From Start-Up to Scale-Up: Mark Scrivener’s Guide to Sustainable Growth

From Start-Up to Scale-Up: Mark Scrivener’s Guide to Sustainable Growth

In this episode of the Authority Builder Podcast, Charlotte Ellis Maldari welcomes Mark Scrivener—board advisor, fractional COO/CXO, and strategic leader with over 15 years’ experience in scaling tech-driven businesses. Mark shares his journey from small digital agencies to leading large-scale teams, offering practical insights on adaptability, user empathy, and building cultures that thrive.

Key topics include:
- The evolution from start-up to scale-up, and the systems that matter most at each stage
- How to avoid bottlenecks by empowering teams and sharing responsibility
- The myth of the “superstar” employee and the importance of delegation
- Embracing failure as a learning and marketing opportunity
- When to stabilise versus when to pursue growth
- The role of automation and AI in scaling efficiently
- The enduring value of human connection and transparent communication

Mark also discusses “transitional design” and how purposeful leadership can drive real-world impact. Whether you’re a founder, agency leader, or scaling enterprise, this episode is packed with actionable advice for sustainable growth.

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we went to someone's birthday party on the weekend and it was outside, and so she was running around with all the other kids going crazy, and she came back with a croaky voice and really ill, so yeah. And it's, that's all bad parenting. No, no. Not at all. I only ask because, They all look good and I think we're gonna be talking for a, a nice amount of time anyway, so I think it's all good. hi and welcome to the Authority Builder Podcast, and today I'm joined by Mark Scrivener, who's a board advisor fractional, C-O-O-C-X-O, non-exec director and a strategic advisor. And I'm really pleased to say somebody I've known for Mark, how long? Maybe 15 years, maybe more at this point. Yeah, a good 15 years without aging ourselves too much. and he's a strategic and purpose living driven leader, passionate about building what matters most. And from shifting perceptions to champion, championing user empathy, he's committed to driving success, growth, and sustainability through Adaptil. Adaptability. innovation and meaningful action that creates real world impact. And the majority of your work has been with startups and scale up and other kind of companies that have had tech involvement. And I know from the angle of where we worked together, I actually hired the business that you were at at the time, mohu, to be the digital agency for the agency I was at at the time, which is saying a lot because I don't think the term digital agency even exists anymore. No, no, that was some time ago. And what you just said as the introduction, that was that's a big mission statement, but it is the encompassing everything that always happens with agencies looking for problems, challenges, and fitting in how to solve for that. And so that's what my life's always been about and I think that's where we're gonna take this conversation today, I believe. Yeah, absolutely. So what, you have been very busy since we worked together way back. And can you tell the people a little bit more about the potted version of your, your bio, which kind of companies you worked at beyond Mohu and what that looked like for you? Yeah, I think, I think Mohu was the start of the journey where I cut my teeth. But after that, going into a sporting digital agency, that agency had data from all sporting events. And how do you then change that into products, digital products, experiences for customers? So my role there was when it was, a few people, with a few contracts working within a few sporting industries. How do you then take that and, and grow and scale that business? How do you then create value for your clients, which would be anything from horse racing organizations to bookies to media outlets? And how do you then productize that for. The better experience and everybody getting involved in, in using data and the intelligence of data for, for good interactions. So that was my first journey and, and building that out, how to grow a business. we acquired a fantasy football organization as well, adding another string to the bow, but also integrating, emerging that world. After that, I moved into e-commerce again, an agency that was a few people that had really great clients. And how do you then evolve that into a sustained business? How do you then grow that? And we, we ended up having two offices, and the, the second office in the Middle East then enabled us to understand a different culture, different working environment, but also how to deliver. Retained work for clients within the, e-commerce world, from fashion luxury goods. and how do you then tweak it and change it for the different customers and give a different experience in that world in, different products and services. So that was all about retention, engagement, awareness, learning, all of that. And then coming full circle to, originally from what I was working at Mohu for a UX agency, I then joined a UX agency called Momentum, where we were with the front end of product design, product led growth, understanding what the jobs to be done and the customer experience, and building that out from, the organization that we then sold to a, an it company. And we then became overnight. Three, 4,000 people. So how to understand to build that culture within your team, but now part of something bigger. How to then grow that, culture and learn from each other, be vulnerable, understand what works, what doesn't work, and be able to change and adapt for you internally and your clients as well. So we're always looking behind the scenes, what's happening at the agency world, but also what's happening for your clients. How do you deliver a best, best product for them? And in many ways, as you're talking, and I was thinking about this after our last conversation, I feel like your experience kind of, I don't wanna transcend, but like, kind of like straddles, like almost all the different things that people say aren't possible. Like really small business, really big business, and moving very quickly from one to the other, like creative side company, corporate side company. And then again, like some of those businesses you're talking about, they were in both of those camps, agency and client side. and, and also, you know, I think the thing that I've always found most