill that they can't pay. There's your winding up order, and now you're in trouble. Um, yeah, there's a famous one from the UK from a few years ago. Um, Toys R Us uh went bust because they couldn't afford to pay their VAT bill. You know, they were still selling loads of stuff, but they owed HMRC seven and a half million pounds, and they didn't have seven and a half million pounds in the bank, and no one would lend it to them, therefore the company went bust, despite making millions in sales uh uh over that time. So, you know, again, if people are looking to start something for themselves, the finance side is one of the many new skill sets that you will have to develop. You don't have to be an expert, but you do need to know enough to be able to question you know experts that you might hire uh to do that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

Yeah, it's the same as taxes, right? You need to know enough.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

Yeah, yeah. Being not not knowing anything, you know, being ignorant of the law doesn't mean that it doesn't apply to you, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

Yeah, yeah. That's uh that's good, Matt. Um, thank you for sharing you know some of those insights. We're about to switch now, but before we do, um, I have a question that Michael Morgan shared with us uh during the the the the days uh preceding the event. He wanted to know how you evangelized your work. We know how it goes, everyone is so busy. How did you break through the noise of everyday tasks and get everyone oriented to testing lanes?

SPEAKER_00 36:20

So is this in terms of you know how evangelizing it to prospective clients?

SPEAKER_01 36:25

I I I assume so, yeah. Otherwise, I I think Michael is in the chat. Please correct us if if we don't get it right.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

Yeah, if I if I'm answering the wrong question, Michael, you let me know.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

Yeah, please.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

Yeah, so I I think the the approach that um the approach that we took was from the marketing side to talk about call it the awareness and consideration angle. What what I never wanted to do in a sales conversation was sell category. Um and by that I mean I shouldn't be on a conversation like like the one we're having now that trying to sell someone on YCRO is a good thing. Okay because that is you know that's a job that uh the marketing side should do. We we never did loads of uh like outbound um uh marketing. And the reason that we didn't is because you will attract people who just think it's a way of making money and they want you to convince them why they should spend money on it versus spending it on other things. That as an owner takes up a massive amount of your time to to do that. So we focused on inbound um and by doing so left the call it the sale of category to the marketing side so that when we got into conversations with people directly, you I'd say we, me predominantly, that that aspect was already uh covered, they already understood something about it, uh about CRO. Um what you often had to convince people of is well uh convince is probably the wrong word, but what open their eyes to is the realities of what it took to do this work well. Um, when you're telling someone it's gonna cost them, you know, five or ten grand a month to do something, like some people are like, why does it cost that much? It's like you know, I could spin up a test in five minutes. It's like you could, yeah. Um but the the art is not in you know the ability to to show A versus B. You know, with modern with modern tech, that's dead easy uh to do. Um, you know, it's in understanding why you're showing A or B in the first place, and uh what you're going to do with the output uh of that. Um so yeah, I think that the one of the the big challenges was getting people to see what it costs to do these things at scale and at quality.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

Or the cost of not doing it, right? I think that that's also plays a lot into into this, especially when when clients because I think that you're also speaking again, Matt, about client fit, right? And the maturity of that client. In your case, you were you guys were doing inbound, so they there was already intent. They already knew, yeah. I mean, vaguely knowing what I know about CRO thanks to you and our campaign, which I think I thought I knew about CRO until I did the campaign, at least know in concept and definitions. Um, it's about that maturity, right? They're coming in, they have somewhat of an intent, they are somewhat familiar, maybe they heard it from somebody else like me, talking about CRO, and then they came in and said, We want to do this. So it's it's about client fit and the maturity of that client. So if you're doing a lot of outreach, Michael, and then you're trying to get new clients, there's a lot of education that has to go into it so that by the time you're ready to engage in a retainer, they know what to expect, which was one of my questions before, right? Like that maturity or that patience, how patient can they be to wait out until the retainer is done or see all the experiments through? Because at the end, it's not so much about how much money you can make out of the experiment, but how much you would be losing without experimenting and scaling that uh your business. Absolutely. So, Matt, thank you so much, says Michael. Michael, thank you for the question. Now let's switch gears. We have 20 minutes to go, so let's let's see if we can make it. All right. And now we're gonna talk about from being a CRO agency uh owner to selling the agency, right? Which is where you are right now. Um let's how do you see CRO evolving in the upcoming futures? And I had a question which I missed from I think it was Kevin that messaged me. Uh, he wanted to know about how did you see AI working with CRO? So maybe we can bake those two uh concepts in and say, do you see CRO being absorbed by the wave of AI, or how do you see it uh in the in the in the future?

