Hire, train and retain like Sarah Brougham

Hiring and training new employees is a big commitment - and getting it right will have a lasting impact on your agency.

Kicking off The Big Agency Club series, we chat with Sarah Brougham, VP of Operations at GenFlow. Sarah’s helped multiple agencies go from start-up to established, having a big hand to play in their growth and maturity journies. Sarah has spent the past six years at GenFlow, helping grow revenue there by 5x and headcount 16x.

Sarah gives us her best tips on:

• Hiring the right people for your agency
• Creating onboarding programs that new hires love and gets them off to a running start
• How offboarding goes beyond formalities and systems removals, and includes decisions on retention
• How to decide whether to fight to keep an employee that's thinking of leaving

Follow Sarah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahbrougham/

Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/

Agency8x: https://www.agency8x.com/

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This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system.

Transcript

0:00

Thanks for listening to The Handbook, the agency operations podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Scoro. As an ops director, something that was super important to me was consistent pricing. I mean, I've witnessed people copying and pasting each other's quotes as standard operating procedure, and it's not good. When I brought in Scoro at my agency, I loved that I was able to create a library of mix and match quote templates that allowed our account managers to quickly build budgets for our clients, which all had standardized pricing, consistent language on scope, and which had healthy predefined margins. Scoro even allows you to create an approval workflow, so team leads can sign off quotes before they're sent to clients. I loved all of this. And it meant that inconsistent pricing was not something I had to worry about any longer. Sign up for a free trial at scoro.com or if you arrange a demo call, tell them Harv sent you. Now, back to the episode.

Harv Nagra: 1:27

Hey all, welcome back to the handbook. As Ops leaders, something that we're often responsible for is shaping and overseeing hiring, onboarding, and offboarding in our agencies. But doing these things well isn't always easy. Hiring is incredibly time consuming and costly. I've used recruiters with mixed results. Let's just say that 20 percent recruitment fee really stings when a hire doesn't work out. I've also tried the direct route via LinkedIn and ended up buried in CVs. Screening processes and tools help a bit. I've used VideoAsk as an automated first stage interview tool to see who's motivated enough to participate and ensure that we're only interviewing the most suitable respondents from that pool. None of this has been a silver bullet. Onboarding, however, is something that I am very proud of. I've built onboarding programs that start off new hires on the right foot. A structured week of business exposure, team intros through pre recorded presentations, and training and practice opportunities for key systems. I've had rave reviews from new hires saying they love knowing exactly what they're meant to be working on in their first week and that they're moving into their day to day with some great exposure on how the organization works. Today's guest has done some even more impressive work around hiring, onboarding, and off boarding, amongst other things. This is part of a new sub series on the podcast that we're calling The Big Agency Club, where we talk to people that work at agencies that are a hundred plus in terms of headcount and see what we can learn. Our guest today is Sarah Brougham. She began her career back in 2012 in the talent management space, working with BBC radio, DJs, reality stars, and musicians. Years later, she joined content giants, Unilad to head up their new talent management agency, building the agency from the ground up. Fast forward a few years, and she joined GenFlow where she's now the VP of Ops. In the six years that Sarah's been there, the agency has seen a huge amount of growth and success, and she's had a big role to play. Since she's joined, they've increased revenues by 5 X and grown 16 X in terms of headcount and things are only looking up. Let's get into the conversation and see what we can learn from Sarah. Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here.

Sarah Brougham: 3:38

Thank you for having me.

Harv Nagra: 3:39

I'm quite keen to hear about how people get into operations; it's not the most natural career path so how did you get into the space?

Sarah Brougham: 3:45

Do you know what? It's not. And I think, getting into operations, I think when I started my career was probably the, the last thing I actually thought I would be doing when I started my career, I actually started out in more of the, the entertainment world. So, working a record label, then in the talent management space with, you know, Radio DJs, reality stars, et cetera. And then, and then moved into the, the creator economy. So managing YouTubers, influencers essentially, from sort of 2015 onwards, was always really involved in the, the management day to day strategy, sales, et cetera. and then I think just because then I, I joined a company where I'm at now, now GenFlow and it was at its infancy and I was there when we really built this core team. and we, we grew so fast and there was such a big opportunity and me and the rest of the team just worked really hard to, to really sustain that growth and get to where we were. I think it just, it was a natural progression into an operations role because I'd done so many things within the agency. I knew how so many different departments ran that it was like a, a natural next step to then just take over the day to day side of things versus just sticking in, in one sort of department in that way.

Harv Nagra: 4:55

Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And that resonates with me as well. You kind of get your hands dirty across an agency in a lot of different roles and then it just seems like a natural fit that when you know how to do a bit of everything that you can kind of take control of it.

Sarah Brougham: 5:07

Yeah, yeah, no, a hundred percent.

Harv Nagra: 5:09

So there's been a couple of agencies where you have been on the ground floor, right when things are starting to come together, was that intentional or is that kind of a challenge you looked forward to and you kind of threw yourself into?

Sarah Brougham: 5:20

I think I do, I love the ability to work quite closely with people and to, Mm I think also when you work quite closely with the people who run an agency or found an agency and you are so aligned with their vision and the potential of the agency, then I think I love being able to be that hands on and see the actual, the impact that you can have and the growth and being really involved in that. I think sometimes if it's, I can't see myself in more of a bigger, more corporate business essentially, just because I feel like I'd, I'd probably feel more like a number than anything else. Like, and personally, that's not for me in terms of going in and maybe just doing a nine to five and then, and switching off essentially. So, so yeah, I don't think it was a conscious decision. I think it's been where I've landed initially, and then I've enjoyed working in that way so much that I've continued to, to, to work in those sorts of agencies.

