The Company Road Podcast

E85 James Fitzjohn: Swapping Comfy Corporate for Consultancy Hustle

• Chris Hudson • Episode 85

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In this episode of The Company Road Podcast, Chris Hudson speaks with James Fitzjohn, founder and director of Brew Consulting. James is a certified "agency nomad," having spent over 20 years with advertising heavyweights like Ogilvy, AKQA, and DDB across London, Dubai, Melbourne, and Perth.

James shares the epiphany that led him to ditch the corporate life for the independent hustle. He realised that brilliant brands were happily spending fortunes on "shiny new websites" and "truckloads of performance marketing" without ever addressing the fundamental business strategy underneath.

This frank conversation delves into the raw, human reality of making that leap. The fear, the vulnerability, and the exhilarating freedom of building your own thing. It's a must-listen for anyone who's ever considered trading their office chair for a blank page and a new purpose.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

  • The epiphany moment that showed James the massive disconnect between marketing tactics and core business strategy.
  • The reality of the "agency nomad" life and the universal lessons learned from 20 years inside the world's biggest ad agencies.
  • The fear and vulnerability of the first 6 to 12 months after leaving the corporate safety net.
  • Why strategy must be a foundational element before any budget is spent on "shiny marketing."
  • The shift in mindset required to go from being a big agency intrapreneur to a solo entrepreneur.
  • James's generous offer to listeners who are considering their own career leap.

Key Links

About our guest

James Fitzjohn is the Founder and Director of Brew Consulting. With over 20 years of experience, James has held senior leadership roles at globally renowned advertising firms, including Ogilvy, AKQA, and DDB, spanning four continents. His consultancy was founded on the belief that too many businesses confuse brilliant marketing tactics with core business strategy. James helps clients stop faffing about with the superficial and focus on getting their foundational strategy right, delivering better, more honest marketing as a result.

About our host

Our host, Chris Hudson, is an Intrapreneurship Coach, Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of business transformation coaching and consultancy Company Road.

Company Road was founded by Chris Hudson, who saw over-niching and specialisation within corporates as a significant barrier to change.

Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with University of Melbourne in Innovation, and Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors many business leaders internationally.


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For weekly updates and to hear about the latest episodes, please subscribe to The Company Road Podcast at https://companyroad.co/podcast/

Chris Hudson:

Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Company Road podcast, which is where we talk to the brave and the bold and the occasionally outrageous personalities that we know and those people that are forcing change in the business world. My guest today is a certified agency nomad of sorts. He decided to swap the corporate credit card for a consultants independent hustle. And he is now doing his own thing. So I'm talking about James Fitzjohn, founder and director of Brew Consulting. So James, welcome to the show.

James Fitzjohn:

Thanks Chris. Thanks for having me.

Chris Hudson:

Great. And James, I'll introduce you. So you spent the last 20 or so years plus getting a peek behind the curtain at the world's most famous ad houses, and we're talking about Ogilvy and AKQA, DDB You've been globe trotting through senior roles in London, Dubai, Melbourne, and Perth, and you've collected a lot of experience along the way and a few air miles, so, all of that eclectic and electric agency experience ultimately led you to an epiphany and you're seeing a lot of brilliant brands, kind of happily buying a shiny new website or a, a truckload of performance marketing in some sort of way without really grasping the fundamental business strategy. And so you founded Brew to kind of set some of the things, something's right. And to help clients get better at marketing, really. So, yeah, I want to get into that in a moment. But first of all, may we just ask you about your nomadic situation and the roles that you've tried out over the years and, what's been your journey so far?

James Fitzjohn:

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you Chris. And I couldn't have said that intro any better myself. So, so thank you for being so detailed. But yeah, look, my agency career, as you can tell from my accent from the uk went to London at a very sort of young age and started working in agencies around about sort of 25 starting as an account manager. But even then, the onslaught of digital was coming into the fore and a lot of agency conversations were happening and different types of agencies were coming online experience agencies, website agencies, data, digital, CRM, all that stuff was happening. And even then I thought to myself, you know what? I think this is gonna be a big part of the future and it might be a good idea to sort of mix up those skills a little bit from just pure creative comms to try and get an understanding of what this new experience led world was gonna be. So I purposely moved from the different disciplines of agencies throughout my career in London and also trying to tackle big global network agencies like Ogilvy, which I think the London office had like 2000 people. To sort of smallest startup ups of 15, 20 people as I went through just to try and get that richest experience in the shortest timeframe. But I met my Australian partner in London. We kept coming over to Australia on holiday and we decided to to give that a crack. Yeah. And yeah, moved into Melbourne 2015. Worked for a whole bunch of agencies, but still doing the same thing. Global, big network advertising, digital and everything in between. And for the last six years I've been in Perth in WA.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Alright. And yeah. Do you think you're driven by curiosity? I mean, what's made you try out all of those things, would you say? And have you taken those steps quite consciously, would you say?

