Rob Da Costa:
Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools.

Katie Street:
Tips and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob Da Costa.

Rob Da Costa:
Today's episode of the agency Accelerator podcast is sponsored by Cloudways. Loved by agencies around the world, Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that takes care of all the web hosting related complexities, leaving users free to focus on growing their businesses and clients. The platform offers unmatched performance, reliability, choice and 24 7365 support that acts as an extension to your own team, making Cloudways the ultimate choice for growing agencies. Now, at present, Cloudways is offering an exclusive discount for the agency accelerator listeners. So visit cloudways.com and use the promo code aa 20. That's aa 20 to get a discount of 20% off your first three months on the hosting platform of your choice. Okay, on with today's show. So welcome, everybody, to today's episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast.

Rob Da Costa:
Today we are talking all things business development, and I'm really excited to be joined by Katie Street. Now, Katie runs the street agency, helping agencies with their new business, but more than the typical agencies, so they help getting their positioning right, building marketing plans, outreach campaigns, and lead general, that kind of stuff. And Katie also runs her podcast, word on the street, helping agencies win more business. So I am really excited to have you on the podcast. You and I share so many sort of similar thoughts around this topic, so I'm excited to dig into it with you today. So, first of all, welcome, Katie, and why don't you give us a bit of a potted history of how your journey has developed in the agency world.

Katie Street:
Thank you, Rob. And what a perfect introduction as well. And I am so shocked that we haven't spoken before. So I'm really excited to dig into all things new business and a bit of agency growth stuff as well today.

Rob Da Costa:
Excellent, excellent.

Katie Street:
So my history, where do I start? My goodness. Right? Okay. So I was lucky enough to be thrown at a very young age, actually, because I didn't take the traditional route to, you know, life as I don't with anything, really. So when I first started at work, I was only 17 years old, and I'd actually just finished my. I was one, I'm one of the youngest, you know, in the year, obviously, and that's why I'm still so young now. But I went straight into work fresh out of doing a kind of GMVQ in business, because I didn't really know what I wanted to do and basically needed to earn some money because I wanted to get a mortgage at 18, because I was getting some inheritance and landed on my feet in a job that I just absolutely loved. So my first ever job was it for United Advertising and I worked for exchange and Mart and I was actually their first ever field salesperson. So they sent me out to go and meet all the motor traders.

Katie Street:
I moved very quickly up the ladder there started. I was managing the evening sales teams at the grand old age of about 19. Probably salesperson of the year, all that kind of stuff. So it was a great introduction into the world of sales for me. I had some fantastic training. I then ended up moving up to London. Stayed in the world of publishing and went to work for FHM. Started working with agencies selling advertising space and sponsorship deals for things like the high street honeys and various other things which is great fun at a young age.

Katie Street:
Then actually went client side and got some funding from an employer that I was with at the time, Pernic Rickard to do my postgrad in marketing even though I wasn't a grad. But I had enough work experience under my belt by that point to be I guess, put on the course and spent a few years there. Then had a child and by this age I'm only about 25 by the way. So yeah, I'd been doing ever so well in kind of sales and marketing. Then moved back down to Bournemouth from London and went into the agency world. Because down in Bournemouth there was a really fantastic creative hub. And I think I've spent the last now. So I'm going to show my age now 12, 13, 14 ish years leading new business and marketing for agencies.

Katie Street:
And I've been really lucky and have know gone back up to London although been living in Bournemouth. So I've been really lucky to work with agencies at every size. From sitting on the board of some quite. You know, small independent agencies with very high growth targets. So that's agencies with sort of eight staff and also some with sort of 40 50 staff where I kind of led the new business and marketing strategy and also big networked agencies. So I've got. Or I had a really good view on what worked at every single scale. And then after years of being poached by lots of agencies to help them run their new business and working with lots of lead gen and new business agencies that I guess got frustrated with, I thought, you know what? I'm going to take the leap and I'm going to go and do it myself.

Katie Street:
So got myself a good contract with my first client and off I went. And here we are today, a very fast growing agency ourselves I guess because street is an agency for agencies. So yes, very exciting.