Harv Nagra: 6:06

Absolutely. And, a question that pops into mind is like, when you are in these very young agencies it's almost like a blank slate in terms of how to do things. So that can be exciting. That can also mean a bit of fumbling along the way. And we'll be hearing some of your stories today as well, about things that have worked really well and maybe some things that haven't, where do you get that best practice awareness from in that kind of case and that kind of confidence to move forward with something?

Sarah Brougham: 6:36

I think the first thing is, you know, when it insides out more than anyone. So I think you need to be able to, to do any core job in an agency before you start to build the, you know, the building blocks and the processes and the SOPs and everything around it. And I think that's doing that first, I suppose, has then given me the confidence to then be able to go and build them. I think the first thing when I, before I'd done anything to do with operations and we, but we were at a point where we needed to build it. The word process would just make me like, it's like, what is a process? How do you build it? What's the format you do it in? Why do you need it? Like, it was just people in operations can say process a hundred times a day, but it's just, it's the physical, like, how do you do this? What's the template to do in that? And there's so much that you can find online, but not all of it will always resonate with you and your agency, the services you're trying to give and how you want your teams to operate. So I think it probably took me six to 12 months to then be quite confident in like, okay, this is how I'm going to build it. This is what works for this agency. this is how I want to roll it out. And I want the team to be able to execute these different parts of the actual services that we deliver in an agency. So I think, I think it's definitely a confidence thing. Not when you move into operations, it's not something I personally thought was, was a natural thing for me to do. It's, it's been a, it's been a learning curve I'd say over the last sort of six years or so.

Harv Nagra: 7:53

Mm so from what you've told me previously, there's been a lot of change over the six years you've been at GenFlow. One thing that I saw was something around headcount. You started from six employees and now you're over a hundred. So tell us about that.

Sarah Brougham: 8:09

It has definitely been a journey and there's been sort of peaks and troughs in terms of number of employees and how we operate and everything else. And I think, so when I first joined GenFlow, yes, there was sort of six of us in a London office. had about 25 clients or so, and just really hustling to sign new clients, launch new brands, and just increase the revenue that we were making for the creators that we were, we had signed to the agency. I think as well we were quite early in the game. Sean, the CEO, actually started the business, in around 2015, 2016. and he's seen the opportunity in the market for creators to actually monetize their audience when it wasn't really a, you know, mainstream thing. and for us, because we were so early, actually. In terms of having skin in the game, and then this is where it really started to take off. Then we started to see some real success sort of 2019, 2020, and we, we started then to build the team slowly, and I think we got to around 20, by sort of 2019, early 2020. We then went through a funding round in 2020, towards the end of 2020 and raised$11 million from BGF, which is the British Growth Fund. And from there, because we had the money in the door and a lot of that was to, okay, here's the opportunity. Here's the revenue we've made. Here's how profitable we are. It was like, okay, now let's go and build this team. Cause the more people we have, the more clients we'll be able to manage, the more brands we'll be able to build, et cetera, et cetera. And I think we went so aggressive, especially because 2020, was for us, which was fortunate for us, obviously unfortunate for a lot of brands and everything else, because obviously marketing budgets were being cut, there was COVID, there was everything else, but there was a, an opportunity for creators now to launch their own businesses because they could have control of their own audience and monetize their own audience. So that's when we seen this real spike essentially in revenue demands. And then also in creators actually looking at, okay, I could actually build something of my own cause I can't rely on brand deals coming through the door all the time. So, we signed about 80 new clients within about 2021 because the funding had just come in and we hired around 65 people in 2021.

Harv Nagra: 10:15

Wow.

Sarah Brougham: 10:16

because the money was there, it was in the door and we thought, okay, if we have all of these amazing new people, we'll be able to do way more. So we did that. and which was great, but I think we also then learned very quickly that we were going then into 2022, having to make some more difficult decisions when we were going off the top line revenue. And then when we were looking at what the market wants, if we were ever to go for a second round of funding, actually we need the profit to be at the forefront. So we need to focus on the bottom line. and also we need to be a little bit more, we need to be a little bit more selective, I would say about clients. We were just thinking quantity in terms of the clients that we were signing. and I think we were in a position now where we'd matured a lot. We had the great reputation and we had some really exciting clients that we were working with that we didn't have to just have, you know, over a hundred clients on the books to be able to sustain what we were doing. And we realized that we were spending too much time actually just servicing clients that were not profitable for us. So.

Harv Nagra: 11:12

Right. It's

Sarah Brougham: 11:13

probably one of the first times that we'd stopped and looked at, okay, who should we remove from the business? and then from there, I think we removed around 30 to 40 different clients within the space of eight months, so that we could then become more profitable. And then from a team perspective, we removed, we removed around, 35 percent of the actual headcount so that we could look at, okay, how do we reduce our, our overheads essentially, and then work on the cogs underneath and the operations and the systems and everything so that we could be more effective as a team and get more out of the team, give them more of the tools, more of the education, everything they needed to do the job, or do the best in their job, essentially, so that we could then continue to increase the source of revenue per headcount. And then we were on more of a, a steady path, essentially upwards in terms of profit as a business. So, so that's kind of a path that we took in terms of, I suppose, teams and revenue and clients over the first say four years. So we're now just hit over a hundred really in the last couple of months. but there has been a massive change in terms of the way the team are based. So when we first had the agency, it was, you know, it was predominantly UK based. They were London based. It was people coming into the office. And as with every agency, I think over the last few years, we've now become a lot more remote and we've got teams who are all over the world from, yes, in the US, in the UK, in Europe, but also in the likes of, Mauritius and Jamaica, and Nigeria and Ghana. And there's huge talent pools who are over in these other parts of the world. and it also allows us to service different clients and even we, we handle customer service for our, some of our creators, for their brands, their businesses. So having people who are based in these different time zones also allows us to manage the customer service in different time zones. So we've been able to just engineer the, the team and the way we operate in a much more sort of cost effective, but also like impactful way now.

