Overview
- Building and managing a production-line approach to Digital PR
- Balancing creativity and professionalism in B2B marketing
- The challenges of scaling while maintaining service quality
In this episode, we dive deep with Fery, founder of Search Intelligence, about building a fast-growing digital PR agency from scratch. From embracing chaos as a growth strategy to developing enterprise-level software solutions, Fery shares candid insights about the challenges and triumphs of scaling to nearly 100 staff and 7 figures in revenue in just 3-4 years.
A special thanks to our sponsor for this episode, Digital PR Agency Digital PR.
Embracing Uncertainty
“Chaos first, solve later”
Search Intelligence’s growth strategy might seem counterintuitive – they deliberately create chaos and then figure out solutions afterward. This approach included bold moves like:
- Offering no-contract services for high-ticket items
- Rapidly scaling the team despite thin margins
- Investing heavily in technology and automation
- Taking on more clients than they could initially handle
“Let’s create some chaos and then figure it out down the line,” Fery explains. This philosophy has driven their growth from a small agency to a team of 90+ people in only a few years.
The numbers reveal both impressive growth and inherent risks:
- 2023 Revenue: £5.4 million
- Staff Costs: Nearly £4 million
- 2024 Projected Revenue: £6.1-6.2 million
- Operating with thin margins but high growth
Building a Digital PR Production Line
Search Intelligence has invested over £1 million in developing proprietary software to manage their operations:
- Custom client dashboard
- Automated campaign management
- Structured workflow systems
- AI-assisted ideation tools
Their system handles everything from:
- Invoice processing
- Client onboarding
- Campaign assignment
- Idea generation and approval
- Link reporting and delivery
Culture and Team Management
Early growth came with significant challenges:
- Had to let go of 15 people in 3-4 months due to a toxic culture
- Learned importance of setting clear boundaries and strict no-gossip policies
- Developed comprehensive HR processes
Now they maintain rigorous hiring standards:
- 2-hour assessment test
- Problem-solving evaluation
- Typing speed check
- AI-checked press list submission
- Clear KPIs and expectations
Marketing Strategy and Brand Building
Creative Content Approach
Fery’s unique approach to B2B marketing includes:
- Humorous video content
- Industry parodies and creative campaigns
- Personal branding through social media
- High production value content
Sponsorship Strategy
They’ve taken an “be everywhere” approach:
- Sponsoring major industry podcasts and events
- Building genuine relationships with partners
- Creating high visibility in the SEO industry
- Sometimes having to turn down clients due to overflow
Challenges and Future Vision
Current Challenges
- Managing rapid growth while maintaining quality
- Balancing automation with personalization
- Finding and training talented staff quickly
- Educating clients about Digital PR expectations
Future Goals
- Targeting £20 million revenue as potential ceiling
- Planning to productize their software solution
- Exploring new service models and pricing structures
- Maintaining growth while avoiding complacency
Tools & Resources Mentioned
- Roxhill – for finding journalists
- Notion – current project management
- JournoFinder – media contact database
- Croner – HR support service
Key Takeaways
- Embrace controlled chaos as a growth strategy, but have systems ready to manage it
- Invest heavily in automation and technology to scale effectively
- Focus on education and expectation setting with clients
- Balance creativity with professionalism in B2B marketing
- Maintain strict cultural standards and clear boundaries
I know this one’s going
to be controversial.
Today’s guest has sponsored
this podcast for over a year now,
but that’s not why he’s here today.
He sponsors most podcast, newsletters,
and YouTube channels in the SEO space.
And if you’re in digital marketing, you’ve
probably seen him, well, everywhere.
But the story of how he got to dominate
his corner of the industry
is frankly fascinating.
From a humble beginning painting cars and
selling $30 SEO audits, he’s managed to
build a massive agency, generating over
$8 million a year in just four years.
In this interview, we dig into
the real challenges of scaling so fast.
That’s the culture crisis that forced him
to fire 15 people, the constant pressure
of aggressive growth, and how
he manages to stay playful while carrying
the responsibility of 100 employees.
These livelihoods.
This is Fery Kaszoni
from Search Intelligence.
Now, your agency, Search Intelligence,
has grown to, I think, nearly 100 staff
in just three or four years,
which is super impressive.
You’re also in the high seven-figure
revenue range now as well.
You’ve built links for clients
on publications like The Guardian,
New York Times, and basically
every tier one publication that there is.
But this aggressive growth can sometimes
be difficult and risky for a business.
What made you think that you could handle
being at the top of such a business?
Well, I didn’t really
think we can handle it.
We said, Let’s create some chaos and then
figure it out down the line, right?
That was my approach.
I even said to the team,
Okay, let’s create some chaos.
Let’s create a product, a service,
and then we’ll figure out
how to solve the chaos down the line.
That’s how we’ve done it.
We just said, Let’s do no contract,
which is extremely risky.
Having the client being not
obligated to renew, and it’s
a high-ticket service, which means we
hire lots of people to deliver the work.
But if the client doesn’t renew,
we have to pay the wages, but then
the client is not going to renew,
we’ll have a gap there.
But we said, let’s do this
and let’s see how it works.
But I didn’t think we’ll pull it off.
I thought, if we don’t pull it
off, we just get it back down.
But so far it has worked out well.
In the past three years,
we kept on creating chaos
and resolving the problems,
and hopefully we can keep on going.
Do you see yourself as the creative
instigator of chaos in the organisation?
Or what role do you
that you currently hold?
That’s a good way to put it.
I’m going to use that.
I’m going to use that internally.
I think that’s the right wording
and the right place.
I just go downstairs and
say to the top management, Hey,
are you ready for some chaos?
Should we do this?
And they’re like, Yeah, let’s go.
Let’s do it.
And we trust each other.
We believe in each
other that we can do it.
And because we believe we can do it,
we just figure it out down the line.
I’ve heard a lot of fast-moving or very
fast-growing companies talk about
that chaotic influence from the top.
I forget the guy’s name,
but I think it’s Ben something,
the guy that runs Gimshark.
He has a YouTube channel.
He talks about going into departments
and just being this whirlwind of chaos
and shaking everything up.
And then his team come along and make
the changes that he wants,
and then eventually, make things
get better and stabilised.
But is it a similar experience
inside search intelligence?
Yes, I think that’s exactly how it is.
But also I’m looking at ourselves as,
I want to be like Tesla, right?
I want to be like, let’s create something
that nobody has created before and then
figure out how to deliver full
self-driving capabilities into
an electric car like nothing
else, like no other company.
It’s chaos and it’s still not there,
but it’s still better than anything else.
That’s how we are also going.
Let’s set big goals in terms
of products or services that we launch.
Let’s build it up.
Let’s build it up and let’s use technology
to help us build this service
and make sure the chaos is…
There’s less chaos.
It can be quite risky, though, having…
How many people have you
got right now working for you?
Around 90 people now.
That’s a pretty size of team,
and they’re all depending on you.
I’ve heard you talk previously sometimes
about almost missing payroll
and some cash management issues,
certainly in the early days.
Do you ever wake up and think just
like, what have I done here
building this behemoth?
Sometimes I wake up, but sometimes
I don’t even go to sleep because of this.
It is still a very aggressive,
very thin margin operation.
And sometimes we go down
to zero at the end of the month.
