AL EP 55: Tamara Littleton – How to Scale from 0 to 300 Employees

Show Notes

Tamara founded The Social Element in 2002 and has grown the agency to become a 250+ people strong and award-winning business that helps some of the world’s biggest brands including Visa, OREO, Peloton and Dr Pepper thrive on social media. Tamara is also co-founder of Polpeo, a crisis software company that creates realistic and immersive crisis simulations that prepare teams to communicate successfully in a crisis. She has previously been awarded CEO of the year by The Drum, was featured in the Outstanding Yahoo Finance Top 100 LGBT+ Executives list and is a Fellow of The Marketing Society.

Connect with Tamara Littleton & The Social Element here –
Web: https://thesocialelement.agency/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamaralittleton/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thesocialelementagency
Genuine Humans Podcast –
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7jkfw0qeUlwrauhfy2pCGU?si=313187d0c90b401c
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/genuine-humans/id1561811296

Episode Transcript

00;00;00;00 – 00;00;32;21

Everybody is adjusting to go more agency and transformation Coach and founder of Niche in Control Greater of Leverage for Growth. And I’m Lucas James, founder of Twist which scaled from 0 to $200000 a month with my own agency. We are the host of Leverage for Growth Podcast Agency Leverage Episodes. We know that in order to scale your agency successfully, there are multiple shifts that need to happen within the founders mindsets, skill sets and leadership styles.

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We are on a mission to interview marketing and PR agency owners on their journey to six, seven and eight figures and leverage the lessons from their journey to save you time, energy and money in order for you to get your agency to the next level. If you find value in these episodes, watch the case, Study video to learn more about leverage for growth and how we successfully scale agencies quickly at niche in control.

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Com slash key study at niche in control icon slash kingdom. You are now listening to Leverage for Growth. Hey everybody, this is Jesse Gilmore, founder of Mission Control and creator of Leverage for Growth. Welcome to the Agency Leverage edition. Today I am here with Tamara Littleton, the global CEO and founder of The Social Element, a global social media agency enabling brands to harness the power of social and build genuine human connections.

00;01;26;06 – 00;01;47;13

Thanks for coming to our show today. Oh, thank you so much, Jesse. It’s great to be here. Excellent. Can you share a little bit about your background and what led you to start a social element? Yes, of course. So of course I was starting a social media agency before there was any social media, really. So because it was actually before Twitter, Facebook, YouTube.

00;01;47;16 – 00;02;18;22

So it was actually quite a different kind of agency to begin with. But I started it because I was working at the BBC. So obviously a very respected company and I suppose I saw the future. I saw that everyone was getting involved in online communities. There was virtual worlds at the time forums and and I just thought, you know what, I think brands will move into these online communities, these spaces, and they’ll need to be managed properly.

00;02;18;23 – 00;02;43;16

So I started it more as a community management kind of company. And then with the explosion of social media marketing, particularly out of the States, actually it was very much driven by the states. And then it just grew and grew and I sort of pivoted it more into I’m a marketing agency and and now we work with huge brands like Visa and Nissan and Mondelez, Oreo cookies and all sorts of things.

00;02;43;16 – 00;03;05;23

So yeah, it’s been quite the journey after. And looking back, what do you think were some of those key factors that helped you succeed in those very early stages of the business? Well, you know what, Jesse? I think I started it as a remote first company. So being very, very candid and I’m sure people will understand this, I didn’t really have much money.

00;03;05;23 – 00;03;36;01

When you’re starting. I’d taken a small amount of funding from my parents. It was just £10,000, so it’s probably about $12,000. And they got a very good investment back several years later. So but there wasn’t a huge amount of amount of money going around, so I wasn’t going to start wasting it on offices. But that turned out to be a really critical part of our success because we’ve now grown to be just shy of about 300 people.

00;03;36;08 – 00;04;01;00

That’s a mixture of full time freelancers, and we’re based in North America and all over Europe. And by having people in these different countries, it meant that I was able to sort of scale across, you know, globally very quickly. And my first clients, even though I’m headquartered in the UK, to begin with, we have an American office. So we’re not physical office, but we have an American entity.

00;04;01;03 – 00;04;22;05

But my first clients were American clients. And so I think that model allowed for scale, and it’s also allowed me to tap into talent, global talent. I didn’t have to just sort of hire people from London in the UK, you know, I was just hiring people all over the States and all over Europe. So that that was a big factor, that that model.

00;04;22;08 – 00;04;43;14

Mm hmm. That’s awesome. And in those early days, how did you manage to acquire those first clients and what was that experience like? So very different to where we are now because everyone does social media. So there’s a lot of competition now and you have to sort of work hard to stand out. And we’ve got sort of different ways that we do that.

00;04;43;14 – 00;05;03;03

But at the beginning, I’m not going to lie. It was actually quite easy because it was very niche. So there were the first few years that were really difficult because I was trying to educate people as to what was community, well, why did they need to have people managing it? And then when it sort of pivoted to more social media, marketing is still sort of educating the client base.

00;05;03;03 – 00;05;24;28

So those were quite difficult first years. And there were times where I sort of thought, am I really doing the right thing here? But then essentially it got to the stage that there were only three companies that I was aware of that were doing what we were doing. And the phone used to ring in the old days when people used to pick up the phone a lot and of course getting emails, but it was all inbounds.

00;05;24;29 – 00;05;48;08

It was crazy. You know, these huge brands were just ringing up and just sort of wanting to work with us and we weren’t pitching. We I mean, I just put together costs in an email and they’re like, Great, where do I sign? It was insane. Not like that now, but it was I was very lucky. I think, because we were specialist niche and we had got ourselves a good reputation.

