How an Influencer Marketing Agency Can Guarantee Results with Jennifer Quigley-Jones, Part 1

00:00 - Jennifer (Guest)
build it together and then if at any point say they sign an annual contract but one quarter, we don't hit those results, they have the right to terminate the agreement. So essentially we don't want to trap clients into a deal that doesn't help them.

00:13 - Mike (Host)
My name's Mike Lander and you're listening to Higgle, the B2B sales club podcast, where we bring you actionable insights about sales, RFPs, negotiations and difficult procurement discussions from sales leaders, brand leaders and procurement leaders. Please subscribe to get updates when new episodes are released. Jenny, thanks ever so much for joining me on Hegel, the B2B Sales Club podcast. It's great to have you as a guest.

00:40 - Jennifer (Guest)
Lovely to be here. We've had a chat and I think it's going to be fun.

00:44 - Mike (Host)
It'll be a lot of fun. Definitely a lot of fun. So, without further ado, who are you, what do you do and something unusual about yourself.

00:52 - Jennifer (Guest)
Love that you're making me bring my whole self to work here. This is fun.

00:55 - Mike (Host)
Absolutely. Yeah, let's start with that. It's much better.

01:05 - Jennifer (Guest)
So I, founder and CEO of Digital Voices, which is, I think, the world's largest female, founded and run independent influence agency. Wow, I didn't realize which is kind of crazy Congratulations.

01:10 - Mike (Host)
Thanks for introducing me that way I can and I didn't realize so yeah, the business has been going about eight years.

01:18 - Jennifer (Guest)
I started it by myself for £500. And something unexpected or interesting about me I actually, before running Digital Voices and before working at YouTube, specialized in the Middle East and the Syrian refugee crisis. So my specialism was economic integration of refugees and very different. I don't think you ever know where your path's going to end up.

01:39 - Mike (Host)
You don't, no, and you must have learned a lot and been humbled by an awful lot of things as well.

01:43 - Jennifer (Guest)
Yeah, you can't not be happy, I don't know. When you see people living when every aspect of their life that's comfortable has been taken away, and how similar they are to you Like. Often they've gone to college, they're educated, they care about their family, they care about their friends and then they end up in a refugee camp trying to use their skills. It does make you think on a very human level how lucky you are. You can't ever. I can never.

02:10 - Mike (Host)
Really as stressful as my days are at work, I can't ever really have that bad a day when your basic needs are met Absolutely. So just describe for people listening broadly what does your business do so kind of? What problems does it solve? Who does it solve it for? What kind of things do you do?

02:19 - Jennifer (Guest)
So Digital Voices is an influencer marketing agency and we run campaigns involving influencers and social media for brand clients. So our clients are often some of the world's best known brands, including, like Unilever, PepsiCo, Adobe, DoorDash so we get to basically do all the strategy for how their influence campaigns are going to succeed. We then source all the influencers, we define their content with them, we brief them, we do onboarding calls, we contract them. We then also do all the admin of running the campaigns. We define their content with them, we brief them, we do onboarding calls, we contract them. We then also do all the admin of running the campaigns and we've built tech to make that easier and more efficient for our clients so it saves their time. And then we do all the reporting, all the approvals, all the data stuff. That's really fun to show its impact.

02:59 - Mike (Host)
And broadly. I mean, we didn't rehearse this question, but I thought I'd ask it anyway. So if you look to all the different channels, marketing channels today, so obviously you've got Influencer, you've got PPC and you've got SEO and you've got organic and all that kind of stuff. Where does Influencer sit from a brand's perspective? Where are they thinking this is going to go?