James Fitzjohn:

Yeah, definitely consciously, it was definitely a career by design. And I think curiosity was certainly a part of that. I saw brands were multifaceted, they were evolving in different ways. And to be the best consultant or marketeer that you possibly could be, to have an understanding of how they behave in those different spaces I think was was gonna be essential. But I also just like the thrill of learning a new organization, a new brand, a new category, and sector, and testing my skills within that sort of space. So yeah, curiosity was a big driver. It was a career by design but also just something that I just found really fascinating and interesting. And I think any good agency that you have out there, if they've got multitude of different skills and they work across a broad range of different industries, they've gotta be better at the job that they're doing. And I suppose that was a key factor as well.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. And yeah, I mean, international experience particularly for those here in Australia, it feels like it's something that's desired but not always possible to work on a big international scale. But yeah. What's been your perspective on that and what do you think you've learned from that? Being an intrapreneur within those organizations, would you say?

James Fitzjohn:

Yeah, very much so. And look, I know there's been a multitude of people from the UK or Europe coming to Australia and they've got that sort of global experience, but it does give you a slightly different perspective on things that's no denying. But what I would say is when you come into any new market, Australia, Dubai, I did a little bit in as well. And even when I was working in London, there was a lot of exposure to European markets and international markets. When I was at Ogilvy. Working for Unilever, for example, is, it's not always translatable. You cannot just lift and shift that experience and come to a different market. It needs the discipline and the understanding and learning to understand what the nuances of how you're going to get good work out there. And a lot of that is people driven. You've got to understand how the client landscape works and what the appetite and ambition of the clients is as well. So not so much just the organizations, but the people who you're working with and the people who are buying your services. London has a very ambitious sort of client hotbed. There was a lot of marketing directors always looking for the next job, looking to win those awards and you've gotta go with that tide a little bit. Whereas in Australia there's still the ambition but it's centered a little bit more around a sort of lifestyle and, wanting to be comfortable in its own market. So just adapting to that was yeah was something that any sort of practitioner coming into a new new market and needs to do.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And the agency ladder, you're talking about turbocharging your skills a little bit and this nomadic kind of style that you had hopping around the place, and it probably helped accelerate your skills development but maybe you weren't in one place, long enough to climb the ladder to a point. Was it hard to do? I mean, do, could you feel like the trade off was worth it in terms of. Rapid skills acquisition and then just finding new skills as you pick them up?

James Fitzjohn:

Yeah, I think so. I think so. And certainly in the position I'm in now and I think it's helped me set up, yeah, Brew consulting, which we'll come on to later, but yes, at the expense potential of maybe getting to the most senior positions within a big agency group. There's a little bit of envy sometimes when you see people become mentees, CEOs, head of strategy, et cetera, et cetera. And they were at the same level as you when you. Started out, but if I could have my career again, I still would've done the same thing. So, I think choose your own adventure and and getting those different skills and experiences from a myriad of different places, I think in the long run makes you're a richer stronger operator. And I don't mean richer by financial, I just mean richer in terms of skills and experiences and the things that you've done. I mean, without it being arrogant, I come into a situation in any sort of industry and it's something I'm familiar with'cause I've seen it in some sort of guise before, like I said, it's a, be it a big network, a different category of sector or whatever that looks like. So yeah, look, I'm happy with the decision and like I said it's informed my decision to obviously set up on my own and start brew consulting.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And when you're in those roles, I mean, can you think of a time when you just felt like it, it wasn't. It wasn't feeling right. And you felt like you wanted to move. Like is there anything like that came up for you and how did you handle that, would you say?

