Beyond your comfort zone with Shelby Van Zwol

my biggest piece of advice has always been just like push yourself that little bit further because when you push yourself to an uncomfortable zone you kind of have to force to adapt it's like if you jump into an ice bath yeah for the first few probably 30 seconds you think this is the worst thing i've ever done in my life i'm gonna die like i'm actually i need to deep breathe i'm gonna die and then the last like 30 seconds you're like i can do this yeah and you get out and you feel so good about it but it's like forcing yourself into those situations and i think in business that is very important like know where your limit is and then push it a little bit further because it will force you to adapt that is shelby vans wall who owns chain social chain social started in her bedroom and now has 22 fully fledged staff working from their office soon to be a much bigger much more established space in mornington and i am so impressed i have known shelby for a pretty long time because i've come in as a video lead on a couple of jobs that she has had and i've loved every single touch point of working with her chain social and chain academy which i'll touch on in a minute is so impressive and she has so much integrity behind what she's doing personally i've been really inspired by shelby's journey because i put a bit of a ceiling on myself when i think about scaling as something that i do i sort of don't have those things in place yet where i can imagine hiring somebody giving them the reins and never not being involved in the day-to-day of my own business but that's so exciting that in my life i've been able to do that and i've been able to do that in my life in this episode she literally maps out how to do that i think as creative women sometimes we can get a bit stuck on the clients are here for me though like yeah they're here for you but they're here for your level so if you were to hire and train and teach your level who's to say that you couldn't grow your business as big as chain chain and cinema tom have been around for very similar times and shelby and i are not that different in age and i just really look up to her recently i just want to thank her for everything that she's doing and just how she excels in every point of presentation to her clients this episode also goes through team culture and pretty candid insights on creative entrepreneurship what's next for shelby equity partnerships and growing her event side i'm just so excited to dive into this episode before we dive in i'd like to thank the traditional owners of the land this podcast was recorded on the catagal people of the eora nation and pay my respects to their elders past present and emerging welcome to process the podcast i'm your host ariel thomas motion director social strategist and founder of production company cinema tom and now founder of energy gummy brand remy helping you to get over the 3 p.m slump and giving you the energy that you need to be your best self i've had a pretty transformative couple of months over here and the podcast i am so proud to say is back every single week things changed for me and a bit of a light bulb went off and i was like wait why am i not doing this weekly i love it so much and i know that i just needed a little bit of distance from it and thank you for giving me that grace i got a couple of dms from you guys just saying hey like thank you so much for just reminding all of us that we can take a step back and it's okay to do that but i just needed it i guess while i was onboarding team members that has also changed what i thought was going to happen and has ended up very differently and i'm really really happy and proud of where we've landed so i will be giving you guys a petite episode next week and we'll catch up but until then we can dive into the episode with shelby i'm so excited to announce very relevant that the sponsor of this week's episode is the chain academy which is the education piece of chain social and it's really remarkable when a business scales up to the heights that chain social have gotten to and then they offer to give it back to the people at an affordable price shelby and i kind of talk about this in this episode but the chain academy we've had access for a little while now and i am blown away mon who is now on my team who you will hear about in the next personal episode and i'm so excited to announce she is thriving she's learning about all things meta and as kind of a boss i guess it's really nice to just be able to have her in this community of the academy learning her way through things and she's just there doing that and that there is the support that she needs ongoing so that i don't have to kind of be like wait what are you up to like wait what are you doing so the reason that we signed up to the chain academy is because we want to learn how to do our own ads i have serviced brands and agencies for a long time like with the creative that they plug into ads but never have we literally been on the tools to learn all the things and all the data and blah blah blah and that's really empowering firstly for cinema tom but secondly of course for remy gearing up for our launch in october so i think that if we went to chain social now and said hey shelby help me run our ads they would be like cool like it's going to cost you quite a bit and you're not actually going to see that much of a return just yet because you're in the trenches learning so the light bulb for them and now for us is like oh we should learn how to do this ourselves and then they say traditionally and shelby says in this episode you should probably get to like thirty thousand to fifty thousand a month in revenue before you hand off to an agency to then help you scale up to a hundred two hundred whatever thousand hundred thousand dollars a month obviously there's a lot to be learned there and that this is not like an overnight process but how exciting that we've just got this amazing business and women especially working with us day in day out to help us to grow this and learn it on our own what i love about this as well is that this is never going to really go away like we have this information now forever the learning like as much as we soak up and implement it's just knowledge that we have so within the chain academy there are six training modules we came into it expecting to learn meta but now we have access to their entire suite which is meta tiktok organic socials sms and email automation ugc and influencer work which kind of like personally i feel like we're all just kind of like in the dark guessing i work on the other side where we book influencers all the time but this is kind of cool to have it shared and then also create a direction which i am excited about because it's brought about someone else's opinion what am i doing you know like am i doing it right like i think i am but we're only really making this up as we go so we have loved the discovery phase of this as well because once you crack into it honestly the world is your oyster so aside from all the training modules basically they offer support so you get on boarded and you can do a lot of things you can come into the program at any time but you get six support calls a month they can be execution blocks or they can be like time for questions and then to really run through things like with you so when there's an execution block you're sitting there and you can just say to them hey can you guys look over our strategy or hey can you check this or hey can you help me to do this and basically you don't need to be there and they don't need to be online with you it can get done or you can like be with them and have a real chat about hey this is what i'm thinking blah blah blah which is actually incredible because we're trying to gear up we're trying to gear up and we're trying to figure out how to do this and we're trying to figure out and i'm trying to hand over the reins but a lot of the things that i'm actually asking one to do i have no idea how to do so it's crazy to have this now within the business because it's so much hand-holding what's also remarkable is the price which is 900 a month and that may seem quite expensive but from my experience when you hire an agency to work with you it's like minimum three to four thousand dollars a month to run paid freelancer vibe maybe a thousand if they're like a mate and it's like a mate's rates and then the events that they host and i went to the black friday conference blew my mind my laptop died because i was using it so much and typing and researching and doing all this stuff like i drained my own battery because i was on it was remarkable not only the women that i met in those rooms to see shelby who pieced all of this together but they're actually one of the first australian industries to actually bring together meta tiktok clavio and pinterest under one roof to talk to you about all this so you're in really really good hands and as a business owner i'm so excited because i know that mon is in the best hands therefore remy is in the best hands and that's a pretty holistic way to dive into something so the links are in the show notes jump over to the chain academy i hope that you love this episode with shelby i loved it and just having her with me for 90 minutes yapping about all things chain social was such a privilege i've looked up to her for a really really long time and it honestly is just such a testament to what she's built and where hard work can take you she's such a cowboy like i kind of identify with shelby in kind of like just how late to the game she learned like the business things and how coasting for as long as you can can get you pretty far but i loved recording this with her and i hope that you love it too i'm so excited to chat to you same i feel like this is a long time coming it has been we chatted about maybe 18 months ago even about you coming on the pod and then life got in the way yeah fine it does but now you're a free woman freedom yeah yeah it's good though i'm enjoying having a little bit more freedom because i can do fun things like this like this to me is fun i love to talk i love to educate i love to just yap so this is like the perfect outlet and i feel like your podcast is the perfect place for everything's in my brain like i think the end user will value like what's in the brain you know so talk me through what chain was when it started yep and what chain is now it's so different it's wild when i when i do like any sort of reflection i always actually when i look back at even our logo and i reflect on like our first chain i'm like oh my god it's so different it's so different it's so different it's so different it's so different it's so different it was like it was a black hashtag with a bright yellow background i need to find it it was and then show you it was so disgusting but like at the time i was so proud of it right and honestly when where chain was when i first started over nine years ago was just me and a laptop yeah that was in a bedroom yeah well in the spare bedroom yes it was tiny and i had this little white like slatted desk and i set it up with all these really cute little office accessories and i honestly thought like i've made it this is amazing like that I can work for myself. I'm 23. that was my energy. Right. And it's interesting because I always had vision for what I wanted the business to be, but I don't know if I genuinely at the time realized what it could be, but then really quickly I realized, I realized where it could go because we were like an early adopter. I think that's like really important whenever I talk to anyone, whether it's a client that's coming in or whether it's about my business, there's like a timing cycle. Yeah. So first to market often does really well. Yeah. In any industry, you see really good e-com brands that take off when they're first to market because they are first to market, right? Being an early adopter in a category or whatever it is. And so for Chain, we were that, right? Yeah. I always look back at the statistics and when we started, there was 200 agencies in Australia. Wow. Only 200. That's it. And you think about now, like there's maybe 10,000 plus. Yeah. Like, well, there actually is statistically. And there'd be a lot more people like you kind of calling it an agency, but it's really their bedroom. Correct. Or their shared bedroom. Correct. And I think that's the other thing, right? So when I was calling myself Chain Social Agency, actually, no, we called ourselves Chain Social for like the first couple of years. And we only switched over our Instagram to Chain Social Agency probably two or three years into the business because I was like, I'm now an agency. Like I'm now hiring staff, doing little things. But it was just me. It was like, just Chain Social. Hi, like I'll do your Instagram. I'll do your ads. Like, and it changed a lot. But the difference between where it was when I started and now, my passion hasn't changed. Just the size. What we do has changed. And I think I've always been like a yes man to a lot of things. And so I think that is why Chain has kind of got to where it is. Because when I started, I was like, yes, I'm going to start my own business. Like, what is there to lose? And now when I make similar decisions, I'm like, yeah, I'll do this big, crazy event. What have I got to lose? Yeah. Kind of like that entrepreneurial thing where you jump out of the airplane and the parachute gets built on the way down. You trust yourself. You've built it before, so you'll build it again. Yeah. You just roll with it. And I always think to myself, like, I remind myself, we work in like, well, we don't work in PR, but we work in PR, not ER. So I'm always reminding myself, like, there's actually nothing that can go terribly wrong, right? So like, just do it. But yeah, Chain with little old shelves in her bedroom to where it is now, like building a new HQ and doing really great. Building a new one. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So my first ever employee, Lisa, would account this when- Is she still with you? Unfortunately not. She left seven years in, so she had three meetings. Good innings. Yeah. Oh yeah. Amazing, right? Bonnie, though, who still works with me, she also heard me talk about this. So I used to talk about having this head office that was going to have a rooftop pool. That was like my dream, like a rooftop pool and like a beauty parlor. It was basically like a lifestyle hub or like a sorority house for like my business, right? And we're building it. We're finally making it happen. So next year is our 10th year in business and we're going to move in to this incredible space 10 years in. And it does, it's got a wellness center, like building a wellness center into our office, like an event space. Yeah. It's going to be really, really cool. And I obviously also have a couple of e-com businesses and one of them, a lot of the girls love because it's skincare and all the cupboards we've filled with skincare. So- Yeah. And that stuff, you can use all that stuff for content as well. Yeah, for sure. For sure. So yeah, we're building a HQ and I'm proud of that because it also, that was a decision that was like a big decision too, because we've rented the whole way through. It gives you so much flexibility renting, right? But I decided after nine years that it's just time we have our own space. And also what I love and what will, the aesthetics I love, I'd never wanted to like invest that money into my landlord's building. And so like we're working with a designer and it's going to be incredible. Schmick. Yeah, like Vogue style. Yeah. Okay. Which is, by the way, is part of our brand. Yeah. Like that's chain. So I'm like, this is just another branding exercise, just an expensive one. Had that expensive. So what do you think that you were doing differently back then where you had that like aha moment to be like, oh, this is way bigger than me. Okay. So probably the bit that I, I always think remember, because obviously it's like nine years ago, right? There's some key standout moments. When I started, I was just, like I said, me and my laptop. And again, timing was really important, but I would go out to clients and I would sign a client on for these small packages. And then within two or three weeks of working with them, they were then telling their friends, hey, you need to get this girl. Like she's freelancing, she's a legend, whatever. Like she's really good. Let's get her on. And so I remember like, it was honestly within the span of like four weeks or so I had like 10 clients. It was wild. And at that point in time, I was like, okay, so I still have so much demand where I am right now. Do I say no and put my prices up and like, you know, supply and demand, like do it that way? Or do I hire someone? And I remember sitting down with my husband at the time, he was an apprentice. So really hard times, me starting a business and him being an apprentice, it was so risky, right? There was no stability in the household. And I was like, what should I do? And he said to me, he's like, just do it. Like I'll hold down the fort thinking back now, like bless, because he was holding down the fort with about $500 a week. So like holding down the fort, right? But we just made it work. Yeah. And I think it's relative. It is relative. But I'm so glad that I did listen to that kind of gut instinct. And to be honest, the other reason I think I really did pursue it was because my first handful of clients was such a diverse range of clients, right? From a cooking manufacturer to an indoor play center to a car yard, like diversity. And when I started to see leads coming in from like little fashion boutiques, local fashion boutiques, I was like, they're the ones I want to work with. Like that's where my passion lies in that space. And so then, yeah, I was like, all right, well, I need to be able to take them on. And I can't let down my other clients because I loved my other clients because they became like family, right? They did, right? And this is the thing. This was the thing. I always think to myself, like, what if, like if I hadn't have let those clients in and done the work for them, I don't think this business would exist. It wouldn't, right? And so, yeah, I believe that I just realized the opportunity quite quickly. And also, back to timing, no one was doing this. Yeah. So it was, this was the golden age. Especially not a woman. No, this is the thing. It was the golden age. There were a lot of men doing like SEO and Google ads. And there was obviously some people doing social media. Like this was the era of like Frank Body and like Instagram, like when brands were really thriving. Like it was a real thriving era, I believe, for like digital brands, digital offerings. And so we were working with some brands and it was costing us like one cent a click on paid ads. Right. And people that work in performance now know how like near impossible, right? And so it was like the golden age. And so we were able to then present to clients these great strategies and opportunities for them to grow their business with very minimal investment. And they were also used to buying billboards, TV, ads, radio, whatever it is. They were used to that because that was normal to them. And so I was like, hey, for a tenth of the cost, I'm this little 23 year old who can amplify your reach. And they were seeing real time benefits. And like, I used to think to like change livelihoods. Yeah, that was really nice. And that was kind of the thing that got me going because I started with my family and then moved on to your family business. Yeah. So my parents had a sand sculpting business. It's very niche, very, very nice sculpting. I know my dad's an artist. So it was it was extremely niche event operations business. And so we'd hold these events around Australia. And when I finished university, I went and worked for my parents. And so that is where I kind of was on YouTube. I was honing in my skills. I was applying it to my mom's business. And they were seeing wild results. Like you wouldn't even you couldn't even believe the results they were seeing. And so then that's when other local businesses were like, hey, who does your marketing? And my mom was like, oh, it's my daughter. Like, stay away. And that's why I was like, oh, no, I'll take on some side consulting and some side work because like I have a mortgage to pay for and things like this. And yeah, I'm really glad that it started there. But it's weird going back. It's like going down memory lane. Right. Because I only have such a current understanding of my business, like as of today, like I almost feel like it never started just as me because it's so different to that now. So I almost have to be like, what was the beginning of this business again? And maybe I've done that for like PTSD because the logo was so bad. And like the way we used to market ourselves was just mortified. I look back now and I'm like, oh, my God. But then I don't delete any of those posts because or like any of the old content, because I'm like, that was where we started. It's a reminder. I love it when brands don't archive. I think it's nice. It's so nice. It's like a reminder of like the path we take. Yeah. It's mortifying, but also kind of like humbling. And yeah, it's good. Totally. So when you think back to things that really move the needle for you. Yeah. What else comes to mind? OK, so probably the first thing and it's controversial, but I believe like the mindset when I moved from being in my spare bedroom and I took out a lease, this very little tiny office in the back of Main Street Mornington, I think that moved the needle for two reasons. One, I think mentally I was like, well, I have to cover this rent. Like I now have to just go deeper and harder. Like this is a legitimate business now. Like I can't just kind of fluff around at my laptop. I have to make this a business. And that definitely changed my mindset because you've got a little bit of stress. You've got a little bit of pressure. So you're like, all right, I'm going to make it happen. And I still apply that mentality today. Like when I do things, because I'm like, I've got to then make it happen. You've got to move it. I also feel like when I hired my first employee, that really helped move the needle. And the reason being I hired a generalist, right? And it's obviously something that I wouldn't do nowadays. I wouldn't hire a generalist at the stage that my business is in now. I'd be hiring specialists. But I started my business. I couldn't do everything. Like I actually couldn't. And I had to just understand and learn that you grow from letting go. Because I think I was the kind of person very much control freak. I was like perfectionist. I was like, no one can touch anything. Like I need to oversee everything. And I still did for a very long time, like oversee her work. Because I was like, I need to see everything and trust that it's going out how I would do it. And I think that moved the needle because it was like, again, it was almost like a learning phase being like, to actually get ahead, you've got to let go a little bit. You can't do everything. And so the mentality of what that showed me has now transferred into what I do today, which is like, I have a color coding system for tasks for example and so now I look really quickly at my task every single day and anything that I believe is something that someone else could do I handball it over like I never do a task now that I believe someone else can do and do you know how how great that has been for business because now my time has been freed up for just the big picture stuff and I feel like we've jumped leaps and bounds by understanding that like I think if I think back I used to be like before I had my employee I was like why would I pay someone when I can do it like I can keep all the money in the business I can keep revenue in the business I can just work another hour I'll just work another hour I'll just do a few hours here and there I'll do it right because it's extra money but then you realize really quickly that you're then trading your strategic time in your business for an hourly rate yeah and your strategy and I believe honestly to this day like how my brain works in particular is I'm always thinking of what is next and if I was still doing the books or still doing