March 16, 2025 • 35 mins
Company: The James Agency
Owners: Veronique James
Year Started: 2005
Employees: 50 – 99
What happens when life throws you a massive financial setback before your career even starts?
Veronique James didn’t just overcome adversity, she used it as fuel to build The James Agency, a powerhouse of creativity and strategy. In this episode, she shares her journey from early struggles to scaling a successful agency, her leadership philosophy, and the game-changing decisions that shaped her business.
If you’ve ever wondered how to weather financial setbacks, grow an agency with intention, or implement open-book management for stronger team buy-in, this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss.
Key Takeaways
- How Veronique turned a financial crisis into the foundation for her success.
- Why transparency in finances can empower your team and drive growth.
- The simple yet powerful 10% Project that helped TJA stay lean and profitable.
- Pivoting in crisis, how her agency rebounded from a 62% revenue loss during COVID without layoffs or pay cuts.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to An Agency Storypodcast where we share real
stories of marketing agencyowners from around the world.
From the excitement of startingup the first big sale, passion,
doubt, fear, freedom, and theemotional rollercoaster of
growth, hear it all on An AgencyStory podcast.
(00:24):
An Agency Story podcast ishosted by Russel Dubree,
successful agency owner with aneight figure exit turned
business coach.
Enjoy the next agency story.
Russel (00:41):
What happens when life throws you a quarter million
dollar curve ball before yourcareer even takes off.
Today's guest, Veronique James,didn't just survive adversity,
she turned it into thefoundation of a powerhouse
agency.
Welcome to An Agency Storypodcast, I'm your host Russel.
On this episode, we dive intoVeronique's incredible journey
starting The James Agency withsheer determination to scaling
(01:03):
it into a full service firm.
From overcoming financialhardships to navigating the
chaos of the pandemic, Veroniqueshares her shares the hard
earned lessons that have shapedher leadership and business
philosophy.
As the founder and CEO of theJames Agency, Veronique has
built a reputation as a leaderwho values transparency,
champions a people firstapproach, and isn't afraid to
pivot when the industry demandsit.
(01:26):
She opens up about the power ofresilience, the impact of open
book management, and why knowingyour numbers isn't just a
survival tactic.
It's a game changer.
If you're looking for a tale ofgrit, agency growth, and
navigating uncertainty, this isthe episode for you.
Enjoy the story.
Welcome to the show today,everyone.
I have Veronique James with TheJames Agency with us here today.
(01:47):
Thank you so much for joining ustoday, Veronique.
Veronique (01:49):
Thank you for having me.
I appreciate it.
Russel (01:51):
All right.
Let's get right to it.
Tell us what TJA does and whoyou do it for?
Veronique (01:55):
The James Agency, also known as TJA, is a full
service agency.
We prefer the phrase or, uh,naming of integrated.
Integrated agency is all facetsof marketing.
You name it, we handle it.
The agency started as acomprehensive brand development
firm back in 2005, and throughthe evolution of doing great
work, we've added PR, web, uh,video, crisis communication,
(02:17):
social.
We have a very strong, uh,digital team, um, and all facets
of these services are handledin-house.
We really pride ourselves on themiddle market, uh, type of
client.
Pre-COVID we were definitelymore B2B, uh, we've diversified
to B2B and B2C, uh, which we'vecoined the phrase B2H, which is
business to human.
We believe the intent here is toconnect the, the brand, uh, our
(02:40):
client, to their end audience,whether that's business to
business or business toconsumer.
The formula is essentially thesame.
We have the privilege of workingon all types of clients, uh, but
we love clients that engage uson that omni channel strategy,
uh, really allowing us to be thequarterback for their marketing
initiatives.
Russel (02:55):
I love that business to human.
Veronique (02:57):
B2H.
Russel (02:58):
In 2024 when, yes, when we think of all the words that
people have coined up, thatthere's still an opportunity to,
to have new nomenclature andterms.
I love to hear it.
I want to learn a lot more aboutall the things that you're doing
in your agency and goals and allthat good stuff, but I also want
to know about young Veroniqueand where, where she was coming
up in the world, where shethought she was headed.
(03:18):
What was the young life ofVeronique like?
Veronique (03:20):
I'll give you a shortened version of a very long
journey.
Born and raised in San Diego,California.
Went to Torrey Pines HighSchool.
Found myself loving architectureat a very young age.
Applied to several schools, andfound myself actually at the
University of Arizona in Tucson.
For their architecture program.
About a year into school, Ifound that I was really missing
(03:41):
the creative side.
I'm a very high creative visualperson.
Love the math, love, um, theproblem solving of architecture,
but I have both sides of thebrain.
I'm very operationalsophisticate, but I also love
visionary thinking andbrainstorming.
My favorite question is alwayswhat if, right?
The what if we could do this?
I switched my major to a visualcommunications degree, a
(04:02):
Bachelor's in Fine Arts.
Graduated and found myselfshortly thereafter as I looked
for opportunities to work withinthe creative sphere.
An entry level salary doesn'tget you very much in a lot of
the bigger metropolitan citieslike New York or San Francisco
or, even California where I grewup.
That was an awakening for me.
I was very privileged to comeout of school essentially debt
(04:24):
free, but my parents did say,generously, when I graduated, I
was on my own.
I have a very European motherand I have a, uh, uh,
entrepreneur father who was anex-Navy officer.
Kind of strict, right?
And I was an only child.
I found myself actually at afemale led and owned small
agency, about eight people herein Scottsdale right out of
college.
While I never intended to gointo advertising specifically, a
(04:46):
small firm was the great kind ofspringboard for me to be able to
grow, because you're required towear a lot of hats.
I think that's a greatsubmersion into all facets of
the business and being able towork closely with my colleagues
and see that interdisciplinarythinking, I think, was really
what allowed me to advance rightout of school compared to some
of my other fellow graduates.
Russel (05:07):
Okay, that sounds like quite the fast track.
Where does it go from here?
Veronique (05:11):
I'll just tell you quickly, this is where the plot
thickens.
I fell in love quickly out ofschool, got married quickly out
of school and shortly thereafterfound that that wasn't a good
decision.
About a year, uh, went through adivorce that was really
tumultuous.
Unfortunately, um, my, um,ex-husband leveraged, uh, my
credit score and my perfect debtfree social security number to
(05:34):
pay off a lot of his debt.
And in the state of Arizona,they don't care.
It's a community property state.
I was awarded about a quartermillion dollars of debt at a
very, very, very young age.
As you can imagine, um, having alack of support from, and I'm
saying this in a good way, likemy parents said, you know, and
they meant it, when I graduatedI was on my own.
Being in an entry levelposition, that really required
(05:56):
for me to be extremely nimbleand scrappy and to get
thoughtful.
Here I am, in my early 20s, I,uh, recently divorced, have a
lot of, you know, thisaccumulated debt that wasn't
really of my doing,unfortunately.
Homeless because I had walkedaway from my home and my dogs
and my car, so I'm living withmy cousin.
I was like, gosh, you know.
At that time, during thattransition, I had left that
(06:19):
small agency and went to alarger firm.
Started out as a graphicdesigner and was slowly making
my ranks up.
That firm, what's funny, I callit a larger firm, but at its
prime, it was about the sizethat we are today.
It's an interestingretrospective.
That firm is, uh, no longer inexistence, um, uh, but
represented a lot of, like,large flag hospitality, Wyndham,
and Golden Door Spa.
(06:39):
That was an amazing experience.
Big budgets, uh, more corporateclients, really got to learn
about the hierarchies ofbusiness and professionalism
with different personalities,not quite as scrappy or
bootstrappy as I'm sure you canimagine.
Plus, it was a sophisticated 40year old firm, it was a legacy
business, so they had a lot ofwell oiled processes and
systems.
But with that came some culturaldisparagement that I didn't
(07:01):
love.
I felt like there was a lot ofcontention between the agency
and the client, a lot of like,why does this cost so much
money?
How is this taking so long?
You guys are so big, thingsaren't getting fast, you know,
done fast enough.
As a creative being in thattender environment, you bleed
over your work.
It's like, man, there's got tobe a better way than having the
client always pissed all thetime.
(07:22):
Pardon the expression.
In parallel, my life is sort ofcoming into shambles.
I'm going through an interestingintersection in my career where
I'm not loving where I'm at.
I'm like, gosh, there's just notime like the present.
I, in a very brave manner, quitmy job, quit my day job, um, and
decided that just, you know, afew months prior that I would
start to freelance, uh, tosupport some of these expenses
(07:45):
that I had crewed through mydissolution of my marriage, um,
to also get myself back on myfeet.
Russel (07:49):
I gotta pause.
I mean, there's just so manythings we gotta go back and
unpack a little bit because, Imean, I think some people, this
could be life forever crippling.
What you're talking about of asituation saddled with debt, a
very young age and I know I'msitting across from a confident,
successful businesswoman today,but what were you thinking back
then in terms of just, I mean,the word kept in my mind, I'd be
(08:11):
scared shitless.
