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in the show notes. I

1:05

felt embarrassed. I felt ashamed.

1:08

I felt frightened.

1:10

I felt relieved. I

1:12

felt massively relieved that I

1:14

think this thing was now being talked about. That

1:18

actually someone had gone, this is something to, this

1:20

is something that needs to be dealt with. That's

1:23

Andy Brown, a leadership coach and advisor

1:25

to founders, particularly in the agency space.

1:28

He spent decades in creative services, but the

1:31

period which stings the most is what we're

1:33

talking about today. Andy's

1:35

first business was a thriving marketing agency,

1:37

but although it looked rosy on the

1:40

outside, Andy was in personal turmoil, which

1:42

left him boarding a ferry to France

1:44

to escape it all. It

1:56

all started so well. creative

2:00

agency, marketing agency, so we would

2:02

help. I described this

2:04

as a bit of a bottom feeder. We would take

2:06

any work that came along from

2:10

design for print, advertising,

2:14

and everything in between communications, internal comms,

2:16

that sort of thing. So we were

2:18

a communications agency, advertising agency, and

2:20

we did okay. And we were regional, and

2:23

we had a good reputation. So

2:25

it was a business

2:27

that had a right to exist. You

2:30

know, we were good at what we did, but

2:32

it wasn't particularly differentiated.

2:35

And subsequently, the work I

2:37

do with agencies tends to be around finding a

2:39

niche, but that's a different discussion. Andy

2:41

started the company with a co founder above

2:44

a veggie restaurant in Brighton. They

2:46

did well, they picked up some big

2:48

clients like British Rail. But after a

2:50

few years, Andy's co founder decided he

2:52

wanted to do something else. He

2:55

was a creative who wanted to focus on

2:57

other things. So Andy bought him out leaving

2:59

Andy to build the business solo. The

3:01

problem wasn't really growth, it was

3:03

a lack of structure and focus

3:05

as they hunted growth. The

3:08

way I describe it now is we were a bit of a

3:10

sea urchin. And a sea urchin

3:12

sits on a rock. It can't

3:14

move anywhere, it's got tentacles, and anything that

3:16

floats past the sea urchin it grabs in

3:18

case it's food. And

3:21

we were that sort of business anything that came along that

3:23

we thought we could make money out of we grabbed. And

3:26

what that meant was we, we

3:28

lost our focus, we lost our specialism, we started

3:30

going to other sectors and other verticals, we offered

3:33

other services, and the client said, I love what

3:35

you do. Could you do this for me? We

3:37

go, no idea what that is, but we'll have

3:39

a go. Yeah, sure, of course we can. So

3:42

we started to spread our service

3:44

proposition too wide. We

3:46

started to work in verticals where we didn't really

3:48

understand the market particularly well. And

3:51

That, that meant we had to bring on

3:53

more people. So Mid-level senior hiring of people

3:56

who knew those verticals and hiring senior people

3:58

is really difficult. So It very. Quickly

4:00

snowballed into. An

4:02

extremely challenging sentence as. A.

4:05

Of an circumstances and I guess

4:07

what? What I'd I'd I'd mickey

4:09

bachelor's advising myself I said. You.

4:12

Shouldn't be a sea urchin. You want to evolve

4:14

quickly and get off the rock and as searching

4:16

for the sowed the seeds he messed. With

4:19

is not a shark and something least

4:21

that can swim and gun find food

4:23

sources. It's that's where it started going

4:25

wrong. I absolutely understand that's what happened,

4:27

that we just lost our focus. We.

4:30

We went on to the money to think of

4:32

that eager involved as well as also certain amount

4:34

of. I

4:36

think I wanted to prove everyone that I could run

4:38

it by myself. A

4:41

and. Of that led to some

4:43

quite. But

4:45

it's a party, some poor decisions and to

4:47

a lot of stress. The

4:50

stress seeped into and his personal

4:52

life. So. I I, I. I

4:54

recall that I didn't go to bed. I

4:57

used to stay up incredibly late at night

4:59

and I just. I don't know

5:01

what I was doing, I think I was

5:03

working, but I was. He was working productively

5:05

An island getting really late at night. And.

5:08

Of we just had our our son. And

5:10

I are crawled into bed to give him

5:12

a little total. Just

5:14

because up on I just burst into tears.

5:16

I burst into tears because up and the

5:18

magnitude of his life was happening. When.

