Starting an agency can be hard - why do we do it?

00:00 Hello and welcome to Perspective. This is a show by founders of digital creative agencies giving our perspective on starting and running our own companies. This is our 24th episode. My name is John Dark. I'm a director at Every Interaction and joining me today as always I've got Dan Ghent from Lighthouse London. Hello Dan. Hey John, how's it doing? All good, thanks. All good.

00:19 Trying to avoid the rain. Yeah, that was really filthy today. Sunday now though and actually a light evening. I mean obviously people can listen to this anytime they want but normally we record about 8pm at night and I don't remember the last time it was light outside. No, it's a refreshing change but I've got all my curtains closed to help with sound insulation so I can't tell.

00:43 Yeah, me too obviously. Excellent and today we thought we'd do something a little bit different. We've got a listener question. Steve Calburn, long time listener, big time fan writes in to ask us to talk about why people starting their own companies. Why do people start their own companies given that the rewards and workload can be tough? What is that certain something that we get out of doing it for ourselves? Thanks Steve, that's a really good question. Fans. Fans? Yeah, you know, it's good to have fans. Steve's a big time fan which is a nice tier and that's why we do it for ourselves. Fame and glory. That's why I wanted to do it. Now we've got it. What do we do? Where's it to go now? So let's rewind. Let's go back to the beginning Dan. Fans, what led you to start Lighthouse at the beginning rather than keep on doing whatever it was you were doing before?

01:50 What were you doing before? I've forgotten. I was a developer kind of being transitioned into a technical account manager I think but that was basically because the place was getting rid of people slowly and I think I was tactically moved somewhere where the development team could be reduced and I was still a developer but not in the development team anymore. So the writing was on the wall. Yeah, I suppose so. But I don't think that's why I did it. I think it was probably just blind optimism I expect that led it to happen. I was thinking about this. I think definitely my career up until that point things had mainly gone well and I think I probably said that a slight air of arrogance in the "oh well this will work as well then" you know. Because there was a developer back in when was this the noughties. It says to be mid late noughties I think.

03:08 Yeah, that's how old we are right? Yeah. Developers were web development quite hot property you know what I mean as in you could basically there were lots of agencies lots of jobs and essentially if you just move job every two years people kept wanting you. You know you wouldn't be looking for a job for long and you'd find somewhere and people would you know not chuck money completely at you but certainly there wasn't a lot of negotiation you could basically say well here's what I want and people generally paid it. And I think like that I did you know so I had like three jobs before and I just I think I was just like well this is gonna go you know I didn't have any fear about it not working because everything had kind of worked up until that point and I think I also saw it as like a career thing I think in the back of my mind I was like well this doesn't work that's okay because I can clearly get a job in about a week I've already proven that and I'll only be more exciting to those people for having started my own business. That's what I think that's what I said to myself because I must have said something to myself because there's no way I'd do it now. So you did it on purpose basically it was a pre-meditated act to actively start your own agency. Yeah absolutely I mean I'd say to I mean it was me and Tom so it was an agency and we gave ourselves a name so yeah it was more just to go kind of just freelance really I suppose to well we gave ourselves a name so we must have always thought we were gonna do something with it rather than just be Dan, Tom, freelance is working together but yeah no completely like we've been we've been doing it on the side for a while and those projects kind of kept getting bigger and by bigger I mean literally the project we jumped in on is probably about three days wages now you know I mean it was kind of like there's no way to do it now I mean that's exaggeration but certainly it wasn't you know I think we had a we got a project that was like four grand and it was like that's both of us and it was like well here we go then you know I mean let's just jump jump into this pool of money exactly. I think it was just confidence really you know right right experience up until that point and then nothing that said it it wasn't gonna work I suppose how about yourself yeah a lot less purposeful I um I was already freelancing after having moved through a couple of jobs and a couple of long freelance gigs and I came upon an opportunity to take on a couple of freelance jobs where I didn't need to be in house and I'm one of those people who just can't work from home it's just too distracting I can't I can't concentrate enough to get stuff done home to me is where I don't work I got quite a clear distinction between the two and had a quite a small flat at the time so there wasn't a lot of additional space to just move around in so some friends of mine who are running a branding agency just moved into a new office which was quite big for their size at the time and had some had some availability basically a bit of space to let out so I thought jump on the opportunity I'll do my freelancing from their office and work on some gigs from there and treat it treat it like my own sort of freelancing operation and at the same time I had uh sort of been communicating a lot with Neil my co-founder because we were each other's go-to recommendation for all the jobs we couldn't take on because we were too busy and we were both constantly referring projects to each other because neither of us could take them on because we were already at full capacity as loan freelancers and so we were doing that for a little while and a couple of opportunities came up that were too big for only one person to take on so we thought well let's let's try teaming up and taking taking on all those things that we keep referring to each other and keep turning down and let's take on a few of these bigger opportunities that keep coming along and for us we didn't think of it like an agency I don't think for quite a while we were just a collective of two freelancers sort of working together it was just John and Neil we didn't have a name right Neil had some of his clients I had some of my clients basically and we're figuring out the difference between us at the end of each month and sort of invoicing each other for the the difference whoever brought in more money essentially right okay I think they went on that way for about three