difficult is, and I think, that perhaps, I can say we have in common is, agility and willingness to problem solve regardless of what the situation is. Mm-hmm. not really being willing to categorize yourself down as one thing. I mean, I know even from reading your bio, there are at least five roles in there that you currently hold with various different companies. And I feel like in, in my twenties and around the time. We first met each other, I feel like there was a lot of stay in your lane messaging. You're either strategy or you were creative. You are either corporate or you were, again creative I guess, or you're either really, really big company or really, really small company and you you got tight cast in that sense. And I'm really fascinated by how you've transitioned between often within the same company, between those different, um, boxes effectively that somebody could have easily typecast you in. So thinking about that, when you grew from five to 150 people, was that in the, the first company you mentioned, the, the sport data company. What systems mattered most during that period of time? Because I know that was a, it was over a very rapid period of time from what you told me, right? I think, I think every organization goes on a journey and throughout that journey you are. Certainly mature as a business, but mature is your mindset and your team and, and there's different maturity levels, and this could be product side or agency side. And it's very much going on that journey together. Mm-hmm. As soon you start to realize that you may have a few key anchor clients, or you might be going very quick, light fast, and, and it's picking up momentum and trajectory very quickly. The ability to change and adapt and to run with it is really important, but the governance and structure behind it is also just as important to, to not over promise. To, not under promise to deliver, but to realize where you can say no and I keep saying it, of the, the vulnerability, but being open and, and, and very trustworthy in a way of saying that's. We are probably not ready for that, or that might be not best suited for us. And being able to say no, I've learned over time is so powerful, but being able to say no because of this or no, and why don't you try these guys? Or This is probably not our bag, or you are not mature enough or data ready for this. And so there's many, many reasons where you start to understand as organizations, if you focus you said stay in your lane, but if you focus in what you are good at and keep evolving that, then it keeps growing it can go as, as quick as it needs to go. Mm-hmm. for the, for the last organization I, I exited at the end of last year, there was. multimillions hundreds of millions investments. how that works is that, that enables you to do your m and a, but your organic growth and your anchor clients and delivering and the trust is what helps you to grow. And that is what helps everybody else internally to grow. It's the, it's the culture that goes with it as well, and bringing everyone on board. I think we spoke last time about small five to 10 people. That's very scrappy, but those five to 10 people in an agency, then all chip in together, they all know that they have to do the hr because they have to look after each other. You don't have a HR department, but you have to be scrappy. You have to wear all hats, you have to do marketing, you have to deliver be very conscious. But when you get to 30 people. You have a little bit more freedom. You, you start to focus in your lane in effect, but you still know that you don't have a HR department, you don't have a finance department, legal departments. You may have people who are more, specific to that and have been hired for that, but you're still helping out. you are being very professional, not to give them extra work, and everyone can then take on and own what they need to own. When you get to 150, when you get to a few thousand, you have your departments, you can then rely on it. That's when you then focus on what you are delivering yourself and you focus in your team and it just becomes a smaller squad team within a larger organization. So the key thing here is communication and transparency. All of this is all about organizing, communication, transparency. So many words that are very. Day-to-day for everybody. But connecting the dots is really key, I think, for all of this. How to scale and that's really important. Yeah, absolutely. I, yeah, I'm nodding away as you're talking 'cause I was I, I'm trying to figure out why I like that, that smaller. Size. And I was is it because I always did team sports at school and it was always about supporting people and helping out. I'm thinking netball team where there's seven people and every person is super vital and you just need to get the job done. But then I'm then you know, the first time you used the word team as you were talking through them was once you got to hundreds and thousands of people. And I was oh, maybe it's not that. But I think it's this kind of idea of not coming to it. I enjoy it most where people come to it with no ego and they just, they have their mm-hmm. Their eyes on the goal and they wanna get there. And actually it doesn't matter how they're typecast or how many people they are, et all aligned on a, on a shared goal and, and ambition. And again, those are words that get thrown around all the time, but I don't know, I dunno how often they're actually lived and believed practice. so on on that theme, what is a scaling myth that you see founders repeat that actually creates bottlenecks? I think what I've seen in the past is. There's always going to be your superstars. There's always gonna be the people that you, you think, okay, let's put our superstars front and center and let's continue to do that. For every client, every client is the new shiny thing. Every, every new project is, is, is what's needed to, to bring excitement to the group. But you end up putting the same people in front of the new challenges and, and they ultimately become drained of, of that. Now the other people in the organization, you might get that kind of resentment and you might that get that kind of envy. And so what I do try is that you want everyone to learn from each other and you want to spread the team. You want to be able to, not give the focus on certain people 'cause they are the bottleneck. You all see within large organizations that the CIOs, the CTOs, the ones who are very time poor, everybody's wanting them to make decisions. Everyone's