03:20 - Jennifer (Guest)
It's really interesting because I think this is where I see changes happening now. So brands were thinking of influencer as just you take maybe 10% of your marketing budget and you pay creators to produce content promoting your brand and it goes on either their TikTok, YouTube or Instagram. Sometimes they were thinking, okay, let's pay them to produce paid advertising, so paid ads which are outperforming the brand owned ads, which is interesting and sometimes they were thinking, let's just use them as affiliate and pay them if there are any sales. What's changed now, and specifically in the last year, Unilever new CEO, Fernando Fernandez, which I love that name and I love this man as a person he came out and his first speech as new CEO he said I want us to be increasing our social and influencer budgets to 50% of our marketing spend.

04:00
Yeah, he wants to 20x the amount of influencer marketing work Unilever's doing. He said he wants to go hyper-local. So he wants every single one of the 19,000 postcodes in India to have at least one influencer working with them in each postcode for Unilever. Seriously, yeah, he's gone really hyper-local at scale and I think that has changed the way a lot of the brands were approaching it, because they were approaching it as as this last minute, test and learn, let's get a few celebrity-ish influencer names. Now the brands are thinking, oh my God, we need to include influencers in all parts of the marketing mix. So influencers is the content that's making paid ads influencers in out of home, influencers in TV, influencers at events and experiential. So I think suddenly it's opened up this world of influencer marketing and made it far more multifaceted and, yeah, that's really increasing.

04:47 - Mike (Host)
So why? Because ultimately you take Unilever as an example, then ultimately it's the consumers they're trying to reach and they're trying to build a genuine connection with. Why are influencers so much more valuable now than they were before? What's happening? Is it the authenticity? Is that what we're looking for as consumers?

05:03 - Jennifer (Guest)
I think it's the humans like humans and they trust other humans.

05:07
And I think, especially in an era where there's so much AI content and also there's so much demand for short form content, people hate being advertised to.

05:14
They were already using ad blockers, right Like everyone had ad blockers on their computer, and so I think they don't like the idea that brands are controlling the narrative they want to be sold to by someone they relate to, and this parasocial relationship has just really intensified after COVID. I also think the demand for the volume of content these short form platforms require means a brand can't often afford to produce the volume that it demands, or they won't afford to take the creative risks, so they're often not brave enough, whereas if you pay an influencer and they test something and the messaging doesn't quite work, you can just be like, okay, it didn't work. So I think there's a bravery issue, there's a content scale issue, there's a localization issue, and then there's the cost of production as well. So it's kind of become this beautiful cacophony where now influencers are, I think, having their moment in influencer marketing sorry, in marketing in general and I also think we're forgetting how behind most brands are.

06:11 - Mike (Host)
Yeah, yeah.

06:11 - Jennifer (Guest)
So we're still at this point of. I don't think we've reached, we're at the hockey stick point now, but I think there's about to be a huge growth.

06:18 - Mike (Host)
So on the adoption curve, we're on the kind of like we're on the upwards phase of that early bit. We're nowhere near the top, nowhere near.

06:27 - Jennifer (Guest)
Exactly on the kind of like we're on the upwards phase of that early bit. We're nowhere near the top. Nowhere near Exactly. And it's really funny, the bigger brands you speak to, the more you realize actually there is a real gap here for working at scale.

06:33 - Mike (Host)
It's been a wake up call, I bet, so I'm going to put you on the spot because it's always fun. Nothing unpleasant, believe me. What's your view on AI influencers?

06:42 - Jennifer (Guest)
I definitely think there's a space for influencers to use AI to produce a higher volume of content.

06:47 - Mike (Host)
I think AI influencers who are not as in not real human beings, not real human beings.

06:52 - Jennifer (Guest)
I think they're an interesting tool, but I have a couple of issues with them. One I do think you have to be declaring AI, and I think it's really hard as a consumer to relate to an AI influencer saying they're trying a lipstick Like how do you know it's going to work for you? How do you trust that?

07:06 - Mike (Host)
Yeah, yeah, good point.

07:07 - Jennifer (Guest)
I think it's going to be the future.

07:08 - Mike (Host)
Can't be authentic.