SPEAKER_00 41:22

Yeah, so I I think what one of the things that I battled with over uh over the last few years is that for me uh CRO is an industry still in flux. Like I I think it's still it's still battling for what its identity actually is. Um there's a lot of discussion around you know what its purpose should be, um but that runs contrary to what the purpose most people have for it. Uh you know, yes, it should be about learning, but it isn't. It's about printing money, uh, you know, for for want of a better way uh of putting it. And I think whilst that um whilst that discussion or call it the the search for that identity still goes on, I think it's still gonna remain in flux. Um I think there there has been some amount of like CRO's always been dominated by agencies uh as a as a practice. I think there will there or I've seen more in-housing, uh not necessarily of every skill set, but of some uh of those. Having worked in-house myself right a long time ago now, you know, add that disclaimer. But what I've seen from people who have in-house things is that they've ended up getting frustrated about the throughput uh of them, and then they end up going back to the outsourcing, the outsourcing method. And that's that's why I think it's you know part of the reason why I think it's still in flux. You're almost in that inner loop where it's like none of these things are good enough yet, or at least not delivering on what people are expecting from it. So the question is, is the delivery wrong or is the expectation wrong?

SPEAKER_01 43:13

Right. I was I was about to interject and say, okay, but can we talk about then that same maturity level, right? Because some people say, Oh, well, let's say I tomorrow turn around and say to my CMO, hey, we're gonna do CRO. Right. And we need to hire one. But then when you start unpacking it, it's like, okay, so that person is gonna come in and maybe you don't have the tools, you don't have the data, you don't have access to the data, uh, you're not set up. So you're setting that person that person up for failure, right? The person's gonna come in completely challenged and not empowered to do their job. So I I think that it's you know, yes, the the industry in CRO is in a flux, like you're saying, like you're suggesting, but at the same time, where do we see the most issue, the the the biggest issue? Is it clients' expectations or is it the output of the CRO person?

SPEAKER_00 44:00

on a team is it what what do they need actually like if if if i ask you right now if you were looking for a crou job in-house let's say what would be the things that you would say outside of an interview obviously like when you're going to the yeah right and and and assuming that they tell you what's what's actually going on um what are the what are the red flags let's say you're in cr you want to move in-house from agency and you want to move in-house what would be the the or you're starting out whatever what would be the red flags what what would you look for lack of dedicated resource that that would still issue issue yeah it it and it's not just saying you know do you have access to the to developer resource for example it's like oh yeah yeah yeah yeah you do it's like yeah but you have to peg for them and you get an afternoon a month if you're bloody lucky um you know that that for me you know how the the just the the situation you described there where it's like you know that one person comes in you know they're usually it they've got a you know call it a consultancy background or consultancy skill set i e they're good at you know the the research the hypothesis the idea generation you know planning tests and all that but they're not experts in building tests you know that's a technical skill set that somebody else has you know I I mentioned it uh right at the outset about CRO being a multidisciplinary industry you can't hire one person and expect them to do anything so if I if I were it's been a long time since I was in a job interview mate um but if I walked into one uh I actually I probably wouldn't even get that far I'd you know the phone interview that you do the question would be do you have dedicated resources for CRO? If you don't I'm just gonna spend the next six months bashing my head against a wall.

SPEAKER_01 45:54

So and that's when it comes that frustration on both sides right your side as an employee as well as or an agency like for you know for that matter unless you are the you are doing like the 360 services uh because sometimes you know it could be just the hypothesis and then they shared developer resources or what have you so I think that that's what builds up that frustration right like you don't have the resources so I think that's a that's a good answer. So you're hired good answer. Yes all right so Matt um you know we've covered the things that that were most tiring to you I am assuming was all the financial all the admin stuff you were really good at experimentation and doing the experiments and the analysis and all those things but I am guessing that it didn't come to you naturally to do the like the CEO stuff right like I'd actually say the the most like the the bit that takes the most energy is people management.

