The “In Hindsight” Series: Ready 10 founder David Fraser

Ready 10 founder David Fraser is the next guest in our new In Hindsight series on the PRmoment Podcast.

In this new regular format of the PRmoment Podcast with Ben Smith we’ll be catching up with UK public relations leaders - and our guests will share their in hindsight secrets that they wish they'd known when they started their businesses!

Today we're chatting with the founder of Ready 10 David Fraser.

Ready 10 has revenues of £4 m and 35 employees. It is a consumer PR shop based in London. Clients include McDonald's, Brewdog, Reed and Paddy Power. David founded the business about 7 years ago.

It's 5 years since David's been on the PRmoment Podcast it was David who persuaded me to launch it all those years back! So thank you, David, we now get between 5-6 thousand listeners a month and people seem to enjoy the show.

If you haven’t taken a look already - do check out the Creative Moment Awards website, the final entry deadline is on Friday 30th June 2023

And thanks so much to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors of the PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what David and I talked about:

2 mins David tells us his in hindsight first lesson: How to position your business.

“Your positioning isn’t a fixed thing, it’s an evolving thing.”

9 mins David’s 2nd in hindsight lesson: How to push through the £1m barrier

13 mins David talks about how can build extensions to your business without damaging the original.

“When there’s 10, 15,25 of you (employees), the values you want to hold get lost unless you write them down and push them through the business.”

15 mins David’s 3rd lesson: The importance of values in a business

20 mins David 4th in Hindsight Lesson: “When the tide goes out, you can see who has been running things properly.”

“We didn’t make any redundancies, we didn’t take a penny of furlough money from the government”

26.30 mins David’s 5th Lesson: “You can lose everything in an instant”

“I am the grandson of a holocaust survivor”

“Don’t ever think that anything is permanent, things can change in an instant, be ready for that uncertainty”

32 mins David reveals his 6th and final lesson: People (employees) always want more. 

“You have to design a structure that takes them with you if you want them to grow, rather than pushes them away.”

“No one is turning up to work every day to make me (David Fraser) successful!”

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the PR Moment podcast produced in association with the Marketeers Network.

Speaker 2: 0:21

Welcome to the latest PR podcast, and this is a new regular format with me, Ben Smith, and we'll be catching up with UK public relations leaders, and our guests will share their in-hine science secrets that they wished they'd known when they started their businesses. And today we're chatting with the founder of Ready10, David Fraser. Ready10 has revenues of about £4 million and 35 employees. It's a consumer PR shop based in London. Pants include McDonald's, BrewDog Reed and Panty Power And David founded the business about seven years ago.

Speaker 2: 0:56

It's been about five years since David's been on the show and in fact it was where he paid a role in persuading me to launch the PR moment podcast all those years back. So thank you, David. We now get what? between five to six thousand listeners a month. People seem to enjoy the show, so I reckon you had a point. It was a good idea to launch it. Before we start. if you haven't taken a look already, do check out the Creative Moment Awards website. The final entry deadline is on the 30th of June. I should say thanks so much to the PRM podcast sponsors, the PRCA. David, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 1: 1:32

Thank you, ben, it's good to be back. Thank you for saying I had some kind of maybe role in pushing on the podcast. I did want to please leave this in the edit because I wanted to say thank you for doing the podcast. I listen to it a lot. I know loads of people do. I find it really, really helpful. I think you are miles, miles better at podcasting than me, for sure. So thank you and please keep at it, and I'm delighted to be on.

Speaker 2: 1:59

Well, i'm sad to see that you no longer host the QPR podcast, but maybe a comeback's in order there as well. So, moving on to your first in hindsight lesson, david, that you wish you'd known seven years ago when you were starting a business.

Speaker 1: 2:16

Yeah. So I think this one is about positioning, because when you start a business I mean everybody, it's true, but everybody drives you mad about what your position is because you can't just come out and say we're going to be good And we can be a bit better than the agencies that you're working with, and our ideas are going to be a bit better. Positioning is important because so that you've got relevance to clients, relevance, market, and so on.