Or is that just, that was just,wasn't in your DNA?
Veronique (08:14):
There's no playbook for those types of life events.
Let's call that my first dosageof adversity, you know, as a
young adult.
Looking back, yeah, certainly Iwas afraid and there was a lot
of uncertainty.
I was very fortunate I had a lotof people that were, you know,
psychologically supporting me.
I had some friends that werevery supportive.
(08:34):
As I mentioned, I had left, youknow, everything kind of behind
to leave my husband.
One day I sent an email andsaid, hey, I'm meeting
furniture.
I have nothing.
I had finally found a home thatI could rent for a low expense.
Within 24 hours, I had a fullhome full of donated furniture
from people's storage.
It was events like that, thatmade me realize if people
believe in me, then I have noright to be looking rearview
(08:56):
mirror thinking I can't do this.
Tenacity was really fueled byone, proving to myself that I
was capable kind of honoring thecommitments of the people who
believed in me.
But every day was a new day andwhen you're young and you're
naive, and remember I went toschool for art.
I didn't know how to run abusiness.
Having a crash course inentrepreneurialism is.
I think, an amazing way to learnfast.
(09:18):
It's also can be quite expensiveand exhausting.
But you know, I apply thattenacity and that, you know,
there is, there is only one way.
There is always a way, uh,through all of my phases of
adversity.
You asked the question, is it myDNA?
I think it is.
It just kind of became part ofwho I am.
Russel (09:34):
Iron sharpens iron.
I've had a lot of conversationswith folks lately of, uh,
there's some, some kind of testout there that measures and, you
know, what they're finding is somany entrepreneurs have some
adverse circumstances that theyfaced in their life.
Probably just speaks to, youknow, just, yeah, you've got to
have some of that, I don't knowwhat to call it, scar tissue or
tenacity, some of the wordsyou're using to, to make this
whole crazy thing we're doingwork.
(09:55):
I'm so glad we're sitting hereand we know that, uh, it did in
fact work out for you.
How much of that were youbalancing as seeing is being an
entrepreneur, your only way outof this debt you're facing
versus just kind of anunhappiness that you shared
about just, the agency life thatyou were experiencing?
Veronique (10:10):
I would say money was not necessarily the scorecard
for me.
I measure my life on momentsmore than I do things.
Even in my Instagram handle, itsays experiences over things and
quality of life for me wasreally crucial.
I think that if you get, youknow, that aligned, money will
come.
As a young person,entrepreneurialism wasn't really
(10:32):
in the forefront of my, mydefinition of who I was.
It was more about like, how do Irecover?
How do I hold true to my innervoice and my inner truth that
there's gotta be a better way todo my craft?
To serve people through visualcommunications and solve these
business problems in a, in acreative way.
I know there's these like sevenstages of growth and it wasn't
(10:52):
until, you know, I was on thejourney to hit my first quarter
million when I started torealize, like, I should probably
put my big girl pants on.
This is turning into sustainablelittle business.
I was calling on friends to helpme because capacity was starting
to become relatively shallow.
I had a sort of a boy band or aconsortium of freelancers that
were kicking in extra hours atnight.
(11:12):
I was, you know, paying them fortheir time.
That's really the evolution ofhow the functional term agency
became.
I don't know if I ever lookedahead and said I'm going to own
a 12, 000 square foot, you know,office space with, you know,
close to 50 employees, but bynature of persevering and, and
believing in what I felt to betrue.
(11:33):
Thus the evolution, you know, iswhat has become today.
Russel (11:37):
Again, I'm impressed already and we're only what, you
know, a quarter of the way intoyour, your story so far.
That's amazing.
All right.
You started your agency.
When was the first point whereyou felt like, hey, we've got to
rethink how I'm going about thisor, or, call it a pivot or
whatever that might be of justa, what, what we'd been doing up
to this point isn't going towork anymore?
Veronique (11:56):
I remember it vividly.
I'll take just a kind of asidebar moment.
As I was talking about this,like boy band, I say that in
like a loving manner.
It was me and like four dudes,five dudes.
One gentleman, uh, had emailedme one day and said, hey, I'm
leaving my agency for prettymuch the same reason that I've
heard that you left your firm.
Will you look at my portfolio?
(12:18):
I'm going to be going out andlooking for other, you know,
opportunities.
Can you critique my work?
I said, got a better idea.
Come meet me for breakfast.
There's a really cool breakfastplace here, Popular.
I said, I, I want to tell youwhat I'm working on.
He came, he met and we, youknow, we sat at the community
table and what probably wassupposed to be a 45 minute
conversation turned into fivehours.
That gentleman today is stillemployee number one and is our
(12:40):
chief creative officer.
He is not an equity partner, buthe is essentially a founding,
you know, contributor to ourfirm as our CCO.
Shane and I, um, sat there andwe talked about all the things
that we believed in and reallythe future and the voice of what
we wanted to be represented as afirm.
There were many moments wherethe external noise, the
(13:01):
influence from competitors,client opinions would challenge
us to not stay the course of ourNorth Star.
That's probably like lessonnumber one for young
entrepreneurs who are especiallyin this space is, it's very easy
to lose sight of what you'recalibrating your objective
towards when you've got a lot ofpeople telling you how they
(13:21):
think you should run yourbusiness.
Fast forward, here we are.
We're approaching, I want tosay, I don't have the actual
dollar amount, but let's justsay it's three quarter of a
million.
I've got five freelancers.
Some of them are coming to meand work at my house half the
day in my little studio.
I was introduced to a reallyamazing woman.
She was a contract like CPA,CFO.
(13:42):
We had met through one of thenetworking groups and she and I
sort of befriended each otherand were giving each other
business advice.
One day she says, V, like, Idon't think the IRS is going to
love the fact that you've gotall of these contractors and
you're giving them a place towork and there's, you know,
perpetual, you know, cashflowhere, um, all on a 1099 basis.
You're potentially going to getinto some hot water, um, you
(14:04):
need to think about convertingto an LLC and formulating an
actual entity here.
That was really sort of thebirth of going from a one woman
shop with a bunch of friends tonow a, a corporate entity.
I was like, okay, let's do this.
This is real.
With that comes its ownidiosyncrasies of taxes and
insurance and you don't reallyrealize what you're signing up
(14:25):
for when you take on theresponsibility of, of becoming a
formal business.
One of my personal core valuesis do what you say you're going
to do.
When I essentially, you know,formulated this agency, I now
had people accounting on me forsome livelihood.
That was a, not only acontractual agreement,
obviously, with theiremployment, but also my
emotional, you know, agreementor commitment that I would make
(14:45):
sure that they, you know,aligned with my truth and what I
wanted to have happen and thatthey could have a great work
experience and produce, youknow, really killer creative,
you know, stuff.
That was our first moment oflike, okay, it's time to pivot.
Back to your question.
I think we probably have awarehouse full of those moments
between then and now, and everyday, literally every day, my
(15:06):
president and I are constantly,in a good way, not in a
disruptive way, turning dials,pulling levers, looking for
places to optimize, you know,blowing up systems in a positive
way that's not disruptive to theagency, because if a firm is
complacent and just sort ofstays stale, you're going to
die, right?
You're just going to die.
Russel (15:24):
I think that, that was our pain point a little bit in,
you know, once we'd kind of hada good growth and success run
and we got a little lazy becausewe just didn't force ourselves
otherwise.
You're kind of saying pullingthese levers, but it did just
make me leave with the idea of,yeah, if you're not growing,
you're dying.
Veronique (15:41):
I subscribe to that in, in a lot of ways.
I think that there will be somemonths where you will, by
mandate, flatline because myagency needs to cure from the
changes that we make previously,right?
There needs to be a point oflike chill mode to, you know,
test those revisions and notover disrupt.
Smaller tweaks can be made hereand there, and that's really
(16:02):
important to continue tooptimize.
But, um, we always findourselves around this goal
season, when we're planning forthe oncoming year, you know,
what are some things that we canreally disrupt and change and
look ahead?
That's where we find a lot ofthat juice from the squeeze from
those revisions.
Tangent here, um, going back toyour question is like, when are
those moments of pivot?
Sometimes they're small,sometimes they're big, sometimes
they're obvious, sometimesthey're by mandate or they're,
(16:25):
you know by de facto.
Sometimes they're economicallyinfluenced.
I think so many agencies, ofcourse, in 2020, had to pivot
by, by proxy of what washappening within, you know, the
world.
Russel (16:36):
It's funny, when I first started doing podcasts, uh,
launching podcast episodes, sothis is 2022.
How common people were talkingabout the pandemic, right?
I think it was still fresh oneveryone's mind to some degrees
we'd been living it and it'sstill a little bit maybe.
But it was just so neat to seein such a petri dish, people
having to pivot in a very shortamount of time.
Really that's the same thingthat happens on a more expanded
(16:58):
timeline, whether that's aneconomic crash or something, uh,
along those lines that.
It was just really fascinatingto hear all the COVID pivot
stories.
