Trenton Moss: 3 high-impact strategies that redefined my agency

Curious about how an agency experimented with new approaches and found their recipe for success?

In this episode, we talk with Trenton Moss, a former agency owner who ran his business for 15 years before it was sold. Trenton shares the key decisions that transformed his agency, along with some missteps along the way.

Trenton covers three major changes he implemented and explains exactly how he did it:

• Setting up team pods with a highly effective reward system
• Developing ongoing client services training and putting the learnings into practice
• Creating an advisory board to guide the agency

Trenton shares plenty of inspiring stories and practical tactics you can apply in your own agency.

Now a leadership coach, Trenton has been coaching and training teams for nearly 20 years. You can check out his website, Sterka, his book Human Powered, you can also subscribe to Human Powered: The Podcast via his website.

Follow Trenton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trentonmoss/ 

Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/

Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter.

This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system.

Episode Transcript

Harv (00:00):
Before we get into the interview, as you know, this

(00:02):
podcast is brought to you byScoro.
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One reason I brought Scoro intomy past agency was because we
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(00:25):
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You can sign up for a free trialat scoro.Com or drop me a note
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my team loved using Scoro.
Now, back to the episode.

(01:19):
Hi all.
Welcome back to the podcast.
Those of us in Ops, we rememberthose big transformative
projects we undertook over thecourse of our careers that
taught us plenty of lessons andgave our agencies a big boost.
One that I was heavily involvedin prior to formally moving into
Ops was bringing in our firstPSA, professional services
automation platform.

(01:40):
We were taking our agency fromad hoc working to consistency
across the organization withdocumented procedures.
The other big career milestoneand learning experience for me
was a bigger transformationprogram that aimed to take us to
a whole new stage of maturity.
It included system changes,process changes, organizational
structural changes, and greateraccountability across the board.

(02:03):
Over the course of 12 to 18months, we were running like a
whole new business.
Well, today we're going to talkto someone with a great deal of
experience that did some bigthings at his own past agency
that had a massive impact ontheir culture and on their
revenues.
Our guest today is Trenton Moss.
Trenton is an agency leadershipcoach who has been coaching and

(02:25):
training teams for nearly 20years.
And he's got plenty ofexperience in the agency space.
In fact, he founded his owndigital experience agency and
ran it for 15 years before itwas acquired and he exited.
He's written a best selling bookcalled Human Powered, which
talks about supercharging teamswith people skills and emotional
intelligence, and has a podcastby the same name.

(02:48):
Trenton's got a wealth ofexperience he's gained over the
course of his career, Which henow uses to support other
agencies through hisconsultancy, Team Sterka.
I'm always excited for you tolisten to the conversations in
the podcast, but I can't tellyou how inspired I was after
talking to Trenton for thisepisode.
I was buzzing.

(03:08):
I'm excited for you to hearthis, so let's get into it.
Trenton, welcome to the podcastand thank you for joining us
today.

Trenton Moss (03:16):
Thank you so much for having me.

Harv (03:18):
I'd love to start with a bit about your background in the
agency space.
Can you tell us about that?

Trenton Moss (03:24):
Yeah, sure.
So, I've been working in theagency space for about 20 years
now.
So, I started my agency about 20years ago.
And I ran it for about 15 years.
And managed to kind of keep itgoing through all the ups and
downs.

Harv (03:39):
Hmm.

Trenton Moss (03:39):
After, a rollercoaster ride of around 15
years we were acquired and Iexited a year or two later.

Harv (03:45):
And then is that where you went into consulting?

Trenton Moss (03:48):
Yeah, so after I exited...
I was, well, after we sold and Iwas trying to think, well, what
do I do next?
And one, and when you're runningan agency, it just feels like a
litany of failure, right?
Like it just, you're constantlytrying to do things.
You're having to balanceeverything.
And it just feels like you'refailing all the time.
And I reckon I did about threethings that were quite

(04:08):
successful.
And one of those things that wasquite successful.
So what's that like an averageof one every five years.
So one of those things that wasquite successful was a client
leadership program, that Ilaunched within the agency.
we kind of launched on a bit ofa whim and, and ended up being
transformative.
We got an uplifting revenue ofabout 35 percent from our
clients.
when I was leaving and I wastrying to figure out what next,

(04:29):
and I was chatting to, you know,agency buddies of mine, and it
turns out everyone has the sameproblem that when it comes to
upselling to clients or, youknow, trying to reduce
unbillable work or trying toinspire your clients or having
to interact with a seniorstakeholder, usually someone
from your senior team has to getinvolved in those moments that
matter.
And, we solved that problem inmy agency through our client

(04:50):
leadership program.
And so after I left, I decidedto set that up for other
agencies.
So that's what I've been doingfor the last four years.
And I now run that program forother agencies.

Harv (05:00):
We're going to be talking about some of that and some of
the, the kind of things thatyou've learned along the way
that the rest of us can learnfrom.
Before we do that, just a bitmore about you and your
experience.
You know, I've been followingyou on LinkedIn for a while and
you, I find, very refreshinglytell some very honest stories
about the challenges you facedover the course of your career.
I was looking over your LinkedInprofile the other day and I

(05:21):
noticed that in one of yourhighlights on your profile, you
had highlighted actually afailure, which was trying to
launch your agency in the U S.
I thought that was superinteresting.
Why do you find it important totalk about these things when
everyone else is talking aboutwinning?

Trenton Moss (05:36):
Well, I mean, no one's winning all the time
right?
So, you know, it's nice to...
It's nice to post on socialmedia and LinkedIn about the
good things that are going onand the nice things happening,
but I don't know.
It's also, let's be realistichere and there's highs and lows
for all of us.
And you know, the things that gowrong, cannot, you know,

(05:59):
everything that you do in life,you've got to kind of look for,
you know, how was this awonderful gift for me?
So, you know, for us kind oftrying to launch in New York and
losing hundreds of thousands ofpounds and failing.
you know, that's a bit annoying.
you know, we had a bit of ajourney doing it and it was an
experience and, you know, I, andwe learned a lot by doing that.

(06:19):
So there's still a lot ofpositives in it, even if, you
know, it didn't actually achieveits goal.

Harv (06:25):
We are talking to operations people and lessons
learned, so if you don't mind mestopping there just for a
moment, what went wrong with theU S expansion, if you can share
anything.
Is there anything that comes tomind that you can tell us?