And I I’m always transparent with this.
We are still in that crazy phase
where we are very thin with the margins.
I think last year we paid, I think we
made 5.4 million and we paid close
to 4 million in wages, or I’m not sure
what the more than 4 million in wages.
I would have to check it
in our accounting, but it’s a massive
expense, which we are happy to do because
the team that The team is great, and they
make it possible to deliver the campaigns
and to create this product.
So it’s still risky.
We’re still not over the line.
But that’s our modus
operandi as as one would say.
That’s interesting.
I want to get back to the finances
and the numbers a little bit later.
But can we start actually
by talking about the moment
you started to go all in in digital PR?
Because you were involved in SEO and link
and had some other projects before that.
Why did you decide to go into
digital PR and start this agency?
I was always a link builder at heart.
I loved link building.
I built satellite websites for
my tax calculator back in the mid-2010s.
I had eight tax calculator
websites that were linking back
to one tax calculator website.
I paid bloggers, guest
blogs, initialites, and forums.
So I was a link builder at heart.
Was that profitable business?
Were you making a lot of money from that?
Not a lot, but I did
make some, maybe a wage.
Maybe I made a normal wage, not
a minimum wage, but like an average wage.
Of course, it was up and down because
it was depending on Google’s traffic,
but it did make some extra money.
I didn’t make a lot of money, but
it helped me learn a lot and it helped me
learn how to build websites, how
to do guest blogs, the effects of links
and the effects of even changing the user
interface on a website, how it went up.
It helped Google
appreciate the website better.
So it was a lesson more
than a business for me at that time.
Then in 2020, the business was
with the pandemic.
It was me and one other person,
Robbie, who’s still with us.
We are still doing guest
blogs and websites.
In 2021, I’ve seen these great agencies
coming up like Rides
a Seven and Digitaloft
and Reboot Online, all of these.
Even now, I look up at them,
they are great.
I was like, This is so amazing.
We have to figure out how to
do this, but do this at scale.
I think digital PR is great, but when
you do it at scale, that’s where things
start breaking, when systems start
breaking and processes start breaking.
I said, We have to leverage technology
to figure this service.
So in 2021, I said, I’m going
to go all in and we’re going to invest
all the money, all the resources,
all the profits are going to go back
into developing a product.
So in 2021 was the year when we said,
We’re going to stop doing
all this Anything else but digital PR.
So we email our client, say,
it was so great to be working with you,
but just let you know, in the next six
months, we will scale down this service.
So we’ll have to find somebody else
who who writes the content
and who builds the guest blogs
and who does the technical SEO.
And we’ll only do digital PR.
We’ll be a one service agency.
And everyone was happy.
We were like, yeah,
thank you for the notice.
And they actually stayed
on for digital PR.
And then they found some technical SEO
people, and they found some content
creators, like content writers,
and they stayed on for keep on.
Some of them even doubled down
on digital PR.
So, yeah, 2021.
The long answer to the short question.
How do you see yourself
in comparison to those other agencies
in the digital PR industry?
I think we are all on the same journey.
I think we are all trying to
build great products and deliver great
services, and I have the utmost respect
for all of them, genuinely.
I’m competitive.
I want to outprise everyone.
I want to be better than anyone else.
But I think eventually, we are all on
the same journey They have a great
service, amazing service.
I’ve seen some of their campaigns
and they are amazing.
I’m like, maybe we can do those big
asset-based campaigns that they do.
I think everyone is good
at what they do, specifically.
I always look up at them, even
now, I look at some of the campaigns,
and I think they’re great.
It’s an interesting segment
of the market that you’re taking.
You said there that your goal
was to outprice some of your big
competitors, but also you You
talked a lot about automation and process
as a way to gain efficiencies.
Do you see search intelligence
becoming a bit of a production line
factory version of digital PR?
And was it inherently something
that was difficult to…
Because it’s quite
a creative process, right?
It is.
We want to be the production line, but not
the production line that still produces
quality because that’s the thing.
You can do the production line
for any service, but maintain
the quality of service, maintain
the quality of the final outcome,
that’s the most difficult part.
There are processes that you can adopt
to productise or to create the production
line for any service, but making sure
that the service is not going to break
in the meantime, that’s the challenge.
That’s why we are using software.
I think I told you at the beginning
of this, before we joined the meeting,
we invested over a million pounds now
in the past four years into our own
enterprise-level software in-house.
When people see us
getting those links, and we still
use Rocksill to find journalists,
we don’t have a media database.
But for process management and operations,
we could not live without this software.
You could not run hundreds
of campaigns simultaneously
if you don’t have a software.
You could not have the production line
that we have now
without a bespoke software.
I think that was a game changer
for us when we said we’re going
to invest into our own
digital transformation project in-house.
You actually have a background
in software development and coding.
Do you think that helped you
take a more structured approach
towards in-house development like that?
100%.
Sometimes I have an idea and I say,
I’m not sure this is going to work well.
I book off three days in a week
of my time and I code the MVP.
When the MVP is working, and we’ve had
this even six weeks ago, eight weeks ago,
I’ve coded an MVP for an AI, crazy AI
system, and it worked Then I said to our
talented dev team, which is nine people
now, I said, I have something for you.
Are you happy to take this over from me?
They took it over and they made it
this crazy, really good software now.
We are going to start We’re using
that internally from next year.
But it helps.
It helps to have a software development
mindset because we always think
of problems and how can we solve them.
When I hear Molly or Maddie or
anyone downstairs complaining about,
Oh, We have this problem
and we don’t know how to do this.
I’m like, Okay, let’s get software in.
Let’s get the software team
in a call and see how they can solve it.
Can you give us some insights into what
types of solutions you’ve built then?
Yeah, so all of our processes,
from the invoice payment until the links
are reported and delivered,
everything is handled by our software.
So the client pays the invoice.
Automatically, they get logged
in to their own client dashboard.
They will have the onboarding form.
No human interaction.
Onboarding form with some
really good questions.
We explain on the onboarding form exactly
what they’ll get, exactly how it will be.
They complete the onboarding form.
The managers get instantly notified saying
an onboarding form has been completed,
a campaign box is available in the system
to be assigned to a team member.
Then the managers drag the campaign
to a name in our system.
They drop it.
When they drop the box, the executive
gets notified, say a new campaign
has been assigned to you.
You have one week or two weeks
to come up with the ideas.
And then we have a structured format
of how many ideas they need
to do for every campaign.
And then once they have the ideas,
they say, submit for approval, the ideas
are being sent to the manager.
The manager approves it.
If the client has to approve it as well,
the client gets a notification saying,
We have some ideas for you.
Would you like to take a look
and please approve them all?
The client approves it,
then it comes back.
Everything is like
a proper production line.
Have you started using AI in any of
the creative processes here?
We have not I have officially
introduced AI into the system,
but I’ve started using AI to experiment,
even just outlining some ideas.
We have this ideation tool, which we
have that in the system, but I’m not sure
how many people are using it.
Maybe they are using it, but it’s not
like an official part of the process.
It’s just, Oh, we built this ideation
tool, and you can click on it.
It takes the client’s URL
and the client’s preferences,
and it brings back a few ideas.
But we have not started using
that officially as part of
the strict process that we have.
Did you start your agency in 2021
by building these tools, or was it just
a bit chaotic in the beginning,
and then you came and tidied up later?