wanting them to jump onto sessions, but if they can delegate, if they can train the team around them, that's how you grow a lot quicker. That's how the culture evolves. And they all then take the shared responsibility and they all then chip in as a, as, as a group. So education and learning is, is really key there. It's really interesting. I had a conversation earlier around, from a completely different angle with somebody completely out of this context around, those kind of superstar employees in an organization. Kind of the, in this context, it was about people in corporate environment, very kind of high, high performing kind of executives and an overlap with neurodivergence, but also a kind of sense of for them, In some instances, seeking approval is what perpetuates them in that role. And actually it's a, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy in the sense that the business gets a lot from them. but they get a lot from the business. And, and I'm just thinking as you're talking, how do a problem I'm seeing with potentially kind of those superstar players becoming the bottleneck is the kind of, is the self need, the need within the self to be a really valuable person within the team. And I've seen organizations where the founder will not remove themselves from certain things, even though they know they should delegate. They, they like sticking their or in, Regardless of the stage of business they're at. Do you, do you have any kind of thoughts on how to kind of, especially for the, if somebody identifies as being that person, I'm asking for a friend by the way. It's not at all for me, but how do you, like how do you keep that in check? Yeah. I, I work with a few product companies that understand from a, a psychometrics level of an organization and you need to have a fine blend. And this is when I'm talking about the maturity of a business. It could be a maturity of a product, but it could also be the maturity of your organization from a staffing perspective. And sometimes you have certain people who are the entrepreneurs, the ones that they're front to the buzz. And then you have the workers, and then you have, and you have different stages depending on where as you or where you are as an organization. Yeah. Now you, you have to be able to switch context or know who to. Trust in those different types of situations. the Phoenix Project is a great book that I always keep rereading, and the, the ability to stop production and to look at the process and look at how to fix it and then go back into that environment is really important because then you can, you can all learn from it, but you put pieces in place to then avoid that in the future. Mm. And that is one book that I keep going back to all the time. it's one book that helps you to understand the bottlenecks, identify those bottlenecks, and then remove them. And that that individual the one who has that need to be involved all the time. This, this comes down to that Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Yeah. That comes down to they want to be able to feel important. Now, you can do that by. Delegating. You can do that by entrusting people and then having them go further up that ladder. Because ultimately you want to be able to leave a legacy that is not just that you've always been doing it, but you've created something. And that's really key for scaling. Oh, yeah. And, and also exiting. Because if you are the product, if you are the service, if you are the business, then you're gonna have to earn your buyout over a much longer period of time. Right. Or you're gonna be lowering your valuation when it comes to that point where you're thinking about whether it's succession planning or management buyout or, you know, re to do the retirement or whether you truly aim to sell your company. And that is a, that is a goal for you. Also, as you're talking, I'm hearing you didn't say it, but I'm hearing it's it's looking at things objectively, not being too subjective and personal about it and getting defensive about it and, and taking stock, pausing, taking stock, and then iterating, which is iteration is such a huge thing right. In, in kind of tech background and, and, and UX as well. Like this knowledge that it's a journey, not a destination and treat it as such. Yeah. The, the iterations is really key because when you, now I, I work with lots of product companies and when you look at how you measure product led growth is, is about how you measure the performance. But there may be a bigger shift in the market that you then have to keep up with. And we, we will talk about AI in a bit, but understanding and listening and have that 360 feedback and that loop feedback then, then enables you to not be too precious about completely pivoting. And yes, you can double down on pieces if it's working for you, if you are growing, if it's, if it's sustainable. But if there is a change to the environment, and it could be anything from, new competitor on the market or it could be a completely different technology or, or there's no demand for it anymore. You need to be able to pivot. And there's many product examples I've, I've worked on where we had a remit to create something for a conference or an event, and it would be at the same time building that out. So it's, it's to be launched at that event and yet you get halfway through that journey and realize there may have been a shift in the environment. So we will do a proof of concept or, or something, a demo to show at that event, but not necessarily build it and wait for the results to come back. And so being able to make those decisions and know when to. Change or to adapt from the, from the feedback is really important. There's, as I'm just quickly trying to, find the term for something, but when you were talking just then, you really making me think of a conversation that I heard ages ago at Sea Camp, at Google Campus where Neil Ann Paris, who at the time, and actually I think he still is, VP of Growth at wise, which at the time was transfer wise, and he was talking about, to a room full of tech, well funded tech startups, about how they quantified success and, and what was the thing that they, the growth metric that they anchored everything around and I forget what it was called, the time. Do you remember what they used to call the thing where it was like, would you refer this to a friend? What do they call that thing? I'm like trying to find the name. Oh man. referral index wise, let me see if I can find it. I've got endless, yeah, they