Harv Nagra: 13:02

Some really good lessons there in terms of growing too fast and then having to do a bit of a reset with a focus on profitability. But I wanted to focus on that point around team expansion and hiring, you know, finding the right people, finding people that are the right fit. What have you learned in that regard?

Sarah Brougham: 13:19

I think making sure people are aligned with the culture that we have at GenFlow because we're quite an aggressive agency in terms of growth and, hiring the right people has definitely been a challenge. We've hired a lot of great people. Don't get me wrong, but people who've just not been the right fit for GenFlow as an agency. And, And I think the learning on that, you know, we've probably wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds on, on employees who have been great on paper and may be good for other agencies, but for us, we're just not the right fit whatsoever.

Harv Nagra: 13:49

hmm.

Sarah Brougham: 13:49

I think originally I, when I first started hiring, I'd never really hired before, before coming to GenFlow and we used to, I would look at a flashy CV and think, wow, this person's been at this brand and that brand, you know, obviously they're going to come in and they're going to fix our problems because they know how it works. These big brands who were doing amazingly well. and it didn't just wasn't how it worked for us. They come in and they, they used to work in a certain way or for a bigger agency. And it's just, it didn't work for us because we were, we were working with real people, creators for one, they're not just B2B clients. You need to manage them in a very specific way, you know, from personality to the way you report to them, to the way you communicate with them. and then also just their, their outlook on, on what pace should look like internally and, you know, what growth should look like and, and everything else. So I think that was one major learning curve. And then we've had to adapt how we hire and the, I suppose what we, what we check in that hiring process to make sure people are actually aligned with us and where we're going and, and the why for me now in the recruitment process is so important. Not just like delving into the CV and making sure that, okay, yes, they actually, they have done X, Y, Z, and you can test them on that in the interview. It's like, why, why are you doing this? Like, where do you want to, where do you want to be? Like, what is the, what, what gets you up in the morning in a way? Because for us, you need to have that personal drive and you need to want to do something for yourself. Not just to, to want to get up and get paid and, and tick a box. Because if you don't want to constantly learn, I think, and that's what I've, I've learned is like a, now building the team, if someone joins the team and they don't want to develop personally, they don't want to continue to evolve and they don't want to know what, you know, new trends are, or they don't want to keep up with the industry. They're not like consuming what they're doing day to day, just generally, and they're not passionate about it. They're not going to be someone that's going to going to work for us as a, as an agency, just because we are all so passionate about what we do and we want to be the best in everything that we do as an agency. so I think that was a, one of the biggest challenges and most expensive lessons, I think we learned as a, as an agency. yeah. And then from a culture perspective, obviously you can write it out, you can have your values, you can have everything. So people know what you want to do from a, from a culture perspective, but just, I suppose, lead them by example, that being sort of the main thing that we actually do now, because I think I thought you can write these values down. You can sort of instill them in people and people would understand and then just crack on and just believe in it and probably start to just to live it day to day because we because we do, but I think yeah being sort of having people have that mindset to really to want to be a winner to do it for themself and to to really just to deliver the best source of quality of work I think is as being probably the the most difficult thing. But now we had that core team who you know, the six of us at the beginning and the first other people who come through the door because they were able to sort of learn our culture and we were all able to build such a tight knit team, essentially. It's, it's now become a lot easier for us to just drip that into the team and for us to just try and lead by example.

Harv Nagra: 16:44

That's excellent. Yeah. I think values can very easily end up just being words on a page. If they're not kind of reinforced.

Sarah Brougham: 16:51

Yeah.

Harv Nagra: 16:52

it just becomes something people read during onboarding week and then you kind of forget it. And also, like you're saying, it needs to be lived and demonstrated by the leadership team, and linking back to it so people remember that this is a reflection of that, I think is super key. I want to go back to that, that point about hiring. I know a lot of agencies have this issue and it's so painful. Hiring is just such a pain in the butt and you know, whether it's the recruitment fees or you manage it yourself, it's a nightmare either way. And you know, there is this awkward thing where people might look really great on paper or might even do really well in the interview, but it ends up not panning out. So is it like, you know, a lot of those questions that you're asking now, is it more about this kind of culture fit kind of stuff that you're asking about their passion and their drive? I was trying to glean what you've changed in terms of your hiring process.

