"They underestimated me. Now I run a $20M business." Meet the first female founder CEO of an agency of this scale: Jennifer Quigley-Jones, Digital Voices

0:00Welcome to Strategy and Tragedy, the top business show for entrepreneurs. If you are thinking of starting a business or you're early in your startup journey, then this is the show for you. If you're tuning back in, then a very big warm welcome. I am so happy to have you here and I'm particularly excited to bring you my next guest. Now, I need to check my notes to make sure I don't get any of these incredible details incorrect. I'm about to interview here the founder of Digital Voices, named the 13th fastest growing agency by Adweek, officially the fastest growing influencer marketing agency in the world gang.

0:37Starting out with just 500 pound personal investment, Digital Voices now turns over, wait for it, more than 20 million dollars. I'm making my guest here blush. I can feel her getting uncomfortable next to me. 94 % ownership retained by founder Jennifer Quigley Jones. Digital Voices is the only UK-based influencer agency of its scale led by a female founder CEO. Ladies and gents, if I had a live audience here, I'd be like, give Jennifer a big warm round of applause. Welcome to Strategy and Tragedy. Thrilled to be here. Very much want to hide under the table now. But yeah, thrilled to be here. Thank you.

1:17She's so sweet. I love it. It's funny, you kind of forget because you get so stuck in the day-to-day of what you do that you don't take a moment to be like oh yeah that happened testament to your success head down building your empire quite literally all right the first question we need to hit the ground running with here jennifer is what's the secret to unlocking this incredible growth i think there's a few secrets that you learn along the way one of the things that really shocks me is that we've had a similar business model for the last eight years so when I left YouTube to found the company I was 26 years old I'd never worked in marketing I'd never managed anyone I'd never worked in agencies and I thought from this model feels really broken because I a lot of agencies just pay for their time you pay for that time so it's an hourly rate or it's a percentage of fee but with if you're a brand you don't really know what you're going to get out of that the KPIs that they have aren't guaranteed to match your commercial KPIs.

2:19So when I left and thought, oh, maybe I'll freelance or found an agency, I had no idea what the industry standard was. So I was kind of happy to break it. Interesting. So we created this model that we now call we win when you win, but it's basically guaranteed results. What does that break that down, sir? We call it we win when you win. We win when you win. Basically guaranteed results tailored to what our clients' KPIs are. So if you're a brand that's desperate to sell more products, get more app downloads, we can work to guaranteeing like a cost per customer acquisition or a turn on ad spend.

2:53But if you're a brand that's really trying to raise brand awareness, we'll guarantee a number of impressions or views for a campaign. And if we don't hit that, we either give back a portion of our agency fee to the client, which is giving back money. we ensure that influencers get paid and we give back some of our money or we commission more content it's really interesting because no one puts their money where their mouth is yeah and it builds this trusted relationship where you're like more of a partnership 100 that's exactly the first thing that came to mind so i just jump in but my early years in career were agency side and it was like the best part of a decade and you're right there was that conditioning and drilling in of like how it works but of course you're if you don't mind me saying that kind of healthy kind of naivety coming out to it meant that you could do something completely different that made sense which is 1000 % what the industry needs the risk of offering guarantees and refunds is very very ballsy I understand I can definitely see how maybe there's some survivorship bias coming into this but I can see how once you have made it it's easy to be like okay you've got that confidence to put your money where your mouth is but in those early days what gave you the the balls basically to do that like i think in the early days it was that influencers were so much cheaper than other forms of media and like influencers well all media's cheap influences much cheaper now now so you could see this insane level of success with like youtube videos that brands would never have envisioned going viral or they'd never it's something they'd never have made themselves so if you partnered in a youtube creator's successful format already and you did a 60 second sponsored segment of that that viewership is practically guaranteed so because we came and started with youtube it gave us the confidence to test that first and then we expanded to other like platforms like tiktok linkedin and instagram and whilst you started the business age 26 did you say actually your experience in youtube that gives you a competitive edge doesn't it literally coming from in-house at YouTube yeah and understanding the channel and the influences on there yeah my job at YouTube was a strategic partner manager but it was to work with the creators so I knew like 500 of the UK's kind of top creators and could message them and could get them to work with us so it was really interesting it's like that gave me an advantage in a place where I had none of the other structures that traditionally make agency founders succeed so it was really good and i think that level of i find it so interesting that eight and a half years later we're still talking about the same model and there are so few agents and it's still very disruptive yeah yeah especially in america no one's guaranteeing results and i'm like the industry needs to get better and what i really enjoy is building a product where people should be trying to catch up to keep up and to elevate the professionalism of an industry that has been seen as very wild wild west for a long time but you're so right it has been wild wild west for such a long time you should be so proud of that Jen that's incredible so you basically just sorry do you want to stick with like this guarantee again so you're starting out 500 pound investment like fully bootstrapped 26 years old which is like you know this healthy naivety the blind optimism is a great thing when you're starting out in business but you had this I just want to sort of understand a little bit more about that confidence behind that guarantee and were you being that explicit and black and white about this is what you're going to get we guarantee this has got a digital voices seal of approval you're going to get this many views yeah it developed as we went on I mean like the first nine months of the business were me freelancing and I'd never done that before and that was stressful I think I was working with startups because I thought that like that was what I wanted to do nine months in we had um actually I think it was on this street or like a street over we ended up meeting um being introduced to someone who had convinced rolls royce jet engines to pay for a an influencer campaign to gift to the air force it was the royal air force's 100th birthday again not what i thought i would work on right and they wanted to talk about engineering and get young people and kids excited by space and space travel and engineering and building rockets and jet planes so they were introduced this tv producer and he was like yeah let's do a crazy tv show about going to mars and i was brought in to like give an opinion on this and i was like gen z don't watch tv like gen z not like this is again this is eight years ago i was like no they're watching youtube and they were like oh what would you what would you do and i was like well you have like a 50 grand budget like i'd create a youtube channel and literally add creators to it with science and technology and like how does the world work creators and give them access to like an f-35 jet like that's so cool and we ran engineering competitions and we talked about careers we put a creator in a centrifuge to explain how g-force works this type of content really resonated and rolls royce was so impressed with the project the raf actually worked with us afterwards and that's when we realized like hang on actually if we do campaigns with creators the creator part is by far the most successful but we realized like the most successful content is coming from influencers.