were using it as a KPI, I can't remember the name of it, but it was basically they were asking people on a scale of one to 10, how much, how willing would you be to, refer somebody to wise, say it's a good, it's an important it's a valuable service to go use a valuable product. They were asking them to go refer people and there was a referral program and a dare say if they scored like seven or above, they would ask that, they would direct them towards that, but that was the metric by which they calculated whether they were doing a good job or not. And I found that so interesting and it completely removed it from it. It, it kind of, we talk a lot in agency world about the danger of asking. People what they think and asking for their feedback before moving forward. And a lot of that is around minimizing risk, around decision making. And I love this idea of the simplicity of a one to 10 scale. And there's no room for kind of qualitative feedback. It's more just a, we know whether we're doing a good job or not, depending on how you scale, how you gave us a mark between that number. And I loved that he kind of credited that with the staying focused on how they grew and what they focused on in terms of the product and how the different, teams within the business, whether they were marketing and as they called it, growth or product based. kind of conversation between them based on, what that metric was looking like. So annoying. I literally can't find, I can, he's got an entire presentation on, some on LinkedIn slide somewhere, which is just amazing. I still is relevant. I read it recently. Still is relevant now as it was a decade ago. Whilst you're trying to find that, I'll, I'll give you time to find that. what I was thinking about when you were saying that is the NPS score. The that, yes. Net promoter score. That's it. Well, there we go. So the NPS score is, is something that a lot of companies work on, and want to be able to feedback, and it's very, it's very apt. When I've been in situations where it's been a really low NPS score, it's been ultimately low. And I love the organizations that are vulnerable, and I'm saying that word again to, to embrace and talk about that on an all hands. Yeah. The ones that say it is actually a bad work environment or it is, not that bad. But for the instance of that, being able to embrace that, but also say, we, we hear you and we're going to change. And that enables you then to start to look at how to. Change your performance. There's a company that I am, working with now and this, this product company understands the relationship between your actual organization view and the per the perception of what that is from exec board level, down to the team we were working on it day in, day out, and the different perception there. And some organizations realized that they might be talking. We've had a great year, everyone's happy and there's lots of people just looking at each other saying, well, we haven't had a great year. And so understanding that from all the different levels and replaying it back, with real perception is really important. And that then helps you to get the great Place to work scores. It helps you to get, the, the B certs and all of those kind of, great awards that you can shout about. But ultimately it's listening to people and people are individuals and everyone's got different objectives and motives that everyone has different purposes. And if you look at it from an agency side, you would have some people who, who are there to get their head down and work and are not necessarily involved in the community, but they, they just want to do good work and they, they get pride and then they go home. That is fine with those people in that organization because they're complimented by the other people who want to be part of the community who, might not necessarily have their heads down all the time, but they bring up morale so there's lots of contributors in and different aspects within your organization, and the best thing to do is spot them, what makes them up and take people out of their comfort zone slightly see how they perform and give them the support. many times I've been to events where I can easily talk to people in, in events and networking. take a designer to that and have them just listen in soon enough, they start talking. And I love to see that change and that being curious is, is really cool about people and that is the experience that they'll be getting from these events that you take them to. But the exposure of just pushing them out their comfort zone slightly. Yeah, absolutely. And as you're speaking that I mean curiosity. Absolutely. I think that gets knocked outta us early on and it's one of my kind of key talents as a parent to try and preserve the curiosity for as long as possible and my daughter, because I feel like I'm only just rediscovering that relatively recently. But as you talk through those different points, and I'm just thinking back to net promoter score, and I'm glad you came up with the name without me having to troll the whole of Google. But I, to me again, it's about. About the, it's about appreciation of it being a journey and not a destination. And also kind of the idea of intermixing different departments, different skill levels, et cetera. And, and yeah, being in it for the long haul or at least having that intention, even if your goal is to exit in the next few years, coming at it with that kind of energy of we're enjoying the process and we are gonna evolve and no, it's not perfect and mistakes will happen and we do stuff and then we improve on it. And that is the way it's gonna be. It empowers people to, to take risks that may well work out, or to kind of speak up in environments where they perhaps would feel intimidated otherwise. so I was gonna ask how do you keep that, get stuff done, kind of energy alive whilst you are hiring fast? And I think you've partially answered the question there, but is there anything else you wanna speak to on that point? I think when you share successes, If you are hiring very quickly, there's lots of newbies coming into an organization. There's lots of different, experience levels. And the way to, to integrate everyone is to share experiences, share successes, and share failures as well. there is lots of times within an agency world where you might win a new contract or you might lose one. Now, I've been in places where that's not talked about. If you've lost mm-hmm. A, a big client that is also a very, okay, well let's, let's learn