Happy teams is a new podcast that seeks to teach business owners all about how to grow a thriving, positive workplace culture that boosts efficiency, helps retain your brightest and best talent and improves productivity across the field.
With remote working and mental health now more relevant than ever, creating a workplace culture that allows team members to feel engaged, included and motivated is extremely important. But, for this to work successfully, a number of things need to fall in place and knowing what fits where isn’t always easy. On Happy Teams, we talk to some of the best digital agency and tech company leaders about how they create a workplace culture that delivers.
We know full well that every business is different, so we cover all things from past success and failures, to how to cater your culture to individual personalities and why it is so important that businesses do all they can to make sure their talent is happy and feel at home when working for them.
Each episode, Prodigi’s founders, David and Bachir, will be sharing some of their top tips and interviewing a new business leader. We’ve learned a lot whilst making these podcasts and hope that you will too.
All content for Happy Teams is the property of Prodigi.team and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Happy teams is a new podcast that seeks to teach business owners all about how to grow a thriving, positive workplace culture that boosts efficiency, helps retain your brightest and best talent and improves productivity across the field.
With remote working and mental health now more relevant than ever, creating a workplace culture that allows team members to feel engaged, included and motivated is extremely important. But, for this to work successfully, a number of things need to fall in place and knowing what fits where isn’t always easy. On Happy Teams, we talk to some of the best digital agency and tech company leaders about how they create a workplace culture that delivers.
We know full well that every business is different, so we cover all things from past success and failures, to how to cater your culture to individual personalities and why it is so important that businesses do all they can to make sure their talent is happy and feel at home when working for them.
Each episode, Prodigi’s founders, David and Bachir, will be sharing some of their top tips and interviewing a new business leader. We’ve learned a lot whilst making these podcasts and hope that you will too.
We Lost £250,000 on One Senior Hire - Here's What We Learned About Growing an Agency on Happy Teams
Happy Teams
15 minutes 58 seconds
8 months ago
We Lost £250,000 on One Senior Hire - Here's What We Learned About Growing an Agency on Happy Teams
When Sam and Alana founded digital agency Thought Quarter in 2014, they started with "one major client that paid most of our bills, paid on time, and we had a small team of freelancers." By 2017, they knew this business model wasn't sustainable and decided to grow, but lacking agency management experience, they looked to bring in established talent.
"We thought what we really needed was a big shot from a big agency to come in and take care of us," Sam explains. "So we went to market, we found a couple of candidates, but there was this one candidate who was relocating from a really large, well known London agency." The senior hire turned disastrous, ultimately costing them over £250,000 in salary, lost business opportunities and projects.
The agency growth experience taught them that "there's no substitute for a founder's leadership and clear vision," Sam reflects. "The mistake we made was to try and bring somebody in to do it for us. If you're going to grow a business, you need to do it. You need to drive it." This mindset shift extended to how they view success and failure, Sam references SpaceX celebrating a rocket not exploding as an example of how failure can be an essential part of the improvement process.
This business transformation came just as Covid hit in 2021, when their agency revenue dropped below their first month as a company. Rather than give up, they used it as an opportunity to rebuild: "What we had in front of us was a perfect opportunity to just reevaluate what we were doing, why we were doing it and how we were doing it."
Today, Thought Quarter has refined its business model to focus on the energy transition sector, working on decarbonisation and renewable energy projects. As Sam puts it: "We're constantly refining the services that we offer so that we're doing higher value services that solve more complex problems for a smaller number of clients. And that's what really excites me about the direction that we're going in at the moment."
Listen to more agency leadership insights on the Happy Teams Podcast.
Happy Teams
Happy teams is a new podcast that seeks to teach business owners all about how to grow a thriving, positive workplace culture that boosts efficiency, helps retain your brightest and best talent and improves productivity across the field.
With remote working and mental health now more relevant than ever, creating a workplace culture that allows team members to feel engaged, included and motivated is extremely important. But, for this to work successfully, a number of things need to fall in place and knowing what fits where isn’t always easy. On Happy Teams, we talk to some of the best digital agency and tech company leaders about how they create a workplace culture that delivers.
We know full well that every business is different, so we cover all things from past success and failures, to how to cater your culture to individual personalities and why it is so important that businesses do all they can to make sure their talent is happy and feel at home when working for them.
Each episode, Prodigi’s founders, David and Bachir, will be sharing some of their top tips and interviewing a new business leader. We’ve learned a lot whilst making these podcasts and hope that you will too.