As I understand it, you guyskind of had your own running
into a wall or however you wantto describe that.
I haven't heard a good, heard agood COVID story in a while.
Tell me yours.
Veronique (17:14):
Here's a quick one for you.
We had just celebrated our 15year anniversary as an agency,
literally weeks before I hadtaken the entire team on a
Mexican cruise to celebrate.
We had the best time, definitelyone of my core memories.
We come back and as you canimagine, that fateful day was
incredibly difficult as anagency.
(17:35):
We were highly capitalized inthe, uh, hospitality, food and
beverage and entertainmentsectors and destination
marketing, uh, which were allthe verticals that got crushed
the most, you know.
Within 30 minutes, it was aemail, a text message, a phone
call, if you can imagine, ofcancellations and pauses and,
you know, these, um, kind ofdesperate messages of like, we
(17:56):
don't know what to do, but weknow that you're going to be the
first one that needs to cutright now.
I remember laying on the floorof my home and saying, this is
the day I'm going to lose mybusiness.
Up to that juncture, um, we hadabout 36 employees at the time,
full time employees with a fewcontractors.
We were not a hybrid, work fromhome type of environment.
My team really embraced in reallife culture.
We were not really built from a,um, a collaboration perspective.
(18:21):
Yes, we had the infrastructureto log in through our VPN and
access our files so our itwasn't an issue.
It was more about how do wenavigate our culture and our
connection in this remotecapacity?
Many people, you know, when theyreflect back on 2020, they think
about the time that they got tospend with their families and
the connections they built withtheir children.
My kids were four and five atthe time, and, you know, our
(18:43):
family did not get to have that,um, privilege because, um,
unfortunately, we did not getthe first PPP.
Our large, uh, institutionalbank funder fumbled the platform
and had some coding errors.
And if you can imagine that verynext morning waking up to a
sorry, not sorry email waspretty scary.
Every day was some newchallenge, right?
(19:05):
I sat in the swamp for a minuteand kind of prayed about it.
Many people were giving meadvice of you should lay
everybody off.
You should, you know, dofurloughs or AWOPs or, you know,
pay cuts.
I'm like, gosh, but then I'mgoing to have nothing to build
back from.
We didn't do any furloughs.
We did not do any pay cuts andwe did zero, um, AWOPs.
Just reshuffling, you know, rearends in the right seats, um,
(19:27):
putting talents where we feltlike could benefit the growth of
the business and startedfocusing hardcore on doubling
down on sales and, you know,making sure we didn't have
customer concentration and doinga lot of, you know, internal
marketing for external purposes.
Keeping the team busy and themorale high, sending score cards
every Friday, uh, to the team atlarge with, you know,
financials, client attrition,you know, really being
(19:50):
extraordinarily transparent andsort of letting everybody be
along on the journey.
I think that earned me somestreet cred as a leader to
everybody to know, I reallywanted to have that team to
rebuild from.
It was hard.
We took a 62 percent net loss inone hour.
We recovered only 100k in thered by the end of 2020.
That was my first, like, badgeof honor to say, I may have not
(20:12):
gone to school for crisis commonbusiness, but as an agency, we
certainly, you know, kind ofrose from the ashes and we
recovered.
There's a story to be toldabout, you know, how we
navigated that, um, and how wemade sure to maintain the
business that we did.
While everybody else is sort oflike rebuilding their teams.
We maintained the culture andthe connection, the transparency
(20:32):
and the confidence, whichallowed us to bounce back a lot
faster.
Russel (20:35):
I want to get into some of that because I do want folks
to, to, you know, not just thinkthey need to be superwoman,
like, like you were, but, um,you know, what, what are the
practical takeaways there?
Hands down, and I was, had anagency in the 2008 recession.
The takeaway I always got wasyou've got to invest in
yourself.
It's time to get lean and to getefficient and all these other
things, but when you think aboutthat, that kind of after effect,
(20:58):
so clearly you were doing somethings you had to, clearly
investing in yourself.
What will you think were the topone or two game changers that
you actually did during thattime that, you know, still exist
or are very impactful to wherethe business is at today?
Veronique (21:09):
From an employee perspective, having that extreme
ownership and having open bookmanagement during that time was
really critical, allowing peopleto understand truly on a week by
week basis, that cash flow, um,so they could understand.
It essentially displaced theresponsibility, not only me, to
feel like I was the one that'shaving to toe the line, but
everybody had a part to play toensure that we survived.
(21:32):
Internally, some adaptations aresome really great tactics, and I
can't take credit for these.
I'm very privileged to be a partof entrepreneurs organization.
I was tapping into my EO formquite a bit, but building
literally a day to day cash flowon an eight week rotation.
We had a really good cash flowdocument, cash in, cash out, but
it was for more of an expansiveamount of time.
(21:53):
But having literally to the day,cash in, cash out in a large
spreadsheet, and we did it foran entire year so I could do a
look back on 365 days.
Very granular, but that washyper focused at the time.
Cash is queen or king or genderagnostic, so that was important
for us.
The other thing we did is what Icall the 10 percent project.
We pulled up and I think thatthis is a good rule of thumb for
(22:16):
any business owner when you'renot in a state of adversity, but
when you're just generallyoperating, to have a strong
handle of all of your dues andsubscriptions, your tech stack,
you know, where are all thelittle things, the extra drop
box seats.
Fortunately we were obsessivecompulsive with our organization
and being able to understand.
For three days I went throughevery single line on the PNL,
(22:40):
every expense, every softwarereceipt, and I either went back
and negotiated 10 percent offterms, my goal was to try to get
as much off that top line as Ipossibly could, uh, to offset
the losses.
It's kind of, you know, anumbers game knowing what we
were taking in a deficit fromincome.
The saying is, don't wait forthe rain, go to the well, uh,
(23:01):
for income, and so that's what Idid.
I went to the well.
We were hardcore, and we stillare pretty hardcore and
cutthroat when it comes to addeddues and subs, or contract
renewals with licensing, youknow, sometimes that can be a
runaway train, and it can becomeextremely bloated.
I cannot tell you how manyclients we talk with that have
zero kind of understandingfiscally around like that
(23:23):
warehouse of expenses.
It's okay to have a breadbasket, you know, of little
crumbs, but when you have awarehouse of that stuff and you
have no understanding.
Those were two really good, thekind of internal tactical moves
that we made, um, during thattime to have a strong pulse on
cash.
Sort of a tertiary butoverlapping effort there was,
you know, assuming that weneeded to stay away from having
(23:46):
a another portfolio that couldbe hurt in the future because
nobody really knew theaftereffects of COVID.
It was hyper, hyper, hyperfocused goals for all of us to
make sure that we didn't havemore than 10 percent customer
concentration moving into thenext 12 months, um for both
client vertical as well asclient type revenue because that
(24:06):
risk mitigation allowed us tohave that confidence and knowing
that if there was a particularindustry that was just going to
get pummeled, uh, that wewouldn't have that, that feeling
of being, you know, completelycrushed again.
That was important for us and westill maintain that practice
today.
Russel (24:21):
Wonderful tips and takeaways there.
If I apply a holistic blanket onit, it's just, how important it
is to just not be fast and loosewith things when in times are
flush and then wait until, youknow, times are rough to you
know, oh, now go do all thesethings.
Know your numbers and justconstantly be on top of these
things because they can creep upon you and they can build up
(24:42):
into something significant overtime.
If we're just constantly onthem.
It's just about putting, makingthe best use of capital dollars,
resources to do this thing we'retrying to do.
So many great takeaways alongthose ends.
I really just want to hit recordfor three more hours and just
let you go off on, on sharingthose things.
But, um, if I could just pickone, I want to go back to open
book management philosophy,because I think this is a
(25:03):
struggle for agencies in tworealms.
One, scared to show maybe thatlevel of transparency but also
knowing that it's not just aboutshowing, that it is about
letting people take ownership ofthe line items and the elements
of that.
But can you just one, just sharea little bit more about maybe
what open book management is forfolks and how maybe some of
that, a little bit ofgranularity of how and why
(25:25):
that's effective in yourbusiness?
Veronique (25:27):
Absolutely.
I'm going to first start withthe foundation of our why and
why we do that.
Just a quick remembrance ofwhere I started, quarter million
in debt.
The agency wasn't able to secureany credit until our 7th year so
everything was based on cashthat we had in hand.
We were not leveraged in debt.
We didn't have any capitalinvestors.
Today we are still a debt freeagency.
(25:48):
We have very low credit linesthat we use just for media and,
you know, cost of goods soldthat we pay off.
But we still operate in thatphilosophy, which is interesting
because you're not playing withother people's money,.
Your liability is your own andyour liquidity is your own.
It's a win together, losetogether component.
In 201 6, that fear of sharingwas very real for me, I think,
(26:08):
because the agency was profitingand we were growing and there
was a lot of perceptions andwhat, you know, what's the adage
like, uh, revenue for vanity,profit for sanity.
I was afraid to, like, share,cause I didn't want to people to
start asking for more, you know,we were just in a really
accelerated time.