Sarah Brougham: 17:43

That's part of it. But I, I sort of break it down into, into a, a three stage phase, basically in terms of recruitment now. What we used to do is we'd put something on LinkedIn or we used agencies really early in the days. you know, and you'd have, you know, especially with LinkedIn, you have hundreds of CVs coming in and you spend hours sitting there. I'm sure we've all done in the past, just reading CVs and reading people's profiles, shortlisting and then sort of moving them on. And then we do, we do one interview to sort of get to know them, talk about the response to overall job responsibilities, then we'd hire really from there to be completely honest. So we made, we made a lot of mistakes. So now we're, I've put it into these three different phases. So the sort of the attract phase is what I call the first phase, which is how do we attract the right people into the role? And that starts with the actual job ad itself. Like I look at a job ad as in, I want at least 50 percent of people to look at that job advert and go, it's not for me because I want to be so specific that it's, they know exactly what they're getting. And if it is for them or not, whether it's, I don't know if it's a client manager, you know, the, the requirements or the overview of the job to say, you know, to be able to manage eight clients across five different time zones or something like the specifics of the job that I know will probably put some people off, but it will also excite some other people because they're like, wow, okay, I'm going to be working with big creators who are based in New York and Dubai and LA. And the right person's going to come in and find that as a motivation. And the wrong person's going to come in and say, I just want to be an account manager and, you know, and I'll manage clients, but hold on a minute. If you put a meeting in my diary at 6 PM, like there's absolutely no way I'm going to turn up to it. So I think that's the first thing, making sure that we're attracting the right people through the way we advertise a job. the application side of things is now a lot more, It's like, I like to build like a form, like I use Typeform for example, so that I can understand where they're located, how many years of experience they have, and I can ask a couple of questions that just vets out people who maybe have not done the role before, like if you use certain jargon that If you've not done this role, you're likely not going to be able to answer it in a certain way. Or I don't know if it's a, you know, if an ads manager, I'll ask them some of their, their biggest, to tell us some of their biggest wins or the ROAS that they've got on sort of certain clients or the budget that they've managed. So I can just sort of get to a good understanding of what level is this person at, regardless of them saying I've managed ad campaigns for this huge brand which looks great on a CV. Just get the detail a little bit more there. and then, notice periods, et cetera, so that you've got enough information in that actual application side of things before you start wasting their time as well as yours. Then bringing them to sort of an interview stage or a task phase. and then I move on to what I call a test phase, which is phase two, which is then where I start a test, three things. Their ability, the credibility and the culture being the third thing. So the ability is where then I will set some form of task. So it will get some sort of sort of task where I can actually see their ability to execute the job. If it's a I don't know an outreach executive, for example I'll ask them to give me three creators they would actually think we should sign and why, maybe draft an email to a specific creator so I can just see their thought process and the communication and how they think, you know, and just basically come up with some sort of task that just allows you to see can they actually do the job essentially? then from there, I will move on to interview one. These can swap around depending on how senior the job role is. If it's super senior and we know someone, you know, they're not going to do a task and it makes sense to meet that person first, then you can swap these two around. But there's the credibility side of things, which is the first interview which is where the, the person who's going to be managing that person will go in and actually interview them along with sometimes our HR manager. And they will really just delve into the day to day experience. That is really for me just drilling down into where I, what I get a lot in interviews and I've, I've got, I've done hundreds of interviews. Like is, you know, we, people saying we in interviews, it's just really frustrating for me. And it's like, you know, we did this or, you know, I asked them about some to talk me through challenges they've had or wins they've had. And it's all we, we, we, and I'm like, okay, great. But what did you do? Like, what was your input in that, in that actual, the campaign that you ran or, the shoot that happens or whatever it is, just really just sort of drill down into their day to day so that you can understand the credibility of the CV and what they did and their, their experience essentially. If then they've passed that, they then go on to the final one, which is the culture test. So that is where then either, myself or the CEO or the chief brands officer or the person leading the department will join that final interview. And just ask some more challenging questions, I suppose. and then if there's anything we feel like we've left out in the credibility interview, we can re ask them. And I also like to give scenarios. So this is where, from a culture perspective, I can ask them things and how they would handle it to say, okay, would that be aligned with how we would actually handle the, the scenario themselves. if it was a HR manager, I'd give them maybe something that's actually happened in the past. You know, you've got someone, a senior management team member who's been with us for a long time, but you know, they're not delivering, and what's happened and how would you handle it and just say, okay, do we agree with that? Is that what we do? and yeah, you can come up with different scenarios for different roles, but at least then you kind of get to understand the person and their mindset and sort of how they think essentially. and also like to ask them, what are you expecting from your next role? So before you start to tell them what to expect, always ask them what they expect, because as soon as you let the cat out the bag, they're obviously just going to repeat back to you what, what you're giving them. So, so that if someone is saying, you know, I want to be part of a team, that's got a great social culture and it's got, loads of personal development opportunities and training and et cetera. And if you offer that great, if you don't offer that and you know, maybe you're not someone who's got socials every two weeks as an agency, it's like this person's going to get a bit bored and you can just start to, you know, so they expect to come into a free breakfast and a yoga class every week. Like when you're just not what you're about. So I think, yeah, if that's just then for me, you know, whether someone's going to stay with you for a long time or not, even regardless of the actual experience that they've got. and then, yeah, obviously the final phase for me is secure phase and you do everything else in terms of going to sell modes at the end of that interview to actually get them through the door if you want them, offer contracts, et cetera. So that's like my three phase approach now to hire and to make sure that we're getting the right people basically for the role. And we're not spending a hell of a lot of time looking at CVs. Yeah.

Harv Nagra: 23:38

Yeah, I love that. It's so thorough. And it just sounds like you've really kind of nailed all the pain points you were having previously.

Sarah Brougham: 23:44

Yeah.

Harv Nagra: 23:44

So have you have you noticed, and hopefully you have like a big difference in terms of having to have fewer of these kind of concerning conversations or having to let people go.