James Fitzjohn:

Yeah. Interesting. So, at at Ogilvy, I was business director on Unilever, a couple of Unilever brands. Hellman's Mayonnaise was the main one, which is not as popular here in Australia. And Lipton Iced Tea as well. And this is, this was a big piece of business Unilever's fifth biggest brand to do global advertising work in I think it was like 15 markets. So there was a lot of conversation with US counterparts at Ogilvy, at Sao Paulo Ogilvy as well in terms of Brazilian market,'cause Brazil, Argentina, or mad on mayonnaise, as you can imagine with all that lovely meat and everything else of that nature. And that took a lot of stakeholder management, a lot of two steps forward. One step bike, just trying to sort of massage and corral everyone into the same direction that we wanted to go with now. We were pretty happy with the work at the end of the day. It's the first time the brand had done something like this, but it did feel once we'd achieved that we'd reached the pinnacle of the hill. Where do we go from there? Because we would never do it again. It would be another three year cycle if that was to happen again. And whether everyone was on board to do that for another three years, I'm not too sure. I certainly weren't. And that was the start of the catalyst of thinking, okay, what do I want my agency career to look like and what are the skills that potentially got missing? And that internationalism was part of the move to to move to Australia.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I mean that's that was a big change then. So obviously, move, moving to the other side of the world. Did you notice any big differences in what you were perceiving in working culture? Like, did you find it to be quite different, a different place?

James Fitzjohn:

As I was touching on before, the sort of ambition of the clients, and I don't want to say that Australian brands, our businesses are not ambitious'cause they are, but it's just in a slightly different sort of mode. I would say so that was something that I'll be totally honest, took a little bit of adjustment to. But the skills of the agency practitioners I thought was on par with what I was seeing in London just in terms of the creative ideas. The sort of, certainly the digital and experience skills I think were quite developed as well and and strategy. So the agency components and the agency sort of capability was on par with what I was seeing. But it's just that the client is in a different sort of head space. And of course, as good as the agency is, if you haven't got a client that's on the same page, then that work isn't gonna get made. So that was the biggest difference I saw. Now, obviously moving from, what, 10,000 miles away? It seems quite exotic, but there's a lot of familiarities as we can understand from language and sort of previous culture between, the UK and Australia. So, yeah look, it's been nine years now, so, I think I've done okay, Chris, but we'll see. We'll see.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're both treading the same path, so it's, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And yeah, I mean, you obviously went through a few different roles and agencies over here, and then you came on to set up Brew. So what was the story around that? And Yeah. Did you come to that? Just over a cup of tea. Why is it called brew? Why do you wanna start your own thing, do you think?

James Fitzjohn:

Yeah, I got a lot of questions about brew. People think it's coffee or tea, or they think it's craft beer or alcohol related. In truth, there's no real meaning behind it. I just saw the word. I quite like the look of it. It was available on, yeah, on ASIC on the website. So, and the URL was quite cheap, so I just sort of went for it. But if people do ask me, it's this idea that ideas percolate. And get stronger over time. So the brew, once they've been thought about in the right way but it's a very tenuous sort of link in terms of what we do. I don't even think I talk about it on my own website in that way. But yeah, that's what Brew was all about. And I certainly didn't wanna set up a consultancy that was just an acronym of my initials or James Fitzjohn Consulting.'cause that would sound incredibly boring. But yeah, no, Bruce, so Bruce's been gone for two years now. Two years in January. And there was a lot of factors in terms of my the the sort of genesis of it, if that makes sense. Now, I've worked in a lot of agencies when I was in sort of Melbourne, as you ticked off a lot of them, AKQA, DDB, a little startup called Penso, which you're very familiar with. And then certainly over in in Perth as well Wunderman Thompson and I was also GM at a fantastic agency called Human for two years as well. And it was a. Them where I started to get the idea of trying to set up on my own. And it's something I'd always wanted to do, and maybe that thread was always there from my early twenties when I was going through this nomadic career of sort of skilling up in different areas. But I didn't know what flavor this would actually look to be. But I started to see a big pattern, certainly in WA of the fundamentals of marketing were just quite, not quite understood at the business and the sort of client level. There's a rush to tactics, a rush to execution. We're also seeing a lot of this really good thinking coming out from the likes of Mark Ritson and Erenberg Bass Institutes and System one. So there's a lot more conjecture about, what marketing is supposed to do, which for me is deliver on business objectives. Be that revenue at the top, lead sales, whatever that needs to be to how a company makes money. That's what marketing has got to be serving. But we seem to have lost sight of that a little bit. And I saw a lot of brands and businesses certainly losing sight of it. They were briefing in agencies for websites, they were briefing in agencies for ad campaigns, but no evaluation criteria to say, this is actually gonna make a massive difference to my business. So that's the opportunity that I wanted to try and solve is improving marketing fundamentals for brands and businesses. And that's through implementation of marketing strategy. So brew focus just on marketing strategy and business strategy. Usually for SMEs around about that sort of 10 to 50 million rev mark we go in-house and do an onsite audit and a whole bunch of other discovery activities before giving them the marketing strategy. At which point, based on those recommendations, we will then go and say to agency at a, b, and c. Go and work with those guys, go and work with those guys, with the strategy we've created to together. And you'll have a much better time and the agency will also get a lot more out of it.'cause there's clarity of purpose, there's a defined plan of what they need to achieve and how they be held accountable. So that's ultimate what we're trying to do. Look, touch wood, pretty happy with it so far, Chris, there's always room for another client as there is with any service provider in our sort of field, but the market's resonated well and yeah, look, the, I think the opportunity is quite different than most of the consultants is and agencies because I'm gonna be independent and experience and I'm not gonna be pushing a truckload of SEO or social media or things that the client doesn't need'cause it fits my service offer. So I do, I think it's quite refreshing and, yeah, we'll see what 20 26 holds.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Nice. Thanks James. And yeah, great intro to brew and yeah, it's kind of interesting to hear about how you're approaching it where some, some mistakes are obviously being made over and over again. You've got some of that internal wastage and yeah, some pretty fundamental things that might be just off. Off target with marketing? Like what are some of the changes and shifts that you're seeing in the marketing world that, people within these organizations, marketers you know the marketing teams and functions? Like what are they grappling with at the minute?