I started to feel like thesacrificial lamb, like the, the
weight of the world was on meand it was getting harder every
(26:31):
day.
The business was becoming morecomplex.
We were in the multimilliondollar phase.
HR was becoming a thing, uh,because we had more people, just
lots of layers.
I remember feeling like thatsacrificial lamb and I was like,
I, I don't want to feel thisway.
I don't want to feel this, youknow, it should not be this
hard.
I was coached by anotherentrepreneurial friend with a
(26:52):
larger, enterprise sizedbusiness.
He asked me, he said, you know,what is the shame in you showing
your balance sheet, and we havea very clean balance sheet and
your PNL, and like, exposingthat just to your leadership
team?
What's the worst that couldhappen?
I was like, I don't know,judgment?
perception and all the things?
All the limited beliefs that Iwas making up my head.
He said, okay, valid, valid.
(27:12):
But you know, what if they said,wow, thanks for sharing.
I didn't realize that I havesuch a contribution into the
profitability of this businessor to the expenses of this
business or the decisions that Imake?
He's like, I guarantee you thatyou'll find that the
conversation leans more thatdirection than it does about
this perception.
I was scared.
I was really scared.
(27:32):
I got to the point, kind of abreaking point where like, okay,
I got to just kind of dig myheels in and get this done.
I really opened up and we had atwo hour working session and we
went line by line.
Overhead, you know, our servicedelivery team costs, how our
utilization and capacity,because as you know, in the
agency space, professionalservices, it's not just about
sales.
It's about efficiency andgetting projects done on time,
(27:54):
getting stuff out the door.
The conversation was sotransformational and so
informational for all themembers sitting at the table.
I immediately felt this, like,sense of relief and clarity and
more importantly, I felt like Iwas trusted and I could trust
them.
It was in the congeniality of,like, our leadership team really
(28:14):
coming together at that pointwas pretty amazing.
Because of that, the sense ofcommunity that we get to
experience, this beautifuloffice and the cultural
initiatives and the, and thespeakers and the team builds,
they understand that everybody'scontribution matters, right?
On my executive level, they haveaccess to the full, full PNL.
They get to see everything andwe review it on a monthly basis.
(28:38):
The entire agency has more of aroll up PNL during our, um, our
quarterly, but then we dive downinto month over month, year over
year.
We talk about trends, um,benchmarks.
What's great about that is wealso create a space for
questions.
If one person's asking aquestion, probably that means
(28:59):
that somebody else is alsowondering it too.
So everybody gets to learn.
We want everybody to befinancially sophisticated.
That takes a lot ofresponsibility off of myself
because being a solopreneur canbe extremely lonely sometimes,
sitting on my own island.
And I do not take that forgranted, that I have this
incredible leadership team now.
President, 13 years, I mentionedShane, 19 years, my career
(29:22):
director coming up on 14 years,and some members that are
approaching 10, uh, because theybelieve, right?
They believe that they makeimpact and purpose.
Russel (29:30):
So many things we could break down with, with that, but,
you know, talk about ownership.
One is transparency first, butthen, you know, letting people
take ownership.
Love to hear that.
Just even maybe some of thetheme of it, that ownership gets
another 10 or 20 percent out of,you know, what people can
contribute or inspired to do andit's being on top of your
expenses outright, what youshared before, that's another
amount of percentage.
(29:50):
All of that compounds over timeto clearly what you have today,
is a successful agency.
Impressive.
Veronique (29:56):
Thank you for saying that.
And like, I don't have it allfigured out, right?
Every day is a new day.
Political uncertainty, there'sso many things, dynamics that
are consistently happening.
But, you know, as I mentioned,going back to the beginning, you
know, we stay true to our core.
We try not to be influenced byall the opinions and there's a
lot of them.
What our competitors are doingand the social influence and all
(30:16):
of that.
We honor the relationships thatgot us here.
I think a lot of people inbusiness sort of forget the
grassroots and the early, theearly contributions.
I'm so privileged to have peoplethat were with me since day one.
They remember when we used totake our iPhone one and put it
in a bowl on speaker, right?
I used to answer the phone in aBritish accent, uh, when it was
(30:37):
just me pretending to be areceptionist.
You do what you gotta do.
But staying, staying true tothat humble, you know, swagger
is really important.
Russel (30:45):
Oh yeah.
I got all kinds of fake it tillyou make it stories.
Those are funny.
Kind of down the line ofwrapping up, how are you looking
at the growth and future of thecompany?
What does that look like for youguys?
Veronique (30:54):
Coming out of COVID and I'll tie this back to that
really quickly.
Many clients came to us andsaid, gosh, we knew what our
client, our audiences were, butwe don't know what the crystal
ball looks like for three tofour years.
We really doubled down onstrategy and insights.
We built a, uh, a formula orprocess that allows us to really
eliminate the bias andsubjectivity of what marketing
should look like for our clientslooking forward.
(31:15):
People say, really, you can giveme the GPS coordinates, and we
say, yes, like, not only can wereally personify who your
audiences are, but how are theyconsuming information, you know,
and then knowing even more, whatis that channel selection and
the cost and what's thatpotential ROI?
So people can go to pen to paperwith confidence.
We've really leaned into thatinsights first philosophy.
Yes, we do killer creative workand web and all those things,
(31:38):
but rooting that in objectiveinsights has really built a
longstanding and encouragingrelationship with our existing
and new clients.
We just added 4, 000 square feetto our, 4, 000 square feet to
our physical footprint, um, andthat's interesting because in
contrast to a lot of agenciesthat have shrunk and have gone
to either full remote or hybrid,my team is back to liking to be
(31:59):
in real life.
While we do allow our staff towork a couple days work from
home on a flex schedule, we findthat clients engage agencies to
be a part of something biggerthan themselves or their
business.
Offering that brand promise, youcan come here and collaborate
and be inspired, and we cansolve those complex business
problems, which is exactly why Istarted the business 20 years
ago, is really special.
(32:20):
I just extended our lease toJune of 2028 with our current,
uh, landlord.
At that point, we hope to eitherbuy a building and expand our
footprint even more.
We're really going to try tocontinue to honor and own that
authentic agency, um, voice.
It's one thing to say you'recool and then it's another thing
to do cool things, right?
(32:40):
I think there are a lot ofagencies out there that say that
they're the fastest growing orthey're the coolest.
We're going to be very steadfastin our thought of being
authentic to who we are aspeople.
We're fun to work with and we'recollaborative and crazy and
casual, but we are also a fivestar luxury performance agency
that delivers exceptionalresults and we do whatever it
takes.
Russel (33:01):
I'm going to net that out to do more cool things.
Veronique (33:03):
Do more cool things.
Russel (33:05):
No one better to do that than yourself.
All right.
Last big question for you.
Are entrepreneurs born or arethey made?
Veronique (33:10):
Oh, no.
Gosh, it depends on the day.
Sometimes, because of thecircumstance, they're made.
I talked to my dad about this,as I mentioned, he's getting
ready to retire the day beforeThanksgiving, he'll be 75 in
December.
Watching him and his journey, Ithink he was born an
entrepreneur.
He says the same about me.
His stories about me as a littlegirl.
I don't have the answer for youon that one.
(33:31):
It's a privilege though.
It's hard, but it's a privilege.
Russel (33:33):
Hey, it takes all kinds.
Love that perspective.
It sounds like you might beleaning a little towards born,
uh, maybe it just took you awhile to realize that in
yourself.
Who knows at the end of the day?
Well, if people want to knowmore about James Agency, where
can they go?
Veronique (33:46):
Thejamesagency.com is our website and then on all
social platforms@TheJamesAgency.
You can find us across, um, allof those mechanisms.
Of course, um, you can find me,uh, online, you can call me or
text me, smoke signals, youknow, pigeon birds, whatever
works.
We're always looking forward tohearing from people riffing some
great ideas and hopefullycollaborating with some cool
(34:06):
concepts.
Russel (34:07):
Beautiful, beautiful.
What a great story.
Resilience to the max and just,you know, just some of the
innovations, but then justgetting downright in the weeds,
in the sand, grabbing efficiencyanywhere you can.
So many great takeaways fromyour story today, Veronique, and
I really take, really appreciateyou taking the time to share it.
Veronique (34:24):
Thank you so much for having me.
I really appreciate theopportunity.
We hope you've enjoyed thisepisode of An Agency Story
podcast where we share realstories of marketing agency
owners from around the world.
Are you interested in being aguest on the show?
Send an email topodcast@performancefaction.com.
(34:46):
An Agency Story is brought toyou by Performance Faction.
Performance Faction offersservices to help agency owners
grow their business to 5 milliondollars and more in revenue.
To learn more, visitperformancefaction.com.
I always go back to that story of, um, acting as if
(35:09):
right in the very beginningstages of bootstrapping.
I had mentioned about how I usedto pick up the phone in a
British accent and then, youknow, put it down and then pick
up the phone as myself.