client work or still doing any of that kind of work I actually wouldn't be able to move the needle in the big picture right I know that's kind of a roundabout answer but I do feel that really moved the needle for the business it's like a mentality shift yeah I think that's like the difference between being like a solo entrepreneur to actually being like a leader in a business yeah that's not to say there's I'm still like a control freak like let's be real I still love to oversee things but it's it's in a very different format right like I haven't touched client work probably in two years now right and if a client of the agency wants to tap into my speciality or my brain they book in a lot of times I'm not part of like the package anymore and I think it's because the clients know that I'm training my team I'm investing in my team all the time like I'm hiring the best of the best I'm paying great salaries like industry salaries that they know they're getting the best and they don't then feel like the best relies on me and it's been nice not because I ever want to leave the business or anything along those lines but just because it's allowing me now to be a bit more passion driven like I'm really focusing on things that I love to do yeah in the business and I think that's a luxury because it's not something you get when you're starting out like I'm not when you're starting out you're doing everything but yeah it's like a it's like an earned luxury it's like I'm getting paid back now for like sacrificing a lot in the early days and it's nice my biggest piece of advice has always been just like push yourself that little bit further because when you push yourself to an uncomfortable zone you kind of have to force to adapt it's like if you jump into an ice bath yeah for the first few probably 30 seconds you think I'm gonna like this is the worst thing I've ever done in my life I'm gonna die like I'm actually I need to deep breathe I'm gonna die and then the last like 30 seconds you're like I can do this yeah and you get out but it's like forcing yourself into those situations and I think in business that is very important like I'm not saying put yourself in dangerous situations you don't want to put yourself in like bankruptcy land but you want to be able to know where your limit is and then push it a little bit further because it will force you to adapt yeah the overheads thing is interesting because obviously there's pacing yourself but I think that there's no harm in being a little bit spicy I'm a spicy my profit and loss is spicy as in the things I choose to invest in and something that business owners would think is excessive or is a waste of money but I believe like sometimes it's those like spicy investments that are the fun like it's like even this new office right it's costing it on my leg and it's actually more than functional like you don't need to have a wellness center you don't need to have a full marble kitchen like you don't actually need those things but I think those spicy spicy investments are then going to pay me back in terms of the experience we can give our clients when they come for meetings and like the association might be able to take care of their team and their enjoyment in the environment right like I just think it's like it's like full circle and I yeah I'm always a big risk taker like I I've always spoken about even we decided to do a Fiji retreat this year and take brands and business owners to Fiji for a digital marketing retreat and we decided to do that in January this year and it was about a hundred and twenty hundred thirty thousand dollar investment to do it and so I had to commit to that before even knowing if there was palatability for anyone to come with us right and I said okay well I'm going to risk a hundred and thirty thousand dollars but at the same time I was like but I actually feel like I have to do this to one prove that there is palatability because otherwise how are you ever going to know and two to keep cementing us as the leaders yeah like who else is doing that yeah so like by pushing that little we're gonna call it it's like a buzzword today we're gonna push the spicy about the spicy boundaries it just opens up things right yeah that you can't get other ways so chain is essentially built on a foundation of paid ads yeah yeah yeah that's our core that's our core service right like that paid performance piece yeah the irony I always find in this is that we don't run paid ads for ourselves we have recently decided to run them for like our events when we do events and we're wanting to attract people that are outside of our you know let's say circle but the paid ads place is just it's wild right it's something that I think a lot of businesses are catching on to like obviously they have been for the last 10 years but really more so now a lot of businesses are bringing paid ads and they're running paid ads they're running paid ads for themselves they're running paid ads for themselves they're running paid ads for themselves they're running paid ads for themselves they're running paid ads for themselves they're running paid ads for themselves they're running paid ads for themselves they're running paid ads for themselves they're running paid ads for themselves it's a beneficial thing to your business and I think probably actually I should note that there's probably like a threshold and when an agency should run your ads or when a brand should run their own ads in-house like I see a lot of agencies at the moment talk about paid advertising and the service and how like almost it's like a scarcity because it's having like a decline like the agency model is having a decline in the paid space because brands are learning to do it themselves but I'm actually really for that because I truthfully feel that not every brand should work with an agency yeah and they sometimes can't afford an agency and it's it's up to us to be like no this isn't the right place go and learn how to do yourself get yourself out of the revenue slump and then come back and see us like when you've got some cash flow so what is that threshold I would probably say like brands need to be turning at least 30 to 40k a month like at least okay before they would pay an agency to run their ads because you think about it right say you're making 30 or 40 thousand dollars a month that's not all profit right that's your revenue so bottom line they might be making 30 40 percent they'd be on a good day right and so let's say we're left with 15 to 18 thousand dollars you've then got to use money to reinvest into your business buy more stock etc but you've also got to then use the funds to pay an agency and then have ad spend on top yes so if you think about it if I said to a brand I want you to spend five thousand dollars in ads but I also want you to spend five thousand dollars in ads and I want you to spend one you pay you to pay me five thousand dollars that's not viable because you can't actually drive enough profit from that five thousand dollar ad spend to pay me back they pay the agency so there has to be a threshold where we say to brands like you need to understand where your partner to scale where your partner to move the needle will move you we will move you from a 30 40k a month business to a 500k mark or the million dollar mark that's our role that is our role as an agency is we have this specialist skill set the connection to the platforms and we then apply that to your business and we and we do that so that's our role so that's our role as an agency is we have this we charge a fee for that right and that's what we get paid for but some brands can't afford that if they're not making enough revenue yet it's like a chicken or the egg but that's a really important piece of our puzzle and that's probably why you know a lot of people look at our folio and like you work with only like medium or small medium and large businesses but they're often like brands like oh I know that brand it's like you know that brand because they had budget to invest in an agency and they had budget to scale their ads yeah like that's why you know the brand it's like famous brands but then they don't have a single cent to spend on marketing yeah you know or if it's it's minimal and that's where I go let me help you train you how to do it yourself and then come back and see me in six months time is it also because it helps you if you kind of know that there's a product market fit oh for sure like and I think also this is another thing we've had plenty of startup businesses move through chain we've got one at the moment who I'm obsessed with they're called posy it's an underwear or lingerie brand intimates brand and I didn't even need to see those product market fit because when they came to me they had this innovative product with a really clear usp and I was like that's going to do it I'm going to do it I'm going to do it I'm without a doubt that would do well like I can just see it right I think if a brand has a really clear unique selling point you can sell it I always tell my clients to sell it to me like tell me what makes you so special yeah like I want I want to genuinely be like wow that's so clever it's the brands where they're saying like you know I'm vegan or I'm cruelty free and I'm Australian made it's like that's not actually now a usp anymore that now is a like must have like standard yeah and so the product market fit piece comes into the conversation around what's with the do you actually have a unique selling point or have you just created a business because someone else created a business and it looks easy business is not easy no not easy no whether you work in service or ecom like it's not easy and so I see how hard everyone works but yeah I think my role as an agency founder and how we we communicate to our community is you're better fit for the academy or you're better fit for training yeah sure or you're better fit to hire an intern than to give dust yet so come back to us that brand like posy yes were they brand new and brand new in the market yeah brand new but they first of all one had in my opinion a really clear usp that I was like this is going to be really easy to move like easy to sell and they also had budget okay I'm not saying that they were out here like throwing things around but they were like really willing to like hand it over to an agency from the beginning they also having a baby at the time so like they're like we don't have time to run our own ads and I just knew we'd nail it because we just were at a place or working into an industry or space in the industry that like this product would do well and it has done so well it just for context it's camel toe proof underwear so it's like underwear you can wear and not get like a big camel toe when you go to the gym you know because everything's got the front scene these days and you end up like yes but you know what I mean it's it's and I was like that is actually fitting a massive or like feeding into a massive hole in the market I'm like there are women who would be self-conscious about going to gym with them totally with the moose knuckle okay it's there anyway they've done really well I love my love for them and I'm like I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to go to the I love all my clients. obviously but it's just important to highlight like a startup business can also thrive under our management but they've got to be really understanding of what that looks like yeah you know it's not a magical thing where in a month you're in green cash flow land you know yes I think that's important what else does chain offer so paid ads is obviously our bread and butter so paid ads is like meta like as in on Facebook and Instagram and they're like the biggest platform and then TikTok as well as Pinterest we do email marketing and automation which has become a really big thing because email marketing is such a great way for brands to drive revenue without needing ad spend so a lot of the time a lot of the smaller businesses we work with when we do consulting into them via our academy we will say to them like even if you only have ten dollars a day for meta ads right because you don't have a huge budget put