07:09 - Jennifer (Guest)
Yeah, we're just not there now in terms of driving commercial results. My other issue is a moral one with AI influencers, and it's that we talk about the power of the creator economy to democratize media and to build micro entrepreneurs, and we talk about how we want diverse and inclusive approaches to campaigns with people who resonate with the communities you're trying to reach the target customer. So it's not about a tick box diversity. It's about someone feeling like your product will work for them. My fear is a lot of these ai influencers are actually produced by design agencies. So you may have an influencer who looks a certain way, but the person who makes money from it is a white man, because the overwhelming founder of these agencies is a kind of white man, often from a privileged background, and I just think if you're really trying to democratize your media spend and really trying to empower micro entrepreneurs from all these different communities, it can become a bit performative.

08:03
And I have a bit of an issue with that, like brands trying to look inclusive when actually their budgets are going to the same people over and over again.

08:10 - Mike (Host)
That's a really good response because I can see there will be a temptation by brands to say, rather than paying an influencer, wow, let's just create our own. We own the AI influencer. It costs us buttons and we can try all sorts of things out, but it might bounce off the sides with consumers.

08:26 - Jennifer (Guest)
Yeah, and I think also, brands aren't going to take the risk with AI influencers to do things that might resonate Like I think what a lot of people like about influencers is when they make mistakes or are humans or how they respond to that. So I think it's going the wrong way. I think brands need to accept that if they're working with an influencer, the audience don't think, oh, they agree with everything, that they have their opinions, let them have their opinions. You're borrowing a tiny tiny bit of their platform to create a product. I think the idea of going back to oh, I like AI influencers because I can control the outcome is missing the entire point of the industry.

09:01 - Mike (Host)
Very good, excellent. Let's move on. I'm conscious of your time, so can you talk about that kind of rollercoaster journey you've been on? You started with £500 and an idea and now you're circa 80 people, offices in New York and London. Why did you do it, what kept you going through the dark days and what would you do differently?

09:18 - Jennifer (Guest)
So I founded Digital Voices back in March 2017 with 500 pounds about $700. I'd worked at YouTube for about two years beforehand and my job was officially as a strategic partner manager and essentially that role is to help YouTube creators grow on YouTube, because when they make more money from ads, so does YouTube. So it puts you really close with the creator economy and helps you interface with all these creators one-on-one. And I found in 2017, I felt like I stopped learning in the job and I also felt like there was this huge gap because everyone doing influence marketing was doing Facebook or Instagram.

09:52
Tiktok didn't exist and all of that was about awareness and none of it was about sales. And I could see all these YouTube creators I worked with driving sales for brands and being left out of campaigns because it was more expensive, longer form, harder to sell. So I handed in my notice, never thought I'd run a company, started with 500 pounds, freelanced for nine months, and hated that, hated freelancing, and so I decided, actually, instead of doing this for myself, where when you freelance, you're either given the strategy or the execution, I thought I'd love to do both. So I guess I should found an agency and I'd never worked in marketing. Apart from the YouTube role, which wasn't marketing, it was working with creators. I'd never managed anyone before and I'd never worked at an agency.

10:37 - Mike (Host)
So it's kind of a weird thing. So, perfect conditions, perfect conditions to start an agency, brilliant.

10:42 - Jennifer (Guest)
Also, I had about 10 grand in savings and I thought that was enough to live in London, wow. And I look back on that and I think I was 26. So I mean, at 26, 10 grand feels like a lot of money. What an idiot. I hate the idea of taking money from anyone, even when I would go traveling and be like at the stage where I've gone traveling at points and I haven't had the money to have food. So I've been with people and they've ordered food in restaurants and given me their leftovers because I would not ask my parents for money. I'm like weirdly really proud. But yeah, I think it was utter idiocy. To be honest. Why did I start a company.

11:22 - Mike (Host)
So this is quite an important point. This is that you've been freelancing, and I've been freelancing before as well. You started a business, it's really hard, it's really hard, and you had some savings and then it all goes to shit and you're like Christ, what did I do that for? Yeah, so you must have broken through reasonably quickly, because with that little savings you can't survive. You literally can't survive. So what was the breakthrough?