That kind of caught me in theknickers because, um, at the
time I was working on an infillmultifamily project with a
gentleman who I'm still veryclose with and we continue to do
deals with.
He's from London.
(35:29):
I answered the phone in my veryterrible accent, put it down,
answered myself, and then hegoes on to ask me where I am
from, uh, in London.
That's the moment of realitywhere I'm like, okay, I got to
stop pulling this charadebecause this isn't going to
work.
Russel (35:42):
Oh, got called on your accent.
That's too funny.
Welcome to An Agency Storypodcast where we share real
stories of marketing agencyowners from around the world.
From the excitement of startingup the first big sale, passion,
doubt, fear, freedom, and theemotional rollercoaster of
growth, hear it all on An AgencyStory podcast.
(00:24):
An Agency Story podcast ishosted by Russel Dubree,
successful agency owner with aneight figure exit turned
business coach.
Enjoy the next agency story.
Russel (00:41):
What happens when life throws you a quarter million
dollar curve ball before yourcareer even takes off.
Today's guest, Veronique James,didn't just survive adversity,
she turned it into thefoundation of a powerhouse
agency.
Welcome to An Agency Storypodcast, I'm your host Russel.
On this episode, we dive intoVeronique's incredible journey
starting The James Agency withsheer determination to scaling
(01:03):
it into a full service firm.
From overcoming financialhardships to navigating the
chaos of the pandemic, Veroniqueshares her shares the hard
earned lessons that have shapedher leadership and business
philosophy.
As the founder and CEO of theJames Agency, Veronique has
built a reputation as a leaderwho values transparency,
champions a people firstapproach, and isn't afraid to
pivot when the industry demandsit.
(01:26):
She opens up about the power ofresilience, the impact of open
book management, and why knowingyour numbers isn't just a
survival tactic.
It's a game changer.
If you're looking for a tale ofgrit, agency growth, and
navigating uncertainty, this isthe episode for you.
Enjoy the story.
Welcome to the show today,everyone.
I have Veronique James with TheJames Agency with us here today.
(01:47):
Thank you so much for joining ustoday, Veronique.
Veronique (01:49):
Thank you for having me.
I appreciate it.
Russel (01:51):
All right.
Let's get right to it.
Tell us what TJA does and whoyou do it for?
Veronique (01:55):
The James Agency, also known as TJA, is a full
service agency.
We prefer the phrase or, uh,naming of integrated.
Integrated agency is all facetsof marketing.
You name it, we handle it.
The agency started as acomprehensive brand development
firm back in 2005, and throughthe evolution of doing great
work, we've added PR, web, uh,video, crisis communication,
(02:17):
social.
We have a very strong, uh,digital team, um, and all facets
of these services are handledin-house.
We really pride ourselves on themiddle market, uh, type of
client.
Pre-COVID we were definitelymore B2B, uh, we've diversified
to B2B and B2C, uh, which we'vecoined the phrase B2H, which is
business to human.
We believe the intent here is toconnect the, the brand, uh, our
(02:40):
client, to their end audience,whether that's business to
business or business toconsumer.
The formula is essentially thesame.
We have the privilege of workingon all types of clients, uh, but
we love clients that engage uson that omni channel strategy,
uh, really allowing us to be thequarterback for their marketing
initiatives.
Russel (02:55):
I love that business to human.
Veronique (02:57):
B2H.
Russel (02:58):
In 2024 when, yes, when we think of all the words that
people have coined up, thatthere's still an opportunity to,
to have new nomenclature andterms.
I love to hear it.
I want to learn a lot more aboutall the things that you're doing
in your agency and goals and allthat good stuff, but I also want
to know about young Veroniqueand where, where she was coming
up in the world, where shethought she was headed.
(03:18):
What was the young life ofVeronique like?
Veronique (03:20):
I'll give you a shortened version of a very long
journey.
Born and raised in San Diego,California.
Went to Torrey Pines HighSchool.
Found myself loving architectureat a very young age.
Applied to several schools, andfound myself actually at the
University of Arizona in Tucson.
For their architecture program.
About a year into school, Ifound that I was really missing
(03:41):
the creative side.
I'm a very high creative visualperson.
Love the math, love, um, theproblem solving of architecture,
but I have both sides of thebrain.
I'm very operationalsophisticate, but I also love
visionary thinking andbrainstorming.
My favorite question is alwayswhat if, right?
The what if we could do this?
I switched my major to a visualcommunications degree, a
(04:02):
Bachelor's in Fine Arts.
Graduated and found myselfshortly thereafter as I looked
for opportunities to work withinthe creative sphere.
An entry level salary doesn'tget you very much in a lot of
the bigger metropolitan citieslike New York or San Francisco
or, even California where I grewup.
That was an awakening for me.
I was very privileged to comeout of school essentially debt
(04:24):
free, but my parents did say,generously, when I graduated, I
was on my own.
I have a very European motherand I have a, uh, uh,
entrepreneur father who was anex-Navy officer.
Kind of strict, right?
And I was an only child.
I found myself actually at afemale led and owned small
agency, about eight people herein Scottsdale right out of
college.
While I never intended to gointo advertising specifically, a
(04:46):
small firm was the great kind ofspringboard for me to be able to
grow, because you're required towear a lot of hats.
I think that's a greatsubmersion into all facets of
the business and being able towork closely with my colleagues
and see that interdisciplinarythinking, I think, was really
what allowed me to advance rightout of school compared to some
of my other fellow graduates.
Russel (05:07):
Okay, that sounds like quite the fast track.
Where does it go from here?
Veronique (05:11):
I'll just tell you quickly, this is where the plot
thickens.
I fell in love quickly out ofschool, got married quickly out
of school and shortly thereafterfound that that wasn't a good
decision.
About a year, uh, went through adivorce that was really
tumultuous.
Unfortunately, um, my, um,ex-husband leveraged, uh, my
credit score and my perfect debtfree social security number to
(05:34):
pay off a lot of his debt.
And in the state of Arizona,they don't care.
It's a community property state.
I was awarded about a quartermillion dollars of debt at a
very, very, very young age.
As you can imagine, um, having alack of support from, and I'm
saying this in a good way, likemy parents said, you know, and
they meant it, when I graduatedI was on my own.
Being in an entry levelposition, that really required
(05:56):
for me to be extremely nimbleand scrappy and to get
thoughtful.
Here I am, in my early 20s, I,uh, recently divorced, have a
lot of, you know, thisaccumulated debt that wasn't
really of my doing,unfortunately.
Homeless because I had walkedaway from my home and my dogs
and my car, so I'm living withmy cousin.
I was like, gosh, you know.
At that time, during thattransition, I had left that
(06:19):
small agency and went to alarger firm.
Started out as a graphicdesigner and was slowly making
my ranks up.
That firm, what's funny, I callit a larger firm, but at its
prime, it was about the sizethat we are today.
It's an interestingretrospective.
That firm is, uh, no longer inexistence, um, uh, but
represented a lot of, like,large flag hospitality, Wyndham,
and Golden Door Spa.
(06:39):
That was an amazing experience.
Big budgets, uh, more corporateclients, really got to learn
about the hierarchies ofbusiness and professionalism
with different personalities,not quite as scrappy or
bootstrappy as I'm sure you canimagine.
Plus, it was a sophisticated 40year old firm, it was a legacy
business, so they had a lot ofwell oiled processes and
systems.
But with that came some culturaldisparagement that I didn't
(07:01):
love.
I felt like there was a lot ofcontention between the agency
and the client, a lot of like,why does this cost so much
money?
How is this taking so long?
You guys are so big, thingsaren't getting fast, you know,
done fast enough.
As a creative being in thattender environment, you bleed
over your work.
It's like, man, there's got tobe a better way than having the
client always pissed all thetime.
(07:22):
Pardon the expression.
In parallel, my life is sort ofcoming into shambles.
I'm going through an interestingintersection in my career where
I'm not loving where I'm at.
I'm like, gosh, there's just notime like the present.
I, in a very brave manner, quitmy job, quit my day job, um, and
decided that just, you know, afew months prior that I would
start to freelance, uh, tosupport some of these expenses
(07:45):
that I had crewed through mydissolution of my marriage, um,
to also get myself back on myfeet.
Russel (07:49):
I gotta pause.
I mean, there's just so manythings we gotta go back and
unpack a little bit because, Imean, I think some people, this
could be life forever crippling.
What you're talking about of asituation saddled with debt, a
very young age and I know I'msitting across from a confident,
successful businesswoman today,but what were you thinking back
then in terms of just, I mean,the word kept in my mind, I'd be
(08:11):
scared shitless.
Or is that just, that was just,wasn't in your DNA?
Veronique (08:14):
There's no playbook for those types of life events.
Let's call that my first dosageof adversity, you know, as a
young adult.
Looking back, yeah, certainly Iwas afraid and there was a lot
of uncertainty.
I was very fortunate I had a lotof people that were, you know,
psychologically supporting me.
I had some friends that werevery supportive.
(08:34):
As I mentioned, I had left, youknow, everything kind of behind
to leave my husband.