James Fitzjohn:

It's down to a lack of clarity. I really know what they're doing. And a lot of the companies I speak to, they will have a marketing function. Of course, every brand, our business has a marketing function, but they might not have a fully staffed marketing department. It might be a part-time or just maybe one person. Just in there. And generally the sort of skill levels of those sort of marketeers is certainly from a marketing perspective is quite underdeveloped. And that's not necessarily their fault. They might have worked in a different sort of department before and they've come into this role, but because of, as an industry, we've allowed marketing just be sort of relegated to what does me ad look like? What is, what are the tactics? What are the sort of executions we can do? Don't know why we're so surprised sometimes that we just see a sea of sort of social media stuff and lots of digital marketing just because we can measure the clicks, but actually there's no real impact to the greater business. So it's just clarity I think, in terms of how they're gonna do it and a lack of sort of linkage between the marketing stuff that they're doing and what it's actually delivering for the business. I think that's the biggest gap.'cause what I try and do when I'm in these engagements, we speaking to the CEOs, the MDs, the business owners, they want to grow the business. And marketing, let's be honest, is one of the most fundamental things that people can do to do that. The whole definition is, how do I sort of expose my brand business, our service to potential customers? I mean, it is the thing. And we sort of, there, we relegate it to events and LinkedIn posts and yeah, like I said, digital clicks. They're just not really making a difference. So that's the, that they're the major things that I'm seeing at the moment.

Chris Hudson:

So this I guess like labeling or association of marketing with the execution. Obviously marketing is in the execution, but you know, in considering it further upstream, the, there are clients and organizations that were needing to be, very closely aligned, obviously with some of their other teams, if they've got products or if they've got, other departments, it feels like marketing just needs to be embedded there, but what are you seeing shifting in that space? Is there anything changing about the relationships that exist between marketing and other parts of their organization?

James Fitzjohn:

There will be, in some organizations, a lot of them I'm speaking to who, who seek our support and services are struggling to embed it. It's an offshoot. It's the poor relation to sales. You know what I mean? And because there's no way of actually showing, demonstrating its worth. I would say further upstream, and the reason why I think Brew's been successful over the last couple of years is when we talk about marketing strategy we almost, you could call it business strategy in lots of different ways. One of the first questions we always ask anyone, before we start any engagement is what is your financial target for this financial year? Sometimes some companies don't have one, which I do find quite surprising, but we've gotta start with those unit economics of how you make money. How much do you need to make? How many sales is that gonna come from? Where are those sales coming from? Who's bought recently? So we can at least try and create some sort of target market for future sales. If that's the right, that's the right challenge. And we find if we have those sort of conversations with the business owners, they're so appreciative of the, someone's thinking about their business in ways that they do rather than sort of vanity metrics of pushing out marketing that has no correlation to that. So I, I still think marketing's got some way to go to have that conversation. And look, you could even argue that's commonplace in corporate Australia with a lack of CMOs on boards, because again, there's that lack of sort of demonstrating their worth of why they should be at that top table. But yeah, I'm seeing it in smaller versions, if that's the right phrase in in, in, in the SME world further down the chain.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. So, so yeah you're describing the vanity metrics, so, so what should people not be doing so much of, do you think? What are you seeing that is taking way too much time and resource and that they're just spending time doing that in marketing, but it shouldn't be that.

James Fitzjohn:

Yeah. Look, digital marketing, and I'm saying digital marketing,'cause I don't even think that phrase should exist. I mean, no one talks about analog marketing, so why do we, right. Create this new sort of categorization for something that is fundamentally just another channel, yes, it behaves slightly differently and it needs a certain skill set to administer it. But we've sort of lionized it since it's come out and it's because you can put a number next to it. You can measure a. You can measure a cost per thousand impression rates on, an ad or some search activity or whatever that looks like. And it's cheap. If you wanna put some Facebook account, set up a Facebook page that's free, make your content that's just gonna, take a little bit of time and you put some paid behind it and you can control and you can measure it. And I think it gives people, certainly, SMEs, a level of comfort. Oh our shares are up, our likes are up. Our digital vanity metrics are doing something. They're a positive. Now, yes, there's a positive knock on effect to brands because of that, but you're not gonna get it from just purely that data. So just to put the digital marketing tactics to one side is one of the biggest recommendations that we do. But to, yeah, to get that real clarity, what we recommend when we put go into the strategic. Processes, give them three main pillars. And we make sure that the frameworks are as simple as possible for people to understand, not because they're idiots, because we get the better chance of it actually being implemented. We focus on a brand proposition, number one, and within that it has a whole bunch of things like who are you? How do you talk about yourself, your tone of voice, your purpose, vision, mission, if that's appropriate for you. Maybe even some key headlines and a visual mood board as well to understand what the foundational brand elements would be about how you confidently talk about yourself. We then look at a target audience and again, being very detailed on understanding who is who in the zoo. So not just demographics and psychographics. If it's a B2B profile, make sure we've got a buyer of those services from that organization within that but most importantly, a total addressable market for what that looks like. We do find in the B2B space, certainly in Perth as well, that if you can get a total addressable market, you might actually your audience could be just a thousand companies and if that is a thousand companies, you don't need to do a marketing dance around them. You could maybe go from more so a prosaic business development activities that are gonna do that job quicker and faster. So again, if we can move that sort of dial to make sure that people understand that marketing activity doesn't just need to mean creative pictures on screen sort of elements we find we get some really strong results. And yeah, it just. Puts the gravitas into the discipline a little bit more.'cause then we're solving business problems, which we've been trying to solve for years and years, but we've just lost sight of it, I think.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Okay. And what about the creativity and when does that come in and like, what do you think that is changing about creativity now?

James Fitzjohn:

I, I think people's levels of creativity has always been strong. And if I look at the creative output book. Australia and most western societies or most countries over the world, they will have an element of creativity. But unless it's rooted in a strategy that makes sense, that's gonna deliver on the business, then it will just become, it just becomes a nice execution. So again, if we can go back to the business and make sure we've got those three solid things in of. Proposition audience. Oh, sorry. And the third one would be objectives as well. Then we've got a place where creativity can shine.'cause if we have a creative execution that ticks lots of boxes, et cetera, et cetera. But it also answers what we're trying to say from a brand prop. Yeah. Great. Is it actually gonna resonate with the audience and do the, get'em to do the things that we want'em to do? Yeah. Okay. Two, that's a really good evaluation criteria. And then three, what are the objectives? What do we want people to actually do after seeing this creativity? Go to a website, download an app. Buy a thing repurchase a thing. So yeah, we've always got, certainly from a Bruce standpoint, we believe that any creativity it's gonna shine to be its most effective has to come back to a clear strategic purpose. Otherwise, it just looks great, but doesn't work.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it feels like there's, I don't know. I mean, it feels like marketing as a discipline's been running for a number of years. Right. And it's evolved and got faster, automation's now there, the executional capability, for organizations to, to just pump out marketing is far greater than it was particularly on the content side as well now.