Trenton Moss (06:35):
Yeah.
So it was, we, we, we wereworking with a client in the UK
and, and the US and New York.
So we were Kind of going out toNew York a bit with them and
from chatting to them and thenlike doing a bit of research, it
turned out it looked like therewas a real gap in the market for
what we did.
So we were a kind of pure playuser experience, UX agency,
very, very much on the kind ofstrategy and research side of

(06:57):
things.
And no one out there was reallydoing what we did.
It was just...
you know, from everyone we werechatting to, there was just no
one doing it.
So we were like, right, there'sa gap in the market here.
And the, the work we were doingwith our client was just a
small, discreet piece of work.
So that finished and we werelike, right, well we could, you
know, let's try launching in NewYork because here in the UK, you

(07:18):
know, we do a whole bunch ofmarketing and new business
activities and that generatesclients.
And then, you know, we have aclient servicing function that
then kind of like, you know, itkeeps those clients going and
you know, that's obviously howan agency run.
So we thought, well, you know,we just do the same in New York.
So we thought we'd launch withlike our training.
We had a training academy.
So we thought we'd launch withtraining as well.

(07:38):
So we hired some local sales andmarketing people and got going
and the thing that, that weforgot or didn't really think
about was here in the UK, our,our, the engine that drives
revenue into the business had, Ithink, around 10 years worth of
track record, worth ofrecognition in the market, worth

(08:02):
of brand.
And when you go into a newmarket, in our case, you know,
America and New York, we hadnothing.
We were basically just astartup, a nobody.
No one had heard of us.
Our credibility counted fornothing.
it was after a while that wekind of realized.
Yeah, we're basically just astartup.

(08:23):
And here in the UK, we've gotthis huge amount of brand equity
that drives us forward and themomentum we've gathered over 10
years, and we just took forgranted that momentum and didn't
really think that it didn't evenrealize it existed until before
then.
So launching in America, wewere, ended up pumping in a
couple of hundred grand, Ithink.

(08:44):
And we maybe made back about 20grand.
It's also, it was a bigdistraction because obviously,
you know, it's the shiny thingover there.
we've got the kind of UKoperation here, but look,
there's America.
and so it was a bit distractingand it meant that we started
actually running at a small lossin the UK.
Cause we kind of took our eyeoff the ball here.

(09:04):
We were really flying at thetime.
And so that distraction kind oflike, like impacted the business
a bit here.
So after a while we were like,we just can't continue like
this.
This isn't working.
So we pulled the plug.
The other thing is, is that withall these things, ideas are
cheap and execution is extremelyhard.
So a good idea to launch in NewYork.
It was a good idea.

Harv (09:25):
Mm hmm.

Trenton Moss (09:25):
There was a gap in the market for us.
The, the hard thing isn't comingup with the idea.
The hard thing is executing it.
And once the reality of kind oflike, you know, flying back,
flying over there and then backon the red eye and the jet lag,
and,

Harv (09:39):
Mm.

Trenton Moss (09:40):
Staying in like Airbnbs or hotels, the reality,
when the reality kicks in.
It's a bit less exciting.

Harv (09:48):
And, last question on that story, you know, if you were to
do it again, well, is the lessonthat, you wouldn't have done it
or you would have changedsomething about your approach
then?

Trenton Moss (09:56):
I would have made sure we had a client out there
on a, an ongoing basis.
So the client we work with was,it was very much a one-off
thing.
It was always gonna be a one-offthing.
I would've made sure we had adecent, meaty, chunky client out
there.
With at least a six month runrate and all the profit from
that, we could then funnel intotrying to acquire other clients.

(10:19):
And if that had worked, then wecould have kept going.
And if it didn't, then we wouldhave stopped, but you know,
nothing gained, nothing lost.

Harv (10:27):
So we'd been chatting beforehand and we were, we were
kind of going over three keylessons or maybe stories that
we're, we're going to go intowith yourself today.
So, yeah, let's, let's getstarted.

Trenton Moss (10:39):
Okay, great.
Well, I think one of them wewere going to talk about.
How to get your whole team to bea client superstar.
So we, we really doubled down onthis.
We, we had a bit of a problembecause as a user experience or
UX specialist, we were veryniche for quite some time.
And then all of a sudden UX wentvery, very mainstream.
And that meant we were nowcompeting with the likes of

(10:59):
Accenture and IBM, and we werepitching against Accenture and
IBM.
So we knew we had to up the anteand, you know, the big
consultancies, they're themasters of land and expand and
us agencies we're kind of likethe masters of our craft and
being passionate about ourcraft, but when it comes to kind
of that commercial mindedness,it's not, it's not as much part
of our DNA in the way that it isfor the big consultancies.

(11:22):
So we knew we had to dosomething about it.
So, so we tried a few things.
We really wanted to kind ofmotivate the team around like,
you know, all of us areresponsible here for the
commercial success of thebusiness.
So one of the one of the firstthings we tried actually we
tried so we did a profit, welaunched a profit share thinking
like okay, that's going to begood, that's going to help
getting people thinking aboutyou know, how do we make sure

(11:42):
the company's more successful.
Big, biggest disaster ever?

Harv (11:47):
Really?

Trenton Moss (11:47):
Yeah, yeah, it was like a huge failure.
So...
So we launched a profit share,and a few months later, we were
doing so well, we were smashingall of our targets and, and you
could already see, we were goingto hit our targets for the year,
even a few months in, we weredoing so, so well that there
would have to be the mostenormous disaster for us not to

(12:08):
hit those targets.
And when we did hit them, so,we, we, we, we, we hit them and
it paid out, but even then itwas still a massive disaster.
And the problem is it withprofit shares, I find there's
loads of problems.
So, first problem is thateveryone just fixates on the
amount they're going to get, andthen eventually that amount just
becomes normal and it becomes anexpectation.
So then if you hit your target,which we did, and there's a

(12:29):
payout, no one's any happier.
They're just getting what theyexpected.
So the best you can do is, isnothing.
And the worst you can do in thatis annoy people because you
didn't hit your target and theydidn't get their payout.
So that wasn't great.
And then like people just gotkind of furious with us after we
launched it because they weresaying, and I get this, they
were saying, We work really hardand we're really passionate

(12:52):
about what we do.
So what, are you saying that youneed to dangle this like carrot
of like money in front of us,for us to kind of work a bit
harder?
So they didn't like that.
Obviously we weren't sayingthat.
And then like, because there wasthis profit share, everyone
started, it brings the wordprofit front and center of the
conversations.
So everyone starts speculatinghow much that the leadership in

(13:13):
the agency are taking home,because we all know that if
you're running an agency, that'sthe path to riches, like, yeah,
that's the way you get like megasalaries, you know, the
leadership of a small agency.

Harv (13:23):
Uh huh.

Trenton Moss (13:24):
it didn't do very well for us.
And the other thing is it, itdidn't, it didn't work even
though like, okay.
So putting all of that aside,you know, our aim here was to
get people to be motivated, tohelp with a commercial side of
the business.
And it didn't work becausehere's the thing, when it comes
to something like a profitshare, no one person can really
influence it.
No one's changing theirbehavior.

(13:46):
So we tried something differentinstead.
So, you know, we were like,right, well, how can we motivate
people to kind of think moreabout the commercial sizing?
Yeah.
We always shared our financialsevery, every monthly meeting.
We were sharing financials.
Yeah.
We'd explain to people what thedifference between revenue and
profit is, which, you know, formany of us, it's like, what?
You need to explain it.
But yes, you do.

