The One Where We Discuss Running And Scaling An Agency With Laura Hogan
Description
In this week's episode, we chat with Laura Hogan, Owner of Sweet Digital Agency, about running and scaling an agency.
Where to find Laura:
Resources from the episode:
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Episode Sponsor:
This season is sponsored by Screaming Frog. Screaming Frog develop crawling and log file analysis software for the SEO industry, and wanted to support the WTSPodcast as listeners to the show. They’ve just released version 16 of their SEO Spider software, which includes - improved JavaScript crawling to help you identify dependencies, such as JavaScript content and links, automated crawl reports for Data Studio integration, advanced search and filtering, and the app is now available in Spanish, French, German and Italian. You can check out the latest version at Screaming Frog's website (screamingfrog.co.uk).
Where to find Screaming Frog:
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Episode Transcript:
Areej AbuAli: Hey, everyone. Welcome to a new episode of the Women in Tech SEO Podcast. I'm Areej AbuAli and I'm the founder of Women in Tech SEO and I am your host today. Today's episode is all about running and scaling an agency and joining me is the brilliant Laura Hogan, who is the founder of Sweet Digital. Hey Laura?
Laura Hogan: Hey, are you all right?
Areej: Yes, I'm good. Thanks. How are you?
Laura: Good, thank you so much for having me on.
Areej: Yes. Thank you so much for joining. I'm really, really excited about today's episode. We've worked together before through Women in Techs SEO initiatives so thank you for jumping on the podcast with us.
Laura: Not a problem. Hopefully, I can give some useful information to people.
Areej: I'm sure you will. Can you give a little bit of an overview about yourself and what you do and everything we want to know about Sweet Digital?
Laura: Yes, so I launched Sweet two, two and a half, three years ago now. It started just me in my kitchen with my dog, and we're just under 10 people today. We've had some really lovely growth over the last couple of years. We're pretty much a full-service digital marketing agency. We have team members in the UK. One of our team members moved to Spain last year and then we've got a team in South Africa as well. Basically, anybody who's really good who wants a role, we don't really care where you live, which is brilliant.
Areej: I Love that.
Laura: Yes. It's so much fun.
Areej: I remember a few-- I think maybe it was right before COVID, you were definitely much smaller then. How was COVID for you with the agency growth and how did that go?
Laura: I think like every agency when it first hit and the UK closed down, there were definitely a few days of tears and a lot of panicking initially about what might happen. But you know what, I just put my big girl pants on and we knuckled down. There was only three of us in the company at the time that COVID first hit and we just knuckled down, and really worked on the sales, really worked on the partnerships that we had and really worked on making sure that we retained the client base that we did have. When COVID hit, our biggest clients were in leisure and hospitality and travel, which were probably-
Areej: Oh no.
Laura: -the hardest hit industries but we just supported our clients. I think that was the key thing. Nobody cancelled a contract with us, which we’re so fortunate of. We worked with them to scale down their retainers for a bit, and to be there as that support for them. Obviously, in the meantime, we were working to bring on new clients, because one of the things that we found was that companies that weren't online pre-COVID really realized that they needed to get online quickly and start moving during COVID.
We started working with a lot of clients that wanted to start being direct consumer that previously hadn't been. Overall, we've grown phenomenally in the last year or 18 months, and we didn't have a client leave us with COVID, which is unbelievable really. We were so fortunate in that respect.
Areej: That's amazing. I'm so glad to hear that. Before you started your own agency, what did you used to do before that?
Laura: I've been in-house on the agency side prior to starting my own. I did do a degree in journalism and that is what led me into SEO. My first job after uni was very-- it was actually really old school link building. It was very much about working with bloggers to get product reviews. It was so much fun. Then, as part of that, I was writing a lot and learned what SEO was. I'd never heard of it when I was in uni and then learned it on the go.
Areej: How did you make that decision? You have a stable job, a full-time job, and then you decided, actually, no, I want to start my own thing.
Laura: I had a lot of change in the six to eight months leading up to that decision. A lot of change in my personal life and just made me review everything that was going on in my life. I had a really long-term relationship end. I had to start the house that I was living in with my ex as part of that. It was almost like everything in my life was starting afresh, so it just made me reassess everything. I went, "You know what, if I'm ever going to do it, now's probably the time to do it."
Areej: I love that. Sometimes just that change is much needed. I'm really glad you made that decision because it looks like it's working out really, really well compared to if you were still doing your typical nine to five.
Laura: Yes, 100%. It's the best decision I've ever made. I think maybe I should probably thank my ex for cheating on me.
Areej: We're here today to talk about all things running and scaling an agency. I just want to start off by understanding a little bit more about what is the aim of scaling an agency? Because there are some people who, want to start their own thing, but they don't think too much about growing it or scaling it. They think about it continuing to be a one-woman show. What's the difference between that and going ahead and thinking about let's actually scale it?
Laura: I think a lot of it comes down to what you want to achieve. Are you building something because you want to sell in a few years' time? Are you building something because you want a bit of a lifestyle agency where you are not hugely involved in it and it's very team-based and you dip in and out? Or are you building something that you literally eat, sleep and breathe where you are heavily involved in everything, it's your job as always think of it and you’re building it to have just the life that you want from it?
I think that's probably one of the first decisions people have to make when they know what they want to do with it. I know that work-life balance wasn't something that was important to me. I don't have children. It's me and my other half in the house. It wasn't something that was hugely important to me. I wanted to be involved in every single thing in the agency and that's my plan going forward. I think it's knowing what you want from it. It depends then on how you build from there.
Areej: That makes a lot of sense, definitely, starting off by thinking that. Of course, it can be something that changes down the line, right?
Laura: Yes, 100%. It just gives you your starting point because if you're building to sell, I'd say you might start front loading and bring team members in really quickly into the agency. Whereas if you are building for something that's got the longevity of it and sustainability of it over time and you don't intend on selling it, you're probably more likely to be on your own for a longer period of time. Then when it gets to the point that actually, you are completely at capacity and you then need to bring people in. COVID has shown us that you can't really predict things 100%. The reason that you're doing it and how you want to scale definitely can change.
Areej: At what point did you make the decision that, I need to start hiring people in. I need to start growing a team.
Laura: It's very numbers-based. I live in the numbers a little bit. I was flat out myself and I was using two or three freelancers as well to support with work. It was very much looking at the bottom line. You need to know wha
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