One day I sent an email andsaid, hey, I'm meeting
furniture.
I have nothing.
I had finally found a home thatI could rent for a low expense.
Within 24 hours, I had a fullhome full of donated furniture
from people's storage.
It was events like that, thatmade me realize if people
believe in me, then I have noright to be looking rearview
(08:56):
mirror thinking I can't do this.
Tenacity was really fueled byone, proving to myself that I
was capable kind of honoring thecommitments of the people who
believed in me.
But every day was a new day andwhen you're young and you're
naive, and remember I went toschool for art.
I didn't know how to run abusiness.
Having a crash course inentrepreneurialism is.
I think, an amazing way to learnfast.
(09:18):
It's also can be quite expensiveand exhausting.
But you know, I apply thattenacity and that, you know,
there is, there is only one way.
There is always a way, uh,through all of my phases of
adversity.
You asked the question, is it myDNA?
I think it is.
It just kind of became part ofwho I am.
Russel (09:34):
Iron sharpens iron.
I've had a lot of conversationswith folks lately of, uh,
there's some, some kind of testout there that measures and, you
know, what they're finding is somany entrepreneurs have some
adverse circumstances that theyfaced in their life.
Probably just speaks to, youknow, just, yeah, you've got to
have some of that, I don't knowwhat to call it, scar tissue or
tenacity, some of the wordsyou're using to, to make this
whole crazy thing we're doingwork.
(09:55):
I'm so glad we're sitting hereand we know that, uh, it did in
fact work out for you.
How much of that were youbalancing as seeing is being an
entrepreneur, your only way outof this debt you're facing
versus just kind of anunhappiness that you shared
about just, the agency life thatyou were experiencing?
Veronique (10:10):
I would say money was not necessarily the scorecard
for me.
I measure my life on momentsmore than I do things.
Even in my Instagram handle, itsays experiences over things and
quality of life for me wasreally crucial.
I think that if you get, youknow, that aligned, money will
come.
As a young person,entrepreneurialism wasn't really
(10:32):
in the forefront of my, mydefinition of who I was.
It was more about like, how do Irecover?
How do I hold true to my innervoice and my inner truth that
there's gotta be a better way todo my craft?
To serve people through visualcommunications and solve these
business problems in a, in acreative way.
I know there's these like sevenstages of growth and it wasn't
(10:52):
until, you know, I was on thejourney to hit my first quarter
million when I started torealize, like, I should probably
put my big girl pants on.
This is turning into sustainablelittle business.
I was calling on friends to helpme because capacity was starting
to become relatively shallow.
I had a sort of a boy band or aconsortium of freelancers that
were kicking in extra hours atnight.
(11:12):
I was, you know, paying them fortheir time.
That's really the evolution ofhow the functional term agency
became.
I don't know if I ever lookedahead and said I'm going to own
a 12, 000 square foot, you know,office space with, you know,
close to 50 employees, but bynature of persevering and, and
believing in what I felt to betrue.
(11:33):
Thus the evolution, you know, iswhat has become today.
Russel (11:37):
Again, I'm impressed already and we're only what, you
know, a quarter of the way intoyour, your story so far.
That's amazing.
All right.
You started your agency.
When was the first point whereyou felt like, hey, we've got to
rethink how I'm going about thisor, or, call it a pivot or
whatever that might be of justa, what, what we'd been doing up
to this point isn't going towork anymore?
Veronique (11:56):
I remember it vividly.
I'll take just a kind of asidebar moment.
As I was talking about this,like boy band, I say that in
like a loving manner.
It was me and like four dudes,five dudes.
One gentleman, uh, had emailedme one day and said, hey, I'm
leaving my agency for prettymuch the same reason that I've
heard that you left your firm.
Will you look at my portfolio?
(12:18):
I'm going to be going out andlooking for other, you know,
opportunities.
Can you critique my work?
I said, got a better idea.
Come meet me for breakfast.
There's a really cool breakfastplace here, Popular.
I said, I, I want to tell youwhat I'm working on.
He came, he met and we, youknow, we sat at the community
table and what probably wassupposed to be a 45 minute
conversation turned into fivehours.
That gentleman today is stillemployee number one and is our
(12:40):
chief creative officer.
He is not an equity partner, buthe is essentially a founding,
you know, contributor to ourfirm as our CCO.
Shane and I, um, sat there andwe talked about all the things
that we believed in and reallythe future and the voice of what
we wanted to be represented as afirm.
There were many moments wherethe external noise, the
(13:01):
influence from competitors,client opinions would challenge
us to not stay the course of ourNorth Star.
That's probably like lessonnumber one for young
entrepreneurs who are especiallyin this space is, it's very easy
to lose sight of what you'recalibrating your objective
towards when you've got a lot ofpeople telling you how they
(13:21):
think you should run yourbusiness.
Fast forward, here we are.
We're approaching, I want tosay, I don't have the actual
dollar amount, but let's justsay it's three quarter of a
million.
I've got five freelancers.
Some of them are coming to meand work at my house half the
day in my little studio.
I was introduced to a reallyamazing woman.
She was a contract like CPA,CFO.
(13:42):
We had met through one of thenetworking groups and she and I
sort of befriended each otherand were giving each other
business advice.
One day she says, V, like, Idon't think the IRS is going to
love the fact that you've gotall of these contractors and
you're giving them a place towork and there's, you know,
perpetual, you know, cashflowhere, um, all on a 1099 basis.
You're potentially going to getinto some hot water, um, you
(14:04):
need to think about convertingto an LLC and formulating an
actual entity here.
That was really sort of thebirth of going from a one woman
shop with a bunch of friends tonow a, a corporate entity.
I was like, okay, let's do this.
This is real.
With that comes its ownidiosyncrasies of taxes and
insurance and you don't reallyrealize what you're signing up
(14:25):
for when you take on theresponsibility of, of becoming a
formal business.
One of my personal core valuesis do what you say you're going
to do.
When I essentially, you know,formulated this agency, I now
had people accounting on me forsome livelihood.
That was a, not only acontractual agreement,
obviously, with theiremployment, but also my
emotional, you know, agreementor commitment that I would make
(14:45):
sure that they, you know,aligned with my truth and what I
wanted to have happen and thatthey could have a great work
experience and produce, youknow, really killer creative,
you know, stuff.
That was our first moment oflike, okay, it's time to pivot.
Back to your question.
I think we probably have awarehouse full of those moments
between then and now, and everyday, literally every day, my
(15:06):
president and I are constantly,in a good way, not in a
disruptive way, turning dials,pulling levers, looking for
places to optimize, you know,blowing up systems in a positive
way that's not disruptive to theagency, because if a firm is
complacent and just sort ofstays stale, you're going to
die, right?
You're just going to die.
Russel (15:24):
I think that, that was our pain point a little bit in,
you know, once we'd kind of hada good growth and success run
and we got a little lazy becausewe just didn't force ourselves
otherwise.
You're kind of saying pullingthese levers, but it did just
make me leave with the idea of,yeah, if you're not growing,
you're dying.
Veronique (15:41):
I subscribe to that in, in a lot of ways.
I think that there will be somemonths where you will, by
mandate, flatline because myagency needs to cure from the
changes that we make previously,right?
There needs to be a point oflike chill mode to, you know,
test those revisions and notover disrupt.
Smaller tweaks can be made hereand there, and that's really
(16:02):
important to continue tooptimize.
But, um, we always findourselves around this goal
season, when we're planning forthe oncoming year, you know,
what are some things that we canreally disrupt and change and
look ahead?
That's where we find a lot ofthat juice from the squeeze from
those revisions.
Tangent here, um, going back toyour question is like, when are
those moments of pivot?
Sometimes they're small,sometimes they're big, sometimes
they're obvious, sometimesthey're by mandate or they're,
(16:25):
you know by de facto.
Sometimes they're economicallyinfluenced.
I think so many agencies, ofcourse, in 2020, had to pivot
by, by proxy of what washappening within, you know, the
world.
Russel (16:36):
It's funny, when I first started doing podcasts, uh,
launching podcast episodes, sothis is 2022.
How common people were talkingabout the pandemic, right?
I think it was still fresh oneveryone's mind to some degrees
we'd been living it and it'sstill a little bit maybe.
But it was just so neat to seein such a petri dish, people
having to pivot in a very shortamount of time.
Really that's the same thingthat happens on a more expanded
(16:58):
timeline, whether that's aneconomic crash or something, uh,
along those lines that.
It was just really fascinatingto hear all the COVID pivot
stories.
As I understand it, you guyskind of had your own running
into a wall or however you wantto describe that.
I haven't heard a good, heard agood COVID story in a while.
Tell me yours.
Veronique (17:14):
Here's a quick one for you.
We had just celebrated our 15year anniversary as an agency,
literally weeks before I hadtaken the entire team on a
Mexican cruise to celebrate.
We had the best time, definitelyone of my core memories.
We come back and as you canimagine, that fateful day was
incredibly difficult as anagency.