Speaker 2: 2:40

Maybe so much to just say we're going to be a bit cheaper. Maybe that would be better.

Speaker 1: 2:45

Well, one end of the market there probably is people doing that We. So when I came on five years ago, it was all about what we were calling them PR for SEO, and this is how we launched. And for those people who don't know and you're a big supporter of this discipline, so you will know and many people that follow you will This is the idea that PR can provide a solution for Google and SEO results. So, because the best performance on Google is rewarded via PR results, link building in pieces and so on, so a gap in the market we launched us that phrase, pr for SEO, a sort of phased out. It's now known pretty universally as digital PR And we launched we kind of went off like a train on that.

Speaker 1: 3:29

Really, we won the likes of Money Supermarket pretty quickly. We won vouch codes, we picked up quite early work with Paddy Power and it worked really well. What we then found, for a variety of reasons, was that it was brilliant and opening loads of doors, but there were some doors that it was not opening. There were as many kind of closed doors in terms of new clients because that positioning as there were open ones And, i think, because it was polarizing or confusing or an unknown to many people, and so at some point and this sort of all that actually just bleeds into kind of subsequent points that I'm going to make But we got to the point where, in order to grow, we needed to adapt that positioning, and so my first lesson really is the first thing that I've learned is that your positioning isn't a fixed thing, it's an evolving thing, and we still do loads of digital PR Probably about 40% of our business is that but it's within a wider framework, and the framework that we talk about now is called Hearts Mines and Bottom Lines, and that is matching kind of insights that matter to people with data points and different data points, and one of those for the clients that want it is the commercial imperative that they may have to build links to help drive their position up on Google, and what it doesn't do is polarize other people, and so since we changed that positioning, broadened it out, we found it really successful.

Speaker 1: 5:08

We weren't getting into the kind of the bigger clients that we want to, but since then it has to have worked, because that was what about 2019. We sort of slightly altered this positioning And we've won McDonald's, laura Brew Dog, various others. Since We're not sure we would have been invited into some of those conversations if we hadn't adapted our positioning.

Speaker 2: 5:34

It's interesting. That isn't it? Because it's a recurring theme for me at the moment. You know, when you go through these little periods, i think the same thing keeps cropping up. Because I do see that with a fair few agencies And oddly enough, i've talked to someone yesterday about it And he said it's called the bowling alley strategy, which apparently and I was, i Googled it last night a term coined first of all by Jeffrey Moore, which was start with one pin, so one category, one niche, one vertical, penetrate that segment and then move on to the next pin. So in that sense, the evolution of the positioning is doesn't necessarily mean that you made it. You didn't make a mistake first of all. It's just that you need to move it on quite quickly so that you can keep growing the business.

Speaker 1: 6:21

I agree with that. I mean, let's not get into how Jeffrey Moore play competes at bowling, because I'm not sure doing it one pin at a time is the way that you win a bowling match, but let's probably not focus on that. I get the idea. Yes, i think you do have to do that. We definitely. It was absolutely right, from where I'm sitting, to have that positioning when we launched, because we needed something different and we were offering something different, and we still do. But there comes a time nothing is fixed right, which is another point I'm coming onto. Nothing is fixed. Everybody knows about. Everybody kind of talks about things like adapt or die, and we just got to a point where, if we were going to push on, if we were going to break through certain ceilings and barriers, we needed to think about how we were positioning ourselves. And that's exactly what we did.

Speaker 2: 7:14

Good, Which is the perfect segue, isn't it into your next lesson, which I think was basically how to push through the one million pound barrier?

Speaker 1: 7:21

Yeah, so I think when we spoke, we spoke in 2018 and we were about a million pounds in revenue And that's a nice place to be, but it always comes with a challenge, and it's quite a fairly talked about challenge amongst agencies and agency leaders. From what I can tell, because you're at sort of a million pound level, there's maybe 10, 11, 12 people, something like that, in the agency. It can be nice and comfortable, and my observation is that's where a lot of agencies can stop and can falter, and we never wanted to do that. We wanted to push through. We were so aware, heading into that level, that we just can't stop here. We've got to keep kind of pushing through, and we were to determine.