(14:06):
Everyone has to go on thatlearning curve to understand how
finances work.
after we binned the profitshare, we launched, the WMIF and
the WMIF was really successful.

Harv (14:15):
Okay.

Trenton Moss (14:17):
This went on for years cause it worked so well.
So the WMIF was the, the, WeMade It Fund or W M I F or WMIF.

Harv (14:23):
Okay.

Trenton Moss (14:24):
And it's basically, it's a fund that you
get access to when you finish aclient engagement or for a
retainer, like, like at the endof each month, like, well, we
made it.
Yay.

Harv (14:32):
Mm.

Trenton Moss (14:33):
And you got access to a fund that was equal to a
one third of one percent of theclient spend.

Harv (14:41):
Okay.

Trenton Moss (14:41):
If the client spent a hundred grand, you'd get
access to Three, no, 300 pounds,333 pounds.
If a client spent a hundred, ahundred grand, you didn't, you
didn't actually get that moneythough.

Harv (14:54):
Mm hmm.

Trenton Moss (14:54):
You got access to spend that money.
And so the teams would spendthat money on, you know, maybe
if it was a small thing, thenthey just got to the, for a few
drinks, you know.
Maybe a couple of drinks withthe money.
Or if it was a bit bigger, theycould go out for dinner
together.
And then what started happeningwas people would like get
together and pool their moniesand start saving up, for like

(15:15):
more interesting experiences.
And they'd go out to the theateror they'd go out to do like a
crystal maze experience.
And so this was really great formorale, but what it also did is
it achieved our original goalin, insofar as people were now
talking about how they could getopportunities to get more work

(15:35):
from clients so as to generatemore money so they could then go
to the crystal maze.
They'd be sitting togethersaying, right, we need to, we've
got another 70k forecast forthis client, but we need to get
it up to about 100k so that wecan do our activity together.
What are our, what are ouropportunities?

Harv (15:53):
Right.

Trenton Moss (15:54):
It was so successful.
And I think the reason it was sosuccessful was that people could
tie back their reward tosomething they did.
Whereas with the profit share islike, well, I don't really
influence that.
Whereas with the, with the WMIF,they did, you know, they did the
work, and the client was happ y.
It was also an experience andmoney in the bank isn't

(16:15):
particularly motivating people.
It's nice, but doesn't createlike a long lasting memory in
the same way of going to thetheater and going for dinner and
going for the crystal maze.
These are nice experiences thatyou're having with your team
that you're associating with thecompany.
But also like the kind of, justthe group, the group being in
charge of it, and they're kindof bringing the team together.
So that, so the WMIF was reallysuccessful, and we did that at

(16:38):
the same time as, reorging aswell.
And we, we reorged into a podstructure, and, and again, the
specific goal of this was toraise people's commercial
understanding of what it takesto run the business and to
motivate them to want to helpwith the business succeeding,
because look, we had, you know,company values and a defined

(17:01):
company culture and a way ofbeing.
And we had a vision that was allaround the services that we
deliver.
And everyone's passionate aboutwhat we do, ultimately if you
don't make profit, none of thatmatters because if you run at a
loss every month, you willeventually go out of business
and all of that lovely, nicestuff.
Well, it's gone.
So, you know, it's importantthat people realize this, that
there's, there is all thislovely, nice stuff.

(17:22):
And that is key.
But ultimately what underpinsthat is us making profit.
So moving to a pod structure wasalong with the WMIF just, just
revolutionized the agency.

Harv (17:35):
Uh huh.
Amazing.

Trenton Moss (17:36):
What you had previously in terms of our, our
practitioners, you know, thepeople doing the work, they were
so passionate about the work andso, you know, frankly, brilliant
at what they did.
but you know, weren't so greatat selling in their work to
clients necessarily, becausethey just get too bogged down in
the detail.
And, you know, in terms of likehaving difficult conversations
with clients, avoidingunbillable time, inspiring

(17:58):
clients, getting your worksigned off quickly, upselling,
again, they weren't as good aswhat we'd like them to be.
And they weren't focused onthat.
They weren't interested in that.
And by moving into a podstructure where we had about
almost 15 people in each pod,these were all autonomous
businesses, it exposed everyonethere into basically running the

(18:19):
business, running that podbusiness.
I would say it shifted the dialfor many of our delivery people
from focusing a hundred percentof their brain space, just on
delivery and the work to maybe95%.
And that other 5 percent was onthe commercial side of things.
And that was a, for many ofthem, that was a big enough
shift.

(18:39):
And just for them being part ofthat team, in that pod that is
trying to like be a successfulbusiness, just, just changed
everything.
And all the pods had, the twopods had targets around revenue,
and a few other things.
And then the revenue target thengot broken down into, right,
here's all the people in yourpod, and here's everyone's
billable, here's everyone's, dayrate.
And so here's roughly how muchbillable time we all need to do.

(19:02):
And everyone, everyone could seethat.
So they could understand how wegot to those revenue targets
and, you know, roughly like whateveryone needed to contribute to
get there.
So that was really, reallygreat.
You know, we had all of thatinformation available anyway,
but it wasn't kind of, it wasjust presented to everyone every
month in the, in the all hands.
Whereas by being in the pod,they were, kind of that

(19:22):
information was part of themhelping to run the business.
so it was really game changing.
So yeah, targets around revenue,targets around client
satisfaction, targets aroundteam happiness.
Cause we wanted the team to behappy, obviously, and targets
around supporting our marketingnew biz function, because that's
the outside of the pods.
So, the pods were hugelysuccessful.
The pods and the WMIF togethergave people the motivation to

(19:46):
contribute to the commercialsuccess of the business.
And then our training program,gave people the skills.
So those two together were gamechangers.
So we started this, we started aclient skills training program,
which which now is my jobessentially, and it was hugely
successful.
We did team training everyonetogether half an hour every
friday morning 9 to 930 you hadto be there.

(20:08):
Three reasons you could not bethere and those reasons were i'm
sick, I'm on holiday.
I'm dead.

Harv (20:13):
Okay.

Trenton Moss (20:14):
You couldn't be at a pitch, you couldn't be with a
client, you couldn't be runningresearch, you couldn't, and the
same for me, I couldn't do it, Ihad to lead by example, all of
us had to be there.

Harv (20:23):
Mm

Trenton Moss (20:24):
there's, there's something called the forgetting
curve.

Harv (20:27):
Hmm.

Trenton Moss (20:28):
Which is basically like, like a curve that just
shows how over time, you forgetwhat you learn.
So you do a learningintervention and over time the
curve comes down.
So if you're watching this, youcan see my finger.
And if you're listening to this,well, my finger is basically
coming down in a curve.

Harv (20:42):
Yep.