It was chaotic.
We had lots of spreadsheets
all over the place.
We tried monday.
Com.
We still use Notion, but we
want to navigate away from Notion.
We have the main table.
I think we have 40,000 something
or 50,000 placements, which is so slow.
So now we are building our own notion
internally, so we’ll have our own.
I think we are nearly there.
So our own Notion as part of
the workflow software that we have.
But it was chaotic.
It was like spreadsheets everywhere.
We didn’t know.
We were a smaller team.
We were 20 people back then or even less.
It was still becoming chaotic.
We said, We need to push
all the money back into software.
We need to solve this problem.
A lot changes when you have a team
of over 30, 40 people, and then
When your revenue starts getting
into the mid-7 figures, it’s a completely
different responsibility for a CEO.
What insights, mentality,
or knowledge do you have now
that you were missing in those early days
that could have helped you grow faster
in the beginning or start better?
The most important thing
was the way we have employed people.
I think it was the most crucial,
and the way we set KPIs and expectations
from our team members.
I think now everyone has,
even now we are not perfect.
But most of the team members have clear
KPIs, and we have clear, proper support
for them in terms of system, software,
and even team members, supporting team
members who help them achieve those KPIs.
Initially, it was a bit
all over the place.
We were like, if somebody didn’t pass
the probation period, we were like, Oh,
yeah, let’s give them another six months.
And now after six months,
we were still like, They got a few
links, but let’s give them.
We were not as strict with hiring, and we
were not as strict with, unfortunately,
it sounds bad, with firing.
But I think in the past year,
we have become really strict.
Now, if a team member doesn’t
pass the probation, then we,
very, very rarely, we would say,
Okay, let’s give them some extra time.
Only if we see that the person
is really talented, we give them
some extra one or two more months.
But very rarely.
We actually had a case just
now, and we actually gave the person
an extra, I think, two months
because I think she will smash it.
But hiring was not polished as it is now.
I think that’s the case for most
entrepreneurs, though, because it always
takes a while and a number
of failures and experience.
We’ve experienced that ourselves,
and I don’t know too many entrepreneurs
that start this being good at hiring.
Yeah, indeed.
It’s a lesson.
You have to learn the lesson.
Now, Now we have a test
before people even send the CVs.
It takes like 2 hours to complete.
And it’s like really test for
problem solving, for typing speed,
for They have to submit a press release.
We check if it’s been done with AI or not.
We use Originality
and Winston AI to check that.
I mean, it might not be accurate,
but we do like lots of checks
before we actually get them on board.
I actually read on glassdoor.
Com There’s a number of people
complaining that you didn’t give them
any feedback on those tests.
Is that intentional or just
a failure of the process?
I think it was a two-way street.
We have a large team, and some
team members might feel under helped.
But we are striving.
We are not perfect.
I think we have 65
glass Glassdoor reviews, right?
Or something like that, like two
or three are like two stars and the rest
is like five stars, which I’m proud of.
Now, hopefully we can
keep on growing that.
But we probably we could have
done things better for many people.
But we are taking that feedback on,
and we are trying to make sure
that we learn from them, right?
We always share all the reviews on
Glassdoor with the team and say, and we
are like, Yeah, I mean, maybe it’s right.
Maybe let’s look at this.
But I think, yeah, we are not perfect,
but we are trying to work with every team
member closely to make sure they are
helped throughout the probation period.
Reminds me of the Mark Zuckerberg
quote, Move fast and break things.
Yeah, 100%.
I mean, you can move slow,
but then that’s not exciting for us.
I mean, for me, and I think for
the management, we want to move fast,
we want to set crazy goals,
and then hopefully the whole team,
I think the team is resonating.
I think most of the team members
are resonating with us,
and hopefully we can improve.
If we improve their life, then
they will improve the client’s lives.
Right.
So we want to take care of our team
members, and we want to make sure they
are happy, even though it’s stressful.
Like, it’s not easy.
Digital PR, and you know because
you’ve also done some, digital PR
is It’s freaking hard, right?
It’s really hard.
Like, it’s not like, oh, I’m going
to get in touch with three mum bloggers
and we will pay them £100
and they place the link.
Sometimes you have a good story,
you push it out and nothing happens.
And we are then depressed
and we are sad, right?
Hopefully we can learn from those reviews
on Glassdoor, and I welcome
any critical feedback or any time.
So I want to talk about
your company culture and some issues
you’ve had along the way in just a sec.
But this would normally be the case where
I introduce the sponsor of the episode,
which in a weird way is you today.
So I want to ask if it’s possible, sorry
to put you on the spot, would you mind
doing this live for the episode today?
You’re putting me on the spot, right?
Okay, let’s try.
Let’s do it, right?
Let’s do it.
Today’s episode is sponsored
by Search Intelligence, which
is a digital PR agency, of course.
So we have just launched
a new subscription service for
the Digital PR, which is £900 a month.
So you pay a monthly subscription.
And we get you, for £900,
you get five links in three months.
For £1,800 per month,
you’ll get 10 links in three months.
And for £2,900, you’ll
get 20 links in three months.
We will launch unlimited stories
to hit the KPIs and we’ll just
get you the links no matter what.
We’ll keep on pitching until
we get you the links and you
can cancel after three months.
So that’s the new service.
It’s not There’s a big difference
in price per campaign.
Only we just split the payments
in monthly schedules so that your client,
if you’re an SEO agency, can afford it
to go on a monthly payments.
And that was the goal
because we had people who said, Oh,
can we pay in monthly schedules?
And no, we don’t have that model.
But we have a voice app model,
so this is available.
Thank you very much.
And I hope you enjoy this sponsorship spot
by the sponsor himself.
And thanks, Fery,
for sponsoring this episode.
I heard once you had, is it 100 or 200
domain names in your domain account?
You seem to be hogging
quite a lot of them.
I’ve got 1,000.
The 200 ones were only the ones
that contain digital PR in
the domain name or something like that.
Pr or PR in the domain name.
Do you just get creative
ideas every now and then?
I think I’ll buy that and use
it later, perhaps.
I’m a mess with domain
I have a domain name.
Luckily, my wife doesn’t see the
GoDaddy account because I have an idea
and I just buy not just one domain.
I buy, Oh, if I buy this,
then I have to buy the.
Net as well.
Oh, and I have to buy the.
It as well.
I have to buy the.
Dev as well.
I buy 20 domains for one idea.
I need some control there.
I need some maybe rehab.
Any domain addiction rehab
centres, I’m going to take them.
It’s an interesting business model.
We actually fell foul of this once.
A lot of people used to refer to,
or sometimes refer to Authority Hacker
as Authority Hackers, plural.
And we never bought
the domain Authority Hackers.
So someone, some Russian dude
bought it and then put some fake site
that looked like Authority Hacker,
that copied all our images, everything,
but then redirected all the links
to the buy links to his own product.
That’s crazy.
So we had to fight for that.
But that was quite an
eye-opening experience for us.
As you said, buy the.
Net, if you have individual product
names, buy those as well, buy the plural.
You have a hyphen in your domain
name, your main domain name, actually.
Yeah, I should go.
And I think we tried to buy it
and they asked for a big sum.
I think they know us
and they’re like, Okay, it’s fine.
We don’t care.