Speaker 2: 8:13

So that, for a moment, why did you feel that you had to keep pushing through? Just from ambition, you wanted more money. What was the because? that sort of relentless? do we all want to keep growing forever? You know as businesses? Or what was behind that initial, why we want to keep going now?

Speaker 1: 8:33

The drive to keep going is because I'm a restless so-and-so And I just want to do stuff. I don't think it's. I don't believe it's ever truly about money with any kind of agency leader or entrepreneur. It's always about other things, about wanting to do stuff, wanting to build stuff. Me and the people that I worked with and still do just want to see how far we can get it. Yeah, probably there is a point at which is too big and too unwieldy. We are no way near there yet. I just want to do stuff, and I think growth is really, really important to that. It is one of our agency values, which we're going to come on to. But growth provides everyone with opportunities. It provides the people here with promotion opportunities, with learning opportunities. It provides me with training opportunities me myself. It helps me learn about new situations that I haven't been in before and it makes it more fun. So I just didn't want to stop. I just didn't want to stop.

Speaker 2: 9:36

We've covered it before but running a business that's growing is a hell of a lot easier than running a business that is contracting, which I guess layered on those points you just talked about there. But yes, i go on. I went off on a tangent Talk to us about that pushing through the £1 million barrier. How did you do it? What were the details of how you went through that growth phase?

Speaker 1: 10:01

So I think the first thing was we were super aware of it and we were really determined that we weren't going to be one of those agencies that stopped there And coming into it. We were really aware of that. We've always been really, really conscious to basically not believe it, not believe anything, not believe it when it's going well, not believe it, not to get too upset about it when it's going badly And just to keep on, and always I talked about this five years ago, i remember it We talk about starting from zero every day, which I know is trite and there's a little bit of focus-pocus type management speak, but we do talk like that. We start from zero every day. We've got to prove ourselves every day. We went into it having that attitude.

Speaker 1: 10:51

There were some practical things that we felt we had to do to push through that million pound barrier so that we didn't plateau. We read a lot at the time about a guy and this is random, but there was a guy called Edmund Lazarus who had built the largest ever extension to his house. There was a story at the time He had a massive house. This guy I don't know who he is He had a massive house in London, a sort of three-story house and he built a triple-decker 16,000 square foot complex underneath his house. And this was in the news sort of not long before that period And we talked about how can you build something massive that goes alongside what you already have without ruining what you already have. And the lesson we took from that was grow, build, add stuff on, but really double down on what you've already got. Don't take your eye off what you've already got for a minute.

Speaker 1: 11:49

The second bit of that the second bit about pushing through the one million pound barrier was we wrote our values around this time. And this is something that me previously in my career I would always have been cynical about values. So kind of, whenever I would have seen an Agency or a company talking about their values, i would have been like, yeah, right, but the problem is you have to Decide how you want to run your business and what your culture is, and when there's two or three or four of you, you can do that because you're all sat around a desk. When they're and you're talking about it, when there's 10, 15, 20, 25 of you, the values that you want to hold get lost unless you write them down and push them through the business. So we had an exercise around that time of setting our values and those five values about a little bit tinkering, but not too much. They still fit today and they are in a massive sort of 20-foot piece of art in our office that everybody looks at every day.

Speaker 2: 12:49

So that's your third lesson, isn't? it is that values Became important to, i guess, to you personally, were also to your business ready. 10.

Speaker 1: 12:58

Yeah. So values have have have been really important since around that time When we formalize them. So we all sat down as an agency. So this is before the wheel sat down as an agency, we wrote them, we decided what we wanted to stand for and the words themselves And not uncommon to many agencies commitment, decency, growth, support and enjoyment.