SPEAKER_00 46:55

And it should to be honest like it was it is tiring and at times you you may not you may not necessarily want to do it you know you may not feel like sitting into you know do someone's one-to-one today or or to go through their personal development plan or to talk about how they might uh you know what opportunities might I be able to create for them to work on this skill or that skill um but honestly it if you're not like slightly tired out by people management you're probably not putting effort yeah so you're probably not doing it enough right yeah I I've I have a I I made a mistake early in in my agency where I I tried to push somebody into managing people um because that I thought was the only way for them to sort of progress uh in the company um that was bullshit by the way and I would never do that again um but uh yeah that was what I was doing and and it really didn't work well didn't work well for that person didn't work well for the person they were managing I then had to unpick the whole thing so it didn't work well for me either um and what I realized at that point was you should only manage people if you actually want to uh if you actually get genuine enjoyment out of developing someone and seeing them produce you know better and better work as you you know as it goes on if you if that actually lights you up you should manage people if it doesn't please don't do it um don't allow someone to push you into it either because you won't end up being you'll be miserable yeah absolutely miserable and it it is it is a it is a uh done properly people management takes a lot of time and effort and thought um care like you suggested earlier right yeah to do it right so starting with actually caring uh about it um so yeah that that for me is is the was the I would say the most tiring aspect of it although I'm not painting that in a negative light it tells me that I worked really hard to to try and give the people in in my team the environment I would want I would have wanted to to work in.

SPEAKER_01 49:15

Absolutely absolutely well I've I've had bad managers really bad managers and very good managers I can tell you like I picked the good managers above everybody and those that were good it's because they cared so you know if it goes to show it's not you know CRO centric it it's everywhere I believe that's you know we're humans at the end of the day right and and especially for for us millennials it's quite important to feel nurtured and to feel cared for so I I think that you're hitting the the nail in the head there but let me come back to to the to that compound question I uh threw at you because I think that it's important that uh I just got my 10 minute left uh big warning the flash yeah yeah you heard it right so thank you guys um so let's let's try let's try um to briefly talk about ai is it a threat for CRO is it is it not what do you think no it's not um no I'm done uh yeah no uh it's it's one of those it is something that is uh part of how we achieve tasks it doesn't replace uh what we do it's not gonna it's not gonna win influence for your ideas um it's not gonna turn up to a meeting for you and and get the sign off that you require to to move something forwards um you know I talked earlier about the you know the the battle for for identity um for the industry and and as such its place at the at the table you know for it to be for it to be a must-have and not a nice to have you know for those who've been in the industry you know uh a long time that is a battle that has been fought forever um and is still going on that is what will change you know that that battle is the one that will change the direction that the industry goes in when it starts to be seen as a as a must-have uh not a nice to have ai isn't going to win that battle for us you know it'll be used in in day to day uh in day-to-day work um but it will be used by people who are going to achieve the eventual outcome it's not going to replace them right all right well said I nothing to add there I completely agree with you um so uh Matt we we are eight minutes out so I want to do a little bit of rapid fire before I let you go and I mean we have eight minutes it's it's yeah we can be long winded here the first thing is now that you're out of the you're not you know you were pretty active in the CRO community uh you were posting great content great insights along with many people and at least to me uh there'll be a little bit of a void right because you you you're not focusing on that type of content anymore especially on social anybody that you would recommend anybody that you still follow in the CRO community that you would say like okay so you know yeah well so yeah let's let's scare to name a few colleagues here and name drop and um so yeah uh probably top my list uh Simon Gerardin um the reason I like what Simon writes is because you can tell how much he thought about it before he wrote it down.

SPEAKER_00 52:46

Yeah his posts are often quite long you know and and they're not necessarily the the easiest things to to read you know it's not like snappy punchy sentences you know easy to scan stuff um but when you read it you can tell that he's actually thought this thing through you know he didn't he didn't throw it together over his cornflakes um you know it is based on on experiences that he has had real world stuff um that he bothers to take his time to write out for you at length um you know and that that that side makes a difference he's not he's not doing it so that you know he can see whether you know 20 people like this or 70 people comment on it or whatever else it feels like it's being written down because he has seen something that he actually thinks might help you if you read it um so I I always I've always enjoyed um the the the work that Simon puts out um another one on my list isn't strictly a CRO person more of a data person um but I'll qualify why it matters in a sec.