James Fitzjohn:

Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Hudson:

So. Yeah from what I'm hearing is right then, there's a time now to basically get a bit more simple and a bit more fundamental about what you're doing and actually boil it down to something that's gonna contribute significantly to your business. What are some of the steps that needs to be taken for that to be made possible? And who should be taking those steps, do you think?

James Fitzjohn:

Yeah. You mean just do few things extremely well? That sort of thing, Chris?

Chris Hudson:

Yeah,

James Fitzjohn:

yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm a massive adv, I'm a massive advocate for that. Absolutely. There's only a handful of brands within spend that to be every single channel and push lots of different messages out. And I'm seeing that less and less. If you look at something like British Airways for example, obviously they've had a little bit of sort of, let's say a mixed response to the recent outdoor ad with the reflective logo. I think it looks pretty interesting. But you've got a major brand there that has the money to spend in any channel that they want. And I'm not all fair with the marketing media plan or anything that they've got going, but it's funny that they just target out of home. They're really using that particular channel and doing it well and sort of having a narrow focus, but deep cut, if that makes sense. Really owning that as a channel and a tactic to get their sort of message across. I think even sort of 10, 15 years ago, you would've had a lot of agencies say, yeah, okay, here's your air to form. This is what it looks like in a display banner. Here's what it looks like on Facebook. And sort of do that sort of like cross channel sort of approach. But I'm just seeing brands being a little bit more thoughtful, I think and really making something that matters. Focus in a channel that's actually gonna work for them. And I think that's really refreshing. You see a lot of brands as well. They might do some film, but they'll do like a three minute YouTube film and that's it. You know what I mean? And I think that's quite powerful as well. And I think if you can have that confidence to do that then great. But again coming back to the main point, if it works for the brand, fantastic. But the only reason we're to know that is to have a clear marketing strategy that allows that creativity to flourish.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Yeah. So if it's good for the brands, like how should organizations best set up for that being, a, for that being something that you can judge and figure out whether it's right or not. Do you think?

James Fitzjohn:

Yeah. Look, boring answer again, Chris, but yeah it goes back to the strategy. What we find once we've delivered. Marketing strategy for clients, and this is the interesting thing as well. The client, the brand, they should own the marketing strategy themselves. An agency can have a point of view, absolutely, but I don't believe that's something that should be outsourced to an ad agency. For example, the marketing department, the CMO, they should own it themselves. But it's got to start from there. It really has. And what the strategy's lot, we're talking 12, 18 months, maybe even 24 months, where that doesn't get touched and it just becomes. The fantastic evaluation criteria to say, look, should we do this? Yes or no? And there's all the other sort of strategic mantras as well of, the purpose of strategy sometimes is deciding what not to do. Kill your babies, do few things less on all that sort of stuff. But if you can be ruthless that to say that this execution and this piece of marketing activities that we're gonna do is actually gonna deliver the things that we want it to do. It's gotta be a resounding yes. Otherwise you just lose control. I think you just lose you just lose impetus. He gets lazy, he gets disseminated into lots of different spaces and channels and yeah. You get a hot mess on the table. Yeah.

Chris Hudson:

Okay. Let's let's talk a bit about your leap from, corporate world into starting your own thing. For any intrapreneurs that might be thinking, okay, I wanna set up my own business, and I've got ideas around that, like, what was your process there and what would you say to people that are thinking about that?

James Fitzjohn:

Yeah, look, what I'd say Chris, is if people are thinking about it, then just do it if you can, never be thinking what if, or, God, I wish I would've done that when I was younger or whatever. If you've got the financial security and you've got an idea, then go for it. You can always go back into the corporate world afterwards if it doesn't happen. I see thousands of people try that and then come back and it's not right for them, for whatever reason. So, yeah, so do it. Would be the key. Think. The second thing, and it's, I hear this a lot and it is quite important, is to find a niche. We're quite niche and we say, look, we do marketing strategy and sort of that's it.'cause we don't do any further implementation. I do see a lot of consultants out there with quite a broad sort of offer. We can be your in-house marketer, we can be a fractional CMO, we can do this and it's. It's a bit of a sea of sameness when I see a lot of that sort of stuff. And people might have different disciplines and categories that they specialize in. I'm sure there's lots of, been very successful, but I think to have a niche and to be something different I think is I think is really key. The third one is just. Tell as many people as possible about what you're doing. Network's a funny word. People think it's schmoozing with a bottle of, glass of champagne and some palsy tables and stuff like that. And look, there is a little bit of that, which you'll have to do. But even just telling people what you're doing. Yeah. It doesn't matter who it is, it gets you confident about it and you don't know where those conversations will go. So what I've found has been successful over the last couple of years is meeting other service providers not in marketing. But might be sort of speaking to clients I might want to speak to, if that makes sense. So within my sort of like micro network, I've got fantastic recruiters accountants different sort of types of marketeer in there, business consultants, and a whole range and a whole myriad of different people. And it's just great to oh yeah. James, he does marketing strategy. You should speak to him. And it's just a sure fire way of getting into that space that you want to so yeah, telling as many people as possible about what you're doing, I suppose they're the key three things I would say.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Great. Thank you, James. And yeah, I mean, what do you think characterizes someone that, that does well on their own, in their own business, would you say?

James Fitzjohn:

Yeah, look, I mean, they've got to. Hustle's a horrible word, isn't it? You know what I mean? But I'm gonna use it. This is not gonna happen. Yeah. This is not gonna happen by sitting at your desk, and just clicking on LinkedIn and looking on job boards and and all that sort of stuff. You do have to go out there and just be a little bit sort of creative in terms of how you do that as well. I mean, yes, I've done LinkedIn content. I've done the networking. I speak to a lot of agencies as well because I'm referring work to them and sometimes I'll do a little bit of work for them as well. So you've gotta constantly just be. Hungry. But yeah, just creative about how you might just wanna talk about your services. I've done a lot of talks, presentations with different sort of business groups, startup communities, business associations yeah. And it's just about, yeah you've gotta build your awareness. Ultimately, there's a lot of companies out there, there's enough business, certainly in WA in terms of what all these consultants are trying to go for, but the SMEs that we're trying to speak to don't quite have the, the communication pathways that larger companies who speak to agencies do, if that makes sense. So even though we are the inter-agency solution a little in many ways, we're still fighting for those pathways to try and get on those radars. So it does need awareness, and it's not just awareness of who you are. I think more increasingly you've got to demonstrate the value you can bring. And if I can do that through a presentation, a talk, a conversation, then that's some of the best advertising you can possibly get.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah, that's really good.

James Fitzjohn:

And podcasts like this, of course.

Chris Hudson:

Podcasts, yeah. If people are thinking about setting something up for themselves, are there are things that they could be preparing, what was your process sort of prior to leaving something, is there anything like that, that people can be doing just to check whether it's right or wrong for them?

James Fitzjohn:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was very fortunate that when I left human I freelanced there. For like six months afterwards. Just helping the agency out with new business. So if you do have an opportunity with an existing company that you can still do work for, then I think that's, that, that's quite interesting. So yeah if you can do that, I think that's quite good. You will need to be able to articulate your business in lots of different ways. So you need the elevator pitch in two sentences in terms of what you do and the value that you can bring to customers. I do think you're gonna have to have a website and don't put it through AI really to. Maybe the design, but the words and the copy and how you talk about yourself needs to come from you. It needs to come from the heart and look, and every consultant and agency would fall into this same trap. It's difficult to talk about yourself in the same way that you advise clients and businesses. It's just a weird sort of human trait that we just can't seem to do it. I mean, you amount of agencies I've worked for and our own website was absolute garbage. We just, we don't have time. We can't inside. Well, if we can't do it ourselves, how can brands trust us to, to do it with their brand? It was always sort of my mantra. So yeah, you need to be able to sort of have that, this is what we look like on a floor diagram. This is what I look like on a paragraph. This is what I wanna look like on an About Us page. So, yeah, if you wanna be thinking about something in the background, yeah, just start writing some thoughts down about, what you think is interesting. But also like any marketeer, any sort classically trade marketeer road test that with people. Find some friendly people are in the industry, or clients that you might know and just show'em the proposition and see what they think. Getting that feedback will be absolutely invaluable. And I'm sure more people would be, more than happy to give a perspective on that. Yeah, so really start thinking in the background and put some thoughts down on paper. The other thing as well, you're gonna have to have a business plan. Like every business, again, you would recommend have an idea of how much you think you need to earn, how much you think you've got in savings when you're not earning.'cause there will be some months that will be lower than others. And really think about it in those unit economic terms. And again, just like you would preach to any business that you're working with.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Okay. And yeah, I mean, fast forwarding to maybe secrets of success, do you think it's harder now to get to that and do you think it's harder now to differentiate when there are so many people doing the same thing?