that into lead generation so find your key audience get them to join your database maybe you give them like a $50 voucher you know to go on the draw or whatever get them into your database and then just nurture them through email campaigns yeah just send email campaigns write about your brand write about features whatever you want to do because you'll slowly see these people have these touch points with your brand and they'll convert so now someone that cost you 50 cents to get into your database maybe might make a hundred dollar sale on your website and it's really high return on investment a really big part of I think um any sort of marketing function in 2025 2026 onwards we do email marketing we do social media organic social so I have a really great team that runs that I think we were joking about this before like social media organic social media is not my strong point like the most unsocial person that runs an agency I love going on my Instagram like I'm very authentic on my Instagram I'll always just be in stories and I'm talking about the most random things in the world right and like that's just me it's like an outlet when it comes to strategic social media like I have a team that does that yeah and thinks about that like I come up with crazy ideas like the other day we um were advertising our Black Friday summer which is like a strategy kind of summer over two days training people about Black Friday and I was like let's do like a lie detector style content like let's get an actual like forensic lie detector in like man who can like ask us questions and we can have questions about like you know have we ever done this with a Black Friday campaign before and stuff and we can use that for social right so I like to think about like random ideas yeah but I'm not then executing on the random ideas right I've got a team who does that and then we do digital design so we do websites branding and everything like that it's yeah we're we're a busy little team yeah what's your head count now we have 22 full-time staff wow which is good the funniest part of the situation at the moment is that our current office upstairs really only seats 20 people so like I sit on the floor most days or I'll sit like a couch like a lounge couch and that's like truthful right and we've kind of spoken about like there is so much demand at the moment for us to grow from a headcount perspective but we only work in the office two days a week and there's just no capacity for us to have like a rotating roster because part of the magic that makes my business grow is the fact that I'm able to run so smoothly as my team and the culture and if we start splitting people up we start letting go of that magic yeah and so I've basically said to the girls enjoy this year because it's going to be cruisy and we will make it to our new office which then is going to be out of seat 48 okay and so you watch next year we move into our new office yeah it'll be game on game on moles is the energy because it's like we can then start we can really then start just like ramping up everything we do and that's really exciting this year's like foundational I guess just really just investing back into my team and I'm really excited about it and I'm really excited about it and I'm really we've launched a lot of new offers this year in terms of education scene yeah we're on fire in that respect but like that doesn't need more resources though because that's you know sahara coordinates that i coordinate that alongside her i'm doing the training so like that doesn't need extra resources but when it comes to clients and client management and other things like we need more people we do we need we need more staff we could grow so quickly but just fast growth scare no not because now we've got all of our structures in place i would say like in 2022 we had like a influx where i was like yeah let's grow like i think we might have had like 10 staff and i was like let's get to like 18 or 19 staff right this was in 2022 and i just hired the wrong people because i i didn't realize at the time what the right employee looks like what the right skill set was we also didn't have our own like foundational processes in place whereas now everything in my business has a process you literally need to write an email like there's a process for that like everything is ironic they're on the process podcast but like everything is is process driven yeah and that is the magic because i could be away from the business for six months yeah and everything would run who wrote the processes so my team my team and me so it's a combination and it was a huge huge job because you have to basically you strip everything back and be like who does this what do we do what files how does that work and so i would say it's taken like two years to really refine the processes but now we could drag and drop our model and we could scale up with 20 new employees in six months and we wouldn't have had an issue there would be no discomfort for anyone because everything is so process driven so they wouldn't be like shivers it's a shambles and i think that's probably something that will set us up really well for next year right yeah because if we didn't have that like in 2022 we didn't have that and oh that was like the worst year that was like from like a hiring perspective we hired the wrong people and it just it tumbled on us right like it just it bit us in the bum basically it makes me nervous about that too like just as you're learning things for the first time the people that you let into the business in that phase if you get it wrong they leave and then it's like you've left a bad taste in their mouth and people talk because they're young and like we're so young and people are envious and it's weird and you're just like it's like you're in my brain right now because that's exactly what happened we had this group of the wrong people at the wrong time type energy and yeah when they left it was like they have so negativity but there's actually nothing to be negative about like it's just just unfortunately just not the right situation but we've ironed that out now and i feel like to your point when you have the processes in place and you know they work like you know you've tried them they work then new team members come in and they're on board with it like they're so pumped because they're like so so like chilling not chaotic you know it's organized it's organized chaos basically that's what i would say chain is like organized chaos because it's not chaotic like everyone no one walks off at four o'clock 4 30 whatever like we are very strict with that yeah we have really good boundaries yeah but it's wild like we do a million tasks a month we use asana yeah for like our task management and like i get a report at the end of each month and we literally do a million tasks can you imagine like the volume of tasks we're moving through 22 people are moving through a million tasks a month that's crazy yeah it's wild but everything is process driven so we can do that we are able to that and we will be able to do two million tasks next year yeah wow i'll say it here first this time next year so when you say that you're that it's organized chaos yes how are you personally in that and everyone clocks off at four and there's good boundaries yes are you in the same boat i think i am i think my brain always is on yeah right so like i can't turn my brain off and i don't think that's to do with my business i think that's to do with just my personality right my brain 24 7 is clocking and so like sahara will be offline but i will write to her we have like a workplace chat and i'll write to her and i'll say don't mind me just brain dumping and i will just brain dump not expecting any reply but just getting it out of my head because i'm like there's just too much like i'll be laying in bed like that's a good idea right so i think i'm good with the chaos too and i obviously my mom and i like have to balance like working in this business and growing this business whilst also like being super present with my four-year-old and that's like been challenging but again i feel like i'm starting to really get the balance with that too yeah basically i work in a way that i don't have to in the office one and a half days a week that's how much i work in the business i have like a full day of meetings on a wednesday and i'll pop into the office on a friday to see the team as like a team culture thing but then my monday my tuesday and my thursday are basically personal days so on mondays i'll go and do appointments yeah which sounds wild and on tuesdays and thursdays i try and spend time with my daughter are you still on the laptop or on the emails though so i feel like i've gotten better at this as well i think i think what's happened is like again this is that current theme that i spoke to when i started my business i couldn't let go of things and i've really really really learned to relinquish control and so now i can like i'm not saying i'm not checking my emails ever like if i'm offline on a tuesday i'm still checking my emails in the morning getting back to anyone quickly before i you know go and take my daughter to the fairy cafe before we go to barbie world wherever we're going i'll make sure everything's kind of teed off but then i can be present for that time and it's really special because i i think i was really conscious of the fact that as she got i didn't want her like just watching me stare into a computer every day of the week like that is like not the life i would like for my daughter to like reflect and think is normal even though it's my normal i just don't want it to be her normal you know she's too innocent so and at the start of this year actually i was well and truly feeling just all sorts of burnout like emotional and physical burnout i don't know what it was it wasn't like a specific thing that got me there but i just was like exhausted right i think it's maybe working so hard for nine years i think my body was like you need to slow down yeah and so i actually took a three-month sabbatical side of the year wow i didn't work for three months you wouldn't know it though would you so it was in those three months that i really really worked out that my team have got this under control i think that was great for me i think that was great for the team the team to see that like we honor mental health and we honor like physical health like if you're feeling tired and burnt out at all in any way like i wouldn't say that there was a specific thing burning me out but i was just cooked i just needed time to recalibrate and i came back stronger and happier and i also came back with this new sense of like appreciation for my team because i was like you guys have got this under control yeah i could technically walk away from the business like and step back and the team and the business would still run yeah I won't do that because I'm a passionate mofo who just like I'm just so addicted to what we can do and what we can create and I just it's part of my identity now like I don't what would I don't understand who who Shelby is without chain yeah because it's intertwined but it is nice because it allows me now the flexibility to have those moments with my daughter and that's really special you know I think that's that's a good balance have your personal relationship struggled oh for sure I've been with my husband as an example since I was 15 so he's been with me since I was doing VCA since I was I know since I was like you got your driver's license literally everything he's been with me since the beginning and I've always had the same personality I was I'm always wanted to be like a high achiever type thing like even when I was at high school I got like ducks at the school like like yeah girl like little brain nerd over here she's smart and it just it's just like my personality type it's just like you know always striving for like perfection in a way right and he has seen me move through so many different versions of myself as I've up leveled and grown the business and then had trials and tribulations and that puts pressure on a relationship because as I am going through really tough things outside of the home I'm