Trenton Moss (20:42):
it just shows like how much you remember.
And that goes down to zero overtime.
But if you do one or two orthree reviews of what you've
learned.
Very quickly, then what happensis you start to remember and
that forgetting curve comes downmuch flatter until you basically
remember it.

Harv (20:57):
Right.

Trenton Moss (20:58):
So our training program was all around the
forgetting curve, and it wasbasically only half an hour
every week.
this is just one learningoutcome and it was all around
every single aspect of clientrelationships.

Harv (21:09):
Mm

Trenton Moss (21:09):
And we repeated it.
We built on it.
We kept it going and we kept theconversation going in between
sessions.
We, everything we were teaching,we then like, integrated into
all of our processes.
So all of our PDPs had aroundall of these skills that we
expected people to have, wedocumented what that looked
like.
And put it into PDPs.
We created guides, to defineeverything that we did.

(21:31):
So like an overarching kind ofclient experience guide, a guide
for how you do meetings, a guidehow you do presentations and so
on and so on.
And again, these got integratedinto our processes.
So our operational people are,what we call experience
directors.
The kind of most senior peoplein accounts, our PMs.
Every day, they were, they werein charge of making sure this
stuff's happening.
We had checklists that you youkind of went through.

(21:54):
When a pilot gets on an airplaneand is ready to take off, even
if that pilot has flown 20, 000times before they open up that
book and they go through thatchecklist one by one, even
though they, you know, probablycould repeat, could say it in
Chinese or say it backwards.
They've done it so many times.
and we, it was the same kind ofprinciple, just constantly
drilling this stuff into people.
all of this worked 35 percentuplift in revenue with our

(22:17):
clients the next year.
It was mad how successful thiswas.
But it was so much more thanthat.
It wasn't just about revenue.
It, our culture flourished aswell off the back of this.

Harv (22:27):
Mm

Trenton Moss (22:27):
Because all of this, people really felt like we
were investing in them becauseall of this, this was all a huge
effort doing all of this.
And we're always verytransparent about why we were
doing it and you know, how wethink it's going to benefit all
of us.
And especially with thetraining, because all the
training was around emotionalintelligence and people skills.
So, you know, we're applying itto client situations, but all of
these skills you could use withwhoever you want.

(22:48):
So everyone starts using theseskills with each other.
So, you know, in terms of like,you know, when people are
working on client engagementstogether and maybe not agreeing
on something, they now have thetools to have difficult
conversations with each otherand they would go home and like,
use these skills with, withtheir wives and husbands and
kids and housemates, it wasbonkers.
so our culture absolutelyflourished.

(23:09):
And when I, when I left, I endedup leaving the agency before
most people in it.
And I got a few just reallylovely messages from people
who'd been around for a fewyears, who just talked about the
transformation they'd been on inWebcredible, my agency, as a
result of all of this, we'dinvested in everyone.
And when you're running anagency, like, you know, yeah, of

(23:29):
course, you know, you want togrow and you want to get a good
profit and you want to be kindof commercially successful, but
that's like a fleeting bit ofhappiness.

Harv (23:36):
hmm.

Trenton Moss (23:37):
the, the, the really deep seated happiness is
when someone says to you, thankyou so much.
I've learned so much.
I've developed so much as aperson, is that, which like,
that's what you remember.
And that's when you're like, Oh,it wasn't worth it.
Because when you're running abusiness, it often doesn't feel
like it's all worth it becauseyou're just getting a lot of

(23:59):
hassle and issues thrown at youfrom every single angle all the
time relentlessly.
So when you have moments likethat where someone's just like,
thank you so much, I've grown asa person and it's because of
you, you remember that forever.

Harv (24:12):
That is amazing, that story and so interesting, super
inspiring.
A few comments or observationsand questions as well.
First of all, all of theapproaches you talked about,
were they your own ideas?
Did you get external advice?
Did you see something or readsomething?
Where did that come from?

Trenton Moss (24:29):
To be honest, we, we got a little bit of external
helping, but I'd say 5%.
The vast majority was, was usbecause like, you know, us as a
leadership team, we've got a lotof experience, right.
And we're generally think we'requite good with clients.
I've also got quite a bit of, abackground with counseling and
Samaritans with coaching so wecould bring a lot of that kind
of emotional intelligence in.

(24:51):
and then we had a trainingacademy in the business, so we
knew how to do training.
We did quite a bit oftransformation work with
clients, so we knew aboutbehavior change and how to make
that happen.
So we had a lot of theingredients in place.
And then honestly, Harv, to behonest, we then just kind of
made it up as we went along.

Harv (25:05):
Okay.

Trenton Moss (25:05):
We would just be look, we would talk as a
leadership about what are theproblems that we're seeing in
the business in terms of the waypeople are with clients?

Harv (25:13):
Hmm.
Hmm.

Trenton Moss (25:14):
and what does success look like?
And then we would come up withwhat we call the Webcredible way
and codify what good lookedlike.
Because what good looks like forone agency would be different to
what good looks like foranother.
There'll be a lot ofsimilarities.
So we came up with a lot of itourselves to be fair.
And then because we knew how todo, as I said, training and
behavior change, we could, wecould, we could easily implement

(25:36):
it.

Harv (25:36):
And with that training, was that all kind of, you know,
those client skills, was thatkind of your own doing as well?

Trenton Moss (25:41):
Yeah.
And the one thing that welearned very early on that this
can't be, we, we started offdoing this and we had to can it.
We, is that, this can't be, youwill need to be like us, and
that doesn't work.
And what we realized what doeswork is here's what good looks
like.
And let's do loads and loads oflike, like workshops and

(26:01):
training around self awarenessand emotional intelligence.
So you can properly understandyourself and your communication
style and your personality type.
And then, you need to work outhow best to apply this, you
know, you now know who you areand what works for you, and you
know what good looks likeaccording to what we think good
looks like.
You got to work out how to getthere now

Harv (26:22):
I like that.

Trenton Moss (26:22):
That was quite empowering.

Harv (26:24):
You know, you mentioned these pods were about 15 people.
What was the makeup of theseteams in terms of profiles?

Trenton Moss (26:29):
Yeah, the pod we had, it was basically client
services and delivery.
So the leader of the pod waswhat we called an experience
director, which is a, a UXperson who's, who's now pretty
senior is kind of like a, a mixof, delivery and client
services, and then we'd have anaccount director, a project
manager, and then various levelsof different consultants.
And then, and then we'd have onevery client engagement, you'd

(26:54):
have a, you know, someone doingthe kind of the client
leadership, someone doing theproject management, and at least
a couple, and usually two, twoto three kind of practitioners,
but then, but then the persondoing the client leadership and
the project management wouldflex depending on, you know, the
scale of it.
So for the smaller stuff, youwouldn't have a dedicated PM.
The, the, the, the, the accountdirector might just do that.