5:21

I wasn't there, I wasn't say it and the didn't seem

5:23

to be any. Reason. For me

5:25

to miss, it wasn't any compelling reason for me

5:27

to be working long hours and doing the things

5:29

I was doing. I

5:32

was on a mission. I didn't say like. Like.

5:34

I was achieve anything. I felt like a failure. But.

5:37

Yes, I was missing this little person's life.

5:40

Missing them everything they were doing. And

5:42

it it was set That hit me like I'm like a

5:44

ton of bricks. The. Core issue was

5:46

that the company was growing but in all

5:48

sorts of directions. There wasn't a coherent plan

5:50

which left and he just trying to hold

5:53

on for dear life. I run

5:55

before I could walk. Or. Definitely

5:57

hides and see people. I sit in the

5:59

fired. Because I felt they

6:01

could give me that sort of instant. Access

6:03

to to the knowledge I needed. but they

6:05

tend to be expensive. They tend to be

6:07

a difficult on board. They. Bring their

6:09

own learning at the right way of

6:12

doing work which isn't necessary. Seats, Sit

6:14

my business. I hadn't really built out

6:16

the preseason systems I needed to make

6:19

everything scale bowl. So. It was.

6:21

the wasn't enough that was repeatable. But.

6:24

I could enable people call cookie Cutter. He

6:26

wasn't the wasn't enough but I took on

6:28

new staff. They didn't have a handbook, they

6:30

didn't really know what are process was so

6:32

lots of things are be reinvented all the

6:34

time. And that those

6:36

those decisions or non non actions mobile

6:38

but started cause cause the biggest challenges

6:41

of a we we're reinventing yourself all

6:43

the time which is a really labor

6:45

intensive and. Saudi. Foolish

6:47

way of trying to run the business. He

6:51

became very messy at one point the mess

6:53

just became too great for and to bear.

6:56

I was building up what I called in the

6:58

bison overdraft I was. I was subsidizing the business

7:00

at my own cost. I. Didn't know it.

7:02

No one told me that. no one said andy, you

7:04

are getting stressed Probably my wife did, but I think

7:07

I was at the point where I was so stressed

7:09

I was listening to her. Sister

7:11

my wife so than do now listen to.

7:15

But. I was running up this emotional

7:17

overdraft. I was getting stressed as becoming

7:19

overwhelmed. And

7:21

I wasn't dealing with a little while, but I

7:23

hadn't noticed it. I couldn't acknowledge it was half

7:25

an easy five. so. I. Was aware something

7:27

was wrong, but I wasn't. I.

7:30

Couldn't defined it's in any way other than this

7:32

was rotten. Running a business is supposed to feel

7:34

like this was how I was supposed to fail,

7:36

but I knew something had gone badly wrong. At

7:39

a meeting planned with a client in Dover. A

7:41

substance a castle which would be and

7:43

over. And. And

7:46

I was driving. Meeting woman is I was

7:48

driving to the meeting. Think they'll wonder what

7:50

about the car. The next minute I found

7:52

myself driving on to cross channel. sorry. And.

7:56

Heading. off to france and other knows our

7:58

teeth and diverse enough i saw And

8:01

I spent the day in France. I got back on the

8:03

I bought some beer back in the day you

8:05

get duty-free beer I got

8:07

back on the on the ferry and came back and drove home and

8:10

Didn't tell anyone I hadn't been to the meeting. I didn't

8:12

tell the client. I wasn't going I just

8:16

tripped out I literally tripped out

8:18

of and Couldn't

8:20

face the meeting couldn't couldn't go to the meeting

8:22

and the only thing my brain said was well

8:24

you're in the car You're in Dover keep going

8:27

you're either gonna get wet or you're gonna get on the ferry and

8:29

go somewhere else and I can almost understand

8:31

how people get to the point where You

8:34

know the extension of that might be that people

8:36

just disappear. They just Throw

8:39

in the towel. They just go At

8:41

that point. I recognized something was going badly wrong. I

8:44

knew And my

8:46

team I lied to my team I told my team

8:48

that I'd had the meeting and then it

8:50

becomes very evident very quickly when David Castle phoned up

8:52

and say well Where's Andy that that hadn't

8:54

happened? So I don't know what I thought was gonna happen But

8:57

my team then sat me down and

8:59

said Andy what's going on you didn't go to that What

9:02

what's happening to you? What's happening to the business?