years we we had at some point during that three years probably in about a year in we had decided to you know we need to make this a bit more official we want to started becoming it just sort of naturally fell into being more agency-like rather than being independent freelancers who had a bit of extra resource and we started spending more time in the office together going to meetings and first client contacts pictures all those kinds of things together as John and Neil with no brands and then it took us two years to figure out a brand and a name and eventually we after many many discussions settled on every interaction and made it official nice so we sort of fell into it naturally yeah I mean that's I suppose our beginning was very much led by Tom really which was when we were both working he would get design jobs because he worked at Imperial College and there were lots of places lots of people in Imperial College that would say hey we need a website and Tom would say well it's not actually my job to build your website the main college website it's my job but I do have weekends and if you've got a budget you can I'll do a bit of design work for you and he'd do that and then eventually they started to ask him to build things that needed databases and stuff like that and yeah I think the first job he called me in on was a some kind of quiz questionnaire kind of vibe which you know is as any developer knows is sounds very simple in concepts and then as you start unpacking it there's lots of stupid little bits to it and he kind of got it in a bit of a mess so I kind of helped him with that over a weekend pre-survey monkey it was pretty it might have been it might have turned into Survey Monkey yeah that might have been the origin whoever we did it for might have taken it um no yeah it was pre-survey monkey and yeah and then so then I would just do that at weekends and he'd get these gigs that people wanted stuff for and yeah I don't you know it's one of those decisions where you're like I can't remember the first time we said let's both quit our full-time jobs and do this it just slowly became obvious and then the ridiculous thing about you know you're talking about oh is it a risk like you know to quit your job the thing I waited to do was buy a house so basically like you can't really get a mortgage on a I've just started my own business and have no guarantee of income so I like Tom started um he he quit his job and then he got I think he got a like a redundancy so he did it the right way you know took a bit got got a little bit of a payoff which let him settle out over the first few months I basically got myself a mortgage like you know the most debt you're gonna get in your whole life and and then at that point I was like hooray guess what bank I'm quitting my job obviously I didn't tell I didn't tell him that and then I remember I definitely remember like it's kind of a a chat over whatever the cool I am tool of the time was uh what was the Microsoft one instant messenger yep I think so yeah so it was called that one it wasn't oh I see I think we used I think we used like a a thing called trillion which like was like a wrapper for them all it was uh amazing and I I just remember a chat with him while I was at work at the end of you know on my job and he was already full time where there was a bit of from him a bit of oh you know well I don't know if you should start in March because have we got this money and that money and you know maybe let's wait I just remember being like nope no way you're you're not kind of quitting your job and doing it and I don't get to quit my it's just like no that's not I was like that's not happening I'm you know I'm handing you my notice now I've got a mortgage and yeah I suppose there's it sort of helps to go into the deep end a bit I think because if you because if you do something and you're you're competent at it and you can actually talk to people and convince them you should do it nothing's going to make you do those things more than relying on those skills to to actually get money so you kind of learn quite quickly I think so yep yeah you know unless you're jumping in to some kind of discipline where you're just not sure if there's any demand I mean it's clear there is demand for what we were doing so it was more just a case of can we get through until we've got like some regular clients I suppose so what was the turning point where you thought that hey this is this is a good idea we should we should keep doing this and double down I suppose the fact that we could work together realizing that because I've known Tom since I was 11 um and so there's not really many people I've known since you know the first year of secondary school who I could you know friends that are that good that you could also work with like there's plenty of people who I'm just good friends with who I just would never ever contemplate doing that with so I suppose there was the fact that that relationship was actually going well like we weren't annoying each other we weren't letting each other down in any way in fact we kind of both clearly had the same values and work ethic towards the towards the actual business yeah I suppose I mean I suppose Tom getting made Tom getting his redundancy thing probably was it was obvious to him that he should try it because that's the time you try it and then as I say I was just like well you know it was his idea in the first place to get me involved I was like well you've convinced me now so I'm gonna do it as well you know so yeah it's really you know I kind of I remember like a couple of snapshots of conversations in in pubs and things like that I don't think it was a turning point really other than just eventually as I say it became a point of like can I borrow hundreds of thousands of pounds before doing this just to make it that much more um spicy yeah nice well that so you have your one was just that you basically I suppose just started building out work essentially yeah I think I think there are a couple of milestones that sort of marks it in my mind at least in my memory of you know what what turned it into what I thought was yeah this this is this is going to work this is this has got legs and yeah the first time I think was when we we got a project where we needed to get additional help where we needed to bring in somebody else with uh I forget the details I think it was a cup we needed somebody with some more illustration skills and even a bit of animation skill because it was doing some flash stuff back in the day and um also just capacity like we needed some some more bodies in there doing production work with us to help deliver the thing that we've agreed to do it's at that point where I thought well we're starting to we're starting to take on things here that are beyond just the two of us and that made me think that this could scale that we could grow that we could get some more interesting projects and yeah those early projects we I think we took on almost anything