8:07It's the most predictable results. It's the most exciting content as well. So we should start just producing creator content for brands. So we do a lot of, now we do a lot of like hugely scaled matching creators and brands. So one of our clients works like 100 to 150 creators a month and sponsors them in like 30 different markets. So we can do that. But at that point, it was just, it was still, influencer marketing was so new and the budgets were so small if you got a 10 grand budget for a campaign you were thrilled um so we were crafting those campaigns with often like one or two creators and now it's just the same thing but at a huge scale and the thing i don't know this is this is where i get geeky i think in marketing there are so many people who love doing the creative and i think if you are running a lifestyle business where that is what you want to do forever great hold on to the creative but for me I love the data I love the process I love like hiring the right people and putting them in the right roles I always want to be uncomfortable and learn something new so to me scaling it has always been the aim I don't need to hold on to the creative I don't need to be the one with the creative ideas I want to find people who are good at that incredible so that's the message and that confidence to give those guarantees seeing that like no one else is doing this like where did even like that idea come from for you was that also did that come from a place of like we need to stand out in this market or like is this like a savvy bd strategy again i just want to unpack that guarantee that risk yeah be honest gang whether or not you like it if you're in business you're in sales full stop and in today's day and age there is no excuse not to leverage the best tech to make you smash your sales and commercial strategy.

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10:31Reveal the patterns behind your wins and losses and know exactly which messaging resonates with prospects. With powerful tools to understand every customer interaction, you can finally put an end to the guesswork and start scaling what actually works. Honestly, gang, this is such a cool tool for building sales machines. This isn't just about better data it's about predictable revenue growth now while your customers rely on gut feelings and outdated playbooks you'll have an AI powered insights driving every strategic decision if you're ready to turn your sales conversations into competitive advantage then head straight to the show notes for your unique gong link and see why thousands of revenue teams trust their growth to revenue AI because in sales strategy beats tragedy every time all right gang let's get back to the episode i think it just comes from the fact that i'm really bad at lying and i i think innately was probably quite a people pleaser and also when you're incredible i don't know how to describe like it's not a disadvantage but your people are so much less likely to take you seriously yeah it's like a 26 year old woman for sure like what for sure um and i understand why like it's it's fine but you and we were new we didn't have funding we were competing in a really saturated space i was young i was like how can i prove to someone that they should take a risk on this and i also can i think it's my spicy brain and it's spicy in some form in like a mixture of probably autism anxiety and adhd somewhere i literally find it so hard to lie so to me i was like right if you can stand out in an industry by literally being a partner who wants to grow someone's business yeah love it which again is like it should be that way right when you're in the service business you are in servitude of your client you want what's best for them and it goes all the way back to your awesome one-liner if we win when you win and i think it also what i'm observing here from the other side of the table is it links back to your ambitions to scale because it isn't just kind of like we're doing because i think you could do decently as another kind of regular creator marketing business right but those ambitions I think have pushed you to like do something different be a bit more disruptive do something that is genuinely innovative that no one else is doing yeah I think this is like going on to the founder mindset mentality I think this is where wanting to learn is crucial so to me I get very bored if I'm doing the same thing there's a reason I have moved probably country every two years job specialism I find it so hard to stay on one thing.

13:09The fact I've been doing this for eight and a half years is terrifying to me. But it's so interesting. And I'm still loving it because every time the business scales, it becomes a different challenge. So once, as soon as I master a skill, I get to pass it on to someone else, get to hire for that, pass it on to that. Like, here's a system that works. Run with it. Edit it. I don't care. Here you go. And so to me, I think I could see that the more data we had, the more calculated risks we could take, we could scale. So it's like, OK, would this model work in Sweden? Will this model work in the US?

13:43If we build tech that more accurately predicts and benchmarks what guarantees we should be giving and use AI for that, that's interesting to me. So we've built that. I was going to ask you about this as well. Well, so not only are you founder of this influence marketing agency, but you are a fully fledged tech CEO as well now. What's this product? That's so interesting. Like I applied for, I can't remember what it was called. It was like a founder community. And I was like, I really need help. This must have been like four years ago. Someone recommended it. So I applied and I was like, I really need help.

14:14Like I'm so revenue funded. So also, I mean, we can get onto this, but when you're revenue funded, you have to watch your cash flow. and you have to make sure your investments are really careful so being revenue funded and expanding to the u.s and building tech is like taking everything you've built in your life and putting it on red because that was like a million dollars so i really need to help i was like in it was like 2020 or 2021 i was like i need other people in my situation who can help me shortcut learnings more quickly incredible so i did a couple of things one i applied for a founder group and they were like you don't your business isn't technical and i was like i'm building tech i need help to build tech i was like i really need help and they were like no you're not a technical founder and i was like did you just hear influencer marketing also did you look a woman and think but fine if you did so it's so interesting because you try and get help and you i think that's why you need to try multiple avenues so the other thing i did was i raised um 120 grand between seven angel investors so each of them owns max one percent in the company but i basically the way i fundraised was quite different and sorry just i'm going to jump in here because i know listeners are going to want to know how did you find those angels yeah random asking for introductions i presented once an ex-googler meeting they had like um five six startups present but most of the others were like random so i came up with four personas okay this is um I was like, I know I will need help in these four areas.