James Fitzjohn:

Do see a lot of similarities with people in the same bot, but I'm also seeing a massive shift into, independent consultants and sort of like micro teams of two and three anywhere. And we all know some of the challenges that sort of network agencies are having. So whilst differentiation will always need to be a thing in any industry or category you're working with, I think there's a bigger acceptance, a broader acceptance from a lot of businesses that this is maybe the new normal for the next few years anyway. So I think your market opportunity gets bigger. But the need to differentiate would still have been there anywhere. So yeah, look, I think it's a good time to be an independent. I absolutely do. And again, these collaborations and partnerships is something that's potentially really powerful and very appealing for a lot of people of a certain age who have left the agency world. Again, there's been a lot written about it.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah sure. So James, is there anything that, that people should know about you that you think is, important to your own success and, what's driving you as a person usually when it comes to being an entrepreneur out in the world now and not an intrapreneur so much anymore, but Yeah. What's driving that?

James Fitzjohn:

Yeah. Look, there was this desire to to do my own thing. Look it, it's just myself and I'm happy with that. And in the business plan for next year in particular, there's no real ambition to bring on another person. It's just continued to grow to with myself. So yeah to sort of work on me own and be an independent consultant was something that was nagging me for a little while. Look, this. There's other sort of personal goals just in terms of wealth creation, I suppose, if that's not a dirty phrase to talk about. But also the sort of the type of work that I want to actually be engaged in and not feeling like I'm pushing the agency's agenda based on the things that they do, that upsell or organic growth of accounts or would you like fries with this? Mr. Clients or Mrs. Clients, if that makes sense. Really giving true, independent consultancy advice based on what I see and what they need rather than sort of, a corporate shield, if that makes sense. So yeah, those are the main things. And look, there's no denying that I've that I've probably worked less over the last two years than I have done throughout my whole career. Some of that's not always by choice, Chris. But it does afford you a. A fantastic lifestyle that you can do different things with that sort of downtime. And it's gonna be 30 degrees today in Perth, so, I might go to the beach later.

Chris Hudson:

Very nice. Alright, well, yeah, good time to maybe wrap up. Like for any intrapreneurs that are out there that are thinking, okay, I might do this, or, I might be thinking differently about my marketing. What's one piece of advice you'd be giving them you say, on a 30 degree day in Perth or otherwise? That would be, people be thinking. From your point of view.

James Fitzjohn:

Yeah, I mean, look, just go for it. Just go for it. What is the worst that can happen ultimately? It could be some sort of side project thing that you've got going on. If you don't wanna lose the security of your full-time job, maybe going down to four days a week and doing this on the site to see if you can develop it. You've still got that. But yeah, I don't know anyone who has been successful doing this. Regrets it in any shape, way or form. So unless you actually put yourself out there you'll never actually, you'll never actually know. What I did do a couple of months ago, actually, I put a bit of a shout out on LinkedIn that when I reached 18 months and it was just a friendly shout out to say, look, if anyone is thinking about doing this I'm more than happy to share my experiences with them over a coffee or a video call or whatever that looks like. And I'm more than happy to, to offer that to your listeners as well, Chris, if anyone does wanna sort of spend half a hour with me. And sort of tapping your brains about the successes that we had, but also I'll be very honest about some of the things we haven't done as good, then I'm more than happy to share that experience.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Really good. Thanks so much for the offer. Thanks James. Alright. And we might finish this. So, where could people find you if they've got a question or if they wanna ask you about that?

James Fitzjohn:

Yeah, very much so. So it's brew consulting.com au and you'll be able to find my phone number, mobile number on there and you'll see me on LinkedIn.

Chris Hudson:

Yeah. Perfect. Alright James, well thanks so much for the chat today. Really appreciate it. We'll leave it there. Thank you.

James Fitzjohn:

Thanks Chris. Thanks a lot. All the best, all.