(27:14):
Or for the smaller stuff, youmight not even have an account
director.
You might just be thepractitioner who does that.
So we'd have those roles ready,but we had this flex model, to
allow it to work for the client.
Because this is the big problemthat a lot of agencies have, is
right, all these deliverypeople, But you know, God, you
can't really expect them just toorganize everything.
They're spending half their timedoing admin.

(27:35):
Okay.
I better get a project managerand to help with that or someone
of that ilk.
And then it's like, okay, well,everyone's just kind of busy
delivering and looking out forthe risks and making sure
everything's okay.
But no one's growing theaccount.
No one's, think looking for theopportunities, I better get a
client services leader and anaccount director or whatever.
And before, you know, you've gotthis massively bloated team and
the client's like, well, why amI paying for all these people?

(27:56):
So the model we came up withactually, it generally worked
well because we could then, youknow, so everyone was kind of T
shaped.
Everyone had their specialism.
Like you're a, a UXpractitioner, you're a PM,
you're, you're an AD, but thenthey might flex their muscles to
do one of those other roles, ifit just didn't seem to make
commercial sense from theclient's point of view to pay

(28:17):
for a whole extra person to dothat.

Harv (28:19):
Makes sense.
one, I guess, just anobservation.
I'm going to say it wrong.
Was it WMIF?

Trenton Moss (28:25):
WMIF! Yeah, WMIF! We made it fund!

Harv (28:28):
And we made it fund.
Okay.
I, I love that approach in Itcontributed to the company
culture, it wasn't like you weresaying the financial reward
sometimes can be, it can end upfeeling quite piddly or people
can start relying on it and itjust doesn't motivate them
anymore.
So I love that what you didactually contributed to the
company culture by the thingspeople got to do and experience.

(28:49):
And I also, I think what's greatabout your approach is made with
these pods is it made everyoneentrepreneurial.
You know, rather than just,

Trenton Moss (28:58):
entrepreneur is a bit of...
exact 5 percent of their brainwas entrepreneurial.
But that, but, but when youapply that across everyone,
that, that, that is a winbecause what, what would happen
before is people might beworking with a client.
They might potentially seeopportunities, but they don't
have the confidence to kind ofsay anything to anyone.
They're not even sure who theyshould talk to.
so by bringing it in the pods,it gave everyone that kind of

(29:20):
framework in which to, tocontribute to that conversation,
but they weren't the ones thengoing to hunt for it and then
make it happen.

Harv (29:27):
hmm.

Trenton Moss (29:27):
It was like that team effort, but the experience
director or account directorwould be, you know, generally
leading from the front withthat, so it worked really
nicely.
And then the WMIF, if you'reright, it really did contribute
to the culture.
And we, so, so when it comes tomoney, money for me is, is not a
motivator, right?
So if you pay someone a salarylower, than what they think they

(29:48):
deserve, that can bedemotivating.
But as soon as you're payingsomeone what they think they're
worth,

Harv (29:55):
Mm hmm.

Trenton Moss (29:55):
I don't believe if you paid them any more that you
will add to their motivation.

Harv (29:59):
Mm.

Trenton Moss (30:00):
What motivates me, sorry, what motivates people, I
believe, is what Dan Pink writesabout in his book Drive, which
is autonomy, mastery, andpurpose.
In autonomy, obviously havingownership, mastery, the ability
to get good at something andpurpose, you know, understanding
the reason why you're doingsomething.
So, you know, back to the WMIF,there was just, you know, it's
like, right, you got thisreward.
You've got total autonomy towork out what you want to do.

(30:23):
and I think that was why it was,one of the reasons it was
motivating.

Harv (30:26):
Excellent.
you know, the, the one otherobservation, I guess, which,
which I love as an operationsperson is that you had this very
operational process with whatyou applied, you know, you're
talking about this kind ofchecklist in, in terms of the
approach people had to take tofollow this stuff.
And I think that leads us intoour next, kind of example that
you wanted to take us throughhow you operationalised things.

(30:48):
Let's, let's talk about some ofthat.

Trenton Moss (30:50):
I mean, I'm a, I'm naturally quite process driven,
so I like to kind of getinvolved in something, you know,
with the team work out the bestway of doing it and be like,
right, let's just repeat that.
And sometimes I take that a bitfar because sometimes, you know,
the world moves on and so whatworks today doesn't always work
tomorrow.
So I, I have to sometimes holdmyself back, but essentially

(31:13):
from the off with the agency.
So I was the sole founder.
you know, once I was able to getit going and realize that it was
a viable business and, and, andstarted getting a team, from
there on in my personalobjective was to make myself
redundant from every singleaspect of the business.
So it was just gradually overtime, hiring people to take over
from me.
So, you know, someone to rundelivery, someone to run client

(31:36):
services, someone to run, youknow, resource management and
project management and so on.

Harv (31:41):
hmm.

Trenton Moss (31:41):
Someone to run new business and marketing and so
on.
and it took a while, if I'mfair, it took, it took 13 years
to get there.

Harv (31:48):
Hmm.

Trenton Moss (31:49):
After 13 years, the company kind of ran itself
without...
I had a wonderful MD who ran itday to day.
And I wasn't so involved on theday to day basis.
And I could have, I could havelike gone out, I cycled around
London.
I could have cycled home, beenhit by a bus, got under the bus,
end of Trenton.
And if they didn't replace me ordo anything to replace me, they,
I don't, I'm not sure if thathave survived long, long term,

(32:12):
but certainly for six, sixmonths to a year, that'd have
been absolutely fine.

Harv (32:17):
Hmm.

Trenton Moss (32:17):
And then it'd have just worked out a way of
replacing me.
So, it was really nice that itwas, it's a very satisfying
feeling to have something that Iguess ultimately, you know,
you've created and to know it'snow kind of running itself and
it runs itself in your image,right?
Because if you're a founder, youcreate something in your image
based on your personality typeand your values.

(32:39):
So to see that running is, youknow, without you, it's
incredibly rewarding.

Harv (32:45):
Amazing.
so let's move into the nextarea.
You know, one, one of myquestions before was whether you
brought in external support orkind of advisors and that kind
of thing, and, and you, you werementioning something about an
advisory board, so tell us aboutthat.

Trenton Moss (33:00):
Yeah.
It worked really well for us.
So.
You know, I'd often have likenon execs and agency advisors
kind of knocking on the doorsaying, Hey, let's go for coffee
or let's chat.

Harv (33:09):
Mm-Hmm

Trenton Moss (33:11):
For me, just for me, it just, it never felt
right.
So when you're running anagency, it's just like, it's
just go, go, go, go, go.
Right.

Harv (33:20):
mm-Hmm.
Mm-Hmm

Trenton Moss (33:21):
You've got everything being thrown at you.
You've got no time for anything.
It's like, come on, let's go,go, go.
And all of the advisors I'd meetand the potential NEDs who did
that for a job, like, you know,they'd come in the office and,
you know, we'd have a drink andthey'd all just talk so slowly.
And it would be like, if I don'tkick you out, you're going to be
here all day.