that came along at the time I think that that particular piece was for Monocle yeah it was the launch it was the pre-launch for Monocle 24 radio uh to do an interactive presentation for Tyler Brule to take around the world to investors to get sponsorship opportunities for the launch of Monocle 24 and it's to talk about the radio station all the things it was going to do and we uh animated a load of these scenes and put together this crazy flash presentation launched as a desktop app that could be used as a sort of animated presentation tool sort of thing you're probably just doing keynote today but yeah it wasn't nearly advanced enough at the time to do anything like that and a second job where we were working on a recruitment platform project where I think it was one of the first one of the first sort of product jobs product uxui jobs that we did that was our own project that we were doing I think from the ground up to get them launched to an MVP when it was just the founder or founders kind of helping them get out the door with their very first version of the product and that was something that really appealed to us and that was the genesis of what eventually became the thing that we decided to specialize on and you know make the heart of what we do every interaction something that always came as a surprise to me when both taking on these projects and also just you know starting a company in general it's just just how much work is involved I hadn't anticipated that it would be quite so difficult I guess because we'd come from a place where everybody all the other things about running a business including getting the work in the first place managing the clients figuring out all the little details of how to run the project managing cash flow paying the rent doing everything else managing your freelancer bills all these things that always been abstracted away because someone else was employed to do them over at your side work so now things are on our shoulders and all this sort of responsibility had piled up and and all the time even though it was just two of us at the time it still took a bit of time to do all of this stuff and to win the work in the first place something I'd yeah I'd only ever done as part of a larger team in certain agency and yeah it it was always a bit of a shock to me at the beginning how how much extra work all that stuff is and how much of my time it took up that I couldn't just be sat there doing the design stuff that I wanted to do all day every day at the time yeah fair yeah I suppose I think Tom and I were already we were already quite accustomed to the we need to sell this stuff because we had been doing that to the you know to these projects from before we'd go and meet people and also you know lighthouse wasn't our first venture when we were 13 14 we released a fanzine called propaganda awesome printed print of course yeah printed and available in record shops I mean there was internet but we certainly weren't on it I think propaganda may be appearing digitally at some point in the future I think it's being used as an internal project to try some stuff out digitalizing that that incredible journal and for that you know and this was again this was kind of Tom it was the same vibe Tom doing a lot of kind of entrepreneurial making stuff happen and then me going along for the ride so he would ring record labels and get them to send him free records because at the time there was no digital music so the way you promoted a single was you siphoned off however many copies of that 12 inch to send out to journalists I can imagine Tom doing that wheeling and dealing on the phone yeah and then you and then eight percentage of that siphon you know you didn't send to the major ones you kept them back for for the indies and we were one of them we we sold 50 copies that was our maximum ever run but we got so many records and this was tom calling getting us gig tickets getting us all this stuff so you know we had I think from that and then we did like we used to do wedding DJing as well and that was that was another one where tom was like we were we were DJing at someone's party and some guy came up to us and was like oh I'm starting a nightclub will you come and will you come and DJ my nightclub and I was like yes of course we'll DJ your nightclub we're amazing DJs took his took our number and then the next day he rang me up and I was like I was on a coach somewhere or something he rang me up and was like yeah actually it's not a it's not a nightclub it's my wedding next month we you know we DJ my wedding and I was like no DJ weddings right we we're top quality DJs DJ weddings and then and then I texted tom was like that guy asked his DJ wedding and tom was like you can get paid lots of money for DJ wedding text him back now and say yes we will DJ for him and it's this much money I was like all right okay and then so we became wedding DJs for a little bit so we'd already so we'd kind of had to start to sound more like trotters independent traders yeah you guys are running around in a yellow that's what I thought that's what I thought the websites would be john I thought I thought yeah we'll shift a few websites and then we'll move on to something else but but it's lasted no yeah so it's kind of we already had that kind of that side that sort of the businessy side of it was already something we were quite accustomed to and I don't know I think for me it was like I was no longer working at the weekends so actually I was probably working a little bit less because I'm a bit like you I can't work from home so we you know we got ourselves some desks you know suddenly it was like well I've got a week to work on this stuff now so I it felt like less it felt less work at first because you're doing so much in your spare time to yeah things off in the first place yeah yeah I don't know yeah and I know I don't remember feeling that fast about but we running it but we were quite simple like we had like we rented desks so that wasn't a huge overhead same here yeah it was just the money we took out really was our only our only cost and I was pretty naive to all the other stuff you know what I mean like um tax etc oh that thing oh yeah I need to pay that do I yeah well and yeah by naive you know we we didn't uh we didn't avoid it but I just didn't really think about it until it till the bill came up so I'm pretty sure there were several points in those early months years where we could very easily have been wiped out by a an accounting under estimation but um there's that point isn't it where suddenly HMRC decides to hammer you like there's sort of like oh you're you're just messing around now all right your business so next time we speak to you it's going to be serious and I think that you know we hit that point made it through and we're like okay we need to tighten up that stuff and I think that yeah so yeah luck really I think was that we got through that beginning bit I expect okay so there wasn't much of a plan didn't