15:43So I'm not going to just, if you go around just asking anyone for money, the relationship power dynamic is wrong. Like you are on the back foot asking for help. Investors don't really like that. Angels want to feel like there's a mutual exchange. So the four areas I really needed help with were, one, I'd never worked at an agency. So I needed someone who knew how to scale agencies, had run them, knew how to run them, knew how to build agency sales teams. I was like I need that that's number one we actually found two people from that persona one was I've never worked in marketing before so I need to find someone who's worked in marketing at big organizations and given you're asking for like it's like 20 grand from each person max like you um it's it's it's a lot of money but it's not a huge amount so you could approach people who might not have angel invested before and the SEIS scheme really helps people in the UK So I found someone who had been really senior at Spotify and really senior at Virgin.

16:40She became a CMO, so she was really helpful. The other thing was internationalizing the business. I was like, I've never done that before. I need to find someone who's internationalized in agencies. They can help me with that. And the fourth one was I've never built tech. I want to find someone who's a bit of a tech expert so I can just sense check what I want to build. So I created those personas. Do you know what I'm sorry I'd against the jump in? But what I love about this process is so many early first time founders or, you know, budding entrepreneurs would just be so overwhelmed by the amount of things.

17:08And as always, I mean, I do hate to be gendered about it, but it is more so women than men. Men are still definitely victims of this, too. But to feel so overwhelmed, I don't even know where to start. And what you've done there is broken it down. Take that time to break down where what are your blind spots? What are your gaps? What do you need? And then suddenly there's an action plan. it's like right and somebody for the need and it's like okay now this plan is coming together yeah i've got goosebumps because i think that's the thing so many of these tasks like starting a business feels like such this amorphous like how am i ever going to tackle it often when i say to people oh if you want to start a business i'm like cool you know it's like 13 pounds on company's house if you actually keep it as this big amorphous oh my god you're never going to do it but if you go to okay what are literally the next steps to start it my first logo i tried to pay someone like$20 on Fiverr to order it, to design it.

17:59And it was so shit. I was like, okay, I can't do that. So I then paid someone 40 quid and I was like, well, that one's fine. Like it's literally like break these big goals down into small things. So then it means when you're asking people, hey, do you know anyone who's looking to invest in a company? It's not like an investment thing. It's like, who do you know that is an expert in agencies? Because if it doesn't work out, the conversation will be useful. So my theory on Joob's. So in this process, one, you never want the power to be like them versus you and that dynamic. So you have to be so confident.

18:32And all the best founders I've spoken to, and these are, I speak to male founders who are incredible all the time because often they've done this. They are like, do not let there be a chink in your armor. So firstly, that helps as confident as you can be. Secondly, my brother, who actually is not anything to do with business, he said to me, Jenny, isn't it really exciting that this is going to be your last first time? raising capital raising investment i'd never heard that refrain before it made me i was like oh my god this is cool last last first time i mean yeah and i was like this is it shifts it so you're like oh how what's going to happen next time or how am i going to reframe this my so it was really cool and then finally this is so silly it's so stupid and i don't buy into any of this but my parents had been to stopped in Dubai.

19:20Someone, a friend of a friend, yeah. So she had like, I'm so bad at lying. And I'm also so bad at editing. I give away everything. So I'm like, oh. So she bought like a fake Yves Saint Laurent and a fake Prada bag. And they were like bigger ones that could fit laptops. So I said, oh, can I borrow these? Like, oh, they're cool. She was like, well, you can have one. I was like, no, can I just borrow them? So I was wearing one on the train and I was talking to this random woman next to me on the tube and she was like, oh, by the way, I'm an investor and here's my card. Because you have that handbag, I know your business is doing well.

19:58And I didn't, she's not one of the ones who I let invest in the end, but she literally offered me investment on the tube in London. No one talks to each other because of the fake handbag. And then another guy. This is insane. It's insane. Was she that explicit about it? Yeah, yeah. She said, here's my card. Yeah, exactly. and then another guy we were doing like the interview for it and again he didn't invest but at the end of the meeting he goes um i had the fake prada that time the east one and the fake prada and he goes by the way my wife's really into handbags so i know what that means so i know your business must be doing well so like and it's so funny because you don't buy into it but i think people sometimes need social signifiers and they're trying to shortcut and i think it's an unjust system the system is not fair the system is rigged against you because of how humans operate it's the reality and they are trying to especially if they're meeting a startup founder they are trying to rightfully spend time working out who is bullshit and who isn't because so many people lie yeah yeah i'm incapable of it but so many people lie so i think little things shift the power dynamics so again i i actually don't i yeah don't do the design handbag game but i think it's really interesting because i do understand there is a social purpose yeah in doing that 100 % social the state of signaling and it is it is those shortcuts to your point conscious conscious or unconscious is like what am i what what can i mentally sort of attach to to to build trust in this part especially if you're talking about however much money that you're going to put on the table there you want that reassurance so back whereas if someone to me asked me for 20 grand and had like a Birkin bag I'd be like you're gonna take my money and you're gonna spend it on a Birkin bag turns out most people don't think that way yeah isn't that funny yeah yeah it's so true yeah I uh I justify walking around like a slob by being like I'm like tramp rich do you know what I mean I'm like I'm like I'm like beyond like I don't need yeah you don't you don't need the logos I don't need the logo it's interesting as well because similarly like i think so many people who are wealthy don't don't wear logos yeah what i mean yeah i agree around like a homeless it's like next level because you own your confidence but i think sometimes and i think at that stage where i was like 28 28 29 trying to raise this money had no idea what i was doing i knew i was going to make it make mistakes so yeah but you but you know on that note sticking with that as well though there is there is a topic here to discuss on playing the game on being strategic now I know that this is going to come off sounding this you know in the worst way this could be taken as you know being manipulative or not being 100 truthful but we've already mentioned a few times about you being a woman about starting this business in your 20s like that's objectively young you know you're literally in your second decade of life none of my friends were old enough to be budget holders in marketing it changes when you get to into your like mid to late 30s because your friends who are your age are finally in positions of authority there you go but no one is able to give you budget everything around that that we have to look at headwinds and tailwinds and strategy and we've got to look at what's working for us and against us so i would love to get i mean obviously i hear your views now on kind of the designer handbags and the dupes and things but i want to stick with this topic i think it's really interesting to look at like would we be idiots for not using certain tools in our armory i guess you can get into very dangerous territory because i mean i saw like cody sanchez she talks about women who wear makeup on average and like 20 more or whatever yeah it's yeah it's it's so interesting met taller people men in sales uh who are taller and wearing a suit yeah i think men make like 15 more if they are dressed well and make 30 % more is ridiculous.

