Robert Craven interviews Lucy Hall
VIDEO: 45:48 mins
AUTHOR: Robert Craven and Lucy Hall
In this GYDA Talks Robert talks to Lucy Hall from Avviso Media. Lucy is a speaker and educator on Digital marketing. She is a director of Avviso Media, a digital , social and content marketing agency. Lucy also runs the three day media marketing festival and digital media awards, Social Day.
Lucy is one of the UK’s most influential female leaders. Robert spends 45 minutes getting to the heart of this wonder woman's success!
Robert and Lucy discuss:
Intro to Lucy and her history
Social Day, Avviso Media and Awards
New Business – Hunting or Farming?
Why do people buy from you?
Is there a secret sauce for agencies?
Digital Women
Resilience - a balancing act
Biggest challenges of running an agency
Long term challenges
Lucy’s advice for other agency owners
This interview was recorded prior to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Transcription:
Robert Craven 00:36
Hello, and welcome to the Gyda initiative Talks. Today. I'm actually delighted, absolutely thrilled actually to have a Lucy hall with me. Hello, Lucy. Hi. And so where do we start with Lucy? Lucy is one of these people who has one of those sort of LinkedIn profiles or Facebook profiles for you looking at? Okay, so she runs an agency. Okay, so she runs and awards. Okay, so she runs a conference. Okay, so what else? Oh, she's a mother as well. Oh, she's there. What else does she do? So Lucy? For our listeners? Would you just like to introduce ourselves to yourself? Who is Lucy Hall?
Lucy Hall 01:13
Okay, so, of course, I'm Lucy Hall. And I'm a co-owner of a b2b and events marketing agency. And the other side of that bridge is called info media. And the other side of that business is an events business as well. So b2b events business, mainly in the digital marketing space.
Robert Craven 01:31
Cool. So how big is a business? Just to give us a sense of how many people have you got there?
Lucy Hall 01:35
So we're very split, quite a small company, but growing. So at the moment, there's five of us.
Robert Craven 01:41
And at the same five that also do the events and also do the awards?
Lucy Hall 01:47
Yeah. So. So a video media has its five of us, we have an agency, and we have the events. So half the business has events and their businesses, the agency. And then we also have a partnership, another company partnership for other digital marketing events as well.
Robert Craven 02:05
Cool. So because it's not it's, I mean, most of the people I talked to, you know, because if you've not even mentioned digital women, which is another another little string job, I mean, I don't know kind of how many days you have in your week, I only have five, so I'm not quite sure how you do it all. But can you just give us a quick, the quick kind of resume of how you got to 2020. And how you ended up with these different, I mean, just totally different, but obviously, complementary parts to your business.
Lucy Hall 02:34
Okay, so I don't know how far to start. But I worked in publishing, and I was in the sales side of things. So I worked for Newsquest specialist media on institutional pension cycles. And I used to sell space for events and everything else. So we had revenue targets that we had to hit, and we built relationships, people to sell, to sell space, basically, because people wanted to reach that target audience. And then when I left I, before that, I obviously had online businesses anyway. And I come from a long line of business, family business owners. So that's all I kind of knew before I started working in the corporate world. And basically, when I started working, I thought that jazz FM and then I decided, actually, I'm gonna go work for myself, because I'm really interested in digital. That's what I want to do. And so I set up my own websites, and that kind of thing, sold it. And people started asking me, Can you do some work for me? And I was like, Yeah, of course I can. I loved it. Absolutely. So side freelancing. And then basically, Stewart, my husband, he was working at turnouts, and he was managing director over there. So he was managing quite a big team, maybe like 70 people. On the b2b side of things, so big b2b Publishing and events and stuff. Three years ago, he left and decided to join the business with me, because I'd started running social day anyway. And we decided to turn social data to a bigger event, a bigger festival,
Robert Craven 04:07
Just to interrupt you, what are people who don't know, because I know what social days I've spoken there. And I've been there a couple of times now. What is social day?