Sarah Brougham: 23:53

Yeah. Yeah. Retention internally has increased by 23 percent in the last two years now. and, just the speed to hire now we've got sort of approximately around the source of six week mark, whereas it used to be, you know, sometimes three months plus, or we'd, or we'd get to sort of maybe, the final interview. Yeah. And you'd have to sort of then start again. So, so yeah, massive, massive improvement for us over the last source of, yeah, three to four years or so.

Harv Nagra: 24:19

Amazing. How do you find when you have such dispersed team in terms of getting people aligned in your ways of working, how does that all work when you're based here and everyone's in 16

Sarah Brougham: 24:30

Yeah,

Harv Nagra: 24:31

or whatever it might

Sarah Brougham: 24:32

be? Um, it's not the easiest job. I think you've probably come across this when it comes to operations. Generally, I think trying to get people into a way of working is probably one of the biggest challenges I've faced as a VP of Operations because you're trying to change people's mindsets as well, you know, the way they work day to day is just like habit basically. And you're trying to change that and make them understand the why. So I suppose in terms of the team that we already had, that was probably one of the first challenges. And then, yes, as we continue to hire new people who are based all over the world, it's now having the right structure in place so that there is a solid onboarding process in terms of them understanding who we are as an agency, what our vision is as an agency, the sort of the role they will play in our long term vision and our long term business goals, and then giving them the actual, the handbooks, the tools, the systems, et cetera. with a solid sort of two week onboarding process where they meet key people in the team, they have to digest certain things, certain documents, certain templates, certain processes, and then we work with them to make sure that they've understood everything before then they really get into the day to day, really. so there's a solid sort of structure there. and then it's just about staying on top of it and making sure that it's actually working day to day.

Harv Nagra: 25:41

That, that sounds really fantastic about that onboarding program. So you mentioned two weeks is kind of your full induction. Is that all like a lot of that self led or how, how does that work?

Sarah Brougham: 25:50

I do that, it's quite a regimented way now. Where every time people join, they're given a clear setup, which for us is a project in Asana. It can be a task list in Notion or whatever software that you, you use as an agency. So I break it down by one, giving them client education and services. So, a list of all the clients, the key links to their websites, and understanding of the services that we're doing for them so that they have an understanding of who they're going to be working with and what the agency actually provides for them, whether that's marketing services, content, whatever your agency is actually doing. Then I give them a list of processes and handbooks. So the key processes and handbooks that are relevant to them. So, so that they know what they need to follow. They can read through the policies and they're armed with everything they need to then crack on to do the job properly. Then I will give them example documents. So, again, specific to their role. Are they reporting documents? So if they're going to be reporting to a client at the end of a week, end of a month, here's the exact format. Here's an example of what's been given to a client in the last few months. Is it a pitch deck if they're going to be on the acquisition team? Here's how you pitch to a client, how you talk about the agency, how you talk about our services. Um, social calendars, contracts, whatever, depending on the role, give them real example documents so they can see example of work that's been executed that you're happy with within that role. Then a list of intro meetings, which is for me is really important because a lot of the time you're put in an agency and then you're, you're told to go and work with a shed loads of people, but you don't know who's John in finance or whoever anyone is. You just got to figure it out. And I think it just helps you, one, from a social perspective, and also you are in a remote environment especially, people are just names on a screen, and unless you've physically been on a call with someone and got to know the person behind the name and the personality, and also what they do and what their department does, It's difficult to sort of build the rapport and also just build the speed in execution day to day. So I give everyone a list of people they need to meet and then they can go and set those meetings up and then they do that within the first week that they're here. And then finally is just a list of specific tasks that I want them to do within the first few weeks Whether that's to go and set up obviously all the admin side of things their emails, their slack, Go and set those intro meetings up, Go and review specific example documents, do any sorts of research tasks or any then specific execution within that job so it's very varied, but it's basically giving them everything that they need to know about past execution and templates, playbooks and processes they'll need to follow, and then the people that they need to meet to get the context as to who they are, what they do, and how the agency runs day to day, essentially.

Harv Nagra: 28:19

Amazing. I love that. I, I, I think it's very satisfying as an ops person to get to that point in your agency's maturity where you have all that documentation ready and it, it can just be deployed when somebody new starts. You know, all this kind of ad hoc making stuff up as you go is well in the past. So that sounds fantastic. So, really. Really well done. All right. So we've talked about your best practice around hiring and also what you do with onboarding. I was looking at something you posted on LinkedIn the other day, and I found it really inspiring. You were talking about your process, the process you trigger when somebody hands in their notice. And I have to admit, when it comes to offboarding, I usually look at it in terms of kind of payroll related tasks and systems offboarding, and equipment and stuff like that. What I love about what you were saying is that retention has a part to play in that. So if you could just talk us through your thinking around the offboarding process and your best practice so we can see what you do.