23:48I do think everyone draws the line for what's morally acceptable behaviour just underneath their own. And I think you need to know your values. So to me, and also there are infinite battles you can pick. Pick yours. So to me, our red lines are like, one, we're super transparent. We don't lie in anything we do. There are influencer agencies who do crazy things, buy views and say that, you know, whatever. That's not what we do. secondly we don't take any gambling gambling affiliated brands tobacco affiliated brands we've not done any weight loss brands clients so i my feel with this is um alcohol i think is so again drawing the moral line underneath what i think is okay alcohol is so prevalent everyone knows what alcohol does gambling we are very persuasive like the influence campaigns we run get people to buy things or go to sites and get them to take action yeah and i you can't age gate influencer content you can't age gate youtube content so if we do a great really like encouraging psychologically impactful campaign there is nothing to stop a 14 year old taking mom's credit card logging into a gambling site and ruining his family's actual yeah so to me my red lines are the clients we take on the culture i build internally is really big as well i have been in situations that have made me feel very uncomfortable as a woman and realize that i am only seen as a sexual object not a brain and that is really hard to rebuild from and i think as an employer your duty is to help get the best out of your team so we have a culture which is super feed open to feedback it's like feedback is a gift and everyone says it but really no one wants to have an uncomfortable conversation and if someone is giving you critical feedback or constructively critical feedback it is because they've thought about it and they think it can be better yeah the easiest thing is to say nothing yeah so i really want to build hopefully a respected workforce who feel like they're heard and i want to build a generation of leadership in the marketing industry that is going to do things differently oh but those are the values to me that i can stick with other things like is is is uh i don't know is sexual discrimination bad or like are there things people think about women i'm like it's i all i can do is be an example to hopefully show that women are really smart and really good at business i can't fight other battles like that i'm trying to stay in my lane and accept the things i can't change that's the thing you're doing that through your actions through the evidence through what you built through literally your profile as the uk's only female founder CEO of an agency of this scale you're letting your um your results speak for themselves it's one of the things I find really frustrating about this industry I think it's I think it's something ridiculous like 78 percent of people who work in marketing are women but the founders at the top it's like less than two percent of agencies by women and I find it really interesting when you see agencies that are like oh we've got a female CEO I'm like if they're on the cap table great but if you sell that business whose life is going to be transformed financially yeah the founder who might be a man so i'm like you really need to again think about yeah think about who is making the bulk of this money yeah yeah and not just performative like empty words something else i do just want to kind of underscore what you said there which really really resonated jen is the um is the deeper ethical consideration of influence and i think that this needs to be talked about today at this very point in time because I'm a big you know I'm a millennial and I remember it's not it's not too distant a memory for me of uploading blurry pics from a night out on a Facebook album taken by a digital camera that wasn't listening into every conversation social media has changed fundamentally it's changed hugely I believe now it is a mass manipulation machine and so on the surface oh cool influence are fun making cool videos but actually it doesn't take that much scratching beneath the surface to say this is real influence this is real power influencing whatever you use kind of a 14 year old kids example before but whoever it is that you're influencing what we're seeing now is like with this is fully the world we live in and it's powerful it is and it it's really interesting because i really don't like the polarization yeah of influencer content one of the things i find really exciting about this industry and the reason i'm excited about it i think there are very there are for me when i look back across my career or whatever my interests in life the red thread is like championing entrepreneurship from underestimated places so whether that was like working with refugees who i think should be integrated into the the economy they're living in i specialized in syrian refugees before or creating entrepreneurs who did not exist in a different media landscape i love the fact that every dollar spent with us at least 70 cents of it goes to entrepreneurs who might not micro entrepreneurs who might not exist in another context because they do own genuinely yeah yeah they they are they are making money from ad revenue they're making money from brand deals and so we are kind of choosing which voices are allowed to exist and can afford to exist so i find that really interesting so i think there's an ethics part that's like democratizing media and it is truly democratizing media there's extremes on that and that's where i worry about social because i don't want to funnel users to the extremes for more watch time so the people we do work with are brand safe creators um who might be showing i don't know a different way of living or showing that you can be a single mom with a couple of kids running essentially a business from your house yeah um that I like but like I agree the extremes is uh problematic and I worry that they're getting worse yeah I agree I totally agree I'm just for the sake of time and we're going kind of deep and heavy on this but I have got a load more questions that I want to squeeze in there but Jen kudos to you I want to give you such a pat on the back this is incredible you know beyond I opened with obviously the stats the metrics and all this stuff but it's like it's for a reason you know it's for a reason and it shows through in the delivery of your work the the promises that you make and you keep to your clients the transparency the putting them first this is the best part of being an entrepreneur you get to kind of world build yeah yeah and it sounds really weird but I think if you're someone who pokes holes in systems and wishes they could be better like sometimes being an entrepreneur gives you the power to do that like I don't I never wanted any of my staff to feel the way I did when, you know, I felt underestimated at work for being or whatever.