Lucy Hall 04:15
Social Day is a three day Social Media Marketing festival. So I was obviously working in social media, I wanted to create an event that I wanted to attend, because there's nothing, there's always like, how do you use Twitter? How do you use Facebook? That's not what an agency or somebody who's doing work for other people wants to know, you want to know what other people are doing, what cool stuff they're doing, how they're doing it. You need to. I wanted to learn what other people were doing. So I could do that for my clients. And so a great social day brought all the people that I thought were really cool together who were really clever in social media, and it's just evolved from there. So this is going to be the fifth year. The first year we did four events that are much smaller, and they were targeted at kind of more SME type companies. And now social day brings together everyone, the whole Ico space around social media. So the creators, the influencers, the agencies, the agency owners, the social media marketers, brands, everybody, basically, and the freelancers that work on the accounts as well. So it's a really, really fantastic event. I love it.
Robert Craven 05:21
Right. So that's, that's the first big thing. So you're, you've now got a media company, and you've got social day. So then did the awards just naturally come out of social day? Is that what happened? Yeah. So
Lucy Hall 05:37
Yeah. So basically, we realised we have this community. And we also have this, you know, these great people that are attending our event, they're speaking and also attending. And there are other media awards out there. But we thought, you know, there's not an event actually, that reflects all of the categories really in this space. And so we thought, let's create our own awards, because it's very complimentary to the event anyway, we're trying to be this media company for social media marketers, anyway, and for marketers. And so why don't we start incorporating more things, and now we've won awards before it Newsquest for the pensions industry, and that kind of thing. And so we're very much my background, and I very much had a background in you know, sales. So I'd sell tables and sponsorships and that kind of thing. And help people to reach that target audience like pension scheme trustees, for example, or whoever it was that I was working on at the time. And also, Stuart Brings that kind of experience of, you know, more focused business experience to everything, if that makes sense.
Robert Craven 06:43
Yeah. Wow. So I'm just trying to get my head around all the different things you do, because? Because is it? Is it that you just saw the opportunity? Because lots of people, lots of people would have just said: Okay, I'm running an agency, straight line? Who are my clients? How am I going to find them? How am I going to reach them? How am I going to do great work for them, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick?. And it's kind of the way, it sounds like a really dull straight line compared with what you're doing, which is you've kind of gone. Okay, so we know lots of people, lots of people are clients, a lot of people know clients, a lot of people are suppliers. So let's pull them together. Oh, now we've got an award. Now, so now we've got a conference, now we could run an award. And I'd be really interested note that my fear for most agencies I work with is, is about, you know, shiny, shiny object syndrome, where people shoot off, down or become a publishing company, or oh, if we're running a digital agency, why don't we do traditional advertising or, and, and they see this great opportunity, and it looks great, because they don't really understand it. And then they take their eye off the ball. So this clearly isn't kind of shiny object syndrome, because these things are lasting and building, but it's, it's different from a standard agency, or is it shiny object that either that you are just so opportunistic, that you can't really watch it? Or it wasn't a strategy at the beginning? And I'd be really interested to understand…
Lucy Hall 08:17
Okay, so we had, because we had, when did you join the business, we had a social day anyway. And we knew that we wanted to build it, students coming from a publishing background, and, you know, a media company background. And I'm also coming from a media company background, but I'm also coming from a digital background as well. We have the agency running, we have clients and that kind of thing as well. But as the event starts to get more popular, there's obviously a space for it. Now, we knew that we wanted to have an agency and an events company, but it actually fits in together really well. Because if you think about it, we're able to, we're able to test a lot of the techniques that we use on social day that we would also use for our clients. Because it's our own brand. And we are also it's also very similar if you think about it, because what we're doing is when we're selling sponsorship and that kind of thing, we're selling or even when we're selling tickets, we're either selling people content, or we're selling people an audience that's what we're doing when we're marketing for companies anyway, we're trying to reach an audience for people you know, so that they can get more sales or so that they can you know, so that they can get more reach among those those particular people. So we're quite niche and who we're targeting, and that's what we're doing for everyone else. Anyway, it's almost like we treat our events as clients. Does that make sense?
Robert Craven 09:45
So do you see yourself as digital digital marketing on social or social Marketing or do you not see a difference between the two I mean, do the new PPC and SEO as well as the social media stuff.
Lucy Hall 10:07
We don't. We don't do PPC and SEO we do for ourselves for our own. We don't do for clients, the stuff we do for clients is very content based. So then if you go back again, to the publishing side of things, we're great at creating content. That's what we're good at, we understand how to create content to reach the right users and the right audiences. So for our clients, what we do is we create, we have a podcasting and mobile podcasting studio. So we do podcasting for our corporate clients, which include companies like, again, in the institutional finance space, so the likes of Aeon, for example. And then we also create videos and graphics and that kind of thing. But we also do social media strategy. We also do stressful media strategy for people. And we also will create content plans as well, for our clients. And we do you know, there's other stuff that we look at as well, we do ads, for example, and we do a lot of coaching. But outside of that, we don't do websites, we don't do SEO or anything like that for our clients, but we will find the right person if our client needs that.