have a business plan written out sort of goals targets no no no not really we just we're getting but then at the beginning as well it's quite it doesn't take as much effort to kind of increase the sort of project size right so at the beginning you're like you say you're scrap you're tasty taking on anything so you're taking on stuff you're probably not charging enough and it's small stuff so you know doubling the doubling your average project size at the beginning can just be the difference of saying a different price or randomly walking into someone with like a medium-sized project rather than a tiny project you know that like now it's so much harder to kind of step up the type of client you do whereas then you could step up the type of client by bumping into someone in the bar you know I mean it was like you could suddenly an opportunity would come up and people would be like yeah you're completely really cheap so of course and you seem quite good so you know clearly clearly we're gonna do it um you know as much I think that beginning bit that stuff's quite easy because you well if if you're any good you probably are quite cheap desperate for work quite good and and that's a very easy thing to buy yeah very true yeah I meet people these days and everything seems to be in a similar situation starting companies from scratch seems to be a lot more pre-meditated there's a lot more full behind it they treat it much more seriously like a like a real startup with goals and missions sales targets finance plans uh growth plans everything else you can you can think of stuff that we probably didn't think about until year three but who did you look at back then as a role model because I I expect that's because you know now there's business leaders in this space I like heroes and they write books and and I think the the people that are writing books that's probably not true I probably just didn't read them but uh kind of I kind of feel like the people whose books I could have read back then probably quite stuffy bigger you know bigger company that that sort of small lean company being really cool and famous wasn't maybe quite there and the sort of the heroes I had in the industry weren't writing about business they were writing about how to use css yeah exactly you know I mean they they didn't care about business either like I think our industry at that point didn't have those people focused on the business rather than the doing yeah maybe it was a lot smaller it was a lot everyone did a lot broader things there weren't many specialists yeah um yeah it was a different different world was having oh yeah no it was probably easier right there was probably less you know less people to kind of pick from if you wanted to get stuff done so maybe it didn't have to be as good maybe now like if you don't go out there with those uh those targets um then it's just not going to happen yeah I agree yeah it is a different world I think I think you can probably still fumble your way through it but it's definitely not as easy to do so as it once was yeah yeah there is a lot more pressure everything costs more to do these days including you know getting desks and employing people and you know trying to figure out what it is that you're selling in particular because there's so much competition yeah absolutely yeah I wouldn't say we had much of a plan either we really just sort of fell into it like I said we found those those projects that we really latched onto and realized that this was something we really enjoyed we were really good at and not a lot of people were doing because obviously most people were just sort of you know out of the box full service agency doing a little bit of everything and anything yeah I don't know who my who the people I looked up to would have been either um the only people in industry at the time I guess were were bigger agencies the sorts of people we'd come from and I wanted to do something different to what they were doing I wanted to be different to what they are I still do I think the only people who we would have looked up to but I didn't know particularly well at the time when people like clear left the sort of smaller independent agencies doing interesting things starting to specialize but I don't know it was difficult to the news cycle didn't exist the communication channels were hardly there it was difficult to know what companies were around and what was happening in industry and what what people were doing unless unless you knew them in your network absolutely yeah I think we had um we had a friend who still a friend who runs a film production company and uh I remember just before actually this might even be my turning point or at least a moment of decision is that me and Tom went for a drink with him and he just started this company and was you have been doing it for sort of six months I think we were just like wow like how do you does it work basically like you know if you quit your job does it work and he was just sort of like yeah it's fine you know people come and people want what you do and they pay for it I'm saying it was sort of like yeah seeing I think seeing appear like do it and and thinking okay you're not uh like and he was very much a a creative person you know he got into it because he wanted to make these films um so it was very similar like he wasn't yeah we knew people that had gone to start businesses but they were like they quite go that they were into business and I think like we weren't particularly you know other than obviously the massive successful wedding djing and and the 50 copies sold uh fanzine you know we were doing it because we wanted to build stuff and I think we could see that like you know you could be successful with it but yeah we just I didn't have that kind of oh this is how we're going to grow it I just thought like if like I say I think I just thought for from a career point of view it was like well what's there to lose here to see the works and something really cool comes out of it either a company you know a business that works or or someone interesting gets us to come and work for them or it doesn't work and I'm turning around and going well I've been cto an agency you know however however small I could be I could say that and um and I'd be able to go back into the agency world at a more valuable level I just don't know if that'd be possible now like if I tried to go back into the agency world I have no idea what would happen did you have any friends who did something similar who started their own companies other than me other than you and um and as I say this this guy did videos um not not sort of agency stuff really um we we moved in with a small smallish agency who would already a bit established so I think we could see from what they were doing we had something to measure ourselves against in terms of that's useful in terms of how they were operating you know just anecdotally and just you know you see them in the office like what are they like how many meetings