Rob Da Costa:
And I'm sure loads of people, including me, will sort of relate to your journey of how you got into the agency world. And thinking like, the thing that got me started in my agency back in 92 as a young, arrogant marketing manager for a software company was the fact that I felt like we couldn't hire a decent agency that really understood what we did. So I thought, I know, going to do it myself. And I think for a lot of us, that young, naive innocence kind of helps us because I can't help but think, now I'm old and grey, I wouldn't be brave enough to do some of the things I did back then. But, you know, like for you and I, it sort of worked well and here we are today. So I just wanted to sort of start off by asking you the question of what you think are some of the key difference differences between successful agencies and less successful agencies when it comes to, you know, growth and new business and so on.

Katie Street:
Yeah, I mean, gosh, big question. And there's probably lots of things that obviously derive success, but from a new business and marketing point of view, I think there's two things that I personally think are really important. So first of all is, well, I guess just doing things. There's so many agencies. The biggest struggle that most agencies have, and all of you guys listening out there will hopefully empathise with this, is just making the time for new business and marketing, content, activity, outreach, whatever it might be, because as soon as your clients are shouting and you're busy delivering client work, that is the priority. And it should be the priority. It's what's paying the bills. But what tends to happen is that then new business and the marketing activity, whatever it may be, gets pushed to the back and it's very easy to get forgotten.

Katie Street:
And you really need that. From my point of view, you really need that. Always on approach. So it's agencies that respect that, I think initially that do well, that you invest time and money into developing an in house team, usually. And although we are an agency for agencies, most of our clients do have a team also. It's not always just us. Some clients do just use us. The majority of them do have an in house team as well.

Katie Street:
So I think initially most agencies go wrong because they don't actually reserve the time or give new business the time, respects money that it needs to really flourish and then off the back of that become a whole load of other things. But the biggest thing is also giving up too early. It's so frustrating for me and you. Gosh, anyone out there who's listening, who's been involved with either hiring a new business person or is a new business person themselves is. I think often that new business person is looked upon as the kind of solution to all their problems. And I'm sure people feel the same about agencies like us. And I'm not saying that person isn't going to be the solution to your problems, but to my mind, new business and marketing for an agency is everyone's business within the agency. It is not one person's job to deliver all of the new business.

Katie Street:
It's a team effort. So you can't put the. And we do. I felt the weight of it on my shoulders many a time, thinking, oh, my goodness, if we don't win this big deal that we've got coming in, my neck's on the line, I'm going to lose my job. And that's not a nice way for anyone to feel. And it wouldn't have necessarily even been my fault if we didn't win it. There's a big team involved, usually in coming up with the strategy, quoting the job, and then you're selling all of your people, not just your new business person. So I think that's also something.

Katie Street:
And not giving them enough time, I guess. So that's a third extra one is it's expected that within six months you'll see fantastic results. And a lot of new business people turn up with a fantastic little black book. I've got one. I've had one. And they will hopefully get some leads through and opportunities in early doors that hopefully you'll be able to convert. But the reality is, new business works best when it's always on, and it's been running for over a year. So I just think agencies don't give the new business people person agency or process enough time sometimes, because once you've been doing it and it's consistent, and you and I both know this, Rob, and I'm sure we're gonna talk about it today, because I do actually practise what I preach.

Katie Street:
It works so beautifully and it just gets so easy and it shouldn't become a chore anymore. So, yeah, hopefully we can share some ideas around that today.

Rob Da Costa:
Yeah, I mean, listen, you could. It almost looks like I've given you a script of what to say, which, trust me, everybody hasn't. Cause I, you know, otherwise, what happens is agencies lurch from feast to famine, right? They're in the place of feast. They've got absolutely no time to do anything but service clients. They're trying to juggle 20 different demands. The business development goes out the window, the marketing goes out the window. Projects come to an end, often through no fault of your own, because things happen. And then suddenly you're looking at an empty order book and you panic at that point because you need to pay your bills.

Rob Da Costa:
And so that panic leads to, as far as I can see, two things that often happen. One is that you take on any kind of client, and if you take on the wrong kind of client that doesn't fit in your core niche, then, or your sweet spot, then they are really difficult to keep happy. And so you end up over servicing them. That creates more stress in the agency. And the second thing people do is they discount because they're desperate to win business, so they discount their services. Now I'm filling our time with less profitable work and again, that leads to stress. I talk about being stuck on the client service, hamster wheel of Doom, and I need to trademark that term because I talk about it all the time to my clients. And this is the thing, like, if you're stuck on that client service, hamster wheel of Doom, you've got no time to do any marketing or any business development.

Rob Da Costa:
So you have to, as Katie says, you have to protect that time. And doesn't matter how busy you get, you just have to think, this is how much time I've got for servicing clients. I really like this expression that you use the always on kind of mentality towards your sales and marketing.