Robert Craven 11:17
So you've got all this like the perfect flywheel, haven't you because you've got an agency that runs events for clients and suppliers, and you do awards for the same people. And you're, you're always in the center of it. So you I mean, you must have a black book to die for, and therefore, and as you know, if you're looking for awards, you're always going to be nice to the awards organised. And then you've got the judges, and then you've so you. So therefore you can invite bigger celebrities to the events because they want to be at the events because they are important people there. And so your agency then benefits. So you've got it's really, really, really not in some senses that That's my first question, which is how do you reach clients? I mean, is that is that enough? Or do you have a deliberate kind of hunting policy? Or are you just more of a farmer who just nurtures what's going on and keeps it going?
Lucy Hall 12:20
So yeah, so at the moment, we are farmers, I would say, and this is this, this could be a problem in the future for us. So I'm from a sales background, where I would pick up the phone every day and call 50 people. And I have no problem with that. That's what I used to do. And I used to be great. Stewart used to be the same, we used to smash our dogs out of water. That kind of settled down a bit when we started running our own business. And it's a really funny thing, you would think that it would change. But I think that we are going to start incorporating more of just picking up the phone into our strategy again, because it's really important, but people can't do a lot of this work that we get just comes to us at the moment. And I think that is from years and years of putting out content on podcasts, speaking to the right people, making sure people know that we're there. Creating the right articles, thought leadership, that kind of thing. Going to speak at events really works well. But no, just a tote, I will say that there is a little gap in what we're doing at the moment. So what should you be doing in terms of picking up the boat?
Robert Craven 13:37
Do you have a deliberate kind of? Do you ever go off on an away day? Sort of where you deliberately sit down and say, Okay, this year, here are the opportunities, the things we're going to be doing? Because we did them last year, this year, we're going to do them better? And also, do you have a deliberate written down strategy, say, and this year, we want 10 of this type of client and 10 of this type of client or are you a bit more laid back about it?
Lucy Hall 14:05
No. We do. We have a strategy. So we do every 9090 day plans for 90 days, and this game changing thing. And we started it. So it was just the two of us December last year, not December last year, December 2018. Just the two of us. We just did a 90 day plan, which would take our first member of staff on to get in office in January. And we did so on the seventh of February. Last year, we took on the first member of staff and now obviously by the end of the year, we're a team of five and that is literally because we started doing what we should have been doing. That's creating a proper plan. So in 90 days, what we need to achieve in this case as to how we're going to get there hasn't been what type of clients we want. We decided at the end of last year, as well as focusing on our b2b clients. We want to focus on events, companies. We're good at marketing events. That's what we're good at. And so we decided we're going to go after friends' companies and within literally We've already got to new events clients straightaway, like without really doing that much about it. So it just I think having that plan and knowing who you're going after, and what it is that you want to do makes so much difference, it just really makes a huge difference.
Robert Craven 15:17
So flipping that round. And we've I think we've pretty much answered the question. But again, I just want to just push into it a little bit more. What the form question is what differentiates you but the real question is, why should people buy from you when they can buy from the competition? Why should they buy from you? And the competition is faster, smarter, brighter, cheaper, more local? So what's what's what's, what's your pushback on that?
Lucy Hall 15:43
Why should they buy from us? Because not only do we have the cutting edge digital experience, but we also have that old school publishing experience, where we understand audiences, we understand how to build communities, and we understand how to really get into the psyche of the people we're trying to target through content, we have years of experience in the area, traditional publishing, all the way through to digital publishing as well.
