Von der Idee zur Community: Wie ist Agency Life entstanden?

Bevor wir mit der heutigen Folge beginnen, schauen wir mal, was wir in der nächsten Folge machen werden. Bevor du mit einem neuen Klient beginnst oder einen "prospective" Klient bist, machst du, was du in Deutschland nennen würdest, ein Chemie-Mittag. In Frankreich nennen wir es "Lunch". *lachen* So einfach. Aber es ist das gleiche. *Musik* Bevor wir mit der heutigen Folge starten, möchten wir euch zunächst erklären, worum es uns und unserem Partner Teamleader in diesem Podcast überhaupt geht. Wir laden in jeder Folge spannende Persönlichkeiten aus der deutschen Agenturszene ein, die mit ihren Erfahrungen und ihrem Wissen andere Agenturen inspirieren und motivieren möchten. Und genau dort setzt Teamleader mit seiner leistungsstarken Agentur Software an. Diese hilft bereits über 4.000 Agenturen dabei, Terminfristen einzuhalten, Budgets zu kontrollieren, Gewinnmargen zu steigern, Kapazitäten zu planen und vieles mehr. Damit ihr euch voll und ganz auf eure Kreativität konzentrieren könnt. Von Agenturen für Agenturen. Und los geht's mit unserer heutigen Folge. *Musik* Herzlich willkommen zurück bei Agency Life Deutschland. Schön, dass wir wieder da sind mit dem Studio Chris und ich, wie immer. Good morning, ich mach's dann gleich mal auf Englisch, weil heute haben wir einen Gast, den wir vor allem in Englisch bei uns haben werden. Absolut, er ist aus dem weit entfernten Belgien angereist, aus Ghent. Ganz lustig eigentlich, ich glaube, er versteht uns eigentlich komplett. Wir machen das Ganze aber heute trotzdem einmal auf Englisch. Das heißt, es wird eine kleine spezielle Folge. Ich möchte dazu sagen, er versteht uns komplett. Er hat uns gestern Abend erzählt, warum. Weil er sehr viel Fernsehen früher in Deutsch schauen musste. Aber das Sprechen, glaube ich, ein bisschen verlernt hat. Aber dementsprechend war nichts vor dir geheim gestern Abend, auch wenn wir mal auf Deutsch geswitcht sind. Genau, dementsprechend. Willst du dich gleich noch mal selber vorstellen, Peter? Aber vielleicht ganz kurz vorab. Thema der heutigen Folge The Roots of Agency Life. Das heißt, wir tauchen hinter die Kulissen ein und haben dafür, glaube ich, jemanden an Bord, der uns das Ganze nicht besser erklären und auch näher bringen kann. Deswegen, hi, Peter, schön, dass du da bist. Hallo, Juna. Hallo, Christopher. Hallo. Ja, ich bin Peter. Ich bin der Showrunner für Agency Life in Belgien, Frankreich, Holland und Deutschland - also das sind alle Länder für ihn - und ich bin Brandstrategy-Direktor für Teamleader. Und jetzt auf Deutsch? Ich bin Peter. Ich bin Brandstrategy-Direktor von Teamleader und ich bin den Showrunner von Agency Life. Sehr gut, sehr gut. Und kannst du den letzten Namen spelen? Van Weenaerde. Es übersetzt von dem Weingarten. Ah, das ist schön. Okay, das ist das Kreative in deinem Geist. Wahrscheinlich bin ich ... Weißt du, Asterix & Obelix? Ja. Ich bin auch in die Wanne geflogen oder in den Wein oder so. Okay, unsere erste Frage ist eine wirklich schwierige. Würdest du deutschen Bratkartoffeln oder Belgische Bratkartoffeln preferieren? Ich denke, ich mag sie alle. Depending auf die Nacht. Vielleicht will ich am Freitag Abend die Bratkartoffeln haben. Okay, du kennst die deutschen Bratkartoffeln. Ich glaube, ich habe sie gestern gesehen. Ja. Du hattest sie richtig. Nein, Daniella war sie. Daniella, ja. Das war eigentlich ... Ist das deutsch? Das wissen wir nicht. Oder Sauerkraut. Sauerkraut? Ich bin auf Sauerkraut geboren. Ja, okay. Oh, nichts ist neu auf diesem Podcast. Wir nennen es "Zürkull". Nein, was gestern neu war, war der gigantische Gnocchi. Oh, das ist "Knudel". Ich habe dir gesagt, bitte sag das nicht mal wieder. Okay, aber was für ein Witz. Ich denke, es ist Zeit, weiter in dieses ganze "Agency Live"-Tipp zu schauen. Lasst uns mit der Frage beginnen, wie dieses ganze Format live kam. In einem sehr kurzen Weg. Kannst du uns mehr darüber erzählen? Die Teamlehrerin hat viele SMBs über Belgien und Holland serviciert. Etwa ein Drittel von diesen Kunden waren Agenzüge oder kreative Firmen. Wir haben rund 4.000 Agenzüge, die mit Teamlehrern arbeiten. Wir haben auch neue Software bekommen, die besser für diese Agenzüge genutzt werden. Wir sind wirklich bereit, diesen Markt zu nehmen. Um den Markt wirklich zu verstehen und zu reden, haben wir mit "Agency Live" angefangen. Der Versuch in "Agency Live" ist, dass wir die Stimmen der Industrie hören. Was sind ihre Sorgen? Was wollen sie? Was macht sie sichtbar? Und