Speaker 1: 13:20

But it's really how you lift them and how you make sure that they Fit every part of your business. And we say, and we continue to say, if you've got a question, if you're hitting a fork in the road and you're not sure what to do, look up at those values And they'll tell you what you need to do. So is it decent? are we growing personally, professionally, are we supporting each other? and it really helps. The bit about values, the kind of interesting lesson about values, which actually probably goes back to the first point, is they sometimes have to change as well, and I know all these points are bleeding into other points, but in the pandemic we had a very special set of values that we had to rewrite and make sure that we were Keep holding ourselves to during that time. Am I going on to that now, ben? I think. I think another one.

Speaker 2: 14:13

Keep going with your values at the moment, and and and and. Then, yeah, we're segue into the pandemic, but I mean, obviously the pandemic has clearly impacted your, your, your values. So feel free to to talk about the Yeah in that context.

Speaker 1: 14:23

Yeah, Yeah, so we have these values and we still have them today, but we we added on five values and During the pandemic. So if everybody, if it's not too traumatic to people, i'll take everyone back. It was the last day in the office before the prime minister Sent us home and nailed us to. I think was the 17th of March 2020, and there was a very short period of about a week where everybody knew this was coming. And so, on the 16th of March 2020, we all sat down and we said this is going to be quite a difficult period. Rewrite our values for that period. And we said these are five principles That we have got to live by in the next period because if we do, we will get out of it and we'll get out of it stronger.

Speaker 1: 15:11

And we wrote them together and then we pretty much reminded ourselves of them remotely, kind of every day, and they were different. They were different to the ones that I've just Gone through and I've sort of dug them out In the last couple of days as I knew I was preparing for this. Those business ones, of course, like being really, really careful and tight on money, as you would expect. But then there was others. One of them was assisting others. I know exactly what we said at the time assist others. We can and we should. We're going to need each other and we did that.

Speaker 1: 15:44

Second day of the pandemic We set up a four good arm, ready, ready to help, which still exists today, and all and a few other values around making it happen, supporting each other, assisting the world and kind of getting through it together, and they were that life for us during the pandemic. So the lesson here And I realize I'm rambling and giving long answers to short questions, so apologies for that But I guess the lesson I've learned Is the value of values and I, when you ask if you'd have asked me this when I was starting the business, i would have told you to go away Like that is not, that's just something innate, that's just something you know. But having our values there front and center as our north star has really acted as an accelerant And a life raft to the business and the people in the business whenever we've needed it. Nice touch, right, well, that's good, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 16:32

Um, i was interested to hear how you, because it's it's so easy to have values, but it's much more difficult to to live them and get people referred to them and, and So it's it's good to hear how you've done that and and related them to to the business. You mentioned the pandemic there. Um, i remember chat before, i think you. You came up with a nice line. It's the defining bit. The last five years, um, and I think you, what did you say? you said sort of a year and a half of lockdown. You know in and out, but, but they were there about um, and then a year and a half of recovery. Um, what is it's now about this? We're three years hence on me, so it's not really that long. Um, yeah, your next two let word your next two lessons are both kind of pandemic related. You just want to talk us through those? Yeah, so I think so.

Speaker 1: 17:17

So that three year thing, look every but everybody listening to this of course, was affected in their professional lives At least, um, if not personal, by the pandemic. we were no different. Um, i think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. um, and We suffered, like everyone else did. I agree on the three years thing.

Speaker 1: 17:43

So my theory was and this is what I found there was a year and a half of actual pandemic, where things were, you know, not great and slow, and then there's been about a year and a half recovery and I feel like now We are. so we're in year seven. I feel like now we're probably where we would have been a year ago Had there been no pandemic, and we're slowly, um, kind of increasing that pace. um, why? someone said to me very, very early on in the pandemic, which I think is a Warren Buffett quote They said when the tide goes out, you can tell who's been skinny dipping, and that was meant from a financial perspective, and it was true, because the tide went out on the pan. this pandemic came. we were very similar to most businesses, i think overnight, in March 2020, our income went down 40%. We'd just we'd only been working with McDonald's for six months at that point, but when you're a small agency well, of any size agency. of course, mcdonald's are a huge client, but they were particularly huge.