Robert Craven 16:11
And what about how you feel about competing, coming up against the big dogs for want of a better phrase, I mean, there's a fair number of 50, 100, 200 person, pure social media plays, more and more of them are appearing now as we know. But also, you've got the traditional marketing agencies who are applying social media agencies and marketing agencies and marketing consultancies to create their thing. So there's, as the industry is moving around, and as society goes from being this quirky one off thing, because I think, I think, you know, five years ago with a bunch of freelancers, you know, and now it's now it's a proper industry in its own right. How do you, how do you fend off? Or how do you remain competitive against those? The big propositions because the big propositions are saying, tell you what they mean? What the typical one is, we're a big marketing agency, we'll do your brand design, I tell you what, we'll just chuck in the social media stuff for free, and they've got some young people who will do the work. And they then feel hacked off, because they're part of the agency, and they're not, they just have been told, Oh, by the way, you're going to do this. And we said, you could do it for 20 pounds a day. So what's your what makes you more attractive than the people going to the big boys?
Lucy Hall 17:31
Okay, well, first of all, I think everybody probably says that we work with people as a partner. But we also work with other agencies as well. So if they want to outsource their social content, parts of the strategy, they can come to us and work with us like that. But the thing I think, that makes us different from the big boys, is that, you know, we're still small, we're still able to have that real good, kind of like one to one connection with our clients, we're still getting, but we're also literally at the cutting edge of everything. Because we're running this social media event. We're running this social media publishing event where we have to publish the news every single day around social media, we have to find that news. We have to publish it. We're interviewing people in the industry every single day, we're getting the best ideas anyway. And we're creating our own ideas. But not only that, we're not just working in the social media content space, we have a podcasting studio. And so we offer that as well. And now we're looking at things like AI. We were training at the moment, we're learning about AI, what kind of marketing? What kind of things can we do for companies with AI? What kind of processes can we create? We're looking to this at the moment, because we think this is the next well, this is now this technology is here now. But this is also the next thing. And just like social media was the next thing 10 years ago. And I think so many businesses are going to be improved. So many processes in businesses are going to be improved by. And so you know, so many people's data projects are going to be improved by using AI in the right way. So I think we are quite innovative. We're always looking to what's next. And what can we do in the future, not just in a way of Shiny Object Syndrome, where we're like, oh, that sounds like it's been really exciting. We're going right? How can we learn about this and then talk about it and implement it? In the coming? months?
Robert Craven 19:31
So there's, there's a thing, here is, I mean, is there do you think there's, I mean, generally for agencies, do you think there's some kind of secret sauce or some sort of special way that the agencies can? I mean, I mean, let's be honest about it. There's there's many agencies doing really, really well as agencies going bust because people can't find customers or if they can find them, they're not delivering or they're not pricing incorrectly or more, we can't find the right talent. So do you? I mean, is it? Is there some kind of a secret sauce, some kind of a magic formula that you have that the other people don't have? Is that? Is that fair to say?
Lucy Hall 20:15
I don't think so. I think that there's one thing that we have, and I think that was a lot of energy, like, literally, I care a lot. Like, if we have a new client, I just want to make sure that we are going to do everything we can, if we have to go above a bit to make sure you know that we're keeping that person happy, and that we're doing everything we can, you know, KPIs and stuff. And I think that's what every agency really wants, don't they. And at the moment, we're still small, so we've still got control of it, we know we can see our staff with us every single day, it's we're still very, very small. I don't know how that would play out and how it's gonna change in the future as we go, as we go through. But all I can tell you is that our events side of the business is getting bigger. So we're taking on more events, we're getting more sponsorship, people are starting to take us seriously as an event organiser. And so we're getting the big companies now contacting us for sponsorship and that kind of thing, whereas we didn't before. So, you know, it's possible that our events side of the business will start to, you know, take over the agency, but at the moment, our agency is doing pretty well. So it's literally down the middle. It's literally down the middle. But I do think just loving what you do, being energetic and wanting to know what's happening next, I think that's really important for an agency, you have to innovate, you have to understand, you know, understand what's coming up, and how you could possibly implement it in the future.
Robert Craven 21:49
So as someone who is talking about myself now grey, stale and male, and obviously I'm male, none of those things, I'm not. What, what's what, what was the thinking behind digital women? Because you've got, I mean, you've got a heck of a community there. This is on Facebook, aren't you? Okay? Do you remember?
Lucy Hall 22:13
Well, there's quite a few guys there. So that's cool.
Robert Craven 22:16
I mean, for me, I mean, we, the majority of people ii recruit are women, the majority of people I work with are women. And, you know, for me, it's a great access point. We're currently looking for a couple of posts. I mean, why wouldn't? Why wouldn't I go somewhere where there's, there's a whole raft of the what's what was the thinking behind digital women just another opportunity? Or was there more political thing behind it? Or recruiting? What was the thinking behind that?