30:44And I'm like, oh, hang on, actually, you can build a system that changes that. Oh, and you can run it? Like, great, okay. So it's quite, I think if you think differently and you're willing to be a bit uncomfortable, it makes sense to be an entrepreneur. Incredible. I'm so happy for you, Jennifer. I'm so proud of you. honestly I can almost like feel my heart physically like swell up I'm so proud and happy of you I get a praise a lot I know I'm like thank you I swear you in your chair there's always much more to do this is why you're building your empire because you are doubt you're only just getting started we're only just just getting started did we close on the tech story a little bit I just wanted to come back I have got a few more questions but what ended up how did you build this tech bit And what is, give us the elevator pitch of the tech product.

31:29So, right. My CFO a couple of years ago sat me down and was like, Jenny, there's like a million dollars in the bank. Like, what do you want to do with it? Do you want to take it out and buy a house? Like, what do you want to do? And I was like, no, actually, let's take half it and invest in expanding to the US. So we had to put a business case together, get an investor visa, all that stuff. And then let's take half it and invest in tech. I have a very hopefully sensible approach to tech that's like you shouldn't duplicate what's already out there to build something out of vanity. So partner might make sense and build where it doesn't exist or where only you can build.

32:01So we built our own campaign management system called Cord, which basically clients log into. They can see all the influencer data, see all the updates on the campaign, approve creators, approve content, see reports. Why Cord? Can I ask any reason for the name? Work in harmony with our clients. My team won't let me name anything anymore because you'll notice there's a slightly musical theme. We then built Composer. Hey, you're talking to Miss Melodia here. I'm loving it. I'm here for it. Yeah, you should just come on board. You're a brand ambassador. We'd love it. Actually, it's perfect. So then Composer didn't exist because only we had access to the eight years worth of proprietary data.

32:40So we wanted to make sure we were making really smart decisions with that data. So it's an internal strategy and planning tool that helps us calculate deliverables, shows where content is standing out, why. So savvy. That's so cool. So you took half out to invest in that. Yes. And then was there anything with the other half or just kind of reinvesting? The other half with America. Oh, America. Sorry. America. So I now spend about half my time there. I think there's a whole podcast on like expanding to America. That's a whole other ballgame. Especially these days, I can imagine. Tougher than before.

33:14One of the other questions I am really keen to ask you is, given your insane trajectory in a relatively short amount of time, let alone, I mean, digital voices has just absolutely exploded. But now we've got this scalable two tech products, which I didn't even realize. I thought it was just one, but you've got two tech products in the mix there. Like world building. World building. I have an amazing CTO. We hired him from, he was head of data at a performance marketing agency. So super data-y, exactly the hire we need. And we'd have, the one-to-ones were amazing. I was like, is this possible to build?

33:45And he'd be like, yeah, let's go and do it. Yeah, OK. And I was like, what? That's so cool. That is to me. Everyone's like running the creative campaign is the best side of the business. I'm like, no, literally building things from scratch that like will exist the next week. That's really cool. That is cool. No, I completely agree. And so with all of that incredible growth in mind, what I'm really curious to understand from your perspective is how you have had to shift as a founder. you did touch on mindset a little bit before but it's a very different personality skill set stomach gut all the rest of it starting a business we're chatting before we got started properly about people who are you know on the in between on the fence getting one thing's getting it started one thing is scaling it another thing is launching tech product another thing is like this and i almost feel knowing you outside of this as well i hope you don't mind me saying i think i've sort of cottoned on to this this incredible amazing success that's that's gone so much faster than maybe you you expected or could have kept up with so internally Jennifer inside of you how have you had to evolve as that founder through this incredible growth journey yeah okay the thing that remains constant is learning if you're I think if for me if I wasn't motivated by learning I wouldn't be able to do this because I wouldn't be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

35:10I would want to feel more in control rather than finding something solving a problem, handing it off. So the learning part to me is really interesting because there's a business handbook called the High Growth Handbook and it has all these, it's like a Bible. It's really cool. My friend gave it to me and she now started a business. I was like, I see why. But in it, there's a quote that says, if your business isn't changing every 18 months, you're stagnating. so you have to get really comfortable with that and you have to be motivated by that so that's been a constant I think the thing that's changed isn't a nice thing that's changed I think it's that um you have to get comfortable with knowing you've done all you can to help people but sometimes like people won't be the right fit and it's okay and like people might be not able to perform at the level you need to going to scale up you have to be super accountable and super for us it's super empathetic as the other one but in most every scale up you have to be accountable and I think it's really hard to have to make those decisions for the business and that I think learning that has been the hardest thing for me we um just mess with the mic we did a restructure last year so I think it's and we're very much back on track and growing and hitting all our targets and it's six months into so our next financial year it's great and we made the right decisions but I think in those moments it's been really hard for me to step back from being personal and I think it probably came from a bad place in me I think it came from me kind of a bit of savior complex like I used to think I was being empathetic by like trying to solve someone's problems in their life or keeping them on or trying and it's like that's actually not me being empathetic me being empathetic is like keep the business going because that's it's like keep having a ship so it doesn't sink yeah 100 but also tell someone if they're not performing yeah and like maybe they have to be let go to work out what direction their life should go in yeah yeah and i think some of the people that we've let go all of them have found incredible jobs because it's nothing on their reflection or ability like i think of it like the sports team netflix have you read their netflix no rules rules book as in that will never work no there's one called No Rules Rules and it's but Netflix is run really weirdly yeah I wouldn't take all that it's very Amazon-y but they essentially say that like you should not think about a business as a family that's really toxic yeah I agree instead it should be a sports team yeah where like it doesn't mean you're a bad athlete if you're just if that sports team doesn't need wing attack at that point and you are the best wing attack person in the world yeah 100 % you're I mean you can tell I don't watch much me neither wing it on guys yeah but it's like if the team doesn't need that that doesn't mean you're bad you can thrive somewhere else yeah yeah yeah so I think making those hard decisions and making them in a more direct quick way where it's like hey this isn't working let's make this as easy and seamless and fair to everyone as we can that's been really hard but I think that's changed a lot I get it like it's still painful to go through and especially if you are doing it for the first time.