wir versuchen, das mit unserer Software oder mit unseren Verbindungen zu verbessern. Und dieses Format lebt in verschiedenen Ländern, oder? Ja. Welche Länder sind das? Wir haben es in Belgien und Holland. Weil es aus einer fländischen und einer deutschen Sicht die gleiche Sprache ist. Und dann haben wir es in Frankreich als zweite Region angefangen. Und dann in Deutschland, glaube ich, mit euch zusammen. Ja. Und dann in der Zukunft? In mehreren Ländern? Ich hoffe es. Ich habe einige Länder im Kopf. Aber diese sind ein bisschen strategisch. Ich will sie auch nicht genießen. Aber ja, wir schauen uns in andere Ländern an, ja. Okay. Okay, und du hast uns einen kleinen Sneak-Peak auf die Pflicht von "Agency Live" gegeben. Also um zu realisieren, was die Schmerzen sind und so weiter. Aber kannst du ein bisschen tiefer gehen? Also was ist der Hauptzweck oder der Warum hinter "Agency Live"? Well, es gibt natürlich von einem Produkt- und einem Marketing-Sein. Und es gibt auch nur eine Liebe für die Industrie. Aus dem Produkt-Sein sind wir ein Marktführer in Belgien und in Holland. Und wir müssen diese Position wirklich prüfen. Also du musst dir wirklich zeigen, dass du mit der Industrie reden. Und du machst das nicht nur backstage. Wenn du so groß, so dominant wie uns bist, kannst du das auf der Bühne machen. Und es ist auch interessant, weil es andere Menschen beeinflusst. Etwa 40% unserer Klientel kommen durch andere Klientel. Also zeigen, wer unsere Klientel sind, sie auf der Bühne setzen. Das ist, wie es angefangen hat. Wie machst du dein Geschäft? Was macht dich aus? Wann entscheidest du? Wann wirst du auswählen oder nicht? Das kind of knowledge was not really shared in the agency industry. So we decided to share that. And that was like good for us, because we can then showcase our clients, give the agencies a stage, show them it's not only about winning awards, it's also about good entrepreneurship. So we really celebrate the entrepreneurship side of the agency work. Secondly, it's also very interesting for products to have conversations with the agencies, right? You saw that we just released the e-book, a big topic around intercompany billing. Yeah, if you would not be talking to agencies, you would not know that integral billing is a headache thing. If we would not talk to agency, talking about things like billability, we would not know how important it is, why it is important and what are the methods, how they calculate it and what do they use it for. So this is something we can bring into our dashboards. So it's a bit of a research thing. It's also putting our clients where they belong on the stage, I think. It's celebrating their entrepreneurship and from a marketing point of view, it's really showing our thought leadership. Great. And I think that's also something we experience in our talks that sharing is not common between those agencies, but the more we do, the more the people like to talk about it. Because in the end, every agency has the same problems, the same plans or also same visions. And as we talk to a lot of interesting people with a lot of cool ideas and stuff, we realize just how valuable this is for us. And in our opinion, it's a very cool tool or idea to push the agency market because the agency market is something nobody has a real view on it. And it's sometimes hard to get the point what an agency does, where the agency is heading. So in our opinion, it's really cool to give it a stage, let's say. That's it. And if we have a look on those different countries you work with agencies with, can you name some main differences in the different countries? There is actually, when I started out Agency Live and started to ask all these questions that were not being talked about. Agenturen müssen öfter miteinander reden und nicht nur über die schönen Dinge. Genau mit diesem Ziel hat das Agency Live-Team die letzten Wochen und Monate damit verbracht, all das auf Papier zu bringen, worüber sonst viel zu selten gesprochen wird. Dabei herausgekommen ist das erste Agency Live-Magazin, sozusagen ein Liebesbrief in Magazinform, das das Leben einer Agentur in 135 Seiten widerspiegelt. Dynamisch, vielseitig und leicht chaotisch. Darin verbinden wir Agenturen, klopfen ihnen auf die Schulter und liefern Zahlen. Haben wir dein Interesse geweckt, dann bestell dir jetzt dein kostenloses Magazin. Den Link dazu findest du in den Show Notes. I thought I was going to find a lot more differences, but there aren't so much differences. The vocabulary changes, like