Katie Street:
Yeah. And I think you've got to, you've got to look at it like that. Now, I know your audience tends to be sort of between smaller agencies from one person all the way up to 25. And we sit bang in the middle of that. I think we've just recruited our 14th member of staff will probably be about 20. Hopefully we're aiming by the end of our financial year, we'll probably be at about 25. So the reason that we're growing is because from day one, well, I say day one, that's a fib. I am a new business and marketing person and I know the importance of it.

Katie Street:
So maybe not from day one, but within the first six months I had recruited someone to solely do our marketing. And I, I know the importance of that and it feels risky. You know, at one stage there were only four of us and this person, you know, is 25% of my agency's staff. Costs are going on someone that isn't delivering work for me, but it has been absolutely essential to us growing. And now we have a team of two, if you exclude me, we've just, we're just moving one of the, one of the other staff actually into a new business role to support me on the new business. And we're recruiting another digital marketing exec. So we will actually have, for a relatively small agency, four employees dedicated to our sales and marketing, which is for me, so important. And most agencies that we work with that are three times the size of us don't have four people in their team.

Katie Street:
It does work. You've got, but you've got to, I mean, there's smart things we do use digital marketing, apprentices, etcetera. So I'm not saying that we're spending, well, we are of course spending thousands, but we're being clever about how we're doing that and I'm certainly leading that team. But I think if you don't recruit for that team, it will always happen that client work will come first, even if you're trying to segregate partial time from one of your staff members, which.

Rob Da Costa:
Is what a lot of people do, right? They say, right, one of your clients is us. And then of course that client goes to the back of the queue. So listen, I know loads of people are going to relate to this and they're probably shouting at the computer or their phone as they listen to this, driving along, going, that's all very well in theory, but I'm stuck on the client service hamster wheel of doom. What do I do to get off? So what would be your tip to someone, an agency who's, who's really busy, who's super stretched, who is not thinking about this because they've got enough money coming today, but of course they're not thinking about the future enough. What advice would you give them? What would be your words of wisdom?

Katie Street:
So I think it's one, it's to do something. Always doing something is better than doing nothing. And I mean, I talk a lot on my podcast about solving and not selling. So again, one of the big reasons that agencies often don't do well is they don't think about the needs of their audience and they just start pushing out, doing cold calling or recruiting a lead gen agencies that's going to a lead gen agency that's going to bash the phones and basically sell to them going, look at us, look how great we are. Totally the wrong approach. I'm not saying that you won't get some potential leads from that, but they certainly won't be quality leads. So the biggest piece of advice that I can give is one first of all, think about your audience, what their problems are, and you'll know this because your audience are your clients. So if you're solving problems for your clients all the time, you'll start to see trends because that is what us agencies do.

Katie Street:
We do solve problems usually, and you'll know what the key topics and things that you should be talking about are. So first of all, think about your content strategy. What are the problems your audience have? How can you help solve them? And I develop content around that. And that doesn't have to mean you waiting for your next project to go live and going, oh, I can't write a case study that doesn't. You don't need case study content. I have built my whole agency without having a single case study on my website. I'm not saying that we're not redoing our website at the moment and about to publish a whole lot of case studies, but I have got to this stage without publishing any case studies on my website.

Rob Da Costa:
So it's funny, sorry to interrupt you. It's funny how people put these roadblocks in their way because I can just hear some people saying, oh, I can't start doing this because I don't have the case studies to back it up. And that doesn't really matter, does it? It's like you say, if you understand the pain that someone in that you can solve and that's what you talk about, then people are going to be interested in listening to you and that is it.

Katie Street:
And if you can start developing and think about, you know, the way that I have structured our content is so it's easy and manageable for us to develop it. So, I mean, I don't think my marketing team would agree with this, but it feels easy to me, maybe not so much to them because it's a full time job for them. However, what we have done is made sure that we develop content that is reusable and that we can shatter down. So try and think of something that's going to be easy for you as a business owner or someone responsible or leading the sales and marketing or responsible for getting new clients in things that you can do that are going to be easy and repeatable because you want to have consistent content that's continually being pushed out to market. So think about what you can use or what you can do to help you develop that. So for some people that's writing content and insights, post. For some people that's recording a podcast, for some people that's hosting webinars, for some people that might be hosting physical events, for some people that might be recording YouTube videos, whatever it might be, or, you know, creating some form of social content, whatever it is, just start. And if you start small, then that's absolutely fine.