from it. Why? And there will be people asking, well, where have these guys gone? And I thought that was our flagship client. What, what, what happened? a lot of the time it. About understanding maybe there's a change in direction or a change in business, model or, or a competitor, went low on the price. There's many reasons why. Now, if you can talk about that openly to your team and to your group and then to the organization, they can then start to understand, okay, well it's an environment where, maybe our work has an impact on the business, or maybe we can, we can come up with suggestions on how not how to avoid that in the future or also it's just an understanding bit. And the more transparent you are as an organization, the more people want to be able to work and be part of that movement. Mm-hmm. And I'm saying that from an agency side, but I've worked with, one of our. Momentum. The last UX agency I was at, one of our main tenants that we created $48 billion in value for our clients. And that's startup scale ups, that's, that's IPOs, exits, for our clients. Um, and loads failed as well. But what that journey was for these people is that you go on a journey with a, a client, you go on a journey with a product and some will have ups, some will have, lots of lows, but ultimately you, as long as you are part of that journey and they can trust you and you are very open with each other, it ultimately comes to success and you are all then motivated to for it to work. And it becomes gamification really. It becomes, everybody wants to maybe do the best quarter or release it in the right time. And so giving those milestones but also rewarding it's rea it's really key. Mm hmm. Really interesting. Had never thought about that within a, well, I mean, it's, yeah, I understand where it comes from, but as you were talking, I don't think I've ever been in, in-house at an agency where it's been big enough to have that kind of internal competition. but also as you're talking, you mentioned at the start, just then about the importance of talking about failure or when things don't work out. And I come at that with, at another, from another angle with my clients is that, especially if you've lost something at a, kind of pitch stage or a proposal stage. Firstly, being honest with yourself about why that might have happened. Because sometimes there are reasons beyond your control. And I had that recently with a client. I was like, I, they asked me, why do you think we lost this? And we all looked through everything. I was like, you were never gonna win it because, and, and we walked through the situation, they were like, oh yeah, we were in the mix because of this. And it, and it, once we objectified it, and it wasn't about wriggling out of it, it was more about looking at it honestly and objectively. And in that case it was a admission that actually we were never gonna be the right fit because we weren't able to demonstrate X, X, and X. But also it was don't let that be something that everybody gives home glum about on a Friday night, and then no one ever mentions again, and it gets shoved at the back of the server and we try and pretend it didn't happen. It's like what can, in my opinion, it's a super duper opportunity to, my favorite term, recycle stuff. It's like you've put a lot of your IP into that experience, and if you haven't been paid for it, you know, as in if the IP hasn't been transferred to the person who. Paid you for it. And I know so many of, and not all of the people listening in are agencies, a lot of service and product, based businesses as well. But, oh God, I've lost my train of thought. But, yeah, you've put, if as long as you haven't been paid for that pitch, which the majority of my agency clients don't, don't go in for, unpaid pitches anymore, they don't do unpaid creative, then you, you are able to recycle that material. And I really think you should for marketing and, especially marketing purposes, but also potentially for new business purposes. So something we reframe this as is, if you've pulled together a proposal, what are the insights that you've taken from that? What are the kind of key points that you drew their attention to and kind of basically. Dangled the carrot in front of them in respect of this is a taste of what you could get from us, and then how can you play that out into potentially a lead magnet or into a podcast episode or into a series of social posts or an email, LinkedIn newsletter or at least three of the above, in my opinion, for every single kind of experience that has gone slightly wrong, you don't have to mention who it was, but you can say, look, we were privy to the experience recently. We have some thoughts. They're not being used. We thought we'd share them with you. And you can kind of generate a good will and an insight into your, into your thought process that it can be really intriguing for other people in that sector. But also then going out to, if you're allowed to under your, The terms of your confidentiality agreement going out to other people in that sector and saying, look, we recently had the opportunity to speak to one of your competitors. We had some thoughts they decided on to progress with them, but we'd love to have the opportunity to have an hour chat with you and walk through it. no kind of, expectations, but it might be a good opportunity to share, something of value. I think, from a FOMO level, from a human level, from a, competitor level, there are so many reasons that it would be very hard to turn that down. And so, and that's just two ideas of what you do with a failed opportunity, with where something's gone wrong. wrong in inverse commerce. But I, I think, and especially speaking to the agency people, especially if you identify as creative, it's so easy to become defensive about something that can be judged as, Criticism or rejection of your work. And that makes it a super, accustomed to just squirreling those things away on the sofa, server, brushing them under the carpet, not talking about them and and not embracing them and actually maximizing those experiences. And I think it's a massive missed opportunity. 