Speaker 1: 18:47

McDonald's this is the thing that I point out, which people struggle to remember McDonald's shut for 10 weeks. That's how big this whole pandemic thing was. actual, mcdonald's didn't serve a single burger or milkshake for 10 weeks, as did many other businesses, so everything went overnight. We dropped down hugely on our income, but we were okay, and people are always interested to hear when I say we made no redundancies, we didn't take a penny in furlough money from the government And we still paid our bonuses and still paid our staff despite our revenue dropping.

Speaker 1: 19:29

And we launched the four good business unit on day two of the pandemic. And when I look back at that, it all comes back to that lesson of you know, when the tide goes out, you can see who's been running things properly, and I suppose that is as simple as having what I hope is good financial prudence. maybe I would like to think kind of that making sure you're set up for that rainy day, because that rainy day came in March 2020, and it was really tough on a lot of people And I've sort of always been and I was.

Speaker 2: 20:04

I was intrigued when you talk because you didn't take furlough. Well, the first question that do you regret not taking furlough, or you look back at that and you do the same again? I don't think so.

Speaker 1: 20:14

Consciously no. But I do ask myself that question over and over again because the truth is we our income went down overall across the year 5% And we still made a little bit of a profit, but we didn't make as much money as we would have done had we have taken the government furlough scheme. But at the time we said and I still believe just because you can doesn't mean you should. And we didn't have to take furlough, so we didn't, and we felt a responsibility to sort our own stuff out. We could afford to pay our staff, we could afford not to make any redundancies, and so we made the decision maybe other people will tell me as a foolish one, but we made the decision to just keep our own house in order And I thought that was because what I?

Speaker 2: 21:13

because, when you say that I think like, okay, david was making big losses and therefore going into a savings, but that wasn't actually the case was that you, your margins obviously hit, but you, you retained being being a profitable business, if you see what I mean. So it wasn't that you, you know you might have dipped in from a cash flow perspective, but, in essence, you, you, you remained profitable during that period. Is that right?

Speaker 1: 21:36

Yeah, yeah, and I think that is what I thought the furlough scheme was supposed to be doing. So, yes, if we'd have, if we'd have not been profitable, i wouldn't have asked the same kind of questions and myself and everyone else about taking furlough, because that was, in my mind, what that scheme was set up to do.

Speaker 1: 21:53

Nobody should nobody should make a loss because of circumstances beyond their control. But we were making profits. We just made less profits because we've we basically financed everything ourselves, without government support. Also, i don't know there's something somewhere. National resources are low. What didn't? just because we could take from the central part, i felt like we didn't have to, we didn't need to, and it probably goes back to that earlier lesson of keeping your own house in order and like making sure you've got everything right for a rainy day, and so on. And so we, we we didn't do that, we, we were just I don't know.

Speaker 1: 22:35

I've always been really aware in running this business of my responsibilities and our responsibilities. And there's 35 people who's? there's 35 people who have families and hopes and dreams and mortgages and aspirations and all that. And if I screw this up, this affects them, and I've always had that for better or worse. And I guess at that point, in those difficult moments, we want to be set up so we can manage it all ourselves. And, touch wood, we were because the tide went out and we just about clung on to our swimming trunks, i suppose.

Speaker 2: 23:15

And the other lesson, i guess sort of how did you describe it? You could lose everything in an instant, but go on, just talk to us about that. Yeah, this is a cheery one.