Harv (33:41):
mm-Hmm.

Trenton Moss (33:42):
And so it just, it just never sat right with me.
It just didn't feel for meanyway.
Maybe I just didn't meet theright people, but it just didn't
feel like the right thing.
It was my father in lawactually, over Christmas one
year, who suggested aboutsetting up an advisory board.
And I thought, Ooh, that seemslike a good idea.

Harv (33:59):
Mm-Hmm.

Trenton Moss (34:00):
I reached out to a few people and we ended up
getting going.
so on our board, we wouldgenerally have two agency people
and one brand person.
So the brand person wouldusually be someone very senior,
our target client, from a bigbrand.
So chief digital officer typeperson, which also did mean that
then they couldn't be a client.
So it would, you know, it wouldhave to be a brand that we don't

(34:22):
work with and perhaps we'reokay, never working with them.
so we'd get someone very senior,you know, usually like a global
chief digital officer in to keepus up to date with what's, you
know, tell us what's going onin, in brands.
What are people talking about?
And then we'd get two agencypeople in and we'd try and get
people in who could support uswith whatever kind of bigger
initiative we've got that we'reworking on.
So like when we were like,right, we're going to launch

(34:42):
internationally.
Cause that was such a greatidea.
Um, we, we made sure that, youknow, we, we got someone who has
kind of launched in multiplelocations.
and so basically I'd just reachout to people on LinkedIn.
I'll be like, Hey, I've got thisagency and we've got an advisory
board.
You potentially interested, youknow, it's like three days a
year of your time all in.
So you obviously do this on theside and we'll pay you a bit for
it.
So I got a very very goodresponse rate and then like

(35:04):
really good I was surprisedevery time and then i'd go and
you know generally go and have acoffee with everyone and chat
them and talk about you know myagency and and it what was
really weird was when we wererecruiting new people for the
board I'd have to, I'd have toturn some people down for it
cause I'd meet a few.
So I went to meet the global CEOof Saatchi and Saatchi and we

(35:26):
sat there for an hour and I'mtelling him all about my agency
and we're chatting and we'regetting on well and he's like,
yeah, this sounds great.
I'd love to be on your board.
I was like, great.
So I went back to the office andI was chatting to my MD and I
was like, the global CEO ofSaatchi and Saatchi is
interested.
Like we have to have him.
Right.
Like, like it's the global CEOof Saatchi and Saatchi.
And the next day I went to meet,the global CEO of an Omnicom

(35:48):
business called Hall Partners,this lady called Vanella
Jackson, who to this day is, ispotentially the most impressive
person I've ever met.
She just blew me away.
I felt like I'd been draggedthrough a hedge backwards and
forwards and backwards for anhour, and I came out of there
all just disheveled and oh myGod, what just happened to me?
But wow, she has to be on myboard.
So a week later I phone up theglobal CEO of Saatchi Saatchi

(36:11):
and I'm like, yeah, hi, it'sTrenton here.
You know, that piddly littleagency I run compared to yours.
and we talked about you maybebeing on the board.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
It's a no.
And so that was just like,Really weird.
So, but, but, but, you know, weget really good people on the
boards.
I had Vanella on the board for,for a while.
I had, Karen Blackett who runsWPP in the UK on the board.

(36:31):
I had Ian Milner who runs iris,a thousand person marketing
agency.
You know, we've got some reallybrilliant people on the board
and, and none of them reallycare about the money.
So, it was paid and it'simportant that it's paid.
So they take it seriously.

Harv (36:43):
Mm,

Trenton Moss (36:44):
But it was a lot less than what the professional
advisors charge and the NEDs.
No one's doing it for the money.
They're doing it because theyenjoy it.

Harv (36:51):
Mm.

Trenton Moss (36:51):
And as a board, we'd get together once a
quarter, to talk about whateverwe wanted to talk about, really.
So me and my MD had to kind ofdrive the conversation.
We had to talk about ourstrategic initiatives for the
next year or so, and then, youknow, take that back to each
quarter.
And then what we were doing thenext quarter, and we'd usually
have a kind of a question, akind of a topic of discussion
and some guiding questions.

(37:12):
So we'd send them a pack before,like a pre-read.
And we'd go through that.
And it was absolutely brilliant.
It's one of the, I talked beforeabout, you know, I think I did
three successful things.
One was all that clientleadership stuff.
And another was this advisoryboard.
It was, I met some of the mostbrilliant people, but what, what
it does, like none of them, likewhat it helped me realize was
like, none of this is rocketscience and no one has the

(37:34):
answers and all of thechallenges we face in our piddly
little 3 million pound agencycompared to their, you know,
mega agencies.
It was the same problems, juston a bigger scale.
And they also didn't have thesolutions.
There's no like silver bullet.
You just gotta kind of keepmoving forward and doing your
best.
So that was really reassuring.
But the other thing it broughtus, it just meant we had to act

(37:58):
strategically because otherwiseyou just get sucked into
firefighting every single day.
And it's very easy to do thatwhen you're on the leadership of
an agency.
I remember one time we had aboard meeting and me and my MD
looked at each other and we werelike, We've got that board
meeting coming up.
What did we talk about lasttime?
Oh my God, I can't evenremember.
And you just, time flies by.

(38:18):
And then we had three weekswhere we had to like get
ourselves together and like acton the things we said we'd do
and prepare for the next one.
And so, you know, normally wewere more organized than that,
but, but the point is it forcedus to act strategically and to
pull ourselves out of the weeds.
And that was just, justbrilliant.
And you'll get that obviouslywith any advisor, but I think in
particular with these guys,because they were so senior and

(38:42):
they had a full time job, thatit was almost like, if you've
got like a professional advisorcoming in every month, you're
like, Oh, no, I haven't donethat stuff, then there'll be
like, Oh, well, okay.
Well, I'll see you next month,and hopefully you've done it.
Whereas for these guys, we werelike, we haven't done this
stuff.
And they were like, well, whyare we giving up our time to be
here?
And it's almost like we had todo right by them to keep them
motivated, to keep them wantingto do it.

(39:04):
And that, that drove us forwardso well.
So the advisory board was sosuccessful and then, they were
brilliant also, like towards theend of the last year and a half,
we had the most it was justabsurd the last year and a half
of the business.
So you, you, you know, there'salways ups and downs and it's a
rollercoaster ride.
And the last year and a half wasthe biggest down we'd ever had.

(39:24):
And the biggest up we'd everhad.
I, I don't know how I likesurvived it without like ending
up in a mental institution.
It was, it was crazy.
And we had, well, we had, we hadsix months of consecutive
losses, hemorrhaging hundredsand hundreds of thousands of
pounds and the board, you know,just stepped up and we called
like, so we had like a boardmeeting every quarter.