'cause you've done the work, right. It's easy to spin it out into something else. I think from listening to that, from the 20 years of, of running agencies, I think I took a break at the start of this year and I've come back and I've, it's enabled me to assess, as you were talking about sales and making deals and, and understand that a lot of pressure in scaling a business and running agencies is about selling and making money. And what I've realized over the time is that when you are small organization, you have less overhead. Yeah, but you, you have to make that jump from a one person, a two person agency to start to be responsible for paying people's salaries. And so all of a sudden you have that bigger responsibility. So a lot of organizations start chasing their tails and start getting a bit desperate with sales or mm-hmm. Thinking they can do everything and having to accept everything. And, and that is driven by being able to finance something. And so there's, there's lots of finance options that you can have when you first start up as agencies. but ultimately you want to be independent. You want to be able to grow, you want to be able to make the decisions yourself and, and grow it that way. I've seen a lot of that happen. I do know lots of agencies who've always stayed seven to 10 people make a consistent amount of money and make a nice amount of profit, and they keep a lot in the bank. So when they do have a bad year. They are not pressurized by having to make sales. Of course, they want to always make perfect. Of course they always want to be able to do that, but they have the padding now. Those agencies have been around for so long because they don't have that desire or need, and they don't want the stress of, of growing. And that's fine because they are then very much comfortable in delivering And that is a, a good, I see there's great culture in those organizations. When you get to around about 30 sites, you, you have to start really chasing deals or you have to be able to not put all your eggs in one basket with one client or a few big clients. So you are always looking. And so there are those kind of methods of selling the anxiousness and being a bit desperate. what I've noticed now is that coming back now. The best way to have these relationships is just to speak to people on human levels. Mm-hmm. And not have sale at the front of it and lots of agencies that I worked with. As soon as you start to get investment that you need to do return on investment, that you need to then grow, you need to then sustain your growth. And it's, it's all very much metrics. So that pressure then comes with the added pressure of having to sell in your sales team. All of a sudden stop to, to panic or, or look at different ways of making it. And so if you can be true to yourself with all of this, and if you can be true to understanding what we really offer, what we're good at, and when you grow your team, understand the skill sets of the team and take everybody's thoughts on board, then all of a sudden you can start to realize that you found your niche and you are this agency because you do this. And I've, I've consciously come back and I'm an advisor for, six agencies. Each one has a different field that that can compliment each other, but they know to stay in their lanes. They know what they're good at, and they know when they're, they're maybe taking on something that's not good for them, so they will decline it. And it's really important if you're going to grow or even stay as the size you are, that everyone's not got that pressure, not got that panic. And, and it's about building out that trust with everyone you know, in your existing clients and your new clients. And yes, we utilizing what failed for someone else, it's fine because it might not have been that right client for you at that right time. Do not chase those people afterwards. It's, it's a case of that reversal, negativity, learn that today in in a talk where. It's okay to say, no, come back to me when you're ready. If not, no worries. Because then you can focus on your attention on their competitors. Or if you really think it's a good product, you can maybe build it yourself. So there's lots of learnings from that, that chasing the revenue and the pressure that you get from that. But ultimately, if you're true to yourself and your team, then everyone's got on the same cause. Mm-hmm. So just building on that, when do you think you should know to stabilize versus it being a season of growth? I'm just thinking of it because I know a lot of those agencies as well that have remained a certain number of people for 30 odd years, and they are very comfortable and it works brilliantly. And I would hate to think that. And I suppose I did at some stage in my career, look down on those kind of businesses that don't have the ambition to grow, but now I see the wisdom. but can you do, do you have anything to add about that? Like how do you know whether you're in a season of business where you should be more ambitious and growing or, or not, or whether you should ever be in that season? It's company culture. It's, it's a, down to the, the board, if it's a larger organization, but it's also with the team as well. It's, it's understanding your environment. If you are, if you are a plant in the desert and you are not used to that, then you are going to go on survival mode. But if you are a palm tree, well then you, you are comfortable and you can grow because it's the right conditions. And so understanding my analogies are really bad, but understanding how to. I'm a gardener. I like it. Perfect. So how to really know your environment and know when it's the right time to, to branch out, when it's the right time to protect and preserve. And that is all about the feedback you get. That is about. I've, I'm working with a company in a NED role where they've got fantastic metric, tools. They can understand straightaway, their, runway, they can understand, their, ebitda, they can understand, when they need to hire, when they don't, what, what skill sets they've got available on the bench, what they don't, what projects are coming up, what's, what's scheduled in for next year? What's scheduled in for media, how much, each, little minute bit. Now that is all automated. None of that is manual. None of that is someone holding the keys and someone being that bottleneck. It's automated and transparent for a lot of people to see. And when you do that, then everyone can start to make informed decisions as a group and as a team, I think it's time that we should, start to accelerate. I think it's time that we maybe go a bit, on the, on the reserve side on hiring or we need to go out and do a big, marketing campaign. Those are the types of things that help to inform you. It's the intelligence from the data. And this now starts to get into ai. This starts to go into that conversation that I everybody's having