Speaker 1: 23:26

This is a really cheery one. I don't know I hesitate to say this because it's like quite personal And I don't know how awful it makes me sound, but I kind of wasn't surprised when it all happened with the pandemic, because I feel like you have to have this mindset and it really came to the fore that nothing is permanent, like nothing is permanent and everything could go in an instant. And when I say it is personal, it is because, if you sort of can indulge me for a minute, i am the grandson of Holocaust survivors And my grandmother, alice, is 103 years old and her story is very similar to lots of other people. But she grew up in Western Germany and she had a very comfortable family life and her dad was a horse trader, a member of the community, and at 19 years old she had to pack a bag and get on a train and planes, trains, automobiles, whatever it was and leave her family, leave her home country and turn up here with nothing. She never saw her parents again. She's still at 103. Doesn't this is crazy? Doesn't actually know fully what happened to her own parents, although we believe that they were eventually taken to Auschwitz And she had to come here and left and started with nothing and met my grandfather here and they had my dad and so on and so on.

Speaker 1: 25:02

The reason why I tell that story is because there's something maybe in my psyche and in the psyche of everyone else who's experienced something like that, that just anything could happen at any moment. Nothing is permanent. And so if you're always on your guard for that, when the pandemic came which is in no way comparable to anything that my ancestors went through but when it came you're just kind of ready to roll with it, like okay, this can happen, like nothing, nothing is ever fixed. So let's go and let's go out and tackle it and do the best we can. And I kind of realised from that that it's maybe not the most joyous mindset to be in. But my lesson from that is don't ever think that anything is permanent, because things can change. As everyone knows now. Things can change in an instant. So just be ready for that uncertainty.

Speaker 2: 25:59

And what do you take from that then? Does that, is that a mindset thing? Is that enjoy life while you can? What does that mean from a practical perspective of running a business?

Speaker 1: 26:13

I think it goes back to something I said before, like just don't get too carried away with the highs and don't get too down with the lows, because things move, and things move quickly and things change, and nothing is. If things bad, they are going to change. And if things are good, watch out. Like don't think for any moment they're going to last forever. Just you have to yeah, i think, enjoy it. Enjoy it, because it's just ever changing and if you think for one second this is how it's going to be, you're going to get a pretty big shock. So just be ready. I suppose It's interesting, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 26:50

because I have that chat a lot with entrepreneurs, sometimes successful entrepreneurs who you know over the hill and have made it and sitting there in their nice house and it's. I always thought I was quite a risk taker but then when I talk to and listen to some of the people I know who've been really successful, their propensity to risk is much higher than mine. So it's interesting to hear you talk there about, you know, having money in the bank being just making sure you've got stuff for a rainy day, that stuff and I know you're talking more than that, but you get what I'm going with it. But then you look at some people who clearly have risked so much more, haven't they and they? it didn't add up, it wasn't logical, but it worked and it came off and it's just quite interesting that that propensity to risk does govern a huge amount of decisions that entrepreneurs and business owners make.

Speaker 1: 27:42

Yeah, i think I agree. I have the same thoughts as you and I see other people have taken huge risks and they've paid off. I guess my response to that and I think I am the biggest risk taker out there I clearly am not, because we were ready when the rain came. I think there's a few things to say about that right, as there's so many different types of business owners and so many different types of people building things and it's a continuum, and at one end, you've got huge risk takers and at the other end, you've got the people that are really prudent, and I think there is room for everyone. That's the first thing. The second thing is you're only telling me about the people who took those huge risks and it paid off. What about the people that took the huge risks? and it was an absolute disaster and they caused a lot of pain and a lot of suffering for a lot of people around them.

Speaker 2: 28:36

The other bit on that is that a lot of people risk a huge amount in the early days and then the more you get, the, i suppose, in a sense the more you've got an insurance, because you've got a few quid in the bank or whatever else. But you probably don't want to throw the dice on all of it, if you see what I mean. So that propensity of risk, like everything else you talked about in this podcast, is a journey.

Speaker 1: 29:03

It is and you have to get more comfortable with it. I definitely think I've got more Well. Everything is a risk. When you start any business. It is a risk. I came out of a job that I was doing pretty well in, i was comfortable, there was security, and I came to something where there wasn't, and you will have done the same and many others. That's a bit of a risk, but it's not a huge bet. That's involving hundreds plus people and taking many people with me, but the more experience you get, perhaps you get more used to risk. Of course, the bigger you get, the more resources. in theory, you should have to take those risks as well. It is a journey, if we can use that reality show phrase.