11:43 - Jennifer (Guest)
I also think people don't realize, if they want to start a business, how much they need to cut their costs. So for me it was like number one thing to pay was staff. And then when we had an office, it was like paying for the office and then it was if anything's left, I'll pay me. So I even like with the team. I read this. I read something about how, when people are making impositions of financial stress, you can't make strong, accurate decisions. So I was like great, I don't want anyone who works for me to feel financially stressed because I need them making the right decisions. Of course I put myself into financial stress, but I decided I could handle that. I ended up living in this tiny apartment that was like a tiny room in a three bedroom apartment well, a two bedroom, one living room apartment that had been converted to three bedrooms. There was no living room in Dalston. It was £597 a month and I was like, well, I'll give myself the minimum cost so that I can do this and everything back in the business.

12:33 - Mike (Host)
At the very early days. What happened in the very early days to get your first one or two clients? Because that's the hard bit is getting the first couple of clients.

12:43 - Jennifer (Guest)
Yeah, the first big client I'd say that really changed things was Rolls-Royce Jet Engines. Whoa yeah, Rolls-Royce and the RAF. It was the RAF's 100th birthday.

12:54 - Mike (Host)
So you started with a nice small brand.

12:56 - Jennifer (Guest)
Yeah Well, this is nine months in, after the freelancing. For nine months I worked with a lot of small brands who were startup founders, who shout at you when your invoice is due every month and tell you you're worth us. That is a really interesting experience as a freelancer. You're like thank you so much for telling me For feeling so valued.

13:11
Yeah, really, I was like I will never make someone who works for me feel this way, ever Good, like no matter how. If you make the biggest error, I would never make you feel as small as those people make me feel like never. So, yeah, when Rolls-Royce came to us, it was actually through a really random person. So Rolls-Royce wanted to gift the RAF a youth engagement program, so to get young people excited by space technology, engineering, maths, and they approached this random person that I knew through the industry a YouTube creator, manager and they said, oh, can you do this? And he and someone had come up with a crazy idea for a TV show. And I said, hang on, guys.

13:49
I got involved and I was like let's not make a TV show that doesn't make any sense. And I was like, let's not make a TV show that doesn't make any sense, young people don't watch TV shows. Let's make a YouTube channel. And so then that won the trust of the client. So it was even like a really random introduction from someone who was very circuitously involved in the industry. That was the first client, but I would say that every time we've worked with a client, I've tried to build a business model where we under-promise and over-deliver, so we guarantee results for every campaign.

14:12
We're willing to sacrifice our agency fee to get those results.

14:15 - Mike (Host)
Let's dig into that, okay, yeah, this is great. So you know those questions. I have the virtual questions. We've torn those up now, so they're in the bin.

14:26 - Jennifer (Guest)
Forget them.

14:28 - Mike (Host)
So what do brands want? Brands want results. They pay agencies to get results. Most agencies will not go on the hook for the results. Sometimes I understand why, and perfectly reasonably, they say there's too much of a disconnect between the work they do and the results. I'd argue well, maybe you should find a different type of work to do that impacts the results directly. How do you think about the model? I don't care what framework you use, just whatever's in your head. How do you think about that? Brand wants to do something. They need this kind of outcome and then reverse engineer it back into. We can do this and we can guarantee they're going to get that level of performance. That's really hard to do.

15:05 - Jennifer (Guest)
I always like the hard. The hard way is more fun. It sounds like it.

15:08 - Mike (Host)
Okay, I think Give me some examples without the brands. You don't have to talk about the brand name, just talk it through.

15:12 - Jennifer (Guest)
So, firstly, fundamentally, I think you're right the agency model is very broken and the billing per hour model is broken.

15:19 - Mike (Host)
That's completely broken.

15:19 - Jennifer (Guest)
Which is why I was really glad that I hadn't come from that background, because if I had, I'd have carried all of those ways of working and established digital voices very differently.