SPEAKER_01 53:58

So Tris Burns um he used to be oh what was his job title global head of analytics uh at Pizza Hut or data analytics I forget I forget exactly which it is now but the reason I like uh what Triss does is that he he talks a lot about the importance of understanding business requirements and the soft skills necessary to uh to elevate uh the position of your uh of your specialism so and I in my opinion CRO as an industry needs more of that you know less less of the uh less of the tactical more of the strategic yeah yeah just you know looking looking up for long enough to see that you know you're not just moving stones here you're building something right right um and and that uh tris tris lays that out uh really well like I said he he does it from from the spec perspective of of data and analytics but in a lot of his in a lot of his posts you could switch that you know the word data out for CRO and it would still make total sense right um you know uh for it because yeah I it was something I I talked about a lot um last year uh you know from a content perspective was not how do we you know how do you do this kind of test or here's some examples of some tests I've run recently but rather how do you talk about you know how do we talk about what uh what we do how do we get other people to buy in uh to what we do because that for me is what is is the bit that we're still missing uh and still struggling with collectively right right well that's that's two people uh we'll make make sure to share uh this bit so they can you know look great about it uh yeah I'll be sure to be following them I don't think I follow either two I had a really bad joke about Pizza Hut and pie shards I'm just not gonna tell it um so I'm gonna save that one.

SPEAKER_00 56:02

Okay yeah yeah yeah let me know later yeah um so uh last thing um anything you've done differently how long have we got um you I mean let's let's try to name three things uh yeah so I I mentioned one of them earlier so the first one was I I would have focused more on external relationships you know industry involvements um I came really late to that uh and I've no doubt that I played I had to play catch up uh on that for for quite some time uh afterwards um so that's that's number as number one uh number two is that I would have um I would have focused more on building sales and marketing um earlier a lot earlier um I hired a marketer for the first time almost four years in um in hindsight I would have done that probably at least two years earlier um than I did um they did a great job what's the reason why you would have done it earlier just so that the market because it takes time to build to build up um you know the success from a from a marketing perspective in my opinion and I talking to a head of growth marketing here you know who's just about to shake his head and like oh Christ this is awful um yeah it in in you know when when I hired our marketer I told them that if we didn't make a return on their work for a year I was okay with that because I understood it it's this series of doing things right over time. You know yeah you're building you're building it but you're building with lots of tiny little blocks and we we had nothing when they joined and uh you know so we had a we had a lot of ground to make up uh from that from that point um you know so yeah I would have I would have looked at that stuff earlier. I guess both both of those things are indicative of a practitioner who knew how to do the work but not someone who knew how to run a business because I didn't uh at all. And then the last one uh is I would have hired slower than I did. I hired too fast on a couple of occasions uh in time that really dents things when you you end up you know your your payroll is a lot higher um than is comfortable uh for for it to be um it came from the right place and the the the right place was trying not to overwork my team um but in doing that I over-resourced on numerous occasions um and that brought it challenges in and of uh in and of itself um but yeah so I say though those are probably the those are probably the three things that I would do at least just off the top of my head that I would do differently if you if you gave me 10 minutes we'd probably still be talking about things I know I know it's it's and that's and that's the purpose of the rapid fire.

SPEAKER_01 59:21

So last question before we sign off will you come back to CRO?

SPEAKER_00 59:26

No we'll save why for the I guess for the next webinar when we get together right yeah we'll we'll save more of a hopeful answer but yeah okay well no no works asking me today no uh no I wouldn't okay well Matt it's been delightful to talk to you man thank you so much for all the support throughout this month um I just want to give you a big sub for for your career for for the exit um for caring about people I'm sure that a lot of people will remember this down the line and you know if you want to be more um if you're ambitious and you want to be more effective at work make sure you reach out to Matt who's doing some excellent coaching sessions and uh I think that covers it Matt I don't know if you have anything to say before we part ways uh no just to say thank you for for giving me a chance to talk about myself for uh for an hour uh you know it's you don't get that chance very often people people don't you know regularly ask for you know tell us your story um so no it's been it's been uh been a privilege to uh to be able to talk through it today thank you thank you man well that's it for today uh everybody that's stuck around and everybody that joined um we're gonna be distributing the recording later but thank you for joining us and I hope to see everybody soon in another take of our uh webinars thanks a lot Matt take care