Speaker 2: 29:45

David, we're at your final in hindsight lesson. What's your final lesson?

Speaker 1: 29:50

So, it's around people and every business and every person who runs a business is going to say that people are important to them. Of course that is true, but, like with the previous points, you have to adapt to what your people want, because the same way you want more, they want more as well, and you have to create that structure for them and those opportunities for them, because otherwise they're going to go. We are really lucky, i am really lucky. The first three employees of the business are still here seven years later. I'm employee number one, so I probably don't count, but number two and number three.

Speaker 1: 30:30

Number two is Amy, who has been with us from day one, came in to basically run the accounts at senior level and has evolved and really developed amazingly and kind of went all the way through, i guess, and was running the agency alongside me and Sophie Diner and Kate Addy, who are our managing partners. Earlier this year we talked about what's next for Amy and so she has set up her own arm within ready 10, or called Claxton, and Claxton is providing common services to the live experiences industry. We worked with the likes of ideal home show for a few years, southampton international boat show, and I think it was in February. We had been talking about this for a while for Amy to branch out and kind of do her own thing within the structure, and she did brilliantly. Running Claxton is going to be really successful so far.

Speaker 2: 31:30

Just talk us through that, because you see that a bit, don't you? and that the central hub, and then people grow within that business and then a way is found for them to go and launch a different or a related business within the same group and things like that, and that's, is that what you're saying? there is a way to have to find flexibility within the structure of ready 10 and maybe a group of companies so that people can some people who want to go non-entrepreneurial can go and do their own thing, but I guess some people who want to stay within ready 10, finding a way to incentivise them to contribute to the business. is that what your central theme is there flexibility and kind of create that entrepreneurial culture flexibility, create the entrepreneurial culture and adapting to the circumstances.

Speaker 1: 32:19

If you're only ever going to do things one way, it's like what we've talked about with the positioning before You've got to have a look at where you are in the world and what's happening and pick up on the mood music and adapt.

Speaker 1: 32:32

Amy's done an incredible job the last few years and we got you know, we all got to the point where we thought there's probably more here and she felt that and we felt that, and now we've kind of set her up to go on her way and create a whole new thing around us. Also at the same time, in parallel to that, is Sophie and Kate, who I run Ready 10 with on a day-to-day basis, and they are, you know, they have kind of slightly different stories, but they've both been with the business for several years now and they are now managing partners running the business on a day-to-day basis. They're first cracker at that kind of level of job at an agency doing brilliantly, but it's the same lesson really You've got to make sure that you're creating the right opportunities for people for you to meet your goals and for them to meet theirs as well.

Speaker 2: 33:27

It's true, isn't it? because that one thing you said before was that the people always want more. and right, you know, we all do, and employees are no different from founders, so nothing stays still. Does it You need to find a way to help them grow and match their ambition?

Speaker 1: 33:44

I suppose Yeah, and no one's turning up to work every day to make me successful right In the nicest possible way. Nobody is turning up to do that to help me build what I, david Fraser, want to build. They are. Everybody's got their own stuff going on, which I have I completely buy into. Right. Everybody wants to move on, everybody wants to have their own version of success and growth and the business has to be aware of that, because if any business just thinks people are turning up with 100% focus on doing whatever it is they want to do, well, they're not going to stay in that business for very long and you've got to bring those two things together, which are the business objectives and the personal objectives, and make them work for one another and touch. Would we have done that?

Speaker 2: 34:35

David, that's brilliant. Thank you so much for coming on our In Hindsight series, thanks.

Speaker 1: 34:41

Ben, speak to you in five years. Thanks for listening to the PR Moment podcast produced in association with the Marketeers Network.

Speaker 2: 34:53

If you'd enjoyed the show, please do review us on iTunes and give us a decent rating.