(17:35):
We were highly capitalized inthe, uh, hospitality, food and
beverage and entertainmentsectors and destination
marketing, uh, which were allthe verticals that got crushed
the most, you know.
Within 30 minutes, it was aemail, a text message, a phone
call, if you can imagine, ofcancellations and pauses and,
you know, these, um, kind ofdesperate messages of like, we
(17:56):
don't know what to do, but weknow that you're going to be the
first one that needs to cutright now.
I remember laying on the floorof my home and saying, this is
the day I'm going to lose mybusiness.
Up to that juncture, um, we hadabout 36 employees at the time,
full time employees with a fewcontractors.
We were not a hybrid, work fromhome type of environment.
My team really embraced in reallife culture.
We were not really built from a,um, a collaboration perspective.
(18:21):
Yes, we had the infrastructureto log in through our VPN and
access our files so our itwasn't an issue.
It was more about how do wenavigate our culture and our
connection in this remotecapacity?
Many people, you know, when theyreflect back on 2020, they think
about the time that they got tospend with their families and
the connections they built withtheir children.
My kids were four and five atthe time, and, you know, our
(18:43):
family did not get to have that,um, privilege because, um,
unfortunately, we did not getthe first PPP.
Our large, uh, institutionalbank funder fumbled the platform
and had some coding errors.
And if you can imagine that verynext morning waking up to a
sorry, not sorry email waspretty scary.
Every day was some newchallenge, right?
(19:05):
I sat in the swamp for a minuteand kind of prayed about it.
Many people were giving meadvice of you should lay
everybody off.
You should, you know, dofurloughs or AWOPs or, you know,
pay cuts.
I'm like, gosh, but then I'mgoing to have nothing to build
back from.
We didn't do any furloughs.
We did not do any pay cuts andwe did zero, um, AWOPs.
Just reshuffling, you know, rearends in the right seats, um,
(19:27):
putting talents where we feltlike could benefit the growth of
the business and startedfocusing hardcore on doubling
down on sales and, you know,making sure we didn't have
customer concentration and doinga lot of, you know, internal
marketing for external purposes.
Keeping the team busy and themorale high, sending score cards
every Friday, uh, to the team atlarge with, you know,
financials, client attrition,you know, really being
(19:50):
extraordinarily transparent andsort of letting everybody be
along on the journey.
I think that earned me somestreet cred as a leader to
everybody to know, I reallywanted to have that team to
rebuild from.
It was hard.
We took a 62 percent net loss inone hour.
We recovered only 100k in thered by the end of 2020.
That was my first, like, badgeof honor to say, I may have not
(20:12):
gone to school for crisis commonbusiness, but as an agency, we
certainly, you know, kind ofrose from the ashes and we
recovered.
There's a story to be toldabout, you know, how we
navigated that, um, and how wemade sure to maintain the
business that we did.
While everybody else is sort oflike rebuilding their teams.
We maintained the culture andthe connection, the transparency
(20:32):
and the confidence, whichallowed us to bounce back a lot
faster.
Russel (20:35):
I want to get into some of that because I do want folks
to, to, you know, not just thinkthey need to be superwoman,
like, like you were, but, um,you know, what, what are the
practical takeaways there?
Hands down, and I was, had anagency in the 2008 recession.
The takeaway I always got wasyou've got to invest in
yourself.
It's time to get lean and to getefficient and all these other
things, but when you think aboutthat, that kind of after effect,
(20:58):
so clearly you were doing somethings you had to, clearly
investing in yourself.
What will you think were the topone or two game changers that
you actually did during thattime that, you know, still exist
or are very impactful to wherethe business is at today?
Veronique (21:09):
From an employee perspective, having that extreme
ownership and having open bookmanagement during that time was
really critical, allowing peopleto understand truly on a week by
week basis, that cash flow, um,so they could understand.
It essentially displaced theresponsibility, not only me, to
feel like I was the one that'shaving to toe the line, but
everybody had a part to play toensure that we survived.
(21:32):
Internally, some adaptations aresome really great tactics, and I
can't take credit for these.
I'm very privileged to be a partof entrepreneurs organization.
I was tapping into my EO formquite a bit, but building
literally a day to day cash flowon an eight week rotation.
We had a really good cash flowdocument, cash in, cash out, but
it was for more of an expansiveamount of time.
(21:53):
But having literally to the day,cash in, cash out in a large
spreadsheet, and we did it foran entire year so I could do a
look back on 365 days.
Very granular, but that washyper focused at the time.
Cash is queen or king or genderagnostic, so that was important
for us.
The other thing we did is what Icall the 10 percent project.
We pulled up and I think thatthis is a good rule of thumb for
(22:16):
any business owner when you'renot in a state of adversity, but
when you're just generallyoperating, to have a strong
handle of all of your dues andsubscriptions, your tech stack,
you know, where are all thelittle things, the extra drop
box seats.
Fortunately we were obsessivecompulsive with our organization
and being able to understand.
For three days I went throughevery single line on the PNL,
(22:40):
every expense, every softwarereceipt, and I either went back
and negotiated 10 percent offterms, my goal was to try to get
as much off that top line as Ipossibly could, uh, to offset
the losses.
It's kind of, you know, anumbers game knowing what we
were taking in a deficit fromincome.
The saying is, don't wait forthe rain, go to the well, uh,
(23:01):
for income, and so that's what Idid.
I went to the well.
We were hardcore, and we stillare pretty hardcore and
cutthroat when it comes to addeddues and subs, or contract
renewals with licensing, youknow, sometimes that can be a
runaway train, and it can becomeextremely bloated.
I cannot tell you how manyclients we talk with that have
zero kind of understandingfiscally around like that
(23:23):
warehouse of expenses.
It's okay to have a breadbasket, you know, of little
crumbs, but when you have awarehouse of that stuff and you
have no understanding.
Those were two really good, thekind of internal tactical moves
that we made, um, during thattime to have a strong pulse on
cash.
Sort of a tertiary butoverlapping effort there was,
you know, assuming that weneeded to stay away from having
(23:46):
a another portfolio that couldbe hurt in the future because
nobody really knew theaftereffects of COVID.
It was hyper, hyper, hyperfocused goals for all of us to
make sure that we didn't havemore than 10 percent customer
concentration moving into thenext 12 months, um for both
client vertical as well asclient type revenue because that
(24:06):
risk mitigation allowed us tohave that confidence and knowing
that if there was a particularindustry that was just going to
get pummeled, uh, that wewouldn't have that, that feeling
of being, you know, completelycrushed again.
That was important for us and westill maintain that practice
today.
Russel (24:21):
Wonderful tips and takeaways there.
If I apply a holistic blanket onit, it's just, how important it
is to just not be fast and loosewith things when in times are
flush and then wait until, youknow, times are rough to you
know, oh, now go do all thesethings.
Know your numbers and justconstantly be on top of these
things because they can creep upon you and they can build up
(24:42):
into something significant overtime.
If we're just constantly onthem.
It's just about putting, makingthe best use of capital dollars,
resources to do this thing we'retrying to do.
So many great takeaways alongthose ends.
I really just want to hit recordfor three more hours and just
let you go off on, on sharingthose things.
But, um, if I could just pickone, I want to go back to open
book management philosophy,because I think this is a
(25:03):
struggle for agencies in tworealms.
One, scared to show maybe thatlevel of transparency but also
knowing that it's not just aboutshowing, that it is about
letting people take ownership ofthe line items and the elements
of that.
But can you just one, just sharea little bit more about maybe
what open book management is forfolks and how maybe some of
that, a little bit ofgranularity of how and why
(25:25):
that's effective in yourbusiness?
Veronique (25:27):
Absolutely.
I'm going to first start withthe foundation of our why and
why we do that.
Just a quick remembrance ofwhere I started, quarter million
in debt.
The agency wasn't able to secureany credit until our 7th year so
everything was based on cashthat we had in hand.
We were not leveraged in debt.
We didn't have any capitalinvestors.
Today we are still a debt freeagency.
(25:48):
We have very low credit linesthat we use just for media and,
you know, cost of goods soldthat we pay off.
But we still operate in thatphilosophy, which is interesting
because you're not playing withother people's money,.
Your liability is your own andyour liquidity is your own.
It's a win together, losetogether component.
In 201 6, that fear of sharingwas very real for me, I think,
(26:08):
because the agency was profitingand we were growing and there
was a lot of perceptions andwhat, you know, what's the adage
like, uh, revenue for vanity,profit for sanity.
I was afraid to, like, share,cause I didn't want to people to
start asking for more, you know,we were just in a really
accelerated time.
I started to feel like thesacrificial lamb, like the, the
weight of the world was on meand it was getting harder every
(26:31):
day.
The business was becoming morecomplex.
We were in the multimilliondollar phase.
HR was becoming a thing, uh,because we had more people, just
lots of layers.
I remember feeling like thatsacrificial lamb and I was like,
I, I don't want to feel thisway.
I don't want to feel this, youknow, it should not be this
hard.