are they having you know things like that and you're kind of like well we're having kind of we're you know we're just as many people are coming through the door to sit with us so you sort of felt it's like comfort of that must be okay then yeah yeah yeah I want to expand on the point earlier about not having any sort of peers I guess to look up to necessarily I say that from our what ended up being our our discipline of doing user experience design specifically because that's something we decided to specialize on but um yeah I definitely had a lot of inspiration from friends as friends I went to university with who I moved into or shared flat with when here in London soon after after coming to London they they formed an agency from from one of their bedrooms you know in our shared fire and started up their own agency and I think that was very inspiring to me you know I always admired them for doing that so soon they did it a good five years before I did and um Ben and Andy started multi adapter from that bedroom and they were the ones who moved into the office that I took a desk in and I stayed with them in that building for five years and you know we basically our agencies together they eventually grew to the point where it made sense for us to move and now they're a very successful branding agency and I always looked up to those guys and the way that they do things okay and I also had a friend Evan who ran an agency called SIPA who more into sort of projection mapping and and big sort of events style interactive experiences and again another guy who he started that from university and got some really big clients and and he expanded that at an amazing rate and is still doing really well with it and you know it's people like that I've always looked up to they weren't direct parallels with what we ended up doing but it was all yeah design in some form and these guys started their business and it was interesting to watch them grow and be around them as it happened and I think definitely learned a lot from from being being with them as those companies grew and yeah still look up to those guys they're all doing really well still yeah I think um along the way you you bump into people who you can then use you know you can who can mentor you either like officially or unofficially like I think we learned a lot we learned a lot from clients really clients that could see what we were good at and what we weren't good at and we're prepared to take the rough with the smooth and we're prepared to say okay I get that you're a bit haphazard with your resourcing because there's two of you and you don't know what you're doing yet um but we like the work so we'll put in that extra effort on the you know we'll allow that or or we'll we'll manage that a bit more for you we had a client who was basically when when we sort of agreed to the job was like oh you know what are your what are your payment terms we were sort of like well you know normally we do the job and then invoice you and he was like he was like nah it's rubbish it's like it's like that's awful it's like you've got to ask for 60 up front and then negotiate down to 50 but see we were like we were like right and he was like the reason client yeah he was like the reason you guys people like you guys get out of business is cash is like and you you need to be you need to be invoicing up front you know and it was sort of like it was said as an aside like he saw what was going to go wrong with us and and just was like no I'd rather have the work than have you I think he he identified the risk was us overextending ourselves not getting paid the project going badly he probably had that before and he was like I know that if you've got money you'll you'll be you'll be able to do this job and I think you know there's there's incidents like that and yeah like every now and again we sort of stepped it up to be like right it's time to get serious after using the mortgage to start the company I then found out that me and my wife were going to have a baby and that was a catalyst to that was actually probably like a second birthing of the company birthing being the right word in the at that point we had to sit down and go you know we're paying we're paying the rent and getting enough for the mortgage and that was the point where we set a plan I think it was about two years in it was a point of no return it yeah well it was it was it was a crossroads because it was basically saying look this is no longer about me I'm gonna have kids and you know I can earn more if I wouldn't got a job a company you need stability that's it how do we get to the point where where it isn't obvious that I should go and get a job another company or at least isn't you know that isn't something that isn't a question anymore so that was definitely a cast is to start trying to hire people start trying to step it up a bit what does it feel like hiring that first person was as a as a business owner well not disappointed by the result just in case he's listening because he still works for us but I was slightly disappointed by the like it was one of those things I'd always look forward to because I love a good job interview and I just was like wow it's gonna be so cool when we're picking the person to expand the team with and then how hard it was to get good people to come and talk about the job I was just I was like ah right so actually the choice I have here is between people that I'm just not sure and there's some people here and just not sure can do it you know this person hasn't turned up this other person is really nice but is it really going to make us better and then we just fluked it the the guy we've got is still still with us also applied and it was just like right well clearly you should work for us and then you know then he started working for us it was like okay you're like better than even we thought then so that's amazing yeah it was quite a as I say I was sort of hoping to like meet all these cool people and and it just to be like this real sort of exciting thing and instead it was quite a like hmm this is a bit concerning actually you know I mean this is really difficult and and I think we were a bit scared about you know can we afford it that was a big fear point but we spoke to someone just before that actually who we still work with now as well a kind of financial consultancy well kind of doing all those bits that you should do but aren't very good at like they kind of do they sort of do financial modeling and things like that we spoke to them just before it they were just starting as well um a lovely woman called rachel and she just looked at the business and kind of gave us a yeah you should be all right hiring someone and we were like all right cool we'll do it then nice yeah I think for me taking on someone um in fact it was a long time until we made our first hire we had a series of permalancers who stuck around for three six nine months or longer um at a time that we just kept in uh but never converted