38:18Hey, but even that would be the first last time. You'd have had to first one. So it gets better and better. Yeah, first last time. Definitely. For some weird reason, a story from like one of my earlier interviews, literally like two years ago. So I'm going to plug another one. Check out my interview with Daniel Hegarty, who was the founder and CEO of Habito, which was one of like the prop tech, like disruptive brands. They had really cool ads with melty drawings. Yeah, 100%. By Uncommon, who I think is the best creative studio. Incredible. For branding. incredible the best the best so shout out to the uncommon team we're both your fangirls but there was something that he shared which was around he was getting like some pushback from his team at a certain point around kind of the whole b corp thing and it was again this sort of savior complex and he just really distinctly remembered how he was like being made out to kind of be the bad guy because he was sort of pushing against it was like it's like if you haven't been through that process before for anyone who's not aware the amount of time energy and effort which is fantastic because it's a rigorous process and it's very you know and it should be obviously you know it's fantastic but what that does to the business and the distraction that that can create and it's to your point what i'm just linking here is having a boat that doesn't sink it's like we can't have any positive impact social environmental or otherwise if we don't have a business and if we can't be profitable and make money and it's yeah and again it sort of sounds over it's like the ceo you have to work yourself into a position where you've only got three jobs and they are making sure there's money in the account you're attracting the best possible talent and you're communicating the vision like that's all it comes down to but unfortunately because you are so lovely empathetic caring kind everything else the reality is is that when you have to have those tough conversations I fully believe it was harder for you than it was for them.

40:14I think it's like breakups. It's harder being the one doing the breakup. It's also really interesting, like when we did that restructure, someone messaged me and they said, I've been, they were like, you know, I want to apologise for not taking it well. And she said, I've been laid off twice before in, you know, the last two years. But she went, but I thought it'd be different because those were male-led companies. And I completely appreciate where she's coming from. She chose to join a female-led company because she, I don't know, maybe she thought I was making better decisions. But it's really interesting because you're being held to this higher level of accountability and empathy.

40:49Different standards. And you're like, still financially, you have to keep everything going. Like, you have to make the hard decisions. Money has no gender. Yeah. But the expectations are so different. And again, I think, however, when people are going through hard times, however they react, that's okay. Yeah. Because that doesn't, it's just when your back's against the wall, you never know what people are going to say. And she was so well-meaning. But I just remember reading this email and being like. Do you know what's so interesting? Because we've touched on like investors and perception and maybe even, you know, possibly clients.

41:20But what we haven't really talked about, and even just on this show more broadly, is the unconscious bias from team as well, from staff. Yeah. Just holding you to a different standard. Yeah, one of my, someone I met at a dinner actually, she runs a company with her brother. so it's really interesting because it's a family team and he said to her oh my god the problems people come to you with they would never bring to me yeah or they just keep quiet about it because it's like we expect and again that's that's fine it's holding you to a higher standard because the the world needs to be a better place but again it's like pick the values and the battles you can have and if the business doesn't exist i can't have any of this positive impact yeah I'm literally not a charity.