(39:44):
They got booked in at the startof the year and you had to give
eight weeks notice to change thedate.
So no one ever, no one changedthe date and everyone came.
They always happened.
So these are really busy people,right?
So we reached out to them allsaying, look, we're in trouble.
Right.
Please can we get together?
And I think three days later,they're all in our office
having, I mean, they justdropped what they were doing to
help us.
It was, just so brilliant.

(40:06):
And they were so incrediblysupportive during that time.
So, you know, we had Karen fromWPP and Ian from Iris, and they
gave up so much of their timeduring that six months.
And they didn't have to help us.
So the problem we had was thatwe had, we had New business fell
off a cliff.
We had a massive problem withnew business.

Harv (40:22):
Mm.

Trenton Moss (40:23):
Which was, which was killing us.
and they basically helped us puttogether this, this proactive
new business plan that we'dnever done before.

Harv (40:29):
Mm hmm.

Trenton Moss (40:30):
I, me and the team just killed ourselves putting
into practice and making it workand pulling ourselves out of it.
And they were absolutelybrilliant.
And then for the nine, afterthat period ended, when we
stopped making a loss for thenine months after revenue, just
went up and up and up and up.
So that coupled with the successwith our existing clients with
the client leadership stuffmeant the business was just
flying.

(40:50):
We were doing the mostincredible work.
Operationally wise, we were set.
Everything was amazing.
So for after our six months oflosses, we had nine months of
consecutive month on monthgrowth, every single month
revenue went up.
And, by month nine, we weretracking our highest ever
revenue, on a 40 percent netmargin.
So we, we clawed back all themoney that we lost.

(41:11):
And during that period, likeactually the, the agency sale
process began as well.

Harv (41:15):
Mm.

Trenton Moss (41:15):
So that was a really big thing.
And again, the advisors just,again, they didn't have to, but
they just got so involved,especially Ian from Iris.
He was, he was just amazing.
And they just stepped in andhelped so much and went so above
and beyond what they had to do.

Harv (41:29):
Yeah.

Trenton Moss (41:30):
Yeah, going back, back the advisory board, like,
oh, it was just absolutelybrilliant.
I just, just so grateful to the,to those guys for supporting us.
And I think they got a lot outof it as well.

Harv (41:39):
Yeah.

Trenton Moss (41:39):
It was a great experience.

Harv (41:41):
Amazing.
How many people out of interestwere on that board?

Trenton Moss (41:44):
Three, we'd have three at a time.
And...

Harv (41:46):
Three at a time.
Okay.

Trenton Moss (41:47):
And something, we learned the hard way, We did it
a year rolling, you know,agreement, so to speak.
So it was a bit of an agreementthat they signed.
and we put in there like afterthree years, this will end.
You will no longer be on ourboard after three years.
And we learned the hard way.
We had two people on the boardwho were, who were brilliant,
absolutely amazing.
So they were there.
And after about two and a halfyears, we were like, it's just

(42:11):
getting a bit samey now, like.

Harv (42:13):
Okay.

Trenton Moss (42:15):
We had two, with these two people, we basically
say to them, like, we'd like youto step down from the board,
which is a bit awkward.
Cause it was like, you'reamazing.
You've contributed so much thatyou've done nothing wrong.
We just want to freshen it up abit.
so then we put it in theagreement that like, yeah, it's
three years.
So I think with any advisor,based on that experience, I
think two and a half, threeyears is, perhaps the max time

(42:37):
where someone's going to addvalue.

Harv (42:39):
That's fair.
And, the question I wanted toask was, you know, when you said
this revenue fell off a cliffout of interest, was that before
or after you'd set up thesesales pods and that.

Trenton Moss (42:49):
It was after it was during, it was there.
So...

Harv (42:52):
What happened then?

Trenton Moss (42:53):
So so the pods were focused on existing
accounts and developing accountsand they did support new
business.
The way we did new businessdidn't change.

Harv (43:03):
Hmm.

Trenton Moss (43:03):
So we didn't take our eye off the ball on new
business at all.
The pod structure just, justkind of got people focusing more
on commercial stuff.
what happened was we think justthe perfect storm of so many
different things comingtogether.

Harv (43:15):
Okay.

Trenton Moss (43:16):
Probably the main one was just how competitive
user experience got.
It went so mainstream all of asudden that said before we had
Accenture and IBM invading thespace.
We had every big marketingagency invading the space.
Just everyone was there.

Harv (43:31):
Hmm.
Mm

Trenton Moss (43:32):
It wasn't that we were losing pitches.
We just weren't pitching.
and so I remember I just had mysecond kid and new biz just,
just, just went really quiet.
And I was like, okay, this isn'ta bad thing because I'm kind of
busy at home.
So like a quiet period for amonth or two will be quite nice.
And that quiet period just wenton and on and on, and there was
just no inquiries.

Harv (43:53):
hmm.

Trenton Moss (43:53):
And for 13 years, 13 or 14 years, we had relied on
this steady stream of inboundinquiries coming in from
marketing from word of mouth andso on and so on, and we didn't
need to do too much proactivenew biz, you know, the outreach
or anything like that.
And yeah, that tap turned off.
It just stopped.

Harv (44:10):
Interesting.
Okay.

Trenton Moss (44:11):
So if you're listening and you are an agency
that pretty much just relies oninbound inquiries, you know,
you're doing your marketing,you're doing your word of mouth
you're doing a few things, yeah,get an outbound strategy in
place because that tap can turnoff at any moment and you will
have no forewarning.

Harv (44:27):
And we talk to people all the time and you know, I know
that like, past year and a halfhas been difficult and that's
been the reality.

Trenton Moss (44:33):
Can I say it has been very hard, but what, what
the, what we ended up doing,which is what I think you could
be doing at the moment andshould be doing over the last
year and a half.
So with the help of our advisoryboard, we put on new business
strategy in place andimplemented it.
And we made a play to own thatkind of strategic UX place and
to make ourselves the expertsout there.

(44:54):
and to, to just make it so clearthat that's our niche and when
times get hard, we move awayfrom our niche because we're
like, Oh, we want to do a bit ofthis and a bit, we'll just do
anything.
Cause you know, cause you're inpanic stations and it's just,
it's about doubling down on yourniche and then it's doing things
like you know, podcasting, likewhat you're doing, creating
communities for people in thatniche, launching a journal about

(45:16):
that niche, doing events withinthat niche and so on and so on
and so on, which is, and that'swhat we did.
We launched them community forUX leaders within brands.
And this was my third reallysuccessful thing.
The third of three, I've got,I've spoken about all of them.
This community was madsuccessful for the business and
it's what turned it around.
Okay.
So we launched this communityfor the UX leaders within

(45:38):
brands.
It was a closed community with,with, with hand select people,
so to speak, but essentially ifyou were a potential client, you
know, you were in, and, they'dget to go, we get together every
month for round table, haveabout 20 people coming along
each time.
And we'd curate, you know, we'dcurate the discussion, but
they'd bring the content.
They were just because theydon't care about us as an
agency.
They care about themselves orjust really lonely in their

(45:58):
jobs.
So we got all these leaderstogether in a structured way, to
basically just share their painand come up with solutions
together.