bringing it home right because it's part of our world and also to add to the layer of complexity my husband has actually not worked in five years okay so we decided when basically a few weeks before my daughter was born that we would both go back to work part-time okay well that was the decision we're like Josh loved his job I loved my job and that felt like a really good mix my daughter was like three weeks old and I realized really quickly I could not go back to work part-time because I'm gonna work if I went back to work part-time I'd still have emails full-time like I actually could not switch off whereas he would be able to go to the job site he was in shop fitting he'd do his work he'd come home he's offline he's done his brain's ticked off for the day I didn't have that and so we made the decision collectively that he would stay at home with my daughter from when she was three weeks old and that was it was during COVID I feel for him because that was a big thing but again that was a big movement in our relationship so we've had to really find what works for us and I'm very glad to say that like we're we're very well in unison and I think because he's known me since I was so young we're like very cemented in our relationship you know it's it feels good and I think also sometimes he's like an empath and he'll see me struggling and I think that's mentally and physically and he's like just just step away what are you doing but he doesn't understand that when you're this type of personality yeah when you're this way inclined you can't just do that yeah you just need to keep going yeah and so he's been through that with me and then friendships I don't have a lot of spare time and when I do to be honest like my favorite thing to do is to literally watch a movie or just to have a sauna like or just alone time like alone time like I love to almost have like no contact like I don't want any stimulation of like people or noise like yes I'm like all I want to do is like you know I'm going to do this I'm going to the other day I had like a moment to have like a green tea on the couch and like there's just no noise my daughter's at kindergarten my husband was out playing golf and I sat on the couch and I was like this is a life like I can just sit here and sip this tea this is a lot this is this is like that's you know how there's like that tiktok trend like rich because I have this rich because I can sit on the couch and have a green tea midweek and like nothing's bothering me but I think um friendships I've had to really work out who my close friends are because I only now see my friends once in a blue moon because we're all working or we've all got children we're just busy right I do think though also this is an interesting conversation I think I've become friends with a lot of my team yeah so like that has replaced a lot of the social relationships in my life because I've just become really close with the cups like filled up by that yeah like I feel like then I don't need extra cup filling yeah because I feel like I've had a good laugh and I've had a really good connection with a lot of my team and I think probably that's it's not probably recommended ever to become like besties with don't mix business with pleasure or whatever but for me I feel like I trust my team so much that like it's just part of chain like we're just this little wholesome little group of women who just want the same thing yeah same journey and when you move so quickly if you're getting that cup fill yeah it's like I don't need anymore yeah like I think the other thing has been like working out how your true friends are because as my life has changed some people haven't been happy for me or like they're not happy that like perhaps someone's doing well for themselves yeah that's sad but then I just I'm very I'm like an aquarium so yeah I think that's it I think that's it I think that's see you later you piss me off that's fine I can move on you know I'm just like it's my worst and best trait is the ability to be like yeah I do this with physical objects too like I will give away designer shoes to my staff like not even flinch like I could throw them out the window could not care why have they annoyed you no no like this I just have no emotional connection to things or people except for like the really closest people in my life like I could just if that happens tomorrow that's fine that's what it is you know yeah it's so it's like I sound like at all I think yeah it's like maybe even a coping mechanism yeah like you can't get brought down by the drama I think so I get asked a lot how I do it all and I was had a brilliant episode recently with Emma Lewisham we were talking about sacrifice and she got quite emotional because she hadn't been asked that question yet and she was personally like moving through it but I said to her I have not been a bridesmaid ever because actually I chose this I just realized I've never been a bridesmaid either yeah ever I chose this so you don't have that like yeah that's correct yeah I just realized I've never been a bridesmaid either yeah I chose this and like you yeah that is a sacrifice though that is the cost of entrepreneurship like you are constantly in a battle of trade-offs yeah like constantly in the battle of trade-offs like you can't have a big successful business should we have a hens I wish I could be my bride I mean my bride my bridesmaid we should maybe have like an industry like hens party oh my god but I just feel like that's it's the constant battle of trade-offs yeah but I wouldn't swap anything no because the experiences I've had through my business have filled me up enough if not more than what would if I was like a hen I'm like you know like I just well not a hen but like a bridesmaid yeah and I speak about this actually I've spoken about this to my team before like when my daughter was born she was probably like an hour old and I was on a zoom call in the hospital bed I've heard you talk about this like that's a true that's a trade-off yeah like that was like I mean at least she's sleeping like she's newborn she's having a good old snooze yeah she doesn't know any different but like you don't get time off you don't well back then especially four and a half years ago yeah I did not get time off maybe now I've like got the balance that I can have some time off but like back then no time off also though it's relative to just how ambitious you are without a doubt if you were like no no I'm gonna put a week in place you can you can you can do that you're talking to someone who's had to learn to say no yeah it's hard because I'm like I'm a yes man and I think that's part of the magic but at the same time like you said it's it's a sacrifice a level of sacrifice I'm happy to have that level of sacrifice because I feel like now I'm so fulfilled in my business but some people wouldn't want to do that some people would think I'm crazy and that's okay because everyone's so different but anyway we can go we have so much to talk about should we do like a four-part special hey guys just a quick break to remind you that this episode is sponsored by the chain social learning platform chain academy we are having the best time with those girls and having six blocks to book in and ask questions and learn with them every single month is so much fun I feel like the world is our oyster and if you want to learn more please check out the show notes if we zoom out chain has generated like over a billion dollars I'll be well well well over that now yeah it's wild what do you think that some of the brands that have really added to that have done right okay this is the best question because all the brands that have been under our wing that have scaled the fastest moved the fastest become household names the quickest have been brands that are willing to relinquish control can you give us example of brands that did do that yeah of course so like banging body yeah she came to us and she's like this where I want to be and I was like okay well this is what you got to do did she have the brand set up before she came to you or was it three weeks old the business yeah so it'd been live for three weeks yeah crazy right and we took on everything from influencer photo shoots web design facebook ads email marketing anything and everything banging body for two years came out of chain as an engine and then that business grew so quick that she needed an internal team like there's there's moments where like an agency makes sense and in moments where an agency is voided because the business is so big and needs an in-house resource right like a team that would be a great example of a brand and even like more recently like a brand like nala like another perfect example like they came to us and they were willing to relinquish control of paid to us completely like whatever you need to make it happen here we'll give it to you same with banging body same with gem georgia from gem like these people are all the type of people where they go if we're going to outsource to a specialist we're going to let them do their job yeah and I think the brands that grow the the slowest under our that don't have that same like moment of like skyrocketing are the ones who are still super super super super nitpicky or granular granular like it's not this big of a conversation and the ones that are really really nervous about investment whereas the brands I just spoke to have always been like whatever it takes we want to get there because they know getting a business off the ground econ business costs so much money like you're just delaying the inevitable yeah you can do it slowly and all you're doing is delaying the inevitable doing it slowly doesn't mean it's it's just like pulling off the band-aid right and those brands then reap the benefit yeah they do they reap the benefits of that mentality and I think when I say like they're open to spend and invest like obviously within reason like I'm not coming to my clients and being like mortgage your whole house and give me everything but I'm saying to them what's your starting budget and then we scale it and then they invest everything back in like it's a constant reinvestment for probably two years like that's normal to them whereas some other brands are like oh well no we'll have the okay we're not going to expect that same scalability because you can't right yeah so the most common thing would be brands who, one, relinquish control to us and let us be the specialists. It's like you wouldn't micromanage your builder, but somehow you micromanage your agency. It's wild. And then also brands that have, again, that clear USP. I think that's really helpful. Brands that really are disruptors in their market or in their category. All of those brands I just mentioned are exactly that. So I think for me, it's the brands that relinquish control, but also the brands that have a really clear USP. And also the brands that look at everything holistically. So you'll see there's a common denominator between those brands I spoke to, Bang & Body, Gem, Nala, whatever brand it is, even Posey. They understand the holistic nature of marketing so that you can't put all your eggs in just paid advertising, or you can't just put all your eggs in PR. Everything works in the ecosystem. So we often say the clients that do best are the clients that are doing PR, investing in content, running their socials, really think about organic social strategy. Running paid ads, optimizing their website, working with influencers and tastemakers. You're doing a bit of everything. You're kind of then building out, I think this is a thing, right? You're building out a brand rather than just a commodity. And I think that's probably this line here is the brands that do really well, the ones that really invest in the brand. And is your team coming up with creative, executing creative, delivering it, getting the approval on that, and then just running with it? Yeah, yeah. So we have a full team. I just realized I missed talking about that. We have a full team. So like Lauren, who's our art director, she'll come up with high production style concepts. So that's like editorial shoots, product shoots. We've also then got a social