41:59I'm not in life. And I loved working the charity. Well, no, I didn't. The charity sector was too slow. But I wish I could be a charity. I wish. But yeah, I think it's really interesting. My parents in the last few years have been like, wow. Old Jenny from even a year ago would have cried for ages about this stuff. And I'm like, you just have to make the hard decisions. Yeah, you've got to get on with it. Does it get any easier? I think one of the reasons I left, I think I really loved moving to well spending a lot of time in New York and that made me much bolder and more direct nice and I think the part of me that needed to like let go of this like save your Europe whatever it is got partly changed by New York really interesting yeah and then when I came back to UK I felt like it didn't fit so much anymore yeah that makes sense so one of the things now it's splitting my time between New York and Italy Italy gives me the distance to feel like hey you're making hard decisions but like it's not like you're gonna bump into one of your employees in the street there is one person who lives in rome but it the distance really helps me and i think i didn't realize till i i moved in february and i didn't realize till then how much i was carrying this pressure and london started feeling claustrophobic and so you don't realize until you create that space for yourself that makes complete sense so that i totally get it that's been super helpful and what practically have you had to like implement or any practical changes for you to help I mean even just talking about the locate like physical location and geography and stuff as well as helps has there been anything else that sort of helps you operate at your best even in terms of like daily rituals or I just love that sort of stuff it is fun I was like how can we go I would say like first thing is having a really great team so my CFO chief client officer chief technology officer chief people officer all are like I know they've got it I know they will never say they'll put their hand up to take something if they won't do it they are so accountable it is actually insane so that really helps because they will flag things to me that are concerns I should have otherwise I pull myself back into my new shy of the business which again it doesn't serve you three roles you I should not be helping run accounts um so I know that that is the psychologically the best thing and i think it took a long time before we could afford to hire people of that caliber like again being revenue funded you have to go junior first but when i got them it's like get them and trust them and like have a very honest relationship with them so that's super helpful the woo-woo stuff i mean yeah i started journaling that was really great i started journaling on the plane moving to rome so that was hilarious um i used to walk like do a fake walk commute every day yeah i do i do that yeah yeah yeah i do that going to the imaginary office and that psychologically at least because i think when you wake up and you check your phone immediately and you go you spike that cortisol and you go straight into solving to get outside move my body yeah you need to start your day feeling in control of it and i think if you are pulled into it by these lovely omnipresent devices you are working from this reactive of cortisol leave place every day so you just really need to like do something that reminds you you're in control um i quite like joe dispenser okay oh yeah listen to any joe dispenser meditations that again it makes you feel in control yeah those are the things oh and also um you can't not everyone can run away to live in a different country uh one of the reasons i did it was too many random coffee requests which i love but i like can't help it like it's also like if you need to talk through your ideas with someone there are you have friends which I don't know I don't have right now I don't have the capacity to help in the way I want to so I have this email template um she's like I'm literally not even in the country yeah well so it's yeah I'm not that before I moved um it's like uh I copied it from a book I can't remember which book it's great it was like hi um thank you for your your thank you for getting in touch to insert request here thank you for getting in touch to ask about coffee while i'm sure i would love to do that i'm currently focusing on insert big project here so i'm currently focusing on u.s expansion i'm currently focusing on uh financial financial structure my own company so i don't have time however and it's like because you know however i would love to help if i can so if you can send me back your questions via email and it takes me less than 10 minutes to answer i will give you all the advice you want like i will help amazing no one replies this they never have because they haven't done the work of thinking what their questions are because i just want to like chumwag with you over coffee i love i really am grateful for you sharing something that specific and practical because it's those things that really help our listeners and i think it's we talk a lot about you know how to say no one thing is the awkwardness i don't let them down or whatever but also it's like we don't know how to say it so even just you sharing like how you phrase that is super super helpful yeah and paste it yeah incredible and the thing that it actually is so interesting i'm just again i don't know if this agenda thing if it's not fine but like it's so interesting that people think they are they should get your time for free deserve your time yeah and it's like if you hadn't even done the work of thinking what specific questions you wanted to ask me why like you think buying me a coffee like time is the most valuable asset anyone has in their life like you think five pounds for a coffee is worth probably an hour commuting an hour coffee and an hour back for you to what like our stream of consciousness things like to me it's like it's so disrespectful there was one person who i was like hounding down he's lovely i had i listened to a two and a half hour podcast he did he is the founder of um jellyfish so he sold it the largest ever agency exit in the UK.

47:55And he has so much experience and I knew I wanted to talk to him. We had mutual friends who've reached out. We had, you know, I listened to his two and a half hour podcast. I reached out to him. I then on the podcast, he mentioned how he used to run the sunglasses hut shop in Gatwick Airport. So when I was in Gatwick Airport, I took a photo of the shop and messaged it up to someone and said, hey, is this? And he agreed to do a call with me. That little detail. I turned up to that call with questions. I turned up ready to end the call early. but it's like be focused this is why you're you jenny this is why you're in the minority no but anyone can do it and this is the thing that again everyone is underestimated and i want to help people who are underestimated but like don't underestimate yourself like do the work and i find it so interesting i think people it's often anxiety that stops them doing it but it's like turn the anxiety into something productive yeah i love that if you have all these scenarios of what could go wrong or right in your head write down the questions yeah yeah like so that But I think you're right.

48:51I think some people just go, oh, we should have a chat. And it's like, about what? Yes. You must get this all the time. I mean, you definitely a thousand times more than I do. But it is like, how can I ask the question? Especially if it is only via, if you're not saying it in person, you know, things can be taken in a very different way if it's through text or email or whatever. If it's written down and I'm like, I just, I'm like, what do you want to know? What do you want to know? What do you want? What do you want to talk about? In the most polite way, what do you want? Yeah. um i before i come on with my closing traditional question here i just want to share an observation all those bits and bobs that you do to kind of help you i guess operate as your best self the red thread i noticed throughout that is creating space so whether it's the journaling that's creating mental space doing a fake commute literally going out space being away being in rome being away space has been a really clear theme for me across all of that and i think where you could get so easily bogged down in the minutiae as you describe it i think it at your level the way you're operating and of course advice for founders further down the line is you have to proactively create that space for yourself otherwise everything else is going to take over whether it's i haven't heard it framed that way but that is you're so right and i think it's also really interesting it's the difference between again a lifestyle business founder and someone who's scaling a business that will survive without them if i am in everything yeah if i'm literally if there's no space it's not a successful business it's the jenny show yeah exactly it has to scale without you i actually find it we did this um it was so lovely we did this like conference of retreat like this week and some of the speakers they were like you're so to my team they're like you're so lucky to have jenny as a founder and she's and i'm like please don't like just talk about inspiring things like it's very sweet i i i find the ego stuff super uncomfortable and i also because i want to build up people who work for me so i'm like the jenny the jenny show would be a lifestyle business but it's really not that because yeah digital voices is so much more and it it really stresses me out the idea of being i can tell that from women yeah every time it's like oh yeah so do you just love this you just love influence do you love like being consumed by work and having very little elps in your life apart from the gym do you love that you're found lucky yeah you know god you must feel so happy every day you get to run your little creative thing that no i'm here like it's so frustrating so yeah creating generational wealth trying to love it love it love it love it oh jennifer amazing what's one tragedy that's taught you an unforgettable lesson tragedy is a big question um not tragedy i think we i think we see things like moments as the moment that change things like there are tragedies or there are successes but it's actually like they're all micro moments i would say i got i got married super young and i got divorced super young oh i forgot about this wait how old again i got married at 23 but just or 22, 23 legally.