everyone, before you start with a new client or you are prospecting a client, you do what you call in Germany a chemistry meeting. In France we call it lunch. But it's the same thing, there are some differences in how people do business, but that's mostly culturally that will also differ between other industries the same way over the different countries. There is a different culture of doing business in France, as there is in Belgium, as there is in Holland, as there is in Germany. But how you run the business in essence is still the same. Over the course of the last years the agency market has changed, and the stage of those changes is also a bit similar everywhere. In Belgium and in Holland we have seen a lot of bigger companies buying smaller agencies, and that's their way of growing. And then in other countries we see a lot of small agencies popping up everywhere. So there is a lot happening, but I'm sorry to say, I don't want to say that everyone is the same, but it comes down to the same thing always. Combination with cultural differences. We have of course, next to the interviews that we do with Agency Live, we also do a quantified research called the Agency Benchmark, and there we can see some differences in numbers. Let's for say that revenue per full-time employee in Belgium is higher than in Holland. We're looking at why that is, we don't have a number yet on Germany, but I'm very curious to figure out what that number is. So those things are a bit different, but as companies grow, as agencies grow, you see that that revenue per employee lowers a little bit and then stabilises at 50, and this is something that we saw in France, this is something that we saw not in Germany yet, because we don't have the data on Germany, we saw it in France, in Belgium and in Holland. So except for some details and some values in KPIs, most things are the same. Tell us a little bit more about the Benchmark analysis you did, that is a really interesting point for us to see this Benchmark, to solve this Benchmark with different numbers, sorry. That was really interesting, and I think for Germany that is a big point to share this with. Well, we started with the Benchmark last year, we started with the questionnaire, sending it out to all our agencies and to the press, the agency press, and we got about 400 agencies that filled in the questionnaire, and it was a big one, it took like 20 minutes or something, and we were asking all these questions that some people might think it's not polite to ask, what is your billability, how much revenue do you get from new clients versus existing clients if you manage a project, are you planning it in phases ahead, or do you do it by feel or whatever, and so it's mostly finance and operational questions that we were asking, so not really the easy questions, we had 400 agencies answering us, and we had a good feel of differences in digital agencies, traditional agencies, IT builders, but also agencies that are 10 people big versus agencies that are 50 people big and even some that are 200 people big. So we had a good view on these things, so we could start comparing odds and ends there. We figured out a lot of interesting numbers that are also across vertical the same, like they are the same for a creative agency as they are for a digital agency, but some find it easier, like for instance, let's say billability, the average billability, that's the amount of hours you can bill to a client was 65%, that was a really nice number to find, because agencies would not really know what the benchmark is, first of all, second of all, there was not a unified way of calculating it, for instance, are you taking the holidays into account, are those unbillable hours or are they not in the equation, that kind of stuff. For us they are out of the equation, just saying, because those would never have been billable to begin with, so we ended up at 65% and we saw that that was like a good thing to see that it was across most agencies like this, and next to that we saw it in our own data from 4000 agencies, and we also saw that a lot of agencies when they had to type it themselves, the numbers would really compare well, so agencies know this number of themselves, however agencies who are working in social media, who have a lot of repetitive business, maybe like even working on retainers and stuff like that, have a higher billability rate, which helps us to look into the business models of agencies, and this is what we are doing now, we are really looking