Sarah Brougham: 29:14

Yeah, no, for sure. I think there's a couple of things and I, I'd want to sort of briefly touch on onboarding because I think in terms of retention, that is so important before you then get to the off boarding process as to, you know, reasons why people leave, how you can retain staff, etc. and avoid people actually leaving the agency. Because yeah, from an onboarding perspective, I've worked in a few different agencies now, and I think we've all probably had that experience start to an agency where you're, you're thrown a laptop, you're putting a corner and it's like, just, just crack on with it basically. And whether it's like figure it out for yourself or just actually just start to execute the job that you've been given, which can be a little bit sort of deer in the headlights vibe. And great in some instances, yes, then you're in it, then you're getting in the trenches pretty quick, but not great, I don't think, in terms of retention, potentially, because you're not given the team, the tools they need, the knowledge around the agency, the education around the clients, and mainly for me, the confidence to do the job, because I think you have people that will thrive in that environment, but you have other people who might actually be the best people for the job, but they, they feel like because they've not had the best onboarding and they don't feel like you're bringing out the best of them. You're getting the skills from them that you're actually needed, or expected to when they joined the agency. So for me, onboarding is super important. So anyone who actually joins the agency has that, okay, I know exactly what I'm doing. I know I have the understanding of who the clients are. I know who I'm going to be working with. I understand the sorts of hierarchy in the agency and who's who. So once you've done that, I think you as a, an agency owner or whoever it is that's managing that onboarding, has done everything that you can in my, in my eyes to give them the best leg up to then do the job and deliver to the best of their ability. So I give usually people between sorts of up to eight weeks, six to eight weeks, ideally sort of benefit of the doubt after that, because I've done everything that we need to be doing. I think if there's, if they're still not delivering to a certain level or they're still making certain mistakes after that, then that's when I suppose it becomes an issue because you've done everything you can as an agency. Hopefully because you've done all that, you should then get the best out of your, your team.

Harv Nagra: 31:15

Absolutely. And, and I think, you know, bringing it back to that point of retention, it really sets the tone, a good onboarding and it kind of demonstrates to the person that they're, they're showing up at a really grown up place of work and you're, you're right a lot of agencies don't have such a rigorous onboarding process. So I think that's really important. Before we get back to that point about kind of off boarding. I wanted to quickly just ask you in terms of like probation periods, do you, do you look at that as a three month or a six month thing? Do you have a point of view on that?

Sarah Brougham: 31:45

Yes. So, interestingly, we have changed this in the last year or so. And we've, we do a six month probation period. Again, positives and negatives to it, because this is also for us as the employer, we want to make sure that someone has had enough time to be able to integrate themselves into the agency, to be able to start executing to a specific standard that we want them to. And then you know that they're actually someone who you're going to keep in the agency long term. And I suppose on the flip side, it also gives the employee the opportunity to do the job and still have a good six months to understand, is this the right position for me? Do I want to stay around here? So we did try a lot to be honest. It's probably something I might look at reducing because I've actually found that maybe some of the negatives to that is, I think you already know instinctively as, as a, an agency, if someone is good enough or not after I'd say three to four months time. And ultimately, what I found is then, if you leave it up to six months, someone might be great but they've decided maybe they want to move on or they've had another job opportunity come up and all of a sudden they're leaving the agency pretty quick when they've become quite a, a core person to you as an agency within that four or five months. So I've tried and tested a few things essentially and I feel like the, the, the sweet spot is around the three to four month mark when it comes to probations.

Harv Nagra: 32:54

So bringing it back to kind of somebody handing in their notice and what that whole kind of process looks like and the retention element that comes into play there.

Sarah Brougham: 33:04

Yeah, for me, so it's when someone hands in the notice, it's the first thing for me is I look at the value of the persons. So if they've, they've sent you the email or they've spoken to you or whatever it might be and you know, they want to leave, I will first look at, okay, Is this someone who is actually so core, so key to the agency that they add so much value you do not want them to go anywhere and that is, is, is the case a lot of the time, otherwise they usually wouldn't be in your agency. Or I suppose sometimes it might be people who've been here for years got a bit too comfortable, if you look at the role they're doing now, and maybe other people in the industry, you probably could replace that person and get a lot more value out of that role than maybe the current person that's in there. Or you just look at them and say, you know what, it's probably the right time and it makes sense. Let's do it. So it's the evaluation for me first is to, okay, value, where are we in there? And then from there, then you can make the decision as to, do you want to make the steps to retain that person or not? And are they, are they in the right headspace to want to stay in the agency? Do we think that they have the right attitudes to stay in the agency at this point? Or have they, I don't know, got in this headspace where they are quite negative about things or they're maybe they're just switched off and they've just, they want to change essentially in terms of environment or career or whatever it might be. So if that's the case from a retention perspective, if we want to, I just usually have a frank conversation because I think we're all humans at the end of the day. And I think rather than try and do this formal back and forth on email, I would just rather as a first step, just pick up the phone and get on a call and also just see their body language. Like how are they responding to things? Why are they leaving? And just have a bit of an open conversation just to be, you know, supportive if that's the right thing that they want to do but also have a just uh have the ability to to try and maybe persuade them to stay because of the opportunities with you and you can do that a lot more if you're On the phones or you're on a virtual meeting or you're in person with someone. It's much easier. So let's have that frank conversation. And then there's options to then potentially change their role slightly if it's just a tweak in responsibilities they want; maybe it's more responsibilities. Maybe just it's just a change in the day to day and then ultimately a lot of the time it comes down to actual the package that they're on. Is it the salary? Is it the bonuses that they're getting? What is it someone else has offered them? Like why, why did they ultimately go and did they go and look elsewhere? And what was the reason behind that? Or has someone come to them with an offer and just because it was so attractive they've thought I've got to go for it, but they were still really in it with us as an agency and then we can look at maybe just negotiating something which makes sense for them to to leave the other opportunity and stay with us. So that's kind of step two in terms of retention. Then step three, I suppose, if they're not aligned, and they don't want to stay in the agency is when you start to do everything from an admin perspective, you draw up the letter with all the details and the dates they're going to leave all of the, the terms and conditions they need to abide by, the IP, what they need to do, all of that type of stuff. And I usually do an exit interview with people who I don't do with everyone. Usually, you know, if they've been here for a couple of months and we know it's just, you know, they've made the decision, it is what it is. With people who've been here for a significant amount of time or they've passed the probation periods and they're with us, then I will do an exit interview, mainly just to delve in a little bit more around why and get someone who's probably been less involved, I suppose, so they feel like they can speak a bit more freely to them so that we can understand the, if there is any deeper reasons, but for us also just get recommendations. So the next person that comes in, was there maybe a skillset that person felt they didn't have, that if they did, they would have been able to do the role better. Was there maybe things that they feel if was improved in the agency, they maybe would have stayed or anything like that that we feel could maybe benefit us in the long term in terms of retaining staff. And then we give them a handover template. So we give them, these are the things that you need to provide to us versus just saying to them, write a handover and send it to us. Otherwise we don't have the control. And I know before people leave the agency, sometimes it's like, Oh shit, there's only, there's five bullet points on this, or they've only given us certain information about certain clients. And then they leave the agency and you're trying to chase them or track them down, which has definitely happened in the early days. So, we control what the handover looks like before they start to draft it. And then step five is ultimately, yeah, removal. Last day, remove from softwares, get the equipment off them and everything else that I'm sure everyone does when people eventually leave the agency. So yeah, that's it. I'll try and just end on a positive note where we can essentially just because Industries are small for one and you want to make sure that everyone who does leave is leaving with that Positive outlook about the agency and they've had a great time with you. And also for you as an agency, you know, you've built that relationship with them, They've done great things for you And also you don't want them to then instill any negativity in the rest of the team just because they're leaving the agency. So I think it's all around just makes sense for everyone to try and end things on a positive note regardless of how you're parting ways.