team who work in with our paid team across like UGC, creator content, midfire content. And we're coming up with all the concepts. So pitching that into our clients, depending on the scope in which we're engaged, we're pitching in either content for paid ads, which is very different to the content than organic social, right? Like so different. Or pitching in content for like web or billboards, whatever it is. And we're basically working end to end. But it's important because more so than ever, like now being 2025, the creative at the moment is the only bit that is moving the needle for paid ads or for social. That's why I bring it up. Yeah, if you don't have good creative, like you can forget it. And that's why I find it baffling when some agencies don't actually do creative for their clients. It's baffling because the easiest part of the process is doing like the ads builds. Like you can learn how to do that. You can systemize that. And AI is probably going to come along and take that anyway. What you can't technically learn, that's why you have to outsource, is the creative mind. Like understanding what creative you need where, how to do storytelling, how to translate your brand and your brand's point of difference into market that's going to actually cut through, right? Because that's the currency at the moment. That's everything. Everything. Like even Meta on June 6th swapped over how they run their platform. Basically, you need to run 10 new creatives a week at minimum. Like it's wild. And some brands don't get that yet. But it's good. It's good for creatives. Yeah, it's very good for me. It's my business. I know. I literally, I say this, whenever we do our Meta masterclasses, we have like some creative agencies come along. I'll say to them, like, you're in the best business. You're in a good place. It's good. But it's important. And I think even with AI coming along, creative will be even more important because everything's going to look the same. Even at the moment, I can tell when copy has been written by AI. Yeah. There's fucking hyphens too. But it's icky. It just sounds too layered and doesn't sound human. And I think humans crave human interaction. And we're going to do that. We're going to do that. And we're going to want that more when AI is prevalent. I think that COVID time, like how everyone just, all they wanted to do was crave to like hang out and have a drink with a friend or like go to the movies with a friend. Like you just crave that interaction. Like you can't get that digitally. And so like, I think the brands that are going to do the best are going to be, yeah, the brands that are human and creative driven, which is exciting for you and for everyone else that's willing to invest. It's good. I want to show you this thing that got sent to me the other day. What is it? It was a piece of content and it was like a guy on TikTok being like, this gets views, this gets sales. And I just wanted to flag it with you. Because it's a different part of the funnel. Basically now, what do you think the state of the funnels are? I truly believe majority of my clients are working on top of funnel. I feel like I'm saying like a buzzword, but I feel like top of funnel because it's the big marketing bro is like funnel bro, you know, like I just, so I'm really cautious. But top of funnel being like that introductory touch point or that brand discovery touch point, that first interaction, those awareness touch points, a lot of brands are investing there because that's where you can do really fun, entertaining, scroll stopping, fear mongering, whatever you want to do, right? This is your attention moment. So majority of my clients are investing money in top of funnel because it's very easy to sell a product to someone that knows a brand. Like I think I explained this to my clients that investing in top of funnel content is actually cheaper than just investing in top of funnel content. Investing in like bottom of funnel activity because you would then have to be advertising to them so many times to build that trust, build that understanding, build the exposure. So yeah, for my clients, without a doubt, it's top of funnel. And I think even with like how we operate on chain, not that we ever post a lot of content, like we're kind of like the hairdresser that doesn't do their own hair. But when we even post on our social media, it's a lot of top of funnel content because like, I just figured that that's a discovery touch point, you know, it's more important. And I think a lot of brands get caught up. In the opposite, they get so focused on the immediate sale that they're focused on like promotional content, like buy now content. And it just doesn't, it doesn't sell. Right. Not in, not in a market that's driven by humans. Everyone wants to buy from a human. So you need to build that, I think, connection personally. So do you guys focus on like retargeting and that kind of stuff as well? We do, yeah. Retargeting, absolutely. But that's a very small piece of the puzzle, 5% maybe of the puzzle. We are like 75 to 80% top of funnel. And it's really interesting because a lot of agencies don't do it that way. Yeah. Like not at all. Not at all. But the method to our madness is that you have a lot of other channels that can convert bottom of funnel. Like your organic social can often be used as a bottom of funnel tactic. Your email marketing, often a bottom of funnel tactic. PR, well, can be a bit of both, right? Influencer, often a bottom of funnel tactic. So when we're engaged in a full service scope, we're thinking about the ways in which we can provide our clients the cheapest possible interaction with people that will end up converting into a customer. Right. That's the magic. That's the magic. It's a magic moment. We teach that in our masterclass, actually. Yeah, true. And people are always like, what? Because it's like, it goes against like, whereas their agency or they might be doing like 70% on retargeting. But then also think about it, you're not then filling up your marketplace. Yeah. Like you are then, all you're doing is just drying out the bottom. Yeah. That's why there's often like a, with brands that do sales, like big end of financial year sales or Black Friday sales, there's often like a sale hangover, right? Because they exhaust all of their bottom of funnel customers. Yeah. And they wonder why they've got no sales after. Yeah. Because they haven't been talking to anyone new, right? There's been pumping and pumping. So they get this little lift in sales and then like goes back to shit. Whereas for us, we're always, we're BAU always. Like as in we are, we're obviously support our client sales, but we are always, always working on how are we going to maintain and grow our BAU baseline? Like you cannot rely on sales. What is it within you that wants to educate like this? I just feel like, okay, if I'm being super truthful with you, there is a plague, of agencies that suck. No, I mean that with all due respect. Okay. There are people who are calling themselves agencies and specialists that would barely have the qualifications to be a coordinator. Yeah. And the problem is that they then sell themselves and their services in market. They say, yeah, we do Facebook ads, right? Yeah. And then clients go, oh, this is so good. This is so cheap. This is so amazing. And they go and do Facebook ads with said agency, freelancer, whatever it is, and have a really terrible experience and then get burnt and they try again and they get burnt again and they try again. And what happens is this deadly cycle where then agencies like Chain, they're a little bit more expensive than everyone else for a reason. We end up having less clients to even ever work with because all of these other smaller agencies have burnt the relationship. Yeah. Right? Brands just go, agencies don't work. Yeah. Because there's cowboys. Yeah. So for me, my goal with starting education was to make it accessible to everyone. I don't give a shit. In fact, actually probably half of our audience, I don't know, masterclasses and the last 18 months have been agencies, right? So over 500 agencies have trained with me in the last 12 months. I don't, I don't find that competitive at all because there's so much room for everyone. Yeah. What I do find is how excited I feel that they'll be going out and doing it properly. You know, it'd be like being a beef seller when people are boycotting beef. Yeah. Truthfully, you have no business if people are boycotting it. And at the moment, brands are boycotting agencies because they're having terrible experiences. Yeah. So in my role as a leading agency in the industry, I need to show the other agencies how they can do it. Properly. How they can run ads with success. I then get people who email us, like we get our, the agencies that come to email and say, we can't believe how much you share with us. As if this industry is like gatekept. Yeah. But the thing is like some people gatekeep, that's fine. For me, I don't, I don't care. We are busy and booked and that's fine. Like I'm happy. I'm in my lane. I'm good. All I can do though, is to keep health in this industry is help everyone else in the industry. Yeah. That's why I've done so much mentoring. That's why I've done agency accelerators. Cause I actually just have so much to share that will actually improve the state of the industry I operate in. Yeah. Which came first, the one where you were like, okay, there's clients here that we'd like to take on, but are not perhaps hitting that 30 to 40 K mark. Let's create a little masterclass for them to do it themselves. Which came first, that or the big industry sweep? Probably the same at the same time, to be honest with you. I reckon this industry sweep started happening at the end of 2023. Like that's when it started to see things changing. And at the start of 2024, I posted, because I used to like seven years ago, run meta ads masterclasses. There's photos of me running it when I was like 25. Cause I was running them then. And my knowledge has changed a lot since then. And our partnership with meta has changed a lot since then. And so in Feb, 2020, 2024 I put on my social media would anyone be interested in like an in-person like training course right thinking that we would get like five or ten people be like yep and that we just do it at our HQ in our little meeting room yeah and that would be that and we did it and I was genuinely inundated with people like yes yes when is tickets going on sale I was like sorry what because I just didn't realize how many people were on the other side of this Instagram that were like dormant and then were like I want to learn and so we did our first one at Jackalope in April 2024 and it sold out straight away it was like 50 people and I was like and then after that people in like Brisbane were like when are you coming to Brisbane when are you going to Adelaide so then we just yeah we did 18 masterclasses in the last 18 months a road show Adele and I call it our eras tour you know oh my god I love that I know and so basically at the same time as you know brands were wanting to learn there were also a lot of agencies that were realizing that they had to improve their skill set or they're going to become redundant yeah and it's happening there's so I cannot believe how many agencies are closing at the moment but I can kind of believe it because they just never had a competitive advantage because they didn't do things properly yeah and you can't you don't survive your business does not survive with no results yeah you know I think this is the other thing right because I've always had people be like aren't you like worried that you're giving away like all of your spreadsheets and your knowledge but I'm like no because we deliver results yeah so like ultimately my clients are happy yeah so like that's one of the biggest piece of advice that I give to young creatives. Young creatives that are starting up their folios and stuff like that is to show case somehow that you haven't just done one job for that brand but they're a return customer and they're like attention they're like why would I put like a sheet society sheet society sheet society I'm like because they