Lucy Hall 22:40
It's a bit of both. So I, I love the idea of building communities, I think it's a really exciting thing. Communities work differently, so much differently to audiences, you can see that by being a digital miniature community, it's not about me having an audience of people going, Oh, Luciano, buy your stuff, because I don't sell anything there. I've never actually sold anything, I'm not spending a penny on ads for it. People just join free word of mouth, because they want to be part of this community.
Robert Craven 23:07
How many people have you got there now?
Lucy Hall 23:10
Um, so I think it's around 2300, or something like that, hoping to get to 10,000 by the end of the day, but at the end of the year, but it's not about how many, it's about the quality of the people in there. So at the moment, you've got 2300 people in there, but you've got probably 1800 People who are actually interacting over the month, I think, which is amazing, isn't it in terms of like audiences and engaged audiences. So I really love that. And I'm really obsessed with understanding communities and audiences and that kind of thing. But the reason we did digital women was because social data when I first started, I wanted to be able to help people to get the skills that they needed. And it because we were creating this cutting edge information around social media live streaming, that kind of thing, before it was even a thing. We were getting agencies and brands and marketers turning up without paying like 25 pounds for a ticket. But that wasn't meant for you. For this, this was not meant for you. Like this was meant to help people. And I very much had this thing where I want to help people. And so I ran a Kickstarter event and it was okay. But it was you know, it just felt like it was like a kickstart digital, learning about digital, like different things to digital. It was okay, but it wasn't really focused enough. And there's so many things like that. And then I started looking and talking to people. And I think that about 25% of people that work in digital are women. So that's quite low compared to men. But also, I think the other statistic was that in terms of business owners who also work in digital, it's very, very small.
Robert Craven 24:45
It's a real, that's a real issue because you can only name you're honest, in terms of the agencies, over 25 people, it's difficult to get beyond three or four names of women who run digital agencies and that's, that's a disgrace, you know, And we ran a conference recently, you know, and we picked, we put invitations out, we always do. But you're struggling, you're struggling to find women who run agencies that employ people. I mean, it's as simple as that.
Lucy Hall 25:21
It's very, you know, it's very tricky. And so I thought if we create this event that upskill women in digital skills, and it's not just for it is for women who run businesses, but it's also for women who work in digital. So it's digital women, it's an inclusive community of women, who want to learn more and get up skilled in digital or learn new skills, and digital are. Our key is to empower women through digital skills. And that doesn't mean teaching someone how to use Twitter, it means everything, you know, like, what is AR? What is AR? What are all of these amazing things? And how can I use them to get further in my career or in my business? I did a poll there recently. And you found most of the people in the community do run their own businesses, which is interesting and really exciting, because it means we've created a space for these people. And we're able to give them a voice as well, through the awards, now our pond with NatWest. And the reason I partnered with Western This is they, they, they sponsor the events, and they help us with frauding us with the venue and that kind of thing as well. And amazingly, great with their women and business initiatives. And I recently sat in on a roundtable discussion for the rose review, which I think was at the beginning of last year or end of 2018. And they were looking at if you know, there were as many women starting and scaling businesses, there weren't, as there are men who will put 250 billion more into the economy. There's great research that came out of it, you know, what do women need just one of that was creating, one of the things that came out of it was creating these communities, or spaces for women to be able to get together and, you know, share information and to see people like them as well. Because if you can see somebody on the stage, who is doing something that you got to do, you can do it, it makes you feel like you can do it as well. And that's why we make sure that we're not only, you know, it's not just women on the stage, we have some men as well. But we're also diverse, make sure we're really diverse, because there's even less people who are not black or minority in digital, digital or female as well. So we need to make sure we highlight these people, you know, as well, you know, so it's about highlighting and supporting people through, you know, events.
Robert Craven 27:37
And I really liked this woman because it doesn't feel you don't feel excluded. And it's not about poor us. And it's not it's kind of it's just got a very positive vibe of people sharing and helping each other as opposed to any kind of, you know, why do we find it such a difficult sort of approach? So I really, I really liked it. Can you talk a bit about I mean, I guess the question is, how on earth do you keep on going because there's a real issue about resilience as a real issue, as we as we speak today about the kind of mental health and social media, which is getting a bigger and bigger issue. So you've got along with all the business stuff you've talked about. You've got a family, you've got kids, you've got how Yeah, and and you're doing so much. So I guess the question is, Addy, how do you keep it so chipper? How do you protect yourself? How do you defend yourself from getting beaten up by the outside world? And I mean, what's your? How do you approach that whole resilience piece?