But as a whisper, I sometimes even
buy competitors extensions for like, oh,
if you have a good domain, I’m just going
to buy it so you cannot buy more domains.
I know it’s a bit like evil,
but I love domain names.
Just on this, is it ever
a problem that you’re branded.
Co.
Uk?
Because you You have a culture
of clients everywhere, right?
Maybe we could have even
more clients if we had the.
Com one.
I don’t know.
We’ve got this digital.
Pr, which is very independent,
not country related.
So I think if people buy because
they know, they know me, they know
the service, they know the company.
So I want to test, even just
to put just plain text
on a wide background on the website.
And I bet We will still have almost
the same amount of inquiries.
I want to test this for like a month
to see we have changed
a website, no colours, nothing.
And we do have to update
the website anyway.
But we just add heading content
to images and then you contact us here.
I want to test if people will still
buy from us because they know the brand.
There’s a big trend going on right now
in online courses
where instead of building websites
and these long form sales pages
with the VSL at the top that traditionally
courses have,
instead, creators are putting together
a Google Doc with a more summarised,
succinct version of what
they’re trying to say.
And then they just share that document
with all their prospects
rather than even have a website.
So it’s definitely
there’s something in that.
I don’t think the fancy website
is really doing as much sometimes
as people give a credit for it.
It’s everything else, really.
If your service If for selling
your service, you need a super fancy
website to be able to convince people
to buy, then you have a problem, I think.
Let’s get back to the team
and scaling and culture challenges.
You’ve talked previously when I was doing
I did a research for this about having to
let go of 15 people in a three to four
month time period because in your own
words, your culture became toxic.
What did that experience
teach you about your own leadership?
The lessons were that
before we hire people,
we have to first assess them well.
But also when they come on board,
we have to set clear and strict borders.
If somebody starts gossiping one
of their colleagues, I’m sorry,
there’s no more place for you here.
We didn’t do that.
We were allowing gossip.
We hired mostly very
young people, early 20s.
Some of them were absolutely amazing.
They’re real beings and
they’re business-minded and so on.
But some of them were like,
Oh, we’re at another university.
We are going to high school.
That’s how it felt to them, right?
They were like,
Yeah, it was a two loose culture.
We allowed everyone to just
do whatever they wanted
without setting clear boundaries of
this is who we are, this is our culture.
Respect is the only thing that matters
when you communicate with somebody else.
You cannot be, by any
means, disrespectful.
We didn’t set these clear expectations.
That was the biggest lesson.
After that stage, It was like
three years ago, two, three years
ago, I think 2021, when we
started growing or like early 2022.
After that, we were like, no, there’s
no way anyone can speak bad things.
Even in Slack, we never publicly
call out anyone, ever.
If we have to say something about someone
publicly in Slack, only say good things.
If you have some concerns, go privately.
And that’s an unforgivable mistake, right?
We We never have an unforgivable attitude
that we have this clear rule.
We have the utmost respect
for each other, and we have
kindness and love for everyone.
No negotiations there.
What happens when that doesn’t
work out, are you now much quicker
to just get rid of people?
Absolutely.
If somebody disrespects another person
and willingfully are bad people
with a colleague or they have
a bad intention towards a colleague,
we have now a very strong HR department
with very strict processes.
We even pay for Corona.
There’s a service called Corona.
We pay £500 a month, and they also
have lots of lawyers, lots of We have
a large team of HR professionals
who advise us on everything.
If somebody is toxic or really evil
with a colleague, we call them
in a meeting and we say, You have broken
the rules, so you cannot do this.
This was a non-negotiable thing.
Sometimes if it’s not extremely bad,
it’s not critically really bad, then
we give them one warning and say,
This was the last time this happened.
And please, this cannot
happen one more time because
there’s going to be no more time.
So we are very strict
with this and very on the case.
I remember, Gael and I used to
run an SEO agency 11, 12 years ago now.
The biggest challenge we had,
and we were not at that scale
you’re at, but quite a bit smaller.
The biggest challenge we had is,
as we were growing quite aggressively in
the beginning, onboard Putting new team
members and getting them to the level
where they could be impactful and deliver
for clients quickly was a challenge.
We were under quite a lot of time pressure
because we’d want all this new business
and we had to serve it.
That led us to a A lot
of what I would look back on now
as substandard hiring decisions.
We wanted someone in quickly just
so that we could serve the client.
Have you ever had to do that?
And how do you ensure that you get
that balance of quality while still
growing so aggressively?
Oh, yeah, we had that quite a lot,
and we still probably have it.
But we had it even…
It was even worse at the beginning where
we did not have even a training system.
So we just brought people
and said, Here’s the campaign.
This is how we shared
a document with them.
And then that’s it.
Just go and do it.
And then it was wild because the same
as you said when you were growing,
we were like lots of clients
coming on board and we’re like,
oh my God, we have to deliver.
So here’s the campaign.
He’s what the client wants.
Let’s do it.
But we still gave them one to one
meetings, but it wasn’t structured.
It wasn’t like a proper training system.
Now we have, I think
in 2022, when these…
I don’t want to say the people were toxic.
I think we allow
the environment to be toxic.
When the environment was a bit
toxic, I don’t want to…
Probably the people, if they came in
now, they would not be behaving
like they behaved because
the environment is better for them.
So the environment was bad.
But back then, we didn’t
have a training system.
When that happened, we said,
We need a training system.
We need to structure.
I think we have now 30 modules in Illumi.
It’s a system called Illumi.
And everyone who comes on board,
we give them training.
But initially, as you said, it was wild.
That’s the biggest challenge.
When many people join, how do you
make sure they get up to speed fast?
You are currently sitting in,
I believe, is it Whitney?
Just outside of Oxford,
which is not too far away from London in
the UK, for those not familiar with it.
How on Earth do you find
so many people in such a small town?
I believe There’s less than 30,000 people
live in Whitney and about 160,000
down the road in Oxford.
Yes.
Yeah, good.
Wow, you’ve done the research.
That’s pretty cool.
So we have about 20 people in office,
and then everyone, all the PR team, most
of the PR team are in the UK remote.
So we have a large remote team, right?
We have about 20 people who are part
of the media team, the video team,
part of the core management.
We have a big part of the outreach
team, like people who just
send emails and do campaigns,
but they support the PR executives.
And we have some admin.
We We have almost like 20%,
25% of the team in office.
So it would be hard.
If we wanted to hire 100 people,
Justin Whitney, it would be hard.
It would be very difficult.
Unless you hire juniors and then you have
a solid training system where you
hire anyone and then you level them up.
I know it’s not a good analogy,
but McDonald’s, they can hire anyone and
they have a process, a training system.
They bring them in and that person can
contribute to the highest level because
the system and the training is so good.
That would be the only way
we could actually scale here
if we improved the system even more.
I’ve never worked in McDonald’s,
but I’ve I know a lot of their processes
are just so well-structured and
documented throughout the entire world.
Down to, for example, when
they put your food in the paper bag,
they’re told to fold the bag outward
towards the customer Everyone
around the world follows that process.
That’s the level of detail.
That’s what it takes to get,
not anyone, but almost anyone
to be able to work there.
Indeed.
Do you see yourself
and search intelligence
in any way as a McDonald’s of
link building or digital PR in that way?
I don’t mean to cheapen it,
but from the super structured approach.