Harv Nagra: 37:32

Amazing. the consideration throughout about whether you want to keep this person and see if there's anything that you can do. And, also ending on that positive note, I think really, really important. So really appreciate that. in terms of what you're most proud of as an Ops leader, what comes to mind?

Sarah Brougham: 37:49

I mean, there's lots of things I would actually mention the actual, the operations in terms of the systems you put in, because without it, we wouldn't be able to operate at the level that we do, manage the clients we do, sign the clients we do. So I think that is definitely sort of number one. cause it's also made us so much more profitable from like an, team perspective and an output perspective. But also I think being able to work quite closely with people so that you can, yes, you can coach people. And I think for me, it's being able to, to bring people in the business and to, to have people now who are super senior in the business, but joined us as pretty junior. I like to do like a, a three month intensive when I have someone join, especially sort of under one of my departments that actually lead to, to really show them how to do the job and to coach them on how to do the job. And then from there, I'd say three months onward, let people really go. And, and then have that freedom to just to just execute. And I think that approach for me has actually led to some amazing people in the business. One, because they're amazing people anyway, but without actually having that actual, the system and working quite closely with these people, I wouldn't be able to even step back from what I've been doing day to day to then work on the bigger projects, Agency 8x, which I've mentioned to you in terms of other coaching things that we're doing as a business. Sign new clients. I focus a lot now on the acquisition side of the business and who we want to bring on board and doing the pitching myself so without having really, really just mentors a lot of people in the business to, to really, to give them the same sort of understanding and, uh, motivation and show them the sort of the path that they can go on to be able to, to build their own career. and then, Obviously at the end of it also add value to us as an agency which is what has allowed us to continue to grow because we have great people. because yeah, I love being a people person. I love being able to solve problems and I think both of them are sort of together has really allowed us to build a really strong team. That's probably one of the, one of the main things that comes to mind.

Harv Nagra: 39:32

That sounds amazing. You, you brought up Agency 8X and, that, that's a good opportunity for us to talk about that. So this is, is this kind of like an agency community? Tell us a bit about what it is.

Sarah Brougham: 39:44

It is, yeah. So it's a two prong. So there's the, the educational side of things. So it is a, it's an online course, essentially, where we have, myself, James Salby, who's the chief brand officer, and then Sean, the CEO, have developed this, this course, which gives, agencies who are doing at least sort of the six figure mark. So they're already established in some sort of way. They have clients, they've got services, they've got some sort of success, but they want to get to that sort of eight figure mark. It's given them everything that we have learned over the last six, seven, eight years as to, from Sian's perspective, strategy, clients, how to be a CEO, build a leadership team, from myself in terms of everything from, from hiring and operations and, and delivering the work and putting sorts of OKR frameworks in place and, and who to hire, when to hire them. and then from, from James's perspective, everything around sorts of the, the client management, the business strategy, client strategy, growth, et cetera. So it's, it's basically everything we wished that we had five years ago and we probably would have avoided a lot of the mistakes that we have over the last five or six years if we had something like this. So I think we've seen an opportunity in the market from like an online education perspective we've seen the demand in the market for it and because we've done it I think it we sort of it's something that we we wanted to be able to share to build this this community because it's It's not something we sort of could see or find online that we were able to join to give us that sort of network, essentially. and there are a lot, a hell of resources basically as well that are in there that we can, we can share with agency owners to, to use and implement in their agency. So, so yeah, it's an education platform, it's an online course, and then it's a, it's a community essentially. So we have a, we, we use Slack for our community, and yeah, there's a lot of different founders from all over the world. So. UK, US, Germany, quite a few people in Europe, and, India, et cetera, with small agencies who are, who are just growing essentially. And they we're supporting them, but then now there's this great network of people who are supporting each other with, you know, anything that comes up. Someone's got a pissed off client and they come in, guys, this has happened, any sorts of advice on this, or someone's changed their outreach strategy and they sort of, they want to test it and, and, and put it in the group and people feed back on it. So it's amazing if I wish we had something like this really a few years back just to be able to bounce off people who are, who were going through the same things that we were. Yeah.