Lucy Hall 28:50
I've had my damn times and my times where, you know, it's been completely hard. And I thought, you know, I can't go on, this is really hard. But actually, I think the thing that drives me on is that I literally love it so much. It doesn't feel like it doesn't feel like work, almost, I enjoy doing it. And I enjoy the relationships I've built, I enjoy actually creating the content, I enjoy the industry I work in. And I know that's a rare thing. And it's not really fair, because some people hate it, and they are still working on it. But I think you know, if you love something so much, and you and you really want to make a change as well, and you really want to you've got that fire in your belly, if that makes sense. It makes it so much easier to do. And I have made sacrifices as well. You know, because, you know, I've an agency and this growing business, I've made sacrifices in terms of the salary I could have. I've made sacrifices in terms of the amount of time that I could spend time with my children. But at the same time, I feel like where I am running this business, I can pick my children up from school every day. And if I was working in the city, doing a similar thing I would not be able to pick my children from school every day. So it's a balancing act. It's hard. And yeah, it is hard. I'm not gonna say it's easy. It's all you know, it's, it's one day, it's like this next day, it's like that one day, you're celebrating something amazing. The next day, you're crying on the floor. No. How can this happen? And that's the truth of it. It's not like perfect all the time. You can plan, you can plan. But at the end of the day, humans can. You know, you can come across any event that you put a spanner in the works and ruin it for things not of its luck, isn't it? A lot of it is determination. And I'm telling you something, I literally grew up in a market stall, my family had a market stall business and shops and that kind of thing. So every sentence that I was not at the farm with other kids, I was in the market. So with my dad, my dad gave me a target. This is how much money you need to get to. And then you get an extra fiver for every 1000 pounds we take, you get an extra five pounds. So for me, this is like 100 pound a day, maybe if I work really hard. So you know, I like it.
Robert Craven 31:06
I love that story. My first job was at Petticoat Lane. And we used to, we used to give away really expensive blankets. And we used to sell really rubbish sheets. And it was that thing not 10 not nine, not eight, not seven.
Lucy Hall 31:24
My dad used to do that, like years and years ago before I was even born.
Robert Craven 31:30
Yeah, I think my job was to stand at the back of the crowd and go by to run to the back of the store, wait two or three minutes and go to the back of the audience and go, oh by three. And that's kind of what I did all day, Saturday and Sunday. So I can relate to economics.
Lucy Hall 31:54
I just think you just, it's just so weird, isn't it like you're literally just trying to sell everything you can to make enough money. So you can buy more stock. So the next day, you can go and do it all over again. And it's just like, it's just a great learning curve. Like I learned more during the market about money, and everything else than I did from you know, school.
Robert Craven 32:14
Yeah, I'm 100% with you. So go back to agencies. Two questions in one. So the first question is, what do you think the biggest day to day challenges are of running an agency? So that's like day to day? And the second question, which I'd really like to hear your your view on, is on this more long term strategic piece, you know, where agencies don't know which platform to beyond become full service or specialist or whether they should get in SEO and content or whether they should do PPC or Tik Tok, or they should grow with as you become more profitable. I mean, I mean, so there's two questions. What do you think the big challenges are short term? Running an agency? And what do you think the big challenges are? The big directions are long term.