That’s what we want to be.
We want to be the And I think we
are, we are becoming that,
the McDonald’s of the industry.
And yet we are not perfect, by the way.
We have flaws, we are not perfect.
We sometimes forget to reply to a client
because the email goes down.
Yes, I admit we are not perfect.
But that’s the goal to create
a system so advanced, so
perfect, close to perfection,
that we are becoming the McDonald’s
or the production line of Tesla,
the machine that builds the machine.
Tesla and McDonald’s are
two big inspirations for the business.
How can we generate a service
that’s cheap, good quality, delivered,
or always delivered on time?
We still have timeline issues.
I think most of our agencies have.
But we are still not perfect,
but that’s the goal.
The McDonald’s approach,
that’s a good one.
I didn’t even know that even
the folding of the bag is important.
So, yeah, that’s what
we want to be at least.
Do you see yourself as or do you
like Elon Musk’s approach to marketing
for his various businesses?
You do all these hilarious videos.
I mean, you dress up You’ve done wigs,
you’ve done rap videos with different
members of the industry and brought a lot
of fun to what can sometimes be a bit
of a dry and dull B2B industry.
But at the same time, you’re also
trying to convince major brands
to trust you with their PR.
Is there a risk that you maybe
lose out sometimes or come across
as unprofessional in certain
circumstances with this, do you think?
I don’t I don’t know.
I don’t think so.
Because we have some really big
brands coming and work with us.
We’re not trying to be
the silly, silly, funny.
We’re trying to be like,
and at least that’s the intention,
and that’s why we are aiming for
with our videos and with the work.
Don’t be the silly funny that jumps
off whatever, but be the clever funny.
People are like,
How did they even think about this?
Then some of the clients come into
a meeting and say, I’ve seen that video
that’s so creative that I want to
work with a creative company like this.
I think humour is a good
way to communicate.
I think if you can add creativity
to the humour, I think that will actually
capture people because
the marketing directors are still people.
They still love to see entertainment.
They still love to see infotainment.
I don’t think it would it
would push back big brands,
and it didn’t push back big brands.
We cannot talk about some of them,
but we really had big brands coming to us
just from the week, from like,
Oh, I’ve seen you in that week.
I loved it.
Do you think maybe because
digital PR itself requires more
extreme level of creativity,
sometimes when you’re working with a brand
in an industry that’s maybe a little more
dull, you need to inject something into it
in order to make the campaign successful.
So that’s actually quite representative
of what the company
does for its clients in the end.
That’s a good point.
I didn’t even think of
this connexion, but I think it is true.
If people see extreme
creativity, that makes them think,
how did they even come up with this?
Where did you come up with these?
Then they were like, maybe Maybe
they have some level of creativity
that can help our brand as well.
Yeah, I think so.
I think that is true.
Are you seeing something here with this?
Because some of these videos,
they’ve basically gone viral and you get
thousands, tens of thousands of views.
I’m sure you get a lot
of inquiries of them.
What are you seeing that everyone else
has missed here with this opportunity?
I think just creating genuine…
Nobody’s created high-level,
even VFX-driven humorous videos
in the industry.
I don’t think there’s been consistent
humor-driven marketing in this industry.
I think that’s where we crack it.
That’s where we That’s where
we see something like humour.
And we integrate a case study
throughout the humour, which is double.
It’s like double the value, right?
You create entertainment,
but also like, oh, wow, that’s how
they We’ve done this campaign.
That’s the email.
I think that’s where I’ve cracked
it, where others have not
integrated humour in their marketing.
And we said, let’s just go humour first
and everything else will fall into place.
If people like the content.
And it turned out well.
It actually worked.
Is this driven largely from
you and your creativity, or the rest
of the team coming to you
and saying, Hey, Fery, I think you
should wear this wig and do this?
Yeah, we We have some team members
downstairs where if something happens
in the EU or now with the Paddington
movie, they suggested, I didn’t
have the time to do it, but I’ll do it.
They suggested to do a Paddington parody
where I sit and eat
with Paddington, and then
We might do that in the next few weeks.
But the team does suggest lots of ideas.
Probably, I know, 70% come from me and 30%
from the team, something like that.
But sometimes I drive in the car and I
have an idea, I stop,
I put it in my notes, and then I go home,
go to sleep, and I wake up at four
o’clock, I add some extra paragraphs
there, some extra ideas,
and then the next day I’m like, Hey, aunt,
we have a project, and then we execute it,
and then within two weeks, it’s out.
But that’s the usual process.
Are you just having fun with this,
genuinely, or is it really core
to your marketing strategy?
Have you been quite deliberate about this?
I think it’s both.
We are having fun.
We are having fun, mostly
when we see the footage and when we film.
Usually, filming such
videos is very boring.
Because most of the time, what you do,
especially if you have multiple sets,
most of the time, you’re just
waiting for the sets to be re-arranged.
I had this Bruce Lee video
when I was fighting with Bruce Lee.
So the team cut out
Chuck Norris and they put me in.
So we had probably like 20, 20
something, almost 30 different scenes.
So the lighting had to be changed,
the angle of the lighting.
Everything had to be
re-arranged many times.
And it was just me waiting,
messaging clients, like people
on LinkedIn and so on, whilst the team
was re-arranging the lights and so on.
But it’s fun.
I think it’s super fun
when you see it being put together.
It’s fun when you film it,
when you’re actually filming it.
But it’s also it’s part of our strategy.
I know people are waiting
for our next video, our next content.
And I almost feel guilty because even now
I’ve not produced quite as much lately
because we are like,
back in the business Also
doing too many conferences this year.
I think I’ve done too many
conferences, so it limited my time
to create these videos.
But I know people are waiting for it.
So it’s part of our core
strategy, core marketing strategy.
It works the best for us.
And Do you ever get
any pushback from this?
Do you ever get any negative comments
or hate from people in the industry?
Probably.
Very rarely.
We try not to be offensive.
We try not to be political.
We try to keep everything
as neutral as possible.
Don’t go into different territories that
could cause controversia or could cause
people having a very strong opinion.
Our content always has to It’s going to
be neutral from every perspective, every
political, and everything that we do.
It’s going to be neutral.
So we don’t really get,
maybe sometimes, but very rarely.
Because it’s quite difficult to
put yourself out there as much as you do
and be resilient to when you do get
the occasional negative comment.
It’s quite hard.
I think that puts a lot of people
off creating content and sharing more
about themselves with the in the world.
What advice would you have to people
who maybe have that fear
and are a bit worried about it?
Yes, very good.
I have a system for this.
Whenever I have a person who attacks me
in the comments, and I did have it
sometimes, very rarely,
but it does happen, what I’m doing,
I’m taking a revenge on that person.
So okay, I will just chill, be polite
and reply to him via the comments.
It’s fine.
God bless you.
But I say my next video will have to be so
valuable to the industry that that person
will sit in the corner and cry of why,
like his hate must turn into, I know.
I know.
I either love or be upset because
the next post is so valuable, so good
that everyone in the industry loves it.
Therefore, he has nothing else to say.
So I’m taking my revenge
with extreme value on my next post.
So bring it on.
Is that the saying kill
them with kindness?
Yes, 100 %.
It works so well.
And it works.
And sometimes, those people who have bad
comments, they start like, oh,
this person is actually a good person.