Harv (46:06):
Mm.

Trenton Moss (46:06):
By running that consistently month after month
after month, we were basicallyin touch with all of these
leaders.
And before you know it, we'vewon Tesco.
We've won Vodafone.
We've won Visa.
We've won RBS.
And you know what?
We didn't have to pitch for anyof them.

Harv (46:21):
Amazing.
So Trenton, you, you know, youtalk a lot about emotional
intelligence and how thatimpacts leadership.
Agency people talk about a lotof different things, but
emotional intelligence isn't oneof those, but it's so important
to relationships and you'vehighlighted that in some of your
examples.
And in fact, you've written abook about this called Human
Powered.
so can you tell us a bit aboutthat?

(46:42):
What does it get into?

Trenton Moss (46:44):
Yeah, sure.
Well, I mean, emotionalintelligence, essentially, three
parts to it, right?

Harv (46:48):
Mm hmm.

Trenton Moss (46:50):
Self awareness, there's knowing yourself and
understanding the things thatyou do to positively impact
people and the things that youdo perhaps to negatively impact
you and all of us we will, youknow, have things that we do for
both so it's that real like selfawareness and understanding and
what drives you and whatmotivates you and you know, what
upsets, frustrates and annoysyou.

Harv (47:12):
Mm hmm.

Trenton Moss (47:12):
So emotional intelligence is very, very much
about understanding yourself.

Harv (47:16):
Mm hmm.

Trenton Moss (47:17):
Equally it's about understanding others and having
empathy for others.
And empathy and sympathy are notthe two, they're not the same
thing.
Empathy is about understandingwhere the other person is coming
from.
And it's about assuming the bestof intentions with everyone
because no one sets out to wrongyou or frustrate you or annoy
you.
I didn't wake up this morningthinking, Oh, what can I do to

(47:38):
really annoy Harv on thatpodcast?
What are the things I could door say that's really gonna get
under his skin?

Harv (47:44):
Mm.

Trenton Moss (47:44):
That's just not a thing, but people will do and
say things that frustrate andupset you.
So emotional intelligence isabout looking beyond people's
behavior and understandingactually, you know, where are
they coming from?

Harv (47:56):
Mm.

Trenton Moss (47:56):
And the final part of it is bringing those
together.
And it's about everything youdo, taking a win win, mentality.
So like, right, here's where I'mcoming from.
Here's what success looks likefor me, and here's where you're
coming from.
And here's what success lookslike for you.
How do we get a win win?
I will not be happy if we leavethis conversation with you not
getting a good outcome.
And equally I will be as unhappyif I don't get a good outcome.

(48:19):
Let's work together to make thata reality for both of us.
So the book, I mean, the bookis, you know, loosely based on
the skills program that I ran inmy agency, Webcredible.
That's where it all kind ofstarted coming about.
and it's about how you deal withdifficult conversations.
Cause we have difficultconversations with clients all
the time.
It's about how you put up deepand meaningful relationships
with them.

(48:40):
how you lead and inspire clientsand get them to sign off your
work quickly.
And then how are you kind ofsuccessful with them in all your
interactions?
And because here's the thing,when you work agency side, doing
amazing work is only half thebattle.
And for many agencies and inparticular practitioners, we
think that great work will justbe enough.
And it's not, and I've seen inmy, you know, in my agency, I

(49:02):
was doing some of the mostamazing work and it's just not
landing so well because wehaven't sold it in properly.
So doing amazing work is halfthe battle.
And the other half is havingeveryone else and having your
clients think you're doingamazing work.
It's about using your emotionalintelligence to make sure they
believe that what you've done isas amazing as what it is.

Harv (49:26):
You, you also have a podcast of the same name, human
powered.
So you talk about the similarthemes.
What kinds of people do youtalk, talk to?

Trenton Moss (49:34):
Yeah.
I mean, generally it's agencyleaders that come on the podcast
and we talk about highperforming teams.

Harv (49:39):
Mm.

Trenton Moss (49:40):
It's like, what do you, you know, you've got a, a
successful business.
No one thinks of their ownbusiness as successful,

Harv (49:49):
Yeah.

Trenton Moss (49:49):
Because all you do is see the problems.
but you know, you do have asuccessful business.
What are the things that you doto, to make that business high
performing?
And, and it's almost alwaysbased on people.
You know, what are the thingsyou do therefore to make, high
performing teams?

Harv (50:02):
Mm

Trenton Moss (50:03):
I've, you know, like with you, I'm sure I've,
I've learned, I've learned somuch by doing the podcast.
It's absolutely fascinatinghearing the kind of different
things that, that people aredoing.

Harv (50:11):
Absolutely.
Amazing.
Trenton, this was just such afantastic conversation and
there's so much I'm sure peoplewould be able to learn from
speaking to you.
Where can they find out moreinformation about yourself?

Trenton Moss (50:23):
Oh well, LinkedIn, I mean, one of the, when I was a
kid, I didn't like having anunusual name because you usually
want to fit in as a kid.

Harv (50:29):
Yeah.

Trenton Moss (50:29):
but as a grownup being called Trenton Moss is
quite useful.
So there are actually twoTrenton Mosses on LinkedIn.

Harv (50:35):
Okay.

Trenton Moss (50:36):
One is a network engineer in Salt Lake City.

Harv (50:39):
Right.

Trenton Moss (50:40):
I'm the other one.

Harv (50:41):
Okay.
And your website as well?

Trenton Moss (50:43):
Yeah, it's, sterka.team.

Harv (50:45):
Excellent.
Okay.
this has been absolute pleasureand so inspiring hearing your
stories.
So thank you so much for beingwith us today.

Trenton Moss (50:53):
It's been really enjoyable.
Thanks, Harv.

Harv (50:55):
Thanks Trenton.
I felt incredibly inspiredlistening to Trenton on the
changes he brought to his pastagency, from the pod and reward
structure he brought in, to thein house training and
operational approach heimplemented, to the advisory
board he had set up.
Do reach out to him if you needsome perspective at your own
place of work.
And before I go, please sharethis podcast with your agency

(51:17):
friends and tell them tosubscribe.
Number two, please share yourfeedback on this episode in a
comment when I post this onLinkedIn, Trenton and I would
love to hear what you think, andit helps other people in your
network discover the podcast aswell.
And number three, please sign upfor the handbook newsletter so
you get the key takeaways inyour inbox from each episode.

(51:40):
You can go to scoro.com/podcastand scroll down to find the
newsletter signup form.
Thank you so much for listeningand I'll be back soon with
another episode.