51:59And then, yeah, it was an interesting... Were you just like badly in love at the time? Because that's very young. No. What was the reason for getting married so young? I felt like I needed to tick every box and succeed in every aspect of my life really early. So I put... Where did that come from? Why the rush? I think I was just some weird overachiever. I could say it to my parents, but my parents, my brother isn't like this. My brother's like quite a, I don't know, well-balanced person who doesn't define his life by his career. I think I always wanted to succeed and to like make my parents proud and do everything right.

52:28So I think that's where I just internalized it. So I was just trying to tick every box really quickly. So during I was, the person was American and to stay in the same country, we partly had to get married. But that wasn't why we did like a wedding, like a big, more of my mum's friends than mine because we were so young. None of my friends could afford to fly to America. Right. Like my friends were in the UK. It's like, they didn't even come. They were like, what are you doing? like I kind of wish they'd asked me it's really funny um and then we were together officially for a year but it was the final year of my master's so I had 30 I had 30 freshmen at Harvard that I looked after in exchange for free accommodation and food so I had to like arrange socials for them every week I had to check they're okay I had to advise them on courses I literally lived with them I had four foster dogs that year I traveled back and forth to Lebanon and Jordan I was writing my thesis I was doing Arabic every day I literally for 10 weeks before I got married I did an immersive Arabic course where they said please don't speak to your family and friends because it's gonna interrupt your learning so I came out of that and then got married two days later he like helped arrange the wedding so I was like I won't be there um so I was just I think super neurotic partly because I didn't think I was good enough I think it comes from like I felt the need to compensate yeah the need to achieve something to have value which now I hope has broken a bit in my brain so then him and I we should have always been friends like we had no connection I felt that he was a lovely person um and then we were separated for so we separated after a year of being married and um it took like two over two years to get divorced and I remember feeling like such a failure only because like I think marriage and having babies are things that people have so many opinions on because they're like it's a human thing to do it's like it was so funny I ran into this girl from school on the train and I was like oh I'm sure people from my secondary school will know that I went to Harvard degree and that I work at Google and she saw me on the train and she went oh my god Jen I haven't seen you in ages the only thing I know about you is that you got divorced nothing and I was like oh my god I've literally failed I was like in everyone's eyes the thing they know is the failure and that really switched my view because instead of like ticking all the boxes to succeed I think I had a moment in my life at 25 where I was like oh if I wasn't scared of people thinking I failed if I didn't have to be perfect what would I do and so divorce isn't a tragedy divorce is great divorce is people deciding that they can be happier like it's this weird fundamental testament to hope and hope of the future that like I get it that like you don't need to stay in something because actually what's coming next might be better it's a weird sense of faith and i'm gonna draw the parallel with business as well if it's not working you're flogging a dead horse let it go move on right fail fast all that you know divorce your business if you have to yeah yeah which i think is great i think people like again america has a very different attitude to fail in the uk so um when i had this moment where i was like what would i do if i wasn't afraid of people thinking i was failing what would i do and then i was like i'm not actually happy at google so what else would i do and i handed in my notice actually to do something completely different not linked to marketing at all and that fell through so i was like oh i guess i should start freelancing um so i started freelancing and then it became the agency but i never thought i would run an agency gave way to this phenomenally successful business successful for now like who knows what do you get i mean i'm so glad that you shared that story that's incredible it's kind of part of the game just what the whole show is about literally hence the title strategy and tragedy and my ex is now very happily married and he's great and he's a whole person that he would never have been with me yeah and i'm a whole person i would never have been with him yeah yeah and yeah it's interesting how it took kind of you know let's say like the worst of the worst like this failure to break free of the shackles of other people's perceptions to then be like i'm actually free now you kind of have to go you grow through what you go through you have to go through kind of the worst of it whether it is divorce firing people this is the worst you know to then come out the other side and there's almost a sense of like it can only go up from here right like it can't get anywhere yeah and I think there's also like I don't know for me a character a character arc or whatever and I think a lot of people have this you're young and you you're a people pleaser so you want to be liked then you get to a stage where you're like actually I don't need to be liked by anyone everyone I want to be respected by people and if they don't like me that's okay and then as you get older you're like you know what i need to like myself and i think that it's it's taken it's taken well 35 years but i think it's it's really it's really weird to get to a stage where i actually quite like myself i don't know it's so stupid and it's not stupid at all i think every time like why didn't i have this when i was 18 i'm like god i would have been sufferable but yeah it's funny it's like it's the life it's like in the end it's like if you look in the mirror at the end of the day have you chosen your values do you live by them do you accept the decisions you've had to make no one else is going to see the cards you're dealt they'll all have opinions on the decision but they're not living the cards you're dealt so are you happy with it and if you're not fine make a change but like if you are happy with it great you've got to a stage that people in their lives never get to like people live a whole existence never to like themselves so um yeah that's kind of where i am that's what business has done to me that's what i've been love it so much wisdom I feel like it's you accelerated you to like this wise this wise old woman but you got there in your culture it is true though like business it teaches you so much and we talk about it from a pure practical business sense but the life stuff that you go through as well Jenny you've been absolutely phenomenal this has been so much fun thank you so so much for coming on strategy and tragedy and absolute pleasure to have you this has been great thank you so perceptive it's been great and gong is great thank you to our sponsor thank you also for listening really hope you've enjoyed this i really hope that you felt like a third wheel in the nicest possible way laughing with us joking listening learning something new getting new perspectives and all of this if you've enjoyed it and you haven't already please hit that follow subscribe button it doesn't cost a single thing it takes two seconds really helps me out episodes are weekly so hopefully see you next time as well thanks a lot thank you bye