And he actually
starts liking my future content.
It works pretty well.
Kill them with kindness is the best way.
There’s a good Tim Ferris
podcast episode from A long time ago now,
over 10 years old, I think,
where he talks about once you get past
a certain size and the number of people
who are seeing your content,
it becomes really hard to conceptualise
and imagine that many people.
We can imagine being a room with 15
people, but it’s really difficult
to imagine standing next
to 100,000 people, right?
And if you go into any city
with 100,000 people and you take
all those people together, there’s going
to be a few people with some screws loose
that are not going to like anything
you say, it doesn’t matter what it is.
And it’s not because you have
something wrong in your message
or something wrong with you.
It’s just people are different and you
can’t please all the people all the time.
Absolutely.
That’s a very good way to put it.
Now, I’m going to think
of this in my next comment.
If there’s going to be a
more vibe comment, hopefully not.
So you mentioned you’ve been
to a lot of conferences this year.
You also have basically
sponsored everything in the SEO
and online marketing industry,
including our podcast.
Is this a strategy to just be everywhere?
Yes.
Sometimes too much everywhere because
because of our loudness out there,
we sometimes have so many clients
that we literally have to reject them.
So we’re like, this, whatever money
we spend this month is just
wasted money because we cannot
take the clients on board anyway.
We have an overflow.
So it’s like, It is a strategy.
It is a strategy of being everywhere.
But sometimes it’s too much.
I think sometimes it was too much.
We were everywhere, but too everywhere.
And then, how do we…
We cannot hire fast enough.
Our systems cannot take on as many as many
clients, but it is a good strategy.
We luckily we have managed to build great
relationships with you and with with
some other some other really good people,
even on YouTube and on many platforms.
I think it’s more than a sponsorship.
I always feel like there’s a friendship
and I appreciate because I know you
would not sponsor any service.
I know you have a strict,
I feel honoured to be partnered
up with lots of other people.
It’s an extra pressure for me
as a business owner to make sure we,
as much as possible, we don’t disappoint
our clients because you put your face on
your channel to talk about our service.
Therefore, I have an obligation
to you and to Matt and to everyone else
who we work with to make sure that
our service is good so that we deliver
as much as possible and as much value
as possible to our clients.
But it’s a good strategy,
and that’s our approach, a blanket
be everywhere approach.
There’s an interesting dynamic
with sponsorship that happens a lot where
the companies willing to pay top dollar
to sponsor are often the crypto scams and
the dodgy end of the spectrum company.
So it’s really difficult as a creator
to find someone that’s willing
to pay for sponsorship, but also
is going to deliver something
that’s quite valuable to your audience.
You’re going to be comfortable
putting your name behind it,
especially in the SEO industry.
Indeed, yes.
That’s why I appreciate our collaboration
and with everyone as well.
We have collaborated.
How do you even begin to measure
the ROI on something like that.
Yeah, I think we don’t…
I talked about this.
We don’t measure the direct
ROI, and maybe we should.
Maybe we should take
a more scientific approach.
But we don’t, and it
worked out quite well.
The most important measurement
is in our inbox, how many people
say the word everywhere, right?
How many people have said,
Where did you find us?
Like everywhere.
We have the question on the form
on the website where we ask them,
How did you discover us?
And many times we get everywhere
and then Ha ha, a laugh emoji.
And they’re like, Okay, our marketing
worked in the past two months.
It’s good.
And what challenges do you have in then
trying to meet that demand?
Is it just you can’t hire fast enough
or you can’t onboard people quick enough?
Yeah, I think there’s many aspects
that we should work on to deliver faster.
And I think I was saying this earlier,
we had a bug in our software
that limited our open rates
very barely in the past many months.
And we had to work double to deliver the
same amount of links, which was painful.
And we didn’t know what the problem is.
And this week we have
discovered the problem.
Everyone feels so relieved now.
Okay, we are back
to extreme productivity now.
There’s many things we can do.
Improve our system.
And that’s the biggest challenge.
How can we deploy features
in the software fast enough
so that we increase the efficiency.
So we reduce the
communication between teams.
Everything should be automated.
We should not have meetings because that’s
where lots of time is being wasted.
But also educating clients.
I think a big problem is
in the digital PR industry.
I hope, I think many other agency owners
in the digital PR world and maybe even
you are aware of, that educating clients
of exactly what the service is
and make sure they are being
reeducated every two, three months.
And not all of them.
Many of them are like,
I know how this works.
Okay, let’s do it.
But many of them come on board
and it’s our responsibility
to make sure they know.
Digital PR, especially
this specific service,
is not a lead generation service.
It can be It probably will be, but it’s
not a direct lead generation service.
It’s not a brand building service
when we talk about how great your product
is and how revolutionary that new feature
that you have just put on the website is.
Nobody cares about that.
So it’s our responsibility
to educate them.
And if we do that at the beginning,
then the output is going to be faster.
We can get the client to say,
let’s say if they are a sleep client,
they should agree initially
to say, just run with any stories
Let’s say they sell mattresses, right?
And we have to tell the client,
we will run stories that are about sleep.
How to get your kids
to fall asleep on Christmas Eve.
How to fall asleep on an aeroplane
where you’re travelling or how, expert
warrants not to wash your sheets
or not to make your bed in the morning.
As long as they agree with this, then
we can run and we can be super efficient
because we can just, get out lots
of campaigns, different angles,
And the client will be happy.
But if the client is like, oh, I only
want you to talk about these king size
mattresses that we have just launched.
Good luck getting links
with your king size mattresses
because it’s not going to happen.
And it’s the same for every industry.
So as long as we work on educating clients
on what’s coming down the line,
that’s where we can work on
the efficiency of the team.
But also hiring as well, of course,
finding good people, especially in the
industry, and not just talented people,
but people who are driven and who want
to work, who are hungry, because that’s
why we have a large part of the team.
But that’s what we also
need if we want to grow.
We’re not just people
who can do campaigns, but people
who actually do campaigns.
Last year, you made this big public
announcement that you’re trying
to hit 10 million in revenue in 2024.
Did you make it?
No.
It’s Probably, so this announcement was
mid, mid in the summertime and we said
we’re going to launch these new services.
The subscription service
was about to be launched earlier.
We wanted to launch it in September.
We didn’t get there.
If we would have launched that,
maybe it would have gone into closer
to 10 million than we are now.
We launched it.
We launched it last week.
And in four to five days,
we had about 37 clients joining us
in like less than a week.
It was mental.
We had to stop the buy now button because
they were like, people were just buying.
So if we had launched this
when we wanted to launch in September,
maybe we were going to close and some
other services where we want to launch,
productise our software that we have
built, the enterprise software
for running the operations.
We want to productise it
and launch it and give it away to
other agencies and SEO companies.
Now, that’s a massive, massive,
massive business that we would have.
We could have made a lot of money
with that, but we didn’t launch it yet.
It’s coming, but we still
have some things to solve.
In 2024, probably about
6.1, 6.2 million in revenue.
That’s the number.
It’s short of 10 million, but it’s more
than the 5.4 million that we had in 2023.
We have not hit the stars, but I think we
are getting close to the moon.
Do you see there’s a risk of plateauing?
I mean, are you ever going
to run out a potential client?
Are there any hard limits on how big
a business like this can grow?