Katie Street:
You test it, you see what the engagement's like and you just start doing something. Doing something is better than nothing. And yeah, do things that are going to be like, I say, we're all different. Do something that's going to be easy for you and think about how you can reuse that content, you know, again, another thing that I see agencies do. So I'm going off on the right tangent here. I've got so many things and I.

Rob Da Costa:
Want to touch upon that whole what you're about to go into now. So let's go with that. Because just before we came on air, Katie and I were talking about some of the webinars that Katie runs every month and how well they're doing. And Katie was talking to me about how they taking that content and reusing it. So just talk us a bit about that and inspire people how they can do the same thing with their content.

Katie Street:
Yes. So the webinar is something that we do once a month, but it probably produces us at least ten pieces of content a month. So it's a live event itself. So we host it on Zoom. As a Zoom webinar. We have usually, in fact, we've got 1200 people signed up now, which is just so amazing. Boast about that. But we record it live.

Katie Street:
We usually now probably, we probably have around 25% attendance, and then we push it out via YouTube and on video and people go back and watch them. But that produces us a live event. It produces us a video, which we edit and put onto YouTube. So there's two different assets. We then use that video and cut it up into social clips that we will push out throughout the month and to promote next month's webinar, so we might do three or four video clips. We also, in fact, one of the most valuable pieces of content that we have found in the past few months in terms of growth and engagement are the really nice value slideshares. So you'll see them on LinkedIn and Instagram, where you're giving a statement or an extra piece of information or some value add on each slide. So we create a value post out of it and we also write up the whole webinar itself and pop that onto our website now.

Katie Street:
And we also don't just leave it there, we then use email marketing and we'll pull things out in the email to push that out to our engaged data set. So we do one thing, which takes me an hour to record. And then, I'm not saying that it's not the easiest thing to do to cut up all that content, but there's so many great platforms out there. Like, I don't know if you know, lately that enables you, I think that's what Gary Vernacek and I'm going to cheque that lately is the right platform, but that enables you to cut that content up and produce. It will actually even, it will learn the language and the things that your audience want to hear about and things that, from a marketing perspective, are going to help get you noticed. And it will then pick out the right time codes for you, it will write your post for you, and it will cut the video into the section that you want it. All you've then got to do is publish it. I mean, there's so many things out there and what we do is we try to make it easy for ourselves.

Katie Street:
So we're always on the, on the lookout for cool new tech like that as well. That helps.

Rob Da Costa:
It's amazing. And listen, it's if. I guess if people are feeling overwhelmed by this, you need to take Katie's advice, which is do one thing, do it really well, and then think about how many different ways you can cut it. I mean, in a more simplistic way, if you take this podcast, well, we're recording this podcast, so it will go onto the podcast channel and, you know, distributed via the various channels like Apple podcasts. But we're also recording a video of it so we can post that onto YouTube. We'll also cut up some of this video to promote a social media. We'll also create an audiogram that we can use to promote on social media and so on and so on and so on. So even with a simple thing, it's not simple, but a thing like this, we are finding five or six ways of reusing the content.

Rob Da Costa:
And I think what I see, I showed this, I have my group coaching programme. I showed them this diagram last time we had a group called, which was a circle with a big warning sign in the middle of it. And at the top of the circle it says, new marketing or business development idea. The second box was try it for a while and implement it. The third box was, oh, well, Rob, it might work for you, but it's not working for me. And then it goes back to the top and moves on to the next shiny new object. And I think this goes back to your point earlier, which is you have to be consistent and persistent with stuff. There is almost no, despite what crazy people on Instagram and Facebook will tell you, there is no magic bullet to this.

Rob Da Costa:
You have to do a few things, do them really consistently and stick at them. Even if you feel like you're not getting anywhere. As long as you're being smart and looking at analytics and so on, and refining things and understanding your audience, you have to be persistent with that.

Katie Street:
Yeah, it's so true. In fact, I had the lovely Lucy Mann on my podcast recently, and she said, something that I can totally resonate with is you speak to agencies now, we did a webinar, but we just didn't really get anything from it. Yes, because you did it once and you didn't reuse the content and you didn't let it live and breathe, and you did it once and you're hoping to get, what, ten leads and ten meetings and it. Look, I mean, obviously we have had occasions where we've done that. We did a webinar for a client and we've had four or five meetings straight off the back of it. And luckily they've had two opportunities which they've managed to convert. But you've got to look at the whole of your new business funnel and cycle in your pipeline, and if you've got half a brain, you'll realise you're doing that one thing. It might take you six months to a year to convert any actual paid work from that.