Lucy Hall 33:14
Okay, so I think tasto challenges keeping, finding and retaining talent, like the people in house, I think that's so important. And it's, we've been so lucky with the staff that we've managed to get over the last year, and we've kept them and we've just, you know, our first our first staff member that started in February is still here a year later, which is daunting. Second staff member has been here for six months, and, well, seven months now, and the other one has been here for, you know, four months or something. So, five months. So that's, it's a challenge, because the more they've learned, and the more they know, the more they want as well they expect from you, and then what you expect from them. So that's a challenge. And that's a massive learning curve. And I think I can imagine just having three staff is a challenge. Imagine if you have 100 Like I mean, it gets different because you then have some of your employees to look after those staff and everything else. So there's so much talent out there. And I think it's really important to try and make sure you get the right talent and and you have the right culture in a working environment as well. I think that's really important because people have to come in feeling like they want to be there. And you have to go into the office, I think feeling like you're amongst people you want to be around because you've got to do it every day. And also, you know, there's lots of there's all the intricacies as well around. Different people want different things so they might want some people to go home or some people you know, want to have a hot three weeks holiday in the middle of when your events are about to happen. Like I think that they have to do it because that's gonna help them to keep them happy. And mental health is such a huge thing as well. You can't expect somebody to sit there from nine to five and be unhappy and their mental health be at risk as well. So, you know, I think those things are really challenging and really important. From the small experience I have with, you know, having an agency with staff. That's what I think is important at the moment. And also, you know, having making sure, it's always a challenge to make sure that you have that pipeline as well, making sure that because I know a lot of people don't have, and that's why I think some agents struggle because they don't have a pipeline, they don't understand that you need to have even if it's even if it's a spreadsheet, a list of everybody, whether it's a hot lead a warm lead, or a cold lead, and having that relationship, you know, strategy happening with those leads, and pushing them further down into your funnel and making sure that you're in contact with him regularly. That's a challenge because people, because there's so much out there that says, if you just put stuff out on the internet content out on the internet, then you're gonna get loads of clients. That is not true. And although all I will say is I've been creating content for probably eight years now or something like that eight, nine years, we've written content pretty on the internet, you know, I'm an expert, that kind of thing. And yes, I can sell hundreds of social media planners for 20 pound a pop like this, because people see me and want to buy it, but I also have to use ads. I have to use Facebook ads to sell stuff as well. So you still have to go out, or you still have to call people to try and get sales. You can't just sit there and expect it to come in, like every day.
Robert Craven 36:25
So that's short term stuff, totally get that. What about your feelings about the fluke? Yeah, I mean, I mean, Will agencies wither away as everything turns to freelance, I mean, what platforms will people be on? How will people be? I mean, I mean, it's almost inconceivable, I mean, you're in a lucky position, you've got all these, all these things going on, you're juggling all these things. And clearly, they're not all going to hit the ground. But for some people, it's like they're trying to imagine what running an agency would be like, in two years time. And it's, it's, it's almost inconceivable to imagine, what what business would look like? What platforms will be used? How do people communicate? Will Amazon be even bigger? Or will it be dead? Will it be even bigger? Or will it be the real tick tock be the thing? I mean, there's stuff like, Ah, how on earth? What, how do you see the future? What are the what are the, what do you think the long term challenges are for running an agency?
Lucy Hall 37:28
Okay, so yeah, the long term challenges are that in, especially in the digital world, as we use digital more and more to reach people, things are changing very quickly, we've got new technologies coming into the marketplace every single day. 5g which is gonna take off very soon. And when it does, that means everything's gonna get faster, quicker, and more proficient, especially AI, and machine learning, and that kind of thing. So yeah, jobs are going to be changed, people's jobs are going to be changing. And that having staff getting skilled up or upskilled, in some of the new technologies, and digital, digital technologies that are coming out, I think is going to be really important. The challenge is, technology might move faster than the workforce. So if you're not empowering your workforce to understand what's coming next, and how to use that technology, then they're gonna get left behind. And we saw even with the social media space, people getting left behind 10 years ago, PR agencies were still doing PR institutions away, you have agencies closing, she had all these brand new social media agencies starting up by and some of them are huge. Now some of them have 200, 300 staff, and they've been going for five or six years, because they understand it, they understood there is a, there's an amazing opportunity here in digital, and they understood how to use it, that it's not gonna kill people's jobs, that they can actually use this technology or this, or this, this, these spaces to grow their company. And I think, yeah, things are going to change. And I think people shouldn't be frightened of what's happening with how fast the tech is moving, I think they should learn how to harness it, and learn how to make those monotonous marketing tasks easier. You don't have to sit there anymore with a data scientist and track huge amounts of data, because they will, the technology from AI will be able to look at that data and do it much quicker and much faster. But what the data scientists do will have to change slightly, their position so that they can be more creative with you know, they can be more creative with the data, and the AI can do its thing. Does that make sense? And it's the same with everything else. The marketers need to understand the technology, how they can use it to make it easier for the day to day tasks, how they can use it for Yeah, to free up loads more space and time so they can be more creative. I think that's the thing, isn't it? Free up them. Those tasks were to be more creative and understand technology.