9:05

What's happening to our jobs? What

9:07

are we supposed to be doing here and there was a sort

9:09

of intervention? I think at that point There

9:11

was some denial initially, but that quickly

9:13

gave way to honesty and reality Andy

9:16

realized he'd built a business reliant on

9:18

him and it all came crashing down

9:21

He took a cold hard look at his business

9:24

and decided to go through with a distress

9:26

sale to protect his people's jobs and the

9:28

clients That worked out alright in

9:30

the end and gave Andy a new perspective

9:32

on a failure. I think failure

9:35

is okay I definitely felt that I couldn't

9:37

fail. I wasn't allowed to fail and There's

9:40

a great story about Pixar with Toy

9:42

Story 2, which apparently is their most

9:45

financially successful film of all time But

9:48

they consider it to be one of their great failures Because

9:51

they failed so little when they were filming it when

9:53

they were creating it and their measure

9:55

of success was if we're not failing We're

9:58

not pushing the envelope. We're not trying trying hard enough

10:00

or not experimenting enough. If there aren't failures, but

10:02

because it came on the back of Toy Story,

10:05

which was very successful and changed

10:08

cinema, they knew

10:11

they had, they felt they had to

10:13

create something that was

10:15

very similar. So it was incredibly financially

10:17

successful, but very few failures. And

10:19

internally, they looked at that as, as one

10:22

of the worst films they produced because of that, which

10:25

is fascinating. And I think there's a lesson there, which is,

10:27

I felt I couldn't fail. Whereas

10:31

as long as you fail fast, that

10:33

old Marx and Spencer Macton, fail fast,

10:35

learn from it and do something differently,

10:37

that's great. And thinking back to the bubble of

10:39

a business that was growing, we didn't

10:42

really see failure. We didn't label failure. We just

10:44

carried on and did something else. We ignored

10:46

it. We tried something else. So we weren't learning.

10:48

So the first, the first bit of advice

10:51

I'd give anyone is, it's

10:53

okay to fail. The second thing, importantly, if you're going

10:55

to fail then is to have a culture where

10:58

people are allowed to fail and talk about

11:00

failure, where they're allowed to

11:02

try things, where they're allowed to

11:04

challenge each other, where they're

11:07

allowed to ask questions. So that's really, you can't have

11:09

one without the other. And it

11:11

seems odd when we're talking to,

11:13

about founding businesses, about rapidly

11:16

growing startups, maybe, that

11:19

you can fail, but

11:21

you really can. You really can, because it's at

11:23

the edge of, it's at the edge of failure,

11:26

where you're going to discover the stuff that has the most value. So

11:28

if you're playing it safe all the time, you're

11:31

not going to get anywhere, not in the long run. So

11:33

I think that's critical. I

11:36

learned, ironically, the value

11:38

of hiring amazing people and

11:42

also trusting the people

11:44

around you. So whilst it was

11:46

inadvertent, I absolutely had an

11:49

object lesson in allowing great people to

11:52

do great things. And

11:54

a lot of founders in

11:57

my research and my experience find

11:59

it very difficult. when they're moving from founder

12:01

mode to growth mode, and it's still called a

12:03

growth mode, but founder mode to growth mode to

12:06

let go, to

12:08

not be the smartest person in the room, to

12:11

not be the person having the ideas, the

12:14

ones that the businesses that thrive, the

12:16

businesses that go really well are the ones

12:18

where the founder goes, I want

12:20

to be the stupidest person in the room. I want

12:22

to have smart people making smart decisions. I want people

12:25

who are going to challenge me who

12:27

are going to take this away from me and do

12:29

things I never knew about. As I said earlier, the

12:31

idea of making yourself redundant, I think that's hugely

12:33

important. And subsequently, I've had a career

12:35

in mergers and acquisitions before

12:38

my advisory career. And

12:40

the number one thing that people look for when they're buying

12:42

a business is if we give this

12:44

person this main shareholder loads of money, and they

12:48

disappear with the cash, because why wouldn't

12:50

they? What's left

12:52

underneath them? And this

12:54

fundamental this idea of a fundamentally

12:57

sustainable and structured business is really important. And

13:00

I don't think you can start that too

13:02

early. That was Andy

13:04

Brown. Thanks for listening to this episode.

13:06

I've been your host, Dan Murray-Serter.

13:14

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