booked you three times in a row and anyone with like a business brain is like oh that worked correct yeah correct this is 100% a bit of discourse that I see on TikTok is you know people having mini meltdowns about how their agencies are losing clients and how this is all happening and I think to myself just focus on retention yeah it's your core offering honey just focus on retention and you will thrive that's what we've done so while everyone else is having big bold meltdowns we're just focusing on being better yeah we do because we then are celebrating with clients that have been with us for five or six years yeah just like last week we had Simone Perel sign up for their fifth year like that is a testament to this industry right and that's important to me so we're very aligned I think that's it's a really key thing so and retention happens through results like clients are happy yeah if they've got something out of it and that's why then I'm training people to be like this is how you do a good job of meta ads so that you can retain your clients and you can give your clients results you know yeah when it comes to inspiring your team yes I find we're all fishing from the same pond at the moment in creative the cream is rising to the top and then we're only seeing the cream and then everyone's like just do that yeah it's so dull I love that you're back there with your lie detector ideas but how are you kind of inspiring a team where essentially every day is like a six to ten second video that's got to cut through I come from a filmmaking background I'm mortified that that's now the majority it's dopamine hits yeah I know and I knew that it was coming so I kind of adapted in this way but how do you feel about that so to be honest I think one thing that I've always been really big on with chain is that like everyone can pitch anything to me like there is no kind of box around what we do and don't do so like nothing is ever too outrageous or too conservative so I will say to my girls like pitch anything like pitch it because if you can think of it that's an original idea like if you've thought of something original just pitch it right we are actually about to roll out a campaign and it's under embargo and I wish I could share it maybe when this comes out maybe I can yeah my lips are sealed okay I can't say much but it's a very exciting hair care brand and we're about to launch them into market and we're doing a really controversial campaign and we're doing a really large launch and I'm excited but also like again I'm not nervous but it's outside the box because we're just sick of seeing the same shit like I've got lots to say on this space I think people love cookie cutter yeah they love to follow the trends when if you would actually look at every brand that is the most successful they're the ones that aren't following the trends they're setting the trends yes so that's our energy at chain like just whatever comes to your mind pitch it yeah and roll with it because sometimes the most outrageous or the most wildest ideas turn out to be the best and also I encourage my clients and my team not to follow trends yeah like we're not trend followers we're trendsetters so we have to think outside the box and we get inspiration from other categories too so although we work in marketing we will be looking at everything happening in world news from pop culture to politics to landscapes like we're looking at everything yeah and just going like how can we bring that in it's exciting yeah I always had my clients like what are you stopping and watching truthfully what are you watching yeah like not what are you having a little dopamine hits on like what is actually staying with you yeah and making you make decisions like what is helping you buy something or invest in something or find a new service and then we extrapolate that and it's always unique content it's never like oh I saw someone get a box dropped on their head and I bought a car from a car yard because like it doesn't happen like that right and again I think this whole conversation will stem back to that AI conversation that again because everyone's going to start looking the same and feeling the same yeah that when you can create anything authentic I don't care if it's jarring I saw a quote once about like I'd prefer a hundred people to love me than a thousand people to have no like nonchalant about me yeah I apply that to my clients brands why do you care if someone doesn't like your brand doesn't like your content because you've got then diehard fans that do so just roll with it you know rather than having a thousand people kind of be like whatever it's just a bit of another brand yeah true show up for the hundred and hundred percent even like in my personal brand that's what I like to do yeah I'm probably very jarring for some people because the content is just so sporadic you don't know what you're getting am I cooking lasagna or am I talking about how much I hate something like or am I talking about skincare you don't know but like that's just I just go with it whereas I feel if I actually polish myself and do like a day in the life here's me doing my my cute little interview like I just don't do that because I don't feel like that breaks the needle enough or pushes the needle enough for me everyone's different yeah when we talk about like your HQ and I've been to the one that your team's currently at right now where I shot with Jem in the studio space yes and you were like refitting out the entryway when we were there and you were like we're going to get a couch here and it's going to be amazing how long did it take you to really there's two parts to this question understand your cash flow yeah how long is this founder yeah oh my god I I'm obsessed with this conversation and you're going to be shocked you'll be shocked I think we'll be similar I think about 12 months ago yeah same I was like okay I think because I was just living what's that live in the living like low car whatever they say I was just living and just going kind of with the flow and just throwing and hoping it sticks and I just had some really successful moments across the business I genuinely thought and this is mortifying about until about probably a year to 18 months ago that revenue was the same thing like profit was the same thing as cash flow like I truly did so I was looking at profit and loss I'm like great this looks good but then like where's the cash oh wait shit all these clients lost money yeah so I worked out yeah 12 to 18 months ago so now I work with my accountant every two weeks we catch up maybe cash flow meeting and it's so much better yeah like we have targets and we have like spreadsheets and all these things that are really important that I never had and it's wild to think that I got away with it for seven years without it yeah wow do you think that's wild absolutely crazy and having a big payroll you know our payroll is over two and a bit million a year if not more now so like wow but I got away with it and I think it was just because I think it was a bit of luck yeah and a little bit of like ignorance yeah and also like I didn't start taking a proper salary or anything out of my business like I want to say proper like a normal salary like a 50 60k salary out of my business until like nearly year four so like I invested everything back in like I this isn't like a pick me moment but I really did have a lot of support around me for the first few years where like my mum would bring groceries over to my house because we just didn't have the money for that like we just were really struggling apprentice startup business and I knew I had to invest back yeah so I think the business was healthy from a cash flow perspective because I left everything in it yeah and then I started to spend some of it yeah these really fun things and then yeah I started to spend some of it and then I started to spend some of it yeah and then I started to spend some of it yeah until about 18 months ago and I was like okay all right we need to focus on this now so then how has it come about that you guys are doing the the power to look at the spreadsheets and be like we need a HQ we're going to fit it out it's going to be amazing there's a pool on the roof in a wellness center okay so like how did that come well if my accountant is listening to this right now I would say I'm still very like forthright so like I will go with my gut with a lot of things yeah so she's not out here telling me to spend over two million dollars in a new office okay at any way shape or form but she trusts me and I'm like I'm going to do it I'm going to do it I'm going to do it that my gut intuition and my psychoness will just pay back and I really do believe it's worked so far yeah I do also believe the chain brand is built off being a little bit bougie yeah a little bit extra doing things that others aren't doing like when I sent to my builder the designs and the fit out he was like this looks like a wellness spa not a corporate office exactly but I was like that's exactly it because it's that again let's go back to that conversation around like content everything's the same yeah this is going to be like scroll stopping people like what do you mean that's a digital marketing office you know and so it's part of our DNA right so I would say I'm investing in this office from like a brand exercise but also a team longevity exercise yeah you know so the team will be so proud of the space they come to and they know that the business is investing back into them and in the space and they're not getting put in like a cubicle in the corner with no light you know I think that's really important like we're doing red light panels like anyway we could there could be a whole conversation on my HQ so my accountant thinks I'm doing things a bit too bougie always like you know when I bought out Jackalope hotel and flew in Peking duck for a Christmas party yeah she's like Did you need to do that? Because the fringe benefit tax on that was wild because, again, me being like, we're fine and then getting slapped with a big bill on that so i think yeah about 18 months ago she really got involved and like we really knuckled down and i'm really proud of where we're at now but i still make the final call so there are some things where i go like no we can do this like i know we can do it even though the books might be like telling me otherwise but now we can do it yeah see coming back to that conversation a little bit pressure yeah never hurt no one you know like never hurt anyone i'm like okay if we're going to be settling on an amazing hq in april i just need to like keep things happy and healthy it's my job yeah you know yeah amazing and when you think about e-commerce you've also in you you're partnering in brands right i am saint louvre no one told me that you were a part owner in that when we shot her founder videos no one you guys were just like yeah it's a client i was like okay sure yeah so we're another thing we're doing which is kind of a little bit against the norm is equity share in return for services which has been strategic for the clients we partner with because they're then getting a whole entire marketing team and my brain for a share of equity but then we're getting a share of equity and they're running the business so it works really well we've actually um just invested in another business which is that hair care brand yes so you will see soon another one i'm really particular with who i kind of angel invest or equity share invest with because we can't have all of our clients under an equity arrangement because we need cash flow yeah but i'm really excited about this one really really excited because it's again another really great disruptive category saint louvre was that i loved the product so much i used it myself my skin was phenomenal and i was like wow this product is like game changing so i need to be involved in this in a deeper level because i think i was the number one customer of the brand over the years that went by i'm like this is i am the number one customer in terms of spend but now i'm really particular and if i feel like a brand is going to have a really big moment in disrupting the