00;05;48;08 – 00;06;12;26

So that that really sort of counted well for us. Mm. That’s awesome. And can you discuss a significant challenges you faced in those earlier days and maybe how you managed to overcome it? I think the challenge was growth. I mean, obviously growth is a privilege, but it was also a challenge. And there was one point where we doubled the size of the agency.

00;06;12;26 – 00;06;40;07

So I think it was about at that stage we were about 100 people. So we sort of grown a fair amount. But because everyone was working in this sort of remote way, not everyone was working full time. It was a really lovely sort of I was very much pioneering the sort of flexible working, but we had to bring in we won a big gaming client and we had to bring in about sort of 200 people in the space of six months.

00;06;40;09 – 00;07;00;08

And that was really challenging to sort of find the right people and to make sure that all the right sort of standard so that we just had people who were just dedicated to to hiring, but also how to bring them in successfully and make sure that the culture wasn’t impacted too much by doubling the size of the company so quickly.

00;07;00;10 – 00;07;23;18

And I think, again, the remote model really helped us because if you were in an office and you suddenly had to expand that fast and bring so many people in, it would just completely change the culture. But because we were able to put them onto one project and then we just essentially assimilated them with some of the old timers who’d been there and, you know, got everyone sort of working on a project.

00;07;23;18 – 00;07;49;25

And they worked so well together because they’d all joined at the same time. So it was a stressful six months, but it was invigorating. And a lot of those people are actually still with us today, which is amazing. MM That’s awesome. Being able to flex as you can and grow. Yeah. So you talked a little bit about it, but how did you go about building your team and what qualities did you prioritize when hiring?

00;07;50;02 – 00;08;10;10

Maybe some of those first employees or maybe even with that massive growth that you talked about too? So I think because I’d come from corporate backgrounds, so I worked at the BBC. I also worked a company called Cello. I was working in sort of digital from early, early days. But that corporate background meant that I was very fixated on organizational structure.

00;08;10;10 – 00;08;30;22

So one of the first things I did when I started the agencies, I always knew I wanted to be to be global, and I set up the structure with all the different divisions. It just so happened that I just did all of these jobs to begin with. But you have to sort of think like that. And I think it allowed me by having this sort of clear structure when I started to expand.

00;08;30;22 – 00;08;50;25

So at the beginning it was all sort of freelancers and then making those sort of first choices as to who were the people who could sort of support me to that next stage. And I was able to hire a lot of people who had been in the corporate life but were perhaps bringing up children, for example, and they wanted to work from home now.

00;08;50;28 – 00;09;12;07

If you if you think about it now, everyone’s working from home and it’s not unusual. It was quite unusual back in those times. So having these really sort of powerful people, quite a lot of them were women as well who wanted to be able to work from home, manage, you know, bring up their children and work for a kind of exciting new company.

00;09;12;07 – 00;09;35;05

I was able to bring in some really amazing talent in those early days, and I’m just so great, so grateful that actually some of these early people are now on my executive. So it’s been a mixture as we’ve grown of like these sort of homegrown people who’ve been with us for the whole journey. And then as time goes on, you bring in more experts and you expand.

00;09;35;05 – 00;10;06;07

And that’s one of the key things. It’s like I’m really sort of focused on bringing in top talent. Sometimes you see you have to pay for that talent, but as soon as you can afford to, you bring in that talent and it will take you to the next level. So. So yeah, I think really focusing on the the skills, the culture that’s been that’s allowed us to grow every time we start like a new division or selling a new service is social is always growing, but there’s there’s different areas that can do so we’ve invested in in top talent.

00;10;06;07 – 00;10;29;05

But yes, some of them are still with me, which is amazing. That’s cool that they’re part of your executive team now. Yeah, that’s awesome. So as you have scaled kind of from a small to medium sized agency, what operational or structural changes that you need to make? If you can remember back then? Yeah, I think one of the key things is bringing in experts.

00;10;29;05 – 00;11;10;00

So I brought in a consultant, this amazing guy called Dan Egerton, who works with us, and he audited the agency. I think the philosophy is you start working out how you could be an agency that could be bought or that there is an exit plan. And it doesn’t necessarily mean you want to have an exit plan or, you know, I’ve been running this for 21 years very happily, but back in, you know, several years back and probably about ten years ago or something, bringing in someone who helps you think like that means that you run a much more successful agency because you’re getting this outside consultancy and all this different advice about making sure that

00;11;10;00 – 00;11;31;17

you don’t have too much reliance on just a couple of clients, you know, the sort of stuff that you don’t know, you don’t know if you just don’t know it, and so you get advice from people. So so I think that was was a really key thing to do is to sort of get these sort of get get the consultants in to help you grow.

00;11;31;19 – 00;11;58;04

And I think from there, because we had this full audit of exactly where we need to to change things, we just sort of did it as a huge project plan and took several years to sort of go through and make sure that we were the best that we could possibly be. I mean, I’ve been very bad Luck comes into some of it and obviously sort of skilled, but we’ve been profitable nearly all of those years.

00;11;58;07 – 00;12;20;11

So we’ve probably got like a sort of track record of like sort of 96% or something like that. So we’ve invested back into the business every year. And investing back means that you can just make things better. But I’m a strong believer in bringing in outside help to to really sort of focus on your own, your structure. And that’s what allowed us to to grow up a bit, if I’m absolutely honest.

00;12;20;13 – 00;12;45;13

Mm hmm. Absolutely. And so can you discuss maybe one or two key projects or campaigns that you believe significantly impacted your agency