15:27 - Mike (Host)
How bonkers is it to say to someone do some work for me and I'll pay you every hour that you work? Yeah.

15:33 - Jennifer (Guest)
And it incentivizes you to take longer.

15:35 - Mike (Host)
It's nuts, whether the agency morally says no, but we'd never charge you more because which I agree that's fine, but just the basic principle of paying for hours.

15:47 - Jennifer (Guest)
I've always thought is insane. It's so archaic, yeah. And so when I had approached founding an agency from a tech background, I was like cool, we were told to get results and efficiency. So then I think that shaped how I built digital voices. So we guarantee, say it's a brand awareness campaign, we'll guarantee views or impressions. So we'll say to a brand hey, you need to raise mass awareness of whatever this mohu mohu drink product. We will, for a million dollars, guarantee it will get 50 million views. Right, if we do not hit that number, we will make sure that influencers and the creators get paid because they have the power to destroy your brand.

16:23
We want to make sure they're very happy absolutely but our agency fee portion so you'll take the hit yeah, we're like. Our job is to get the data right because we're building the strategy, so our job is to to do that and to pick the right influencer. Yeah, To pick the right influencers to negotiate the right fees so you get those results. Exactly Design the campaign. So if we don't hit those numbers, we either commission more content from our agency fee until we do.

16:46 - Mike (Host)
So they get more, yeah, yeah.

16:47 - Jennifer (Guest)
Or if the brand says it's too late, we want it back. We give them back a portion of our agency fee linked under performance yeah, okay, because it's like again, that's where our profit should go Exactly. And then also we get the benefit of learning from every campaign. We get the benefit of the data to help us benchmark more strongly in the future. So it's something I really believe in and I think it shifts the entire client dynamic, where you are then on the same page and you can say, hey, the reason we're suggesting this creative is because it works. If a client then pushes through creative that won't work on social, we can say no. We can say no because we're like the, we won't because your fees are at risk.

17:22
Yeah, so it's actually the entire dynamic, which I think has built a lot of trust for us with clients, and this is, I think, leading on to a conversation that one of the questions you're going to have is how do you, as a new player in the space, with new clients?

17:33 - Mike (Host)
Yeah, exactly.

17:34 - Jennifer (Guest)
Do something different and show them that you're willing to put your money behind the results. We're willing to take this risk. Are you willing to take this risk with us? Because I think it's very easy to keep doing things the way they've been done before. But who's learning from that? Who's gaining anything interesting? And brands also. Then they don't want to do exactly the same thing as their competitors, so it's trapping them into a pattern that doesn't make sense.

17:56 - Mike (Host)
Do you also work with? When you negotiate the commercial model with the influencers, do you also do some of the influencers go, yeah, I'll join in with that model as well, or not?

18:06 - Jennifer (Guest)
The issue with that, if you do it is the issue with that if you do it is that it incentivizes the influencers to buy fake views and also it passes on the risk from us.

18:14
It's like it's a fifth, it's an option and there are certain clients who like that option, which is okay, but from my perspective, if you ask to be lied to, if you're asking for something impossible, you're asking to be lied to. So it should be our job to get the data and the predictions right. So, which is why we've invested so much in AI and building tech and data, so that we can make smarter decisions and do stronger, more effective.

18:35 - Mike (Host)
So how do you do the forecasting At that scale? You need a lot of data to give you forecast windows that are accurate enough for a client to go, yeah, and for you to go. We can pin our fees against this. Yeah, well, it's interesting because you need the data but yeah, and for you to go, we can pin our fees against this. Yeah, well, it's interesting because you need the data, but also clients sometimes trying to hold you to unrealistic numbers.

18:58 - Jennifer (Guest)
So they want absolutely. That was the next question. I think you have to be very strong. So initially we would do it by platform. So when we didn't have that much data, we'd do it by okay, we know a TikTok average CPM from campaigns is this. We know YouTube CPM is here. We know an Instagram CPM is there.