Katie Street:
It might not do, and you can get lucky. We've done some fantastic physical events for clients where within a few months, they've converted three or four clients. But you've got to give it the time. And it always works better if you're consistent and you've got that always on approach.

Rob Da Costa:
Yeah, people, I guess people want a shortcut. We live in a very sort of impatient society now, an immediate society, and they want that gratification immediately. And you don't, you're not going to get it. So let me just ask you a bit of a controversial. Well, it might not be a controversial question, but this is sort of my experience and my view with my clients around new business. So often they try to outsource the complete new business problem as they see it to someone else. So they might hire a new biz agency or lead gen agency. They might even try something like telemarketing, which I'm not sure works at all anymore.

Rob Da Costa:
Or they might hire in an expensive business development manager, and it often ends up costing them a lot of money and a lot of time, and it doesn't deliver the results. And I always end up telling my clients that the best people to sell your agency are you the agency owner or the senior team. So, and I'm sure that's a bit of a polarised black and white view, and I'm sure there is a lot of, there's some grey there, but what's your view on that? What's your response to that?

Katie Street:
Well, do you know what? It's why I set up my own agency, because I always did better at leading new business than any of the kind of lead gen new biz agencies that we recruited. So I knew that there was a better way to do it. And I'm not saying that we are the problem. The problem, the answer to all of the agency's new business problems. You do have to look holistically at the new business process from beginning to end and make sure, for instance, I think a lot of agencies, and I hear this all the time, we just need leads. We're fantastic at converting. We just need qualified, good leads. So if you can get us some leads, we'll smash converting them.

Katie Street:
Some of the agencies do do that, but more often than not, there needs to be some work done on the conversion process as well. So actually, we've started doing some consultancy with a lot of our clients on that and helping them with that opportunity to win process as well as the attraction side of things. So I think 100%, you cannot rely on someone like street agency or the various other new biz consultancies, marketing agencies, technologies that are out there to come in and solve all of your problems. You've got to give it enough time, love and respect internally as well. And I think certainly some of the smaller agencies that we work with will be starting to get them some fantastic leads and opportunities, and then they'll be like, oh, we're really busy. We can't have that meeting until next week. I'm like, that's why you're going to lose the opportunity, because you're not giving it the love. We've worked really hard to get you these meetings and opportunities, and then you're going, oh, we're really busy.

Katie Street:
Yeah, yeah, I might be able to have a call with them next week. Well, they've gone to someone else by then. You have to give new business the respect it deserves, and if you've got the wrong attitude to it, and I think, you know, new business, sales, whatever you want to call, you know, what we do. I often refer to what we do more as actually marketing than I do sales. But it, you know, it does achieve sales. At the end of the day, it's what we're all working towards. So if you don't give it the time or respect at any stage of the journey and you don't treat it right, you won't win. Because there'll always be an agency that are faster, smarter, working harder, going there, you've always got to think, what is the extra that I can deliver? How can I be asking better questions? Delivering a more exciting response to an RFP or a more elaborate pitch that really shows that I care? You've got to go extra at every stage in the journey, and if you don't, then, you know, there'll always be someone else that is.

Rob Da Costa:
Yeah, it's so true. I really like when I was sort of prepping for today's podcast, I was looking at your website and LinkedIn profile and so on. I really like your holistic approach. And it's funny, as you were saying, holistic, I was writing that word down on my pad. Because you don't just look at the lead gen piece, you look at the whole thing from the agency's positioning. And I guess often you must see the situation where an agency asks you to go and solve problem a, but like, generate more leads for us. But when you look under the hood, you realise that actually they've got problem B that needs solving. Like, for example, they don't have a clear proposition.

Rob Da Costa:
They're trying to be too generalised, they don't have a clear niche. They think they're special, but they're not. And you've got to burst their bubble. So I guess you must have to look at all of that stuff before you can actually start implementing anything.