right now. and everyone's rolling in certain tools, processes, performances that are enhancing your decision making or giving your efficiencies. So how do you judge whether a company really needs AI or just better systems? Well, there's, there's two things there. I know I was in a conversation this morning about this. There are your operational ai, which is your whole business and infrastructure, and that is something that is a program of work. That is something that your IT team or your operations team will be working through and every business will be doing that at some sort of level. And then your efficiency day to day. Level, which individually people will be taking on themselves. So this, I believe, recording and taking notes is happening right now. That is ai, your, scheduling for a meeting or a calendar or, everything like that is ai. for designers, you've got your, your Canva for, well, yeah. You've got Canva and Figma evolving and then for developers, the co-pilots rolling out to everybody, voice to text, that type of pieces. That is always happening and that is always improving people's workflows in their individual roles. What's happened is the large organizations now have started to, well, for two or three years, the legal team have started to try and work out what's acceptable, what's not, what's in the remits, and that is an ever evolving. Set of terms and conditions and education pieces within an organization. But a lots of businesses now are allowing AI to be in the workforce very easily. and I've, I've gone through lots of events recently where we're seeing it really helping the workforce and people embracing it more, more, and more. And that is something that wasn't necessarily the same as the NFTs or the, the old Metaverse and that, those pieces that had, that had that real buzz, but never really delivered. But we're with AI all the time now and it's not going away. Yeah, and you know what, I'm, I'm so grateful for it in many ways because a big part what of what I've been doing for the last 10 years is improving efficiency for agencies and, and other kinds of service-based businesses. With automation, but automation was this really dirty word until chat. GPT blew up. And I'm so grateful for it, because it was really hard to justify and explain it to people. And as soon as they start seeing other tools that are helping them to make efficiencies and then more willing to entertain them because they're being talked about at scale and in the news, you know, any given moment, at least three of the articles on the BBC news front page feel like they're AI related. And the number of tools that we use in our business between automation and AI are, so numerous at this point. Mm-hmm. And, that is at the crux of a lot of what we help our clients to roll out. And the way I see it is it allows you to punch. Whether it's ai, but specifically automation actually allows you to punch well above your weight because it makes your business scalable. I don't think, most people's interactions with chat GPT make efficiencies, speed things up. But the thing that I love about automation is the lack of potential for human error. And I think that is, a huge block for a lot of the businesses that I work with and, and is often something that scares them off from continuing to do something consistently. And what we do know is if you do something consistently until it becomes a habit, then it, number one, you continue to do it. And number two, people start to notice. I heard this, I, mostly about marketing and new business here, but I heard this, Stat recently, and I feel like I've said there's a few times in conversations this week, so apologies, this is not the first time you're hearing this on the podcast by learned this stat. And I was oh my God, that's incredible. But when I was at uni doing marketing degree, we were taught the I can't remember who coined it, but the, and I don't think it changed since the mid fifties, so it was probably during an update anyhow, but the a reference from the age of Mad Men and billboards, et cetera. But you need to see it eight times before you can remember it and recall it. I learned recently that they've re undertaken those studies and it's now 80 times. Mm-hmm. So, even if you're, if you're just taking that into account, you need to be doing 10 times the amount of marketing that you were a decade ago, say, and. For people who have never done marketing and always depended on referral or, net promoter score, for example, promotion and, advocates. It's put you even further behind. I see marketing as an insurance policy and great if you don't need it, but, brilliant if you can, have something that is working and then scale it up using automation and potentially AI and, ensure that you're removing it from the list of things that A, you might cause error in, or b, just not do because you don't like doing it. that was a rant. My computer's telling me I'm on a monologue, so feel free to chip in. That's good. And, and who's telling you that? Is that an AI bit there? It's ai, it's my favorite fathom. There we go. So when, when you are talking about that there is, there is a key understanding that those touch points, and I've heard something similar with, 40 to 50 touch points for a conversion maybe a SaaS product, but or the marketing touch points that you do. And a lot of that can be automated. Now, when you are looking at automating a lot of these things, there is nothing that's gonna replace this human interaction. And I've heard that a lot. I was at an event last night with, one of the big, top four banks and one of the big chip providers, and they were talking about how innovative products can get into their ecosystem. It takes at least 30, between 30 and 200 meetings. To get it through to a product, that's actually signed and working in their environment. And that is not talking about the touch points, the digital touch points, but these are physical meetings or, or calls human to human. Yes. And you, you end up having to be able to talk to many different people in the organization mm-hmm. To understand the structure, to understand how this is all, within their remit or working model or their philosophy of what they want to do in the future and their vision to then be able to fit in the right place. And sometimes it's not the right time. And so that, that gets to the 200 mark because you've been talking to them for a year or two, until it's the right time and the right place or the, the right service or the right department. And