Paul Rouke is the founder of PRWD, a leading conversion rate optimisation agency based in Manchester.

In this episode, we talk about the mindset and beliefs required to build a successful agency.

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Transcription

You are listening to the 10X Your Agency Podcast where everyone is safe for the next 12 weeks you will be learning strategies on how to scale up your agency and grow your client base from successful agency owners who have been, there done it and built a highly successful agency. You will learn how they attract clients, what their biggest causes of client churn were and what there challenges were at different stages of building their agency. My name is Marcus Taylor and I will be your host.

Hey guys welcome to episode 6 of the 10X Your Agency Podcast. Today I’m joined by Paul Rouke who’s the founder of PRWD, one of the leading conversion rate optimization agencies here in the UK. Today I’m going to Paul about mindset. Often as agency owners, the biggest thing that’s holding our agencies back is us, it’s the founder. So we are going to be talking about how important it is to be working on yourself and developing your mindset. We are also going to be looking at conversion rate optimization, what it is that agencies could be doing better on their websites to acquire more leads as well as some of the different tactics that Paul has used to generate leads and new business for PRWD. Paul, it’s a great pleasure having you here on the show, how are you doing?

Paul: Hi, Marcus, very well thank you, yourself?

Marcus: Yes, doing very well. Paul, before we jump in I was just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about PRWD, what it is you guys do and perhaps what makes PRWD different as an agency.

Paul: Yes, so PRWD we are a conversion optimization agency based in the UK. We’ve been around since 2004. We have our roots in user research and behavioural understanding and this stems right away back to 1999 where I had my first job in digital as a Shopdirect’s first web designer. From 1999 I recognized the importance of user research and understanding behaviour and therefore utilizing these insights to help change and improve online experiences. So today we work with a range of large and enterprise businesses across the UK and Europe, delivering their conversion optimization strategy and helping to drive business growth for them.

Marcus: And so do you consult from strategy and research stage all the way down to making the changes on landing pages and running the tests for them or is it really just on the consulting advice part of it.

Paul: It’s on the full spectrum yes so from the very top in terms of strategic and cultural working with businesses to help evolve their strategy and culture and yes as you say, all the way down through to the actual planning, delivery and implementation of tests to help improve and optimise the online experience.

Marcus: Excellent. Okay so Paul when we first met I think it was about half a year ago at Digital Elite Camp in Estonia and you gave a really inspiring talk on-I think it was actually the keynote to the event-the importance of being the change that you want to see in your industry. And I want to touch on that a little bit later and talk about some of the things that you’re doing around that. But one of the things I remember, you were talking about how important it is to develop and work on yourself personally in order to achieve whatever ambitious goals you have for yourself or your company. What was the moment for you that made you realise how important it is for you to work on your mindset and beliefs?

Paul: For me, rather than being a moment it’s been more a progressive realization over the last few years that the greater that I personally be stepping out of my comfort zone and pushing myself, looking to push my business, looking to make myself more visible in the industry. What that has done for me and maybe for other people it’s made me become even more self-critical because I’m outside of my comfort zone and I’m in this new territory. Particularly in these last 12 months from like 2015, it became really clear for me that I need to work on my self confidence so that I’m not questioning myself and I’m not bringing about kind of imposter syndrome which is that kind of feeling that you’re a fraud and that you are going to get found out. So that’s been very much my kind of personal journey. What I’ve realised the more we’re working with businesses, working with people within these companies that are looking to make a change within their company, then ultimately it’s down to individuals to have the belief in

themself that they can bring about change and inspire and educate other people to help bring about change within business. And conversion optimisation is still very much an immature industry; there’s not too many businesses that understand and appreciate the value and importance of it. So it’s up to people individually working within businesses or working for businesses through agencies to be that change within that company to help change the mindset and the culture to embrace this experimentation methodology.

Marcus: Do you have any examples you can think of of where you’ve done something that has been out of your comfort-zone and you’ve seen a direct benefit or opportunity or difference just come out as a result of that?

Paul: I suppose the thing that comes to mind to me is probably to go back to 2008. My business, we didn’t have a marketing strategy, I was very much in my comfort zone. You know very blinkers on and dealing just with the here and now. And I invited a lady into my business; she was actually a student from university for a summer placement basically with the brief to help come up with our first marketing strategy. And so at the end of the summer placement, this lady came back to me and she presented the short and long term strategic plan for PRWD. And primarily what she was advocating to do was ultimately for me to step outside my comfort zone and to start being a visible and ideally that inspirational thought leader within the industry: to start writing, to start speaking, to start putting myself out there. And I’d never done any of this. The only time I’d ever spoken in front of an audience was at my wedding in front of about 35 people. So this was a really big challenge for me to overcome these fears of

public speaking which many people would probably agree that public speaking is one of life’s big fears. You’re putting yourself in front of others, in front of an audience. So it didn’t happen overnight it was about six months later where I finally did my first talk in front of about a hundred people but if we fast forward from that moment to today, this decision to step outside my comfort zone both personally and then from a business point of view for us to be a visible agency that’s putting ourself out there and trying to help influence the industry and educate; that decision has been probably the most important that I’ve made in the last eight years. It’s fundamentally impacted the business positively.

Marcus: For this industry and I suppose the surrounding digital agencies, it seems to be kind of the thing that needs to be done to be on the map is getting out of the conferences, writing for whether it’s or these kinds of sites. That’s where you sort of see a separation between the agencies that are really respected and, as you say, considered thought leaders from the rest of the agencies out there.

Paul: Yes, I think that’s it and you’ve touched a little bit around content but the big challenge that we are facing right now is the amount of knowledge that is out there online in terms of content marketing with a significant amount of the knowledge coming from the people and the agencies that are effectively just jumping on the bandwagon of conversion optimisation. And describing it is pretty much a list of tips and tricks and tactics and hacks in order to get more people to click the buy button. So yes there’s a big separation there, yes.

Marcus: So some of the 30 hacks to triple your conversion rate and all that stuff. Paul one concept that really resonated with me from your talk was your idea of shifting the definition of hippos; traditionally hippo being the highest paid person’s opinion and redefining how we think of the hippo to mean, I believe, you mentioned was standing for humility and integrity, passion, positivity and openness. I was wondering which of these five areas have you personally found most challenging to develop and how has it helped you to develop it.

Paul: Great yes, so I think, for me, the first one that come to mind here is positivity and this goes back to what I described earlier around what I’ve often been faced with in terms of in my own mind is a lack of self confidence and a lack of self belief because primarily again I’ve stepped outside of my comfort zone. I’ve really had to work on that over the l