Katie Street:
Definitely. Oh, gosh, Rob, there's so much I want to talk about. But definitely that first piece is so important. If strategically, you don't understand who the audience that really need you are, that need you more than any other audience, and you don't understand the problems that they have, the whole thing's going to fall flat on its face because you're going to be talking to the wrong people and attracting the wrong kind of leads, potentially. So that initial strategic piece, I guess, is where, you know, we. We focus so much more time and energy and a lot of our clients will say to us, gosh, you said you were different to the others and, you know, a lot of them have often worked with the others and they're like, gosh, you really are, you really, you really do treat this differently because you have to understand the right, you know, messaging and approach right up front because if you don't, what you're going to do and where I believe you, a lot of agencies go wrong is attract the wrong leads that's going to waste you a lot of time. But also agencies that often haven't done this before, they don't have that kind of nice big. I always refer to it like a snowball.

Katie Street:
We start, we start small and the agencies that we've been working with for two years do so much better with us than the ones that have been working with for six months. And I'm quite honest with our clients about that. The longer and the more you do this, the better it will get. But also it enables them to not qualify in on what you were talking about earlier, which are those really terrible leads and opportunities that aren't the right fit for them or they're going to have to heavily discount because, you know, they're desperate for work because they haven't got a strong amount of or, you know, a hot pipeline of leads and, you know, people that they can talk to, they don't know where their next lead is coming from, so they get desperate, they discount. They, you know, work with the wrong kind of clients that maybe haven't got the right attitude or aren't the perfect fit for them. So if you do this right, and I really, you know, I can't say this enough, if you do this right, you invest the time and you approach it strategically, it will just get easier. It's no effort for us now, you know, we get 20, between 20 and 30 new business inquiries a month. We do qualify out of, obviously the majority of them.

Katie Street:
Otherwise I would be a millionaire.

Rob Da Costa:
You wouldn't have time to do it.

Katie Street:
Yeah, but yeah, we do qualify out of a lot of them. However, you know, it does mean we can do that really quickly and we can refer those leads to the right kind of partners for them. But I have so many leads because we've been doing this consistently for a long time, basically.

Rob Da Costa:
Yeah. There's nothing like practising what you preach. And I guess you have to find the right kind of client that gets this, that is willing to, for you to take a broader view of their business rather than just coming in and generating some leads. I've got just a quick story of a client, a London agency I worked with years ago, and they contacted me originally and said, hey, Rob, can you come and do some sales training with us and I'm not really do sales training, but I went and chatted to them and they said their problem was that they had a sales team of about four people who were getting a lot of leads and they weren't closing them. So they thought they needed some sales training for those salespeople. So I said, look, before we do any of that, what I need to do is do a bit of fact find and look a bit broader around your agency. And the issue turned out to be, not that they, the salespeople weren't any good, but they weren't. They were.

Rob Da Costa:
Their qualification process further up. The sales funnel was really poor, so they were handing really inappropriate leads to the sales team who of course couldn't close them. And so I said, actually what you need to do is have a better filtering process, a better qualification process so that your sales team have less leads to deal with, which meant they're not flying all over the place, but they close a high rate. And that was the issue. And we were able to figure that out just because we look broader in the agency, which I guess is what you need to do at the beginning of your engagement with clients.

Katie Street:
Definitely, and we have onboarded a lot of clients actually, especially recently, that have been doing exactly that. They've actually been doing some new business activity and developing content, but maybe it's just not quite right and therefore they're not getting the right type of leads. So they're, you know, they're either qualifying out of them because they're not right for them or they're going for them and not winning them because they're not quite right for them. So that strategy piece is super important.

Rob Da Costa:
Yeah. I just want to dig into one other question. I'm conscious of time today, but you and I could probably talk for another 2 hours. What changes did you see during the pandemic? What was the attitude towards a new business and how did agencies respond and how did it impact you?

Katie Street:
Good question. Well, it's impacted my business personally brilliantly because I think quite early doors, I knew that lots of agencies had a problem or were going to have a problem. So we started producing, you know, helpful content and, and of course I did think, you know, this is going to be good for us from a new business point of view. I want to help as many agencies as I can because I know that it will come back tenfold. But we've never for street, and I'm not saying this is going to be forever. We will change this. We've never had to do any sales, outreach, all of our marketing means that the right kind of opportunities actually come to us. So it does make life very.

Katie Street:
I'm not saying we don't do any outreach. We do do outreach, but we only push out our marketing and helpful content.

Rob Da Costa:
And I tell everybody that's the best way of getting new business. And it's exactly what I do. I don't do. I put my marketing out there and I get inbound inquiries. I do very little direct outreach to people. So, you know, good for you. That's, you know, I completely concur with that.