that's really interesting. I'm thinking another thing from a product perspective, from companies who. Don't necessarily have agencies, but they're trying to build stuff out is AI can help to advance their delivery and lots of internal teams could be getting a bit carried away and building something very quickly using AI and trying to get the quick wins because they've got financial pressure, they need to deliver something or the board need to see change. And so they do quick wins and they do, big aspirational pieces off the back of not really a lot of CX and real discovery and design thinking. And they've done it based off while it's good, good impact now what if this? And so they're making lots of assumptions and I've seen the better organizations take a lot of time and a lot of pressure from the board. By taking their time slowly to integrate some good technology and slowly to integrate AI with the best use cases or the best reasoning that's scalable. And that's the difference between proof of concepts and engineering. That's the difference between going quick for your startup scale ups to prove an idea, to then refactoring, to then actually implementing it in a beast of scale. And that's your offset in your mind when you're thinking about that from a product perspective, how to do that as you were talking then, I was just thinking you could easily replace business organization with government and product with policy as you were talking. I just think there's so much, I'm not necessarily talking about the current British administration, but like the kind of sense of short term thinking because it's within our tenure, whether it's within an organization or you know, in government or whatever. I just hate this kind of, I feel like there's a missed opportunity for the longer term thinking and having that in contrast to the speeding up of everything. And I'm thinking, as I'm talking, I'm thinking about tortoise media, who deliberately do a very kind of measured approach to news and current affairs. I stopped reading, the B, B, C, well, any of the apps, news apps when the new US administration came in and subscribed to the week again for the first time in a while and just digest all of my news over the weekend based on a selection of articles from around the world. providing a much more balanced and kind of overall view, objective view of all sides of topics. As a contrast to the 24 hour news cycle. And I'm also thinking of the origins of the slow food food movement in Italy and this kind of idea of the artisanal approach and slowing things down, and the appreciation of that in contrast to the speeding up of the world around us. and I know these things don't directly apply, but I think you, something else you've mentioned, which I talk about a lot, is the importance, the increasing importance of human connection in a world where things are faster and more machine based and less attentive than ever before, and we have fewer human interactions. and yeah, and embracing that is something that makes you different. And ultimately human connection and caring is about the long term survival and thriving of, of us as a human race. So doing the short term thing, it's, I don't see it as good for. I don see it as good for kind of humanity or organizations. And I also think there is a danger, especially if you're a publicly traded company, that sometimes the short term thinking and short term solutions are tantamount to not taking fiduciary responsibility, especially when you are, you have that responsibility to shareholders, like who is incentivizing beyond quick win. I love that conversation because it goes a full circle and it's a good, good point to wrap this up in, in a way of I came into this world from. I lived in the north and I went to engineering college, and I realized that I wanted to be a Dyson. I wanted to be a Jonathan. Ive, I wanted to be someone who could change the world through in, at that point, industrial product design, but I became product design in ux. And the reason for that is because I wanted to make a real change. I wanted to, and I, you, you can't change things on a governmental scale or a global scale, but you can make change for person people's experiences, be that product, be that service, be that digital, but understanding how you can make a change. Now, I've tried to do that, and then for the past 20 years, learning the trade, I'm coming back now and I'm choosing organizations and products that I have a connection with that is going to actually make change. And I recently came across a new terminology that to me, it's new, it's been around for a little while in the different guise, but it's called transitional design. Transitional design is about understanding the environment and how your designs and impacts and policies can then change future environments. Mm-hmm. And so that's something that I'm keeping a close eye on and that's something that I'm championing through service design and CX and corporations that are large enough to make impact and change. And so that will be something that I'm focusing on coming back as well. Those types of transitional design programs that make a real change. Interesting. Well, I look forward to watching this space and seeing how that pans out. So, mark, can you tell us who should get in contact with you and how should they find. let's say get in contact with me on LinkedIn. It's very easy. my name Mark Scrivener, there's only a few of us there, and I'll put it in the show notes. My ori, my original Scrivener is down for Scribe, so it's old English for Scribe. So that's what I've always been, I've always worked in writing and recording and looking at processes, and that's true to my name. So, yep. Getting in con contact with me on my LinkedIn and, we'll, I'm sure we'll put that at the end of this podcast. And who should get in contact? Oh, okay. So let's, anything from people who have startups, scale ups, who need advice to large scale enterprise organizations. I'm here to give advice now. I'm here to help, and share my knowledge and help people get to where they need to get to with, with worthwhile projects. Projects that actually make a difference. That could be anything from organizations that are struggling in the climate and have, uh, enterprise level thousands of people down to small startups and scale ups that really want to be able to make an impact in the environment and community they're in. Amazing. Well, it's been a pleasure to speak to you again and, thank you for joining us. Thanks. Thanks.