Harv Nagra: 41:58

Absolutely. That sounds fantastic. so Sarah, we're coming to the end of our session, but I guess one of my questions is, before we wrap up, if someone's looking to kind of get into agency operations, what would be your advice to them?

Sarah Brougham: 42:14

My advice, would be, I suppose one thing to say is I think from an outsider's perspective, operations sounds like the least sexiest job you can get out there because operations is, you know, there's a lot, it just sounds like a lot of running around or just organizing people, but I think it's, it's understanding what operations looks like in different agencies, because there's definitely, there's not like a one size fits all in terms of operation managers. what my job as a VP of operations could look completely different to someone else as a VP of operations in a different agency in terms of what you manage, what you measure, what your output should be, what you own, who you report to. It's just, it can be so different. So I think, I think if you are someone who likes variety, I think, cause that's the main thing for me. And I think why I love it so much, because when I was in the client management side of things, you're always on different. You know, a different shoes or working with a different client or whatever it might be. I think Operations, you need to love being able to get up in the morning and every day looks different. I think you need to be a little bit of a self motivator and you want it. You need to be motivated by the results that you drive. Because a lot about operations is about getting your head in the sand, doing the work. But you know, then you see the results and it might take 3 months, 6 time. But it's definitely something that, if that's something that motivates you, I get a lot of satisfaction out of. and it's also a great way to just continue to learn. I think if you want to be someone who's not always just stuck in one box, you can really carve your own career. If you go into operations, like with me, you know, I, I can sort of work on one part of the business. And as we see a need or a, an opportunity for a new service in the business, I can pivot and start to work on something else. So I think it's, it sounds quite boring. I would say from an outsider's perspective, when you say operations, if I'm being honest, but actually when you get into the nooks of it, if you're in the right agency and you, you work with the right people, operations can actually be a pretty exciting role. That's very varied. Yeah. And it's really satisfying because you can see the actual, the, the results from your teams, your team's motivation to the, the actual, the revenue that's driven through the agency itself.

Harv Nagra: 44:09

Definitely. Definitely. That's, that's an amazing answer. somewhat related, you know, if someone's at an agency that's looking to scale any kind of top of mind advice comes up based on what you've kind of gone through and your lessons.

Sarah Brougham: 44:22

I think in terms of scaling this, I mean, there's a long list that we could probably go through. Yeah. But I think, one is making sure that systems is the main thing without them, you're, you're going to have people taking longer to actually execute. You don't have control over the qualities and our control over the output. And then from a client perspective, I would say, don't be scared to, don't be scared to let go of clients. I think is probably one of the main things, cause that was one of the key things hindering growth for us. And it sounds strange when you think, okay, start to remove clients, but actually that unlocked so much more time essentially for us and energy that we could start to then focus on the right clients or start to focus more energy on the current clients to get more out of them. And I think we, you know, for the first three, four years, there was, it was like, if as soon as we, we dropped a client or if a client left, it was the end of the world. And I think now it's like, it's okay. You know, it's, it's for a reason, like whether it's, they're not happy and they, they haven't got the motivation and the drive to keep going. So it's not going to make sense. Or from our perspective, they've not got the right attitudes and they're not got the passion and they're not driving the results. So I think, I think at the beginning, it's all about, okay, you need more clients. You need more clients, but when you get to a certain point to unlock that growth potential, I think you need to be able to let go of that and be okay with losing clients and you proactively letting clients go to, to, to give you that space and ability to, to grow.

Harv Nagra: 45:33

Really good answer. So Sarah, if anyone's looking to connect with you, where can they go find you? You post some amazing stuff on LinkedIn that I...

Sarah Brougham: 45:41

Thank you.

Harv Nagra: 45:41

always love reading about. So tell us where we

Sarah Brougham: 45:44

You can find me on LinkedIn. Yes. Sarah Brougham. I actually don't know what my handle is on LinkedIn to be completely honest.

Harv Nagra: 45:50

Okay. We'll

Sarah Brougham: 45:51

You can post a link.

Harv Nagra: 45:52

episode notes as well. And if anyone wants to learn more about agency 8x,

Sarah Brougham: 45:57

sorry, yeah, if anyone wants to learn, anything more about Agency 8X, you can go to agency8x.com.

Harv Nagra: 46:02

Excellent. But Sarah, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today really inspiring some of your kind of stories and lessons and stuff that we can take away and apply at our own places of work. So thank you for being here today.

Sarah Brougham: 46:14

No worries. Yeah, all good. Thank you for having me.

Harv Nagra: 46:17

Hey all, I hope you enjoyed that. You can tell how passionate Sarah is about what she does through her stories. And I think it was really great advice as well when she mentions learning to let go of unprofitable clients so you can focus on winning the ones that are a better fit. Probably my favorite part of the conversation though was her advice on the hiring process. That's something I'm going to be making notes on for future reference. You'll know by now that if you sign up for The Handbook Newsletter, we send you a cheat sheet with all the key takeaways from our interviews every other week. Now before I go, here's what I would love you to do. Please share this podcast episode with a friend or colleague and tell them what you loved about it. I'll let you click share as soon as I stop talking. I'll see you back here in a couple of weeks. Thanks very much.