to full timers but the fact that there was somebody else there who was around all the time and you were paying them and they relied on that that income I know they could have got another job somewhere else relatively easily but it felt different to me it felt like like you were responsible for somebody else like it wasn't it was no longer personal it's not just you that that someone else's life and living was dependent on you making sure you made the right decisions about the business and getting new business and doing a good job so you get paid uh and that's that was a level of responsibility I don't think I anticipated and yeah that sort of snuck up on me it's one of those moments where I thought yeah this is there's no turning back now this is serious and need to make a good run of this because otherwise I've just wasted years of my life and but also you know it's not it isn't just my life anymore it's other people's there's other people involved now and and so you've got to you've got to take it a bit more seriously and start start doing a bit more planning doing just being a bit more organized having a bit more structure and then obviously eventually when we do hire full-time people it that just steps it up another notch where you know these people really do rely on you and if you do things wrong then you know people's people's uh livelihoods could be at risk you're right it's that point at which you're you're not critical like you're really important still like if you stop turning up to work the business would struggle or would would certainly not just deal with that quickly and easily but ultimately if I stopped going to lighthouse people would still ring lighthouse asking for websites there are people would still be able to deliver those websites and in my absence if that was a problem would get someone in to do what I'd been doing you know it's sort of that's the turning point isn't it the way it's like okay now this business isn't me anymore it's it's now an entity of its own that I work for obviously I own have a good deal of influence over but actually you realize as well that that influence that you try and change it and it sort of doesn't change as much as you kind of once it did like once it was like all right let's try saying this instead and doing this instead and you just do it and now and even now you know we're not big businesses but even now you say let's do this let's change this and it doesn't all change or it takes a long time to change and you think right so it's no longer me and that's quite in a way I find that quite nice like I find it I find it nice it's it's you can sort of take the pressure off a little bit with it like because it does feel really pressured when you're when you feel responsible but then once it becomes its own thing you can sort of say well of course I'm influential here and I should do my best but if it doesn't work it's no longer me that didn't work you know so you can sort of start to be a little bit more like what will be will be with it yeah I think that's that's the next turning point to me that's the the step beyond you know when you're really small to when you have scaled a bit and this this thing becomes even more serious right it steps up a level and you realize that you're now a much smaller cog in keeping that machine running and you don't need to be there the whole time the rest of the cogs will keep on going even if you're not engaged the whole time and to me that's back to Steve's point back to Steve's question that's one of those certain some things that we get out of doing it for ourselves it's that you've built this thing it's almost like it's almost like having a a child I guess in a way and that you've you've created this thing that you've bought into the world and you spent all this time bringing it up and getting it to the point where it's at and at some point it's going to become independent of you if you've done it rightly yeah and it should be able to and that's that means you've done it right that means you've done a good job if it can be out there living in the world independently without you job well done yeah and I think that's you know what what do we get out of it I absolutely think that my my style with it was always once we got people on board my style was always because it's how I'd always wanted to be treated was to be like you're the important one you do what you see fit I will support you in that I'll give you what you can do you know the kind of free love kind of kind of style of management that's pretty much the only style of management I'm capable of because I'm certainly not organized enough or disciplined enough to go around like cracking people's heads together and you know and and leading by example leading by or fear um you know I've certainly I can't achieve that so it was the only way I could go but from what I've seen and what I'd you know what you read I was like well this actually this is how this should be done and not saying in any way that like I've got it I've got it right and you know it's it's it doesn't need me to change to to make it better in any way but that has that you know you see that work like you see people then just going all right it's okay for me to make decisions and making decisions and them being on the whole good decisions and stuff changing when you have an ask for it to change you know I mean like coming in and being like all right we're doing this a different way now oh great like I wasn't even involved in that decision but it is a better way it's something I shouldn't be deciding I'm no longer involved in that part of the business there's a great book called maverick by Ricardo Semler have you heard of such a book I have not he is a Brazilian guy and his company he runs this massive company it's like it's like some he's got braces on on the front cover it's like a proper 80s kind of business book but um he basically invented invented I don't know he was really innovative manager and did that like empowered people just basically was like you guys do whatever you want I think he was even like you pay yourselves what you want like do like with a massive company and he was always like you know he'd go one of the things I remember out of book was he was always saying that every time he came back from holiday his office had basically been made smaller and moved like so like slowly just people were making these decisions but the company was doing better and better so it's kind of he just let people do what they wanted and they were like well why have you got such a big office you don't need it fine make it smaller you know and the fact they were able to do that meant they were also able to change the things that mastered about the business so yeah you know that's like a side but it's but I think that's when I when stuff like that comes off that's what makes me happy now rather than when when I do something I'm happy with I think it's about finding what it is that's rewarding about it to you I think it