category i'm like i'm down to partner with you for it did they ask you for that or do you come a bit of both actually a bit of both i have i have a lot of brands email asking for angel investment because people know that i do that and i'm like i also do cash investment in brands too and that's been something that like but for silent investment and that's been something that i feel is like a diversity initiative for like the agency portfolio and actually to be honest over the coming years i almost want to start up like a like a fund you know like to really go big and invest into brands because we have a really healthy knack of picking winners you see all the clients that we've scaled and i think imagine if equity in all those brands yeah you'd be laughing yeah that's crazy when we think about what's next then yes with that yes it feels like we're actually doing an episode of deep dive on sofia amaruso and she was girl boss nasty gal and then now she has so you find right it's called like trust fund or something like that so cool and it's yeah it's that's like where i'd love to go yeah i have a few crazy things i want to do we are going to bring out another arm to our business as well next year well hopefully end of this year which is very complimentary to what we do at the moment and it's so it is yeah we're gonna offer a pr like proper moving into the pr world i just feel like no one's doing great disruption and i'm ready to kind of get back to my roots i did pr and events when i was at the start and you know now i want to get back into it so that's a very exciting kind of growth opportunity for the business and i'm pumped for that because that's like a passion project yeah and complimentary to everything we do and then yeah i really would love to keep doing all of our events and training which is just such a fun part of the job i love to talk so i love to present and do that but yeah i think in the next two to three years i would love to start like an e-commerce investment fund that would be amazing and just like there's like there's no one good in australia doing it that can incubators yeah like very cool i think it'd be very fun so watch this space that's like on the on the agenda how and when it comes to light i need a lot of money for that so that's an accountant conversation let's look at the cash flow i'm in the trenches right now of tom 2.0 yes because obviously cinema tom when we've met in the past has been a pretty heavy on video only we've done photography we've done a bunch of other stuff and just offering end-to-end service of content yep now we're starting to operate in social which has come about through anko and the clients through kmart and all of that unfortunately i'm not in a position to do equity share with anko or kmart imagine why not most farmers are telling me to get fucked and those pieces are so interesting to me but i'm also in the space of i've got three new hires this month wow and yeah it's my first time i'm putting anyone on the payroll which is three at once yeah because i'm sort of in that yeah you gotta put you gotta push you've yeah yeah i'm putting it through it you don't i'm in that discomfort where i'm like okay let's put the pressure on yeah but it's not anything else than other than what we've already done it's just changing the i just pay their super now nothing's actually changed so that's great yeah so i think you'll feel more commitment though from it like it feels like it's different to having contractors yeah it's like it's just feels more like like a little home or a little it's like an engine yeah it's an engine that's the word i love to use too yeah so in that obviously i don't want to be a greedy piggy about all of this and i'm interested in offering bonuses and yes how do you figure all that out how did you so okay so again kind of conversation would be like what i did for the first few years versus what i do now yeah so first few years we weren't able to pay a lot to my staff because we didn't have a lot of cash flow or we didn't have a lot of revenue probably actually is a better conversation whereas when we started to get more revenue we then started to pay more in our wages right so like our wages are very high now we have majority senior salaries we're already in the business of having above award salaries we do bonuses around awards so we have like an end of financial year superstar award where someone gets a cash bonus we have a christmas above and beyond award we have a team member of the year award and those awards keep the team working towards really big prizes like and really big bonuses right because they're like they know that that's coming and they're cemented in their role and their pay and then they just know there's the top of the end like last year i gave away one to one of the girls a 10 carat diamond necklace tennis necklace okay right for their christmas gift so they had to go get insurance on that and everything like that's crazy right yeah okay and in addition to that i think what we we don't do traditional like bonus system like we don't have like kpi targets and stuff because i think then people are operating off a commercial motive okay like i don't want my team having to be hitting certain targets for my clients just to get a bonus then they'll do anything to make that happen yeah but in the wrong way so instead what we do instead of having bonuses we work on what like i said above industry salaries nice exciting like bonuses the end of the year for key kind of awards we do a lot of team bonding we do a lot of things in the office like a lot of perks that i think have non-financial value that are even more valuable than bonuses so like the girls can go and get their head on any time of the day there's no like no you have to put annual leave in we also offer nomad leave which is eight weeks a year my team can work from anywhere in the world and get paid full salary so they could be in europe they could be in europe right now and be getting full salary we have a lot of things i think other perks are the benefits that alleviate the need for just a traditional bonus system who's giving you that kind of intel and structure ideas it's me just being like from my experience this nomad leave yeah well this is it how it happened was when my daughter was about 14 months old my husband and i took a trip to queensland and i took my laptop and i was working from queensland while i was away and i was like oh my god this is so easy to work while i'm away like because we work on a laptop you know we can do this and then i thought to myself oh how unfair this unfair this is if i'm away working and that everyone else has to put in annual leave yeah well i think that was in my head so i came back and said right i didn't speak to anyone about it i was like right we're putting in nomad leave and so like half my team will be in europe over the next couple months but but they're getting paid their full salary yeah and so our rule is online for four hours of australian time zone so like if you're away on nomad leave yeah you just have to do four hours that would cross over with australia so your clients don't feel affected so the team doesn't feel affected but the rest of it i don't care so like last year my sister who worked me went away to barcelona for eight weeks and so she would just get up every day at like 5 30 do a stint of like three or four hours because it was a line with melbourne and then have the whole day free with their partner go to the beach do all the things in europe then come back and do they love it right and so there's these perks i think with working with chain like our parties and our policies and things that i believe and my team have anecdotally told back to us way way way out exceed what a traditional bonus would yeah we obviously do performance reviews like performance plans so like we say like this is what we wouldn't need to learn this what we want to achieve and if you do we can look at pay rises and things like that like that's normal you know we do cpi increases at a minimum every year so everyone is getting at least a cpi increase even if they're still tracking towards a role or changed like a title change or a salary growth and they're not quite there yet they know they're still getting like some sort of increase every year yeah you know a lot of my girls joke and say they're going to retire at chain because it's like we've got moms on our team most of our team is moms who can go pick up their kids from school at three o'clock yeah and like this don't feel pressure or like they have to guilt or anything like that and i think i've kind of gone around the circle here but i think truthfully our business thrives off non-monetary benefits yeah and i think you've got to understand what is valuable to your team more so like some people yes are motivated by money but most people are motivated by flexibility by value like that they're that they're a valued team member and they see that yeah totally can you talk to me about all the different ways that as an audience we can get in touch with chain yeah of course well your accelerators you've got the black friday there's so much going on isn't there yeah so i guess we've got first of all our just agency model so people can work us through chain social in any sort of retainer model and that's just through our website or instagram and then we have our academy which is my baby so that's been something that i've been working on and putting so much time into and the academy is both online training so a lot of basically catalogs of online training and online mentorship as well as in-person training so like our meta masterclasses our fiji retreats our black friday summit and that's all obviously via the chain academy website and then yeah that's basically our two arms we've got our retainer and we've got our training but we're just we're busy bees and i think there's something for everyone yeah but it just depends where they're at the business life cycle yeah amazing okay well where can people find you chainsocial.com.au okay and you because you've dropped some hints that you're a little bit crazy on the stories and just you yeah shelby vans wall on instagram come come on over come on over you don't know what you're getting in for thank you so much yeah thank you for having me it's been good and i need to send you some remy i need to i need that because i don't drink coffee oh my god okay so like i'll give you some now and i'm like basically now it's part of my personality that i don't drink coffee so i can't now i'm too far gone yeah so now i need i make that with drinking yeah okay girlfriend i don't drink alcohol and alcohol and i had one drink not one drink a few drinks the other night and i'm still feel like i'm still hung over five days later anyway anyway thank you so much thank you i hope everyone gets some value out of it of course they will i did i'm like ready to go okay good emma's on the couch over there i'm like let's go thank you guys so much for listening to this episode the algorithm of podcasting needs reviews as like the best solid that you can do for me if you loved this episode please head over and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts apple or spotify whatever we're also on youtube this entire episode is on youtube as is the majority of our catalog we're catching up slowly slowly and from hopefully the next couple of weeks every episode will be on youtube so if you're a youtube goer head over there and subscribe to process the podcast thank you guys so much for joining me and i'll see you next tuesday this episode was so proudly sponsored by chain social's learning platform called chain academy and it is such a privilege every single week to have mon dive into all of those modules and kind of come back to the party she's so inspired as well about ads now we're working on the creative to dip our toe into different things with only like a certain amount of budget learning on our way before our major launch in october it's been an absolute privilege getting to know the chain academy girls and i just feel like we're in such good hands so if you want to learn more jump over to the chain social academy and you can level up with us