You mentioned maybe exploring
some SaaS opportunities with some of
the tech that you’ve developed.
Where do you see this going in the future?
I think we can go…
Probably 20 million would be the extreme
border where we will be like, we already
work with At that point, we might have
50% of the SEO agencies in the world
working with us or something like that.
I don’t know.
Some crazy numbers.
But with 20 million, we would probably
be plateaued in terms of team size
and what the email sending can do.
Because you cannot just
send out 20 million emails a day.
And then all the stories that journalists
would receive would be from our company.
That would probably not be sustainable.
Or 50% of the stories that journalists
would receive would be from our company,
which would probably not
look good in their eyes.
Maybe they would love it
because they have good stories.
But I think that’s where the limit
comes from, the email sending and also
the management of the team
and the management of clients.
But Who knows?
Maybe with software, we can
keep on innovating and maybe building it
up so we can do more than 20 million.
Maybe.
I don’t know.
Or you have to start buying
the newspapers at that point, maybe.
Yes, right?
Thanks for the tip, maybe.
There was a joke.
Somebody on LinkedIn
said that our company controls 30%
of the British media, which is not true.
But that would be pretty
cool, 30% of the stories
in the media should be our research
and our expert insights and so on.
Something that you’ve publicly
talked about quite often is how you
reinvest literally everything you make
into growing the business aggressively.
It’s paid off quite well.
You’ve grown aggressively and you’ve hit
some really impressive numbers
in a very short space of time.
Are you concerned at all
if things slow down or shrink,
that that leaves you exposed, personally?
Yeah, 100 %.
I’m terrified by that thought.
And it can happen.
We’ve seen the industry stuff.
It’s stuff out there.
So it can happen.
I’m terrified.
I’m building everything in public.
And we don’t have millions in the bank.
So what’s going to happen
if we have to lay off team members?
Hopefully not.
I don’t think we would have to anytime
soon, but I would be terrified of that
because I would feel like I failed
other people who look up at us and who
see us going and they get inspired by,
maybe we get inspired by us.
And I would feel like I failed them
if I failed the business.
So it’s an extra pressure on me
to keep on pushing.
I’m going to work until I fall down, but
I cannot disappoint other team members.
I cannot disappoint our team members.
Also, people who watch us in public
and maybe get inspired by us.
Are you not tempted, though,
to take some money off the table
and pay yourself a few dividends
and have a healthy reserve in the bank?
I did take some money
in the past few years.
I do have reserves, as a personal
money, and I can inject
in the business if it’s needed.
So I’ve done that already,
but not at a large scale, not millions.
But we will still have some emergency
funds if things were to go wrong.
There was a content agency in the UK
called Make Lemonade, I think it
was, that went bankrupt a couple
of years ago now, I think it
They had about 150 people, and the market
changed when ChatGPT came out.
That wiped out a huge amount of business.
What happened was that they weren’t able
to cut their costs fast enough, and they
didn’t take that action quick enough,
and therefore, just everything caught up
with them, had cash flow issues,
and then went into insolvency, basically.
It’s so sad.
When I’ve seen that news,
I was like, Oh, my God.
I It’s frightening when you see this.
What if this will happen to me?
It was sad.
I feel sorry for them.
But that model, ChatGPT
disrupted that model like crazy.
Completely.
Do you cope well with
the pressure of this?
Because knowing that there’s almost 100
people essentially dependent
on you to lead this thing is,
does that keep you up at night?
It does.
Sometimes my wife is like,
What’s wrong with you?
Just leave me alone.
I need to think of solutions.
Because I’m always, and that’s
how I’ve been in the past four
years, always grow, grow, grow.
And then we have so many
We have 20 people now, what do we do?
We have 30 people now.
Oh, we have 50 people.
Oh, we have almost 100 people.
What do we do?
We cannot let them down.
So we have to always…
I think it’s not a bad thing
that I’m worried because
it keeps me out of complacency.
I think the biggest problem
of any business is complacency,
especially as you grow and people
become complacent, not just the CEO,
which the CEO cannot be complacent ever.
They cannot be like,
Oh, happy, happy, relax.
I’m going to take half of the week
off every week because we are good.
Business killer, business killer.
But also the team members.
How are the team members
keeping up to always be on the edge?
If people start becoming
complacent, at scale at the company,
it’s game over, it’s done.
There’s this.
It’s called the S-curve
of a company’s growth.
They’re trying a bunch of stuff in
the beginning and trying to figure out,
and then eventually, they hit
some product market fit It and revenue
goes up, and they’re in this high growth
phase, everything is great.
But then eventually, through limits of
the process, the industry, or something
else, they’ll reach this plateau
and become a mature company.
That is the point
when it goes one of two ways.
It either starts to get complacent,
as you said, and dip, or they just
tear everything down, break it apart,
and then essentially build a new business
again within this business.
In in order to reignite that growth curve
and take off in a slightly different
trajectory to reach the next level.
I think it’s needed.
I think every time you get to a new
stage, you need to go in, throw in
the nuke in the business and say,
We are revamping this process.
It’s a process, and some team members
will be upset maybe, but otherwise,
it’s going to go down, right?
As you said, the S is going
to go down, like the S Curve.
I think it’s very important not
to just say, Oh, this is
the process that we’ve used.
Why would we change it?
No, let’s change it every six months.
Let’s question ourselves.
Is this right for this client
base, for this revenue,
for this team size that we have?
Probably not if you have grown fast.
So let’s just revamp
every process, every step.
And we are actually doing that.
We are now rebuilding lots of parts
of the process, where, as I said,
we remove notion and we build.
It’s very, very important
because Otherwise, it would just…
Complacency will settle in.
In chasing these aggressive revenue
targets, 10 million a year,
that’s 10 million pounds
as well, as you pointed out.
Yes.
That’s like 12, 13 million
What sacrifices are you making now
that you promised yourself you wouldn’t?
I think I promised that I’ll spend
more time with my kids and my wife,
and it’s not happening yet.
I mean, this summer, we went away
for six weeks, and I’m always
saying to my wife, Yeah, but
who goes away for a six weeks vacation?
But I still work.
I still had my laptop with me,
and we went to many countries.
We probably took off one half
or two months this year as family.
But it doesn’t mean
that I’m there for them.
It means I was there then, and then I’m
really in the business in other times.
I do spend, like Sundays, I always
spend With the family, no work.
Do you work on Saturdays?
I work on Saturdays.
I work full-time on Saturdays.
There is the irony of the four-day
work week where you write, Oh, we are
a four-week company, but I do work on
Saturdays and Fridays as well, of course.
But I promise I spend more time
with my girls and my wife, and I’m not
doing that yet because I just want to
keep pushing with the business, which is,
hopefully, one day it will come.
But I’m using the summer holidays
that we took off six weeks
to get a jail break with my wife.
What do you want?
I spent the whole summer with you and with
the kids doing 50 in like 15 countries.
So I have the right to stay a bit later
to build up this, to go in a meeting
with the deaf team or whatever.
Are you a workaholic?
I probably enjoy work a lot.
I probably am.
It depends on how would you want to define
workaholic, but I do enjoy work a lot.
If I’m not working,
I’m really, really bored.
I feel like why is time passing?
I’m not doing something interesting.
Do you think you’re going to be one
of these people that works for the rest
of your life until you die?