must be different for everyone right what is that you find to be the most rewarding thing um yeah and to me it's it's that we're we're making a difference we're helping other people's businesses become a reality and giving their customers the best experience they can get and to me that that gives me a warm feeling inside that makes me think damn we did our job really well we know what we're doing we deserve to be doing well as a company yeah yeah yeah that's the reward to me at least that I get from it and as long as we can continue to do that I'll continue to think that you know what we're doing is successful yeah that's it isn't it it's um it's that it works in a way that I that I find acceptable you know there's no like we do things in the way that obviously because me and Tom run it we do things the way that we see right you know our the limits of our ethics are the limits of mine and Tom's ethics probably which are obviously okay with me because they're mine um but it's that's you're right it's kind of it's just it's nice to see it going completely so yeah given that the rewards and workload can be tough Steve asks what would you what would you say in terms of the rewards and the workload can be tough well I suppose he's meaning financial rewards I'd say that's accurate I mean yeah I think both of us could probably be earning more if we went elsewhere right yeah no doubt yeah definitely definitely but now it's an investment you know if like if we're talking purely cold financial reasons for doing this I think there's an opportunity now to break through a ceiling that I wouldn't get to in the working for other people yes what you're working on is building value regardless of how much money gets deposited in your bank account every month that's it so you invest you're investing and certainly in the early days I was investing and it's yeah because we weren't getting paid a lot but now we've got this company that investment seems it's it's obvious why I did it now but you've got to you know you've obviously got to be able to pay yourself at that point as well but in a way I think that just forces your business model you know unless unless you absolutely unless you need to be earning absolutely tons to get by then it's just not going to work like you've got to be have some flexibility or a safety net there but if you do need to earn a lot it's not necessarily that bad a thing you'll just make the decisions like you you'll make sure that you can otherwise it won't work so it's not unhealthy to need to make a fair bit of money out of it but obviously it gets harder the more you want and probably isn't a good idea if you need to just walk out of a really high paying job and and match it month or month yeah because you won't no you won't but yeah there's no there's nothing wrong with wanting to get paid a lot for it um in terms of workloads I think obviously it's going to be a lot more work a hell of a lot more work than yeah working for somebody else it's always going to be because that's just entrepreneurship in general but how much extra work you have to put in I think is really dependent on on you and the decisions you make about how you run the company and how efficiently you do things you know I've got friends who have started and run agencies and I've just I've seen them work incredibly incredibly hard harder than I've ever worked and they definitely reap the rewards from it but I don't think I'd be willing to work quite as hard as they did like the the hours they would put in were insane and I look at that and I'm scared of it because that's not something I've ever wanted to do if I had to work that many hours to achieve to achieve what we've got I probably never would have done it and we've made it a thing made it a bit of an ambition and a goal of ours to never to never have to put ourselves in a situation where we could we need to work so hard that it it's it's a drain and it's it's tiring to to continue yeah completely I mean I think as soon as we started doing this I was I mean I can't work that hard anyway I'm just not the sort of person that can power on into the night night after night at all like it just doesn't work with me yeah but I realized that there was now no limit no one telling me when to stop working and that the more I worked the more money we'd get and I just said well actually I'm just going to work nine to five now really you know obviously sometimes I'm going to work more than that if the project needs it get out of jail card work the weekend yep but actually that's fine like and that should be the aim like this it's not scalable to to work and work and work you know it's too stressful yeah it's fine to get out of jail but it's also not good business like it's it's bad if you have so much work that you're working that hard and it's paying then that's the point that you should go whoopie I get to employ someone now and if you and if there's a reason you're not doing that because you're not making enough money off working that hard well that's a business problem if you're enjoying working that hard and that's that's your plan well you've hit your ceiling like you can't work anymore like you know yes you're working more than a normal person but still a ceiling um of how much you can do and when are you ever gonna when are you ever gonna step back and and make the decisions to to grow it if you're if you're if you're that busy I can understand people that work super hard on like networking and sales and that kind of thing yeah that that will that will help but to work hard like doing the production output yeah the production work you've you've automatically got to start seeing yourself as like a as a resource to the company you can't behave like that with a resource and have a successful business so yeah there's no I don't think there's any kind of honor in in working super hard I think it's um it's more it's more kind of a symptom of that you're not quite doing it right maybe yeah I've always felt that way about it as well I mean there's no hard and fast rule you know it's different for everyone I think different industries have different philosophies as well about how to get things done and what it takes and in in our in the digital industry in particular I think it is a bit more relaxed there's a lot more planning involved in projects and a lot of the work and planning is a bit more quantifiable so it's more easy to estimate up front things are going to take to do which isn't the case in some industries and there's a lot more unknowns and things that you can't quite put a number on in in such an exact way yeah yeah I I feel pretty much the same but it is um rewarding and it isn't it isn't for everyone you know it is hard work there are risks there are highs there are lows there it's it's a roller coaster and but if you are determined you've got a vision you think you can add value and you think you can lead people it's definitely worth worth trying I'd say yeah absolutely I mean to to come to I don't