into the business models, we are looking at business models like agency as a service, who is doing that, we have added agency as a service features to the product last year in 2023 and within a few months of the agencies that were using it, so we released it to a beta group of agencies, of the agencies that were using it, we already saw that within 4 or 5 months they had 20% of their revenue in recurring business, so something we saw in the agencies doing social media and IT and maybe it is also something for creative agencies to figure out to do as well, so really looking like who is doing it different, what is good about it and how can we bring it into the other agencies as well, how can agencies learn from each other not only through the conversation, what is Agency Life, but also through numbers, and that is the agency benchmark, that is really interesting, I think we put the benchmark link in the show notes, I want to add that we are now running a new questionnaire for the benchmark, and we did not have a lot of German agencies, so it is a warm warm invitation to go to the agency benchmark and give us your numbers, because we will give you immediately back the results and I think you will find it really interesting, yeah and I mean asking those hard questions is not easy, but it is highly important, that leads me to your interview that you organized with Michael Farmer for example, because one of his biggest points was quantifying an agency as the hardest part, but also the most effective part to grow to not lose employees and stuff and I think that is a good time to switch to your personal highlights in Agency Life so far, I just mentioned Michael Farmer, I think that is one thing you wanted to say, but looking back on the last few years with Agency Life, what are your two main highlights that you organized, you lived, you experienced? There is a few, there is a lot actually, because I love doing Agency Life, I love it, one of the big highlights and might be a cliché was the first recording, we had four agencies sitting next to each other, it was also Corona times, so they had to sit like a few meters from each other and it was quite problems with cameras and all that stuff, but we were a bit afraid like what are we even asking, this is very personal what we are asking, and I kind of felt like we were stepping on a taboo, like we are talking about when to pitch, when not to pitch bluntly, openly, when are you saying no to a client, have you ever fired a client, based on what are you doing that, those were the kind of questions and you had then four agencies sitting next to each other in a very competitive market and we have a good host Robin, but half way the episode, he was not the one asking the questions, they were asking each other the questions and then we took a break, we put off the cameras and they kept talking and I was going to my colleagues, I was going to Robin, oh my god I did not know that they would be so easy to work with, but they really enjoyed it and this is when we knew we had something, so that was like a great moment, then of course bringing it to France, bringing it to Germany, meeting you guys, because that is also a big thing, we have an off the record dinner party with agencies in Munich this evening, that is why I am here, and you get to meet a lot of agencies that you would otherwise not meet, of course and that is also lovely because it is also what I said before, it is like it is not different, an agency in Belgium is like an agency in France, it is like it is the same thing, it does not really matter anymore where you are from, you are from an agency, so you are part of the in group right, and I used to work in agencies for over 15 years, so I really feel connected with it, and it is also my way to stay connected with the industry I grew up in actually, so I think and then you have all these guests that you did not think you could have and I think Michael Farmer was one of the ones I wanted a long time and I never thought about inviting him because he is an American, he is far away, and he is very virtual to me because I only read his books, but then one day I just sent him a very kind LinkedIn message, and he said yes, and he responded, nice story, nice story, and maybe last question for today, looking on your vision for Agency Life, so for the next few years, not which countries you want to conquer in the next few years, but in a general way, what is your personal goal regarding Agency Life, what do you want to see Agency