Katie Street:
It works. I'm not saying that we'll do that forever because we will probably start to transition now. And we've got. We know the type of agency that we can work really well for. So we are going to have a bit of a step change, I guess, in that direction. But I think the biggest thing that I saw is the agencies that, and there were many of them that turned off their sales and marketing early doors and stopped doing anything because they thought it was the easiest thing to cut. And, you know, some of these agencies I actually used to work with or for are really struggling now. You know, their teams have shrunk because there's been other agencies out there that have continued with their marketing outreach and they have continued, like we have done, to push out helpful content that now their share of voice is so much bigger than the ones that didn't.

Katie Street:
So I think that's something, you know, that I saw and of course, doing what I do, you know, I guess that that would be the case. I mean, it's obvious you look at any historical stats, those that you have kind of marketed themselves through, whether it be a recession or world War two or whatever it might be, have come out on top because their share of voice was bigger, especially because there were less people talking. So I think that, for me is one of the biggest things. And actually it took a little bit longer at the beginning of the pandemic for deals to come through. So there's been quite a flurry of agencies that we've been working with over last year that stuck with it, that maybe didn't win as many opportunities last year because it was slower for people to make decisions. Everyone was within the brand world that we're usually marketing our agencies, too. Everyone was taking longer to get there or their CFO's were getting involved. Everything was taking longer.

Katie Street:
But those that stuck with with it and stuck with their marketing, we've got clients that have already won just from their work with us. Five or six clients this year, because this year everyone's taking action. So I think the market out there, a bit like the property market at the moment, seems to be very buoyant and there seems to be a lot of positivity out there. But, yeah, this is why I say the biggest thing is to just do. If you can start, you'll do brilliantly.

Rob Da Costa:
Yeah, I completely agree with that. I've got a really interesting client who's part of my group coaching programme and they do pr for health and beauty and spas and that kind of thing. And of course, the minute pandemic hit, they literally lost all their clients, bar one, which was the body that looks after spas. And we sat down and put a strategy together and it was exactly like, keep serving your audience, keep providing value to your audience, keep inspiring them about how they can keep serving their audience. And then, as things came out of the pandemic, her business is flying. Now because of that. She's got so much business and I just want to. I really love your solving, not selling.

Rob Da Costa:
I might have to nick that, because I always talk to people about, you have to get the. I can see you have to get the 80 20 rule apply to all of your marketing, which is 80% provide value, 20% sell. And you have to get that balance right. And if you don't, then you're either going to be seen as a fantastic resource, but no one will ever buy from you, or you're going to piss everybody off and they're going to unsubscribe from you because you're just trying to sell, sell, sell, which doesn't work. So, you know, it's great to have someone who's kind of singing off exactly the same hint sheet. So, listen, I'm conscious of time. Katie, I really appreciate your time today and we should get together again. And there's lots more we could have talked about.

Rob Da Costa:
But the question I ask all of my guests at the end of an interview is, if they could go back in time and give their younger business self a piece of advice, what would it be?

Katie Street:
I think the biggest thing that I've probably learned is just to be more. Well, I am very action focused, but to be braver and I'm very much someone that goes with my gut feeling in life. But I think when I was younger, I would look to other people for reassurance and maybe hold back and wait before I took action. So I would say the biggest thing is just to try things. Worst thing is, something might not work quite right, but you'll learn very quickly that it's not going to work.

Rob Da Costa:
Right.

Katie Street:
So, yeah, take action as quickly as you can and do things would be my advice to my younger sister.

Rob Da Costa:
Yeah, I think it's a really good piece of advice. It applies to all of us today. And being brave, I think, as well, and putting yourself out there, whether that means, you know, getting on a podcast interview or doing a webinar and all that kind of stuff, or standing up and talking, get out and do stuff. Katie, thanks so much for your time today. If people wanted to reach you, what would be the best way for them to get hold of you?

Katie Street:
Yeah, pop me an email. Quite easy. And my email is quite easy. So it's Katy with an iegency. Yes, just pop me an email or find me on LinkedIn Katie street.

Rob Da Costa:
We'll share both of those links in the show notes. And also if we can find that lately platform that you mentioned as well, then I'll list that because I'm going to go and have a look at that soon as we get off here. So thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate the advice that you're providing our audience and I'm sure lots of people will hopefully take action after today's episode.

Katie Street:
Brilliant. Thank you for having me.

Rob Da Costa:
Rob.