know if there's a Steve's question or one you put down but would you would you go back to being employed by the man the man that man cool radical phrase the person yeah the person would you go would you go back to being employed by the person um I have thought about this a lot over the years and fantasized about it yeah I just just hypothesized you know what would happen if if you know the agency had to shut down for some reason or some opportunity came up that was unavoidable that was a you know once in a lifetime opportunity and it was actually worth doing more so than what I was doing today you know any number of things could happen you can't predict what's going to happen someone could come along tomorrow and offer you an insane amount of money for your business and your clients and you might have to think very carefully about you know not that hard about accepting that and what would happen if any of those scenarios occurred and I think I probably would go back to working for the man not not the type man that we used to work for probably not an agency I think I would I like the idea of going client side and being like a I don't know like a head of user experience or a um chief design officer a CDO style position in a in a relatively large company doing with a relatively large product working on solving complex problems but in one one sphere of problems solving just to see what that'd be like for a while because I haven't done that in a long time now it's been like decades since I've been in a position like that the whole industry has moved in a long way there's some really interesting products and some really interesting teams and the way people go about it today is really different to how they used to do it a decade ago yeah something about that appeals that I think I could do that sort of job really well and based on the experience that I've had with this agency I could I could pull that off and yeah that's the sort of thing I think in if something would have changed that that sort of opportunity would excite me again I'm not sure I would if if for some reason I was no longer running every interaction whenever that reason was that I would immediately go and start another agency I probably wouldn't do that at least not straight away yeah fair I look for a different experience what about yourself if if tomorrow somebody came down and and bought Lighthouse London you no longer have to work for them what would you do other than take a very long holiday yeah I think I'd have a I'd have a hard time not working with my friends which is kind of a cheesy thing to say but also is now the reality yeah yeah people who work for us are my friends obviously but you know I do work with my best friend from school and I think it would be weird to not now do that but obviously we can't carry on with our careers completely entwined forever unless we're gonna less Lighthouse is going to be there when we retire which is potential I suppose I feel I have like a grass is greener thing with going back into employment which is like I think yeah I'd love to go and try and sort out this or that or go and work for that company and you know just turn up paycheck and and and do and you know focus just on doing a job and not worrying about everything else but I don't I think I I think I've got the bug for like building things now like you know I think I'd love to like start it again knowing what I know now in a weird way so I think I would whether it was like straight into building websites again or finding something else open a B&B yeah that that was that was my plan B actually like become a carpenter or something like do something completely different like but then you're starting again a carpenter with some outlandish SEO yeah with the best carpentry website in the land completely yeah yeah I think I think starting again doing something else would be a bit too much of a shift like I've spent far too much time not I spent 20 years specializing in what I'm doing I don't think I can spend another 20 years on something completely different I don't think so course perspective might always blow up yeah professional podcaster get some of that had money but yeah no so I I think about it and yeah I don't know I think I've I think I've got the bug now at least in the medium term I imagine I'd be trying to work out what to what to start next although you know that kind of worries me as well yeah I would equally be really interested in starting a startup or a product for my own certainly got a lot of ideas but it's it's uh it sounds after having started one company and run it for so long it is hard work and to jump straight into doing another thing that is equally you know just as much hard work it seems like you need a bit of time off I'll go get a job a job with a man seems like time off really it seems like the equivalent of a holiday job where you are where everything there's so much more is taken care of for you and the weight of responsibility on your shoulders is less than it was before and you're getting paid more for it and you probably have to work less hours and remember not to remember not to mention this at the job interviews I'm taking I'm applying for this job because I need a holiday it looks it looks like it might be easy yeah but yeah no cool well let's let's not worry too much about the future no that is a long way off indeed yeah yeah cool so yeah thanks uh thanks for writing in Steve that's very helpful I know a couple of other listeners have also written in to ask some questions so we'll see if we can get around to some of those eventually if anyone else has got some topics they'd like to hear covered please write in we'll consider all the entries maybe if we get enough of these maybe we'll do a different version of this where we try like addressing a few more points more quickly in a single episode rather than just picking one and talking for a long time about it and having a crisis about it yeah yeah cool so thanks to everyone for listening I've been John Dark at Dark John on Twitter from Every Interaction you can find us online at everyinteraction.com on the web and at everyinteract on Twitter if you'd like to contact us about this episode to write in to ask uh any more show topics or to find any of our past episodes you can do so on our website perspective.fm or send an email to get@perspective.fm or on Twitter underscore perspective.fm iTunes uh all the podcast apps and players and things um just search for perspective.fm you'll find us there uh all the links to everything along with the show notes for this episode are on the websites uh Dan where can people find you and Lighthouse? So my personal Twitter is @gentusmaximus and Lighthouse are @weare Lighthouse um and Lighthouse is just at weare Lighthouse.com so yeah um give me a shout tell me what I should do with my life. Awesome well that will be on the website along with with everything else.

60:42 So thanks everyone and we'll see you next time. Cheers, Dan. - Cheers, John.