I was coached by anotherentrepreneurial friend with a
(26:52):
larger, enterprise sizedbusiness.
He asked me, he said, you know,what is the shame in you showing
your balance sheet, and we havea very clean balance sheet and
your PNL, and like, exposingthat just to your leadership
team?
What's the worst that couldhappen?
I was like, I don't know,judgment?
perception and all the things?
All the limited beliefs that Iwas making up my head.
He said, okay, valid, valid.
(27:12):
But you know, what if they said,wow, thanks for sharing.
I didn't realize that I havesuch a contribution into the
profitability of this businessor to the expenses of this
business or the decisions that Imake?
He's like, I guarantee you thatyou'll find that the
conversation leans more thatdirection than it does about
this perception.
I was scared.
I was really scared.
(27:32):
I got to the point, kind of abreaking point where like, okay,
I got to just kind of dig myheels in and get this done.
I really opened up and we had atwo hour working session and we
went line by line.
Overhead, you know, our servicedelivery team costs, how our
utilization and capacity,because as you know, in the
agency space, professionalservices, it's not just about
sales.
It's about efficiency andgetting projects done on time,
(27:54):
getting stuff out the door.
The conversation was sotransformational and so
informational for all themembers sitting at the table.
I immediately felt this, like,sense of relief and clarity and
more importantly, I felt like Iwas trusted and I could trust
them.
It was in the congeniality of,like, our leadership team really
(28:14):
coming together at that pointwas pretty amazing.
Because of that, the sense ofcommunity that we get to
experience, this beautifuloffice and the cultural
initiatives and the, and thespeakers and the team builds,
they understand that everybody'scontribution matters, right?
On my executive level, they haveaccess to the full, full PNL.
They get to see everything andwe review it on a monthly basis.
(28:38):
The entire agency has more of aroll up PNL during our, um, our
quarterly, but then we dive downinto month over month, year over
year.
We talk about trends, um,benchmarks.
What's great about that is wealso create a space for
questions.
If one person's asking aquestion, probably that means
(28:59):
that somebody else is alsowondering it too.
So everybody gets to learn.
We want everybody to befinancially sophisticated.
That takes a lot ofresponsibility off of myself
because being a solopreneur canbe extremely lonely sometimes,
sitting on my own island.
And I do not take that forgranted, that I have this
incredible leadership team now.
President, 13 years, I mentionedShane, 19 years, my career
(29:22):
director coming up on 14 years,and some members that are
approaching 10, uh, because theybelieve, right?
They believe that they makeimpact and purpose.
Russel (29:30):
So many things we could break down with, with that, but,
you know, talk about ownership.
One is transparency first, butthen, you know, letting people
take ownership.
Love to hear that.
Just even maybe some of thetheme of it, that ownership gets
another 10 or 20 percent out of,you know, what people can
contribute or inspired to do andit's being on top of your
expenses outright, what youshared before, that's another
amount of percentage.
(29:50):
All of that compounds over timeto clearly what you have today,
is a successful agency.
Impressive.
Veronique (29:56):
Thank you for saying that.
And like, I don't have it allfigured out, right?
Every day is a new day.
Political uncertainty, there'sso many things, dynamics that
are consistently happening.
But, you know, as I mentioned,going back to the beginning, you
know, we stay true to our core.
We try not to be influenced byall the opinions and there's a
lot of them.
What our competitors are doingand the social influence and all
(30:16):
of that.
We honor the relationships thatgot us here.
I think a lot of people inbusiness sort of forget the
grassroots and the early, theearly contributions.
I'm so privileged to have peoplethat were with me since day one.
They remember when we used totake our iPhone one and put it
in a bowl on speaker, right?
I used to answer the phone in aBritish accent, uh, when it was
(30:37):
just me pretending to be areceptionist.
You do what you gotta do.
But staying, staying true tothat humble, you know, swagger
is really important.
Russel (30:45):
Oh yeah.
I got all kinds of fake it tillyou make it stories.
Those are funny.
Kind of down the line ofwrapping up, how are you looking
at the growth and future of thecompany?
What does that look like for youguys?
Veronique (30:54):
Coming out of COVID and I'll tie this back to that
really quickly.
Many clients came to us andsaid, gosh, we knew what our
client, our audiences were, butwe don't know what the crystal
ball looks like for three tofour years.
We really doubled down onstrategy and insights.
We built a, uh, a formula orprocess that allows us to really
eliminate the bias andsubjectivity of what marketing
should look like for our clientslooking forward.
(31:15):
People say, really, you can giveme the GPS coordinates, and we
say, yes, like, not only can wereally personify who your
audiences are, but how are theyconsuming information, you know,
and then knowing even more, whatis that channel selection and
the cost and what's thatpotential ROI?
So people can go to pen to paperwith confidence.
We've really leaned into thatinsights first philosophy.
Yes, we do killer creative workand web and all those things,
(31:38):
but rooting that in objectiveinsights has really built a
longstanding and encouragingrelationship with our existing
and new clients.
We just added 4, 000 square feetto our, 4, 000 square feet to
our physical footprint, um, andthat's interesting because in
contrast to a lot of agenciesthat have shrunk and have gone
to either full remote or hybrid,my team is back to liking to be
(31:59):
in real life.
While we do allow our staff towork a couple days work from
home on a flex schedule, we findthat clients engage agencies to
be a part of something biggerthan themselves or their
business.
Offering that brand promise, youcan come here and collaborate
and be inspired, and we cansolve those complex business
problems, which is exactly why Istarted the business 20 years
ago, is really special.
(32:20):
I just extended our lease toJune of 2028 with our current,
uh, landlord.
At that point, we hope to eitherbuy a building and expand our
footprint even more.
We're really going to try tocontinue to honor and own that
authentic agency, um, voice.
It's one thing to say you'recool and then it's another thing
to do cool things, right?
(32:40):
I think there are a lot ofagencies out there that say that
they're the fastest growing orthey're the coolest.
We're going to be very steadfastin our thought of being
authentic to who we are aspeople.
We're fun to work with and we'recollaborative and crazy and
casual, but we are also a fivestar luxury performance agency
that delivers exceptionalresults and we do whatever it
takes.
Russel (33:01):
I'm going to net that out to do more cool things.
Veronique (33:03):
Do more cool things.
Russel (33:05):
No one better to do that than yourself.
All right.
Last big question for you.
Are entrepreneurs born or arethey made?
Veronique (33:10):
Oh, no.
Gosh, it depends on the day.
Sometimes, because of thecircumstance, they're made.
I talked to my dad about this,as I mentioned, he's getting
ready to retire the day beforeThanksgiving, he'll be 75 in
December.
Watching him and his journey, Ithink he was born an
entrepreneur.
He says the same about me.
His stories about me as a littlegirl.
I don't have the answer for youon that one.
(33:31):
It's a privilege though.
It's hard, but it's a privilege.
Russel (33:33):
Hey, it takes all kinds.
Love that perspective.
It sounds like you might beleaning a little towards born,
uh, maybe it just took you awhile to realize that in
yourself.
Who knows at the end of the day?
Well, if people want to knowmore about James Agency, where
can they go?
Veronique (33:46):
Thejamesagency.com is our website and then on all
social platforms@TheJamesAgency.
You can find us across, um, allof those mechanisms.
Of course, um, you can find me,uh, online, you can call me or
text me, smoke signals, youknow, pigeon birds, whatever
works.
We're always looking forward tohearing from people riffing some
great ideas and hopefullycollaborating with some cool
(34:06):
concepts.
Russel (34:07):
Beautiful, beautiful.
What a great story.
Resilience to the max and just,you know, just some of the
innovations, but then justgetting downright in the weeds,
in the sand, grabbing efficiencyanywhere you can.
So many great takeaways fromyour story today, Veronique, and
I really take, really appreciateyou taking the time to share it.
Veronique (34:24):
Thank you so much for having me.
I really appreciate theopportunity.
We hope you've enjoyed thisepisode of An Agency Story
podcast where we share realstories of marketing agency
owners from around the world.
Are you interested in being aguest on the show?
Send an email topodcast@performancefaction.com.
(34:46):
An Agency Story is brought toyou by Performance Faction.
Performance Faction offersservices to help agency owners
grow their business to 5 milliondollars and more in revenue.
To learn more, visitperformancefaction.com.
I always go back to that story of, um, acting as if
(35:09):
right in the very beginningstages of bootstrapping.
I had mentioned about how I usedto pick up the phone in a
British accent and then, youknow, put it down and then pick
up the phone as myself.
That kind of caught me in theknickers because, um, at the
time I was working on an infillmultifamily project with a
gentleman who I'm still veryclose with and we continue to do
deals with.
He's from London.
(35:29):
I answered the phone in my veryterrible accent, put it down,
answered myself, and then hegoes on to ask me where I am
from, uh, in London.
That's the moment of realitywhere I'm like, okay, I got to
stop pulling this charadebecause this isn't going to
work.
Russel (35:42):
Oh, got called on your accent.
That's too funny.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.