Life or which points do you still want to widen? Well there are some things I want to do still with Agency Life, first of all I would love to bring in all the teams together once, like the French team, you guys, the German team, the Belgium team, the Dutch team, I want to bring you guys together for once just to mix and match, because now I am the guy running around from country to country, but I really want to bring the people together because I know that everyone will like each other and it will be a very interesting day I guess, so that is something I want to do, so bring together the team, because that is the team that makes it, right, yeah I want to make it bigger, I really have to think about it, the hardest challenge that I want to crush is that we in Belgium, we started three years ago already, so it is the third celebration of Agency Life in Belgium and we started three years ago and we were stepping on a taboo that really wasn't, it was something everyone was thinking about it, everyone was whispering about it, but no one was talking about it out loud, but we feel that at least in Belgium and in Holland we kind of normalize that, talking about the numbers of an agency, now everyone is talking about the numbers of an agency, so we really need to break into a new ground and that is why we are talking business models and we are really going deeper in the numbers because we have the numbers, we have numbers from 4000 agencies, so this is something we need to do and we also want to really break into the tough topics and I think the Michael Farwood podcast was one to help us to break into the tough topics, but that is not the only thing we want to do, we don't want to be the bad news podcast, we also don't want to be a solution podcast per se, we don't want to be Teamleader, the solution people, we have a software for that, we want to listen to the agencies, what do you think is the solution, but we still want to go to the topics that no one else is really talking about. Perfect summary and I think a great time to invite some new people to our podcast as well, because we are always looking for new people, new guests we can talk to, so if you are listening to this episode and if you think okay, I want to be part of it, talk to us. If you want to talk about figures or something else. Well not only numbers, if you have, can I do a plea for guests, if you feel, if you have like, you don't have to come with answers, you can also come with questions and then the guys from Sosantic will figure out who else would be a good guest to answer those questions. No, it's what is worrying you, are you looking into new business models, are you looking into retainers, are you struggling with planning, I hear the four day work week is a thing in Germany. Yes. How are you going to figure that out with your team and all that stuff, if you're really thinking about those things and think you have a solution in that direction and not even a solution, but on your way towards a solution, that's interesting to us. Also, you know, maybe Christopher, in your case personally, you have an amazing agency, I think. Thank you. You have an amazing team, lovely people, great talent, but you're also about to turn 40. Yeah, thank you for this. So you're going to start to ask the next questions, like how am I going to bring this agency to the next stage. Yes, that's the biggest question. The most simple answer people might think about is selling, but that's not the only answer. Maybe there's people out there who found like strength in a partnership with other agencies and how they then together did it, not alone anymore at your 40, but how were they doing it together. So those are the kind of stories that are of interest to us. Also, many, many other, actually all the stories are interesting, but those are the ones I'm looking for right now. Yeah, really interesting. And that's what I wanted to say, that Agency Life is broad enough to talk about any topic that matters, but it also has the potential to take those deep dives. That's a cool thing. Yeah, even Christophers upcoming midlife crisis. Yeah, still waiting for it. What a good ending, Peter, it was fun, it was really cool that you visited us, we're still looking forward for tonight's evening and talking with other agencies. And I think it wasn't our last talk today, so we're going to visit you in Ghent hopefully in your studio. Thank you for being here. Thank you for inviting me. See you soon. And thanks for listening guys. Bye bye. Bye.