19:11
As we've done more and more campaigns and also as we've worked with certain of our clients, we've kept for like six years. So the more data we have on them, the more we can benchmark according to their past performance. So then we can tailor the, the guarantees that way. So it's been all tailored by industry. So tech CPG, but I think that's been kind of crucial to the way we've built trust with our clients and even, like geographically, we've expanded with them. Or if we've done one trial, they've often then given us another product to work on or another market because we've shown that we're a trustworthy partner. So as quite I mean an agency of like 70, 80 people, we don't have that many clients, but the ones we do are ones who we've worked with for a very long time and built really in-depth trust with. So I think that's been yeah, it's been a privilege and it's been very different to the way a lot of people run agencies.

19:58 - Mike (Host)
Because those models rely on trust, because actually it isn't always possible to get 100% accurate data and sometimes some campaigns don't quite deliver, but you've got a follow-on campaign If you've got a trust relationship. There's some give and take in that where they don't ask for the feedback on that campaign because they know you're going to work together over the next 12, 24 months.

20:18 - Jennifer (Guest)
Well, and the other thing is we, so that's for awareness campaigns. If you go to performance campaigns, we'll often use a first trial to set a benchmark. Customer acquisition costs CPA.

20:27 - Mike (Host)
You don't take their benchmark. You run a pilot to create the benchmark.

20:30 - Jennifer (Guest)
Build it together and then if at any point say they sign an annual contract but one quarter, we don't hit those results, they have the right to terminate the agreement. So essentially, we don't want to trap clients into a deal that doesn't help them. No, exactly, we want to be like a growth partner. And again, I think it's just. There's this book called the Medici Effect. That is all about how true genius comes from the intersection of two different disciplines, and I think people often think, oh, I haven't done that before, so I can't do it Right, whereas it should be. Oh, I haven't done that before, how would I approach it differently with my knowledge or my critical perspective? And that's one of the reasons I think lots of people who don't think they can be entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs.

21:09 - Mike (Host)
Right yeah, self-limiting belief.

21:11 - Jennifer (Guest)
Yeah, but to me, the thing that's motivated me in the last eight years has been learning. So I know that faster than any other career that I've ever done, especially faster than working in international development I'm going to fail and learn quicker, yeah, so that's what motivates me. I think if you're motivated by a monetary outcome or by accolades, that's, a lot of people in entrepreneurship are motivated by ego, but I think it's such a long journey to get there that you probably won't have the grit to motivate you. I think try and find something that motivates you. That's an inherent part of the journey, not just the destination.

21:45 - Mike (Host)
Absolutely.

21:46 - Jennifer (Guest)
Because otherwise you're going to hate every day.

21:48 - Mike (Host)
Absolutely right, absolutely right. Definitely you're going to hate every day. You're absolutely right, absolutely right, definitely Conscious of time. So let's just jump to the last question, which was broadly about the sales and marketing engine. How do you acquire new clients? We were talking before the recording Given, you've had a seven, eight year history. Every year you're acquiring new clients. You're bringing on board new clients by nature of the fact that you're new and you're high growth, whereas some agencies might have a long tail of 90% of their work and then 10% comes from new clients every year. Talk to me about how do you get engaged with new clients. How do you find them? How do you engage with them? Then, how do you obviously engage with the first piece of work. After that, it moves on to ongoing relationships. What's your engine for acquiring new clients?

22:32 - Jennifer (Guest)
yeah, it's very different. I would say a couple of the things that make us different. One the caliber of clients we have are like, really household name brands. That, yeah, it's kind of terrifying. I sometimes pinch myself because I don't know how we've got like to get to work with adobe for the last three years, like how amazing cool to get to build Lithuania's second ever unicorn over the last six years. So I feel very lucky because a lot of the brands we work with are household name brands. And the second thing that probably makes us different is that we actually don't have a sales team. So I was like the 70, 80 people. We don't have anyone doing this step.