Or would you ever see yourself
retiring and sitting on a beach?
Not in the traditional way.
I think if people start retiring,
they will actually die.
Something starts dying in them.
When people have a job and they retire,
I don’t know, 70 years old,
you can see them going downhill.
And it’s not because they are like,
I mean, maybe because they are old,
too, but most of the time,
because they lose the purpose of life.
They lose that mission
that got them every day,
the problems that they have to solve.
I don’t want to be that person.
I want to be 70 years old
and figure out some things.
I’m not sure what the times
it will bring back then
and how the world is going to be.
Maybe robots are going
to be everywhere, right?
But I don’t want to retire ever
in the traditional way.
You grew up in Romania, one
of the poorest parts of Romania as well.
How has that experience shaped how
you think about money and business today?
Yeah, it’s really helped.
I think it really helped me because I’ve
got nothing to lose compared to the child
hood, I’ve got nothing to lose.
I’ve been there, I’ve seen it,
I’ve built it up, and
I know there’s nothing to lose.
I think, first of all,
it helps me be very grateful.
And when you’re grateful, then I think
good things start happening to you.
I’m grateful that we’ve managed
to do what we did starting from nothing.
I can thank the universe
all the time, like God or whatever,
how great things have turned out.
And it shows that whatever situation
you are in, there’s always a way out.
It just gives you that lesson.
And as a child, I had to go and
do paperwork for my mum, who was not not
healthy, and I had to go to the hospital
to do paperwork for her at 10 years old.
So that helped.
And I had to go…
I know it’s embarrassing,
but as a child, we did not
have money as much as we had to.
So My mum was like, Please go
to the neighbour and ask for some money
until I get the pension.
I was a salesperson at the age of 10.
They were like, Hey, I had to go meet
the neighbour to give us whatever sum
of money to buy some food.
That was the first sales training
for me when I was 10 years old.
I think that helps now.
I think it really helps.
You still do all of the sales
calls, the initial sales calls
for research intelligence as well.
People are sometimes shocked,
and they don’t even know I
own the company or I’m the CEO.
They’re talking to me and they
see this great energy and they’re like,
What’s your role at the company?
I’m like, Well,
I’m part of the leadership.
I founded the business
and they were like, Whoa.
I thought it’s going to be
a salesperson coming in the meeting.
I’m like, No, we don’t want a salesperson
going in a meeting and selling just
so they can get a commission and then
having the wrong client on board.
So it’s always a 15 minute meeting.
I’m always trying to keep
it as short as possible.
I outline everything.
I say, nobody cares about you.
In every team meeting, every client
meeting, I say, just to let you know,
With our campaign, we will run these
stories and not those stories because
unfortunately, nobody cares about you.
And they were shocked, like,
I want to spend 100 grand with you.
And then you say, Nobody cares about me.
I’m almost hurting the feelings,
but in a purposeful way.
I want people to understand that
the stories that’s going to run are going
to be about something else because
that’s what the press cares about.
I just want to make sure
that we have the right clients
on board and they understand
every aspect, do follow, no follow.
Everything else, they have to understand.
I think it’s good.
I think most companies
get a founder bonus, if you
want to call it that, for sales.
So if you’re speaking
to a potential client,
it doesn’t matter if you have the best
salesperson in the world,
you’re just going to convert better
because you’re the founder and there’s
a aura or something about
that communicates something
to the client that works well.
Do you ever see yourself, though,
let’s say you double or triple in size,
surely at some point
you have to step back from that.
Yes.
But in order to do that, we have to…
What the strategy is, and in my head,
we have to get the person who is going
who are going to run the meetings or
the people who are going to run
the meetings,
six months prior to that,
they will have to show up in my videos
so that the world gets to know them
and gets to know their personality,
gets to know who they are, so
they can see the authenticity.
Then when they book the meeting,
Oh, I’ve seen you in various videos.
I know you.
Then they will be almost like me.
That’s the strategy.
If somebody has to go in a sales
meeting, they have to be on social media
in my videos or in a company channels,
which, by the way, are abandoned now.
But we have to…
That’s the only way I would
see this working really well.
Because otherwise, if people don’t know
you and It’s a different conversation
when people already see you and know you.
Do you think growing up poor makes you
more or less willing to take risks now?
More willing, yeah.
100%.
Is that because you don’t have
the safety net or the perception of that,
and you’re just like, I need to go balls
to the wall with this to make it work?
Absolutely.
Especially because of the thought
that whatever happens, whatever situation
you are in, there’s always a way out.
We’ll find a way out, right?
And it’s been proven to me
many times throughout my life.
Therefore, bring it on, right?
Bring it on.
We will find a way out anyway.
If we have to scale down or if we have
to die, which we want, hopefully.
But if that would happen,
there’s always a way out.
We’ve done it before
and there’s always a way out.
So that really makes me more aggressive
in terms of business, in terms of sports.
I said earlier in the podcast, I
respect and appreciate all the agencies,
and I look up at them.
But this is a football field.
We play football.
Let’s play football by the rules.
It does make me more
aggressive on the field.
Absolutely.
Do you think you’re trying to prove
something to someone or to the world?
I try to prove something
to myself of what’s the limits?
Where can we What’s the limit?
What can we achieve?
Not to the world, I think.
Maybe prove to the world
that things are possible.
I think the story of coming from nowhere
and pushing the limits more
and more and more.
Hopefully, it inspires others because
I think that’s an ultimate satisfaction
for me when people come to you
and say, Man, this is crazy.
I’m on the same journey.
I’ve had a rough childhood.
I’ve had a rough upbringing.
You To give hopes.
And that’s so powerful.
It’s so powerful when people message you.
So maybe that as well, knowing that
some other people will be hopefully
inspired, hopefully right.
And that’s an extra pressure on me not
to let them down with what we do.
Do you consider yourself,
last question, by the way,
do you consider yourself successful?
And if not, what does
success look like to you?
I think, depending on Which financially,
I’m not necessarily successful by my
definition, but I think by my definition,
I would own multiple properties and
Probably that’s where I would say
I’m super successful in terms of wealth.
But in terms of human, I think as a human
being, I think I am successful.
For me, success is when you’re honest,
you never have to lie,
and you contribute positively
to the other humans around you.
For me, as a human,
I think I’m successful.
I never say a lie.
I never deceive anyone I never…
I’m always honest with
people and transparent.
And I think as far as I know,
I’m a genuinely good human being.
And because of this, I think I
am absolutely successful.
Amazing.
Fery, thanks so much for sharing
with us today and opening up.
And yeah, as you said, being genuine with
how you feel about these things
is really interesting to see
the behind the scenes of how
you’ve built this successful agency.
Thank you.
It was an honour to be here.
Where should people go if
they want to follow you?
You post a lot on LinkedIn, right?
Yeah, LinkedIn is my main place.
Just there.
Where’s the name?
There.
Down there.
Just search that name on LinkedIn
or on Google, and then you’ll find me.
I’m on YouTube as well.
I should go a bit more crazy
on YouTube, but maybe next year.
I mean, we have to learn
from you, Mark and Gael, and
start going more crazy on YouTube.
But yeah, LinkedIn is my main place.
Brilliant.
Well, thanks very much, Fery.
It was a pleasure to have you on.
Good to be here.