Robert Craven 40:03
I love that. I love that. And okay, so what next? Lucy Hall is not another, another project on the line.I mean…
Lucy Hall 40:11
You and I are a voice conference.
Robert Craven 40:16
And AI conferences, where are our machines talking to each other?
Lucy Hall 40:24
I definitely think it will, something your voice and you know, because there's a lot going on with voice and skills, Alexa skills and that kind of thing. Podcasting is getting bigger. And I know there's a lot of podcasts and friends but I'm talking more along the lines of voice in terms of what's going to happen next was shopping, ecommerce with invoice and what's gonna happen next, with voice assistants, it's really exciting time because these new technologies aren't so new anymore, and they're signed to take their place in the digital world. So it's gonna be really interesting. I'm really excited. I'm actually just really excited to see what's gonna happen. And so what's next is yet social debt, build social day, ticket Blackmagic. Global, I think we're gonna go to America with it. Same with digital demand, we're already talking to somebody in New York to bring digital women over there. Because it's a global thing, I think, digital, and then maybe take it to the countries where you know, there's even less women in digital that we can kind of start to grow their community and stuff, like getting women more interested in digital as well. And then yeah, just I think keep growing, keep building on it and keep looking to the future, but working on the problems that we have right now.
Robert Craven 41:40
Amazing. And at the end, at the end of this podcast, I'll be your URL and the dates of all the things that you're doing so people can catch up with you and see all of those things. And obviously see your profile, see your website. So. So far, I've got two or two questions. Again, two questions in mind. So the one is, is it old? If you were to do it again, what would you do differently? Question. And the one straight after that is, what are your top tips to agency folk just starting out now? So the first question is, what would you do differently? And the second one of the top tips?
Lucy Hall 42:26
Okay, what would I do differently? This seems really cheesy, but I think, I don't think I don't think I would do anything differently. And the only reason is, is because I've had this spin so many downs. I think it sounds really cheesy, but I think I've learned, I think we've learned a lot from the things that have happened or haven't been so good. And I don't think you can buy that. I think if you take the advice, but until it actually happens, you can't learn from it. And then in the future, you can't. And I'm also pleased with the way that we haven't taken investment, or we haven't taken any lives, and we've built everything up organically. I'm pleased with that. Maybe one day we will. But I'm pleased with the way we've done it because it's taught us how to do that, you know, manage our money, cash flow, and that kind of thing. Without going give me money. Give me your money like this. And I just think that that's really important. It's really good. Because it's at the end of the day, agency or not, this is a business. And we're here to make money. You know. So that's that for now. And then what was your What was your next question?
Robert Craven 43:31
Top tip for people starting out now,
Lucy Hall 43:33
People are signing out now. Okay, so for people starting out now, just, I think make sure like you have a pipeline, you understand who that's the second part, actually. Second part is having hope, like the first part is, understanding what it is that you're offering. And if you are a full service agency, understand that that means everything. That doesn't just mean you build a website and you do a little bit of social media on the side, you have to really hone in on what it is that you do better than everybody else. And that might be why you build the best websites in the world. But you also do this other stuff. If people need it, it might be that you are the you know, you make the most social, amazing social media content. And then that's how you're going to draw people, that's how you're going to draw people in, I think you have to go. I don't do everything. I do something that's really really good but then everywhere else. And that's my advice. And also, just make sure that you're always in touch with your cash flow. Make sure that you are invoicing it as much as possible. Try an invoice as soon as you take the work on rather than like at the end of the project. Because when you start getting to problems with cash flow, your business can basically die. And you'll be stressed and you won't enjoy your work very much anymore. Been there, done that and it has been very hard. And just understand it's not gonna be plain sailing and easy. Look out for plans, have a strategy, have a pipeline and understand that there are going to be problems along the way. Try and foresee them as much as possible and understand how you might react when that happens.
Robert Craven 44:59
You Brilliant Lucy. Absolutely fantastic. So that is that Lucy Hall whiz bang 40 minutes has been absolutely fantastic. Really looking forward to seeing you all, your events and your award ceremonies and so on. Because you asked, you're so busy. And it's been an absolute pleasure having you as a guest. I'm sure people will catch up with you afterwards. So Lucy, thank you so much for being our guest. Thank you very much.
Lucy Hall 45:31
Thank you so much for having me.
Robert Craven 45:33
My pleasure. Okay, thank you. Bye bye