23:05 - Mike (Host)
Just pause a second. Go back, you've got. You've got no one in BD. No one's got the BD. Hat on that says I'm the full-time business development person. No, and you're 80 people.

23:16 - Jennifer (Guest)
Yeah, I don't know if that's fully or no, so I'm open to being so.

23:20 - Mike (Host)
how does it work? How does it work?

23:23 - Jennifer (Guest)
So a lot of our clients come to us, or referred to us, or recommended, and then they often find us through marketing as well. So, and then they often find us through marketing as well. So even we invest in key marketing moments like south by southwest, can we really invest a lot in retaining our clients? So the first tip I'd say is like, instead of winning from scratch, the best thing to do is retain clients.

23:43
So if you're not retaining them work out what you're doing wrong before you focus on like churn and building a new business. Why do you end up like a struggling SaaS brand that's faking their numbers to private equity? Don't do that. So number one is retaining is the cheapest way to win a client, so make sure you're building that trust. Second thing that we've done a lot is lead through thought leadership. So we've just launched something called the Global Influencer Council that brings the top 10 best minds in the US in brand marketing working with influencers, and the top 10 brand minds in EMEA that work with influencers together and we do a lot of reports, thought leadership talks.

24:17
I think also I wish I'd shared the journey more. I'm not naturally a TikTok creator or anything. I find it really hard to film myself, but I find the more open I am about challenges we're going through and the more I share and have those conversations publicly. Actually that's driven sales for us as well, because clients if you're dealing with a problem in the industry, clients are dealing with the same problem. There might not be a magic solution, but don't build in silence hoping you're going to find the magic solution. You've made yourself irrelevant. So I think definitely share problems, be very open about the process. That part of marketing has been crucial and transformative. So I'd 100% say do that.

24:55
The other thing is, like you mentioned, with the guaranteed results model. This is a very human game of building trust and I think people, when they hire big sales teams, they often it can come across a bit smarmy. It can come across as trying to approach someone for their job title. One of the things I love is like helping our clients get promoted, or like working with them in the long term or watching the way they advocate for us with other clients or if they move roles they'll bring us too, and I think that's don't take the human out of it. So, yes, we have a different business model, but that is all based on building trust and showing that we are a reliable partner. So the more you can do that, the more likely clients are to take a risk on you. And final point is, I think the US is better for that.

25:35
The US is more open to taking risks on a new agency. So there were about five of us at the company going into COVID. So, yeah, five employees, and then really quickly it became 20. So COVID helped accelerate because production was being done at home.

25:50
But then once we expanded to the US. Now, 50% of our revenues come from the US within three years, and that's because they are so much more willing to take a risk on something that's bold or different. And I think once you find those people who are willing to do it, they also compound as willing to take more risks more often. So then use that as a case study to get other brands excited.

26:11 - Mike (Host)
So that's how we've done it Brilliant, Jenny. It's been amazing. I mean I think we should end on that point, because it was an excellent way of describing how you grow a business through thought leadership and being a trusted advisor and having a commercial model that actually lines up with their interests. They want to grow and you're prepared to take a risk on your ability to deliver their growth ambitions.

26:33 - Jennifer (Guest)
Thank you. Yeah, and what's the point of building a business if you're not helping other people build theirs as well?

26:37 - Mike (Host)
Yeah, absolutely right, definitely, jenny. It's been a real pleasure Been a real, real pleasure. Where can people find out more about you?

26:44 - Jennifer (Guest)
Digital Voices on LinkedIn. We post a lot, so you can either find me on LinkedIn, jenny Quigley-Jones, or Digital Voices and the team would be really, really happy to chat.

26:57 - Mike (Host)
Brilliant, Jenny, it's been a pleasure. Thanks, Mike. Have a lovely day. Thanks for listening to Higgle the B2B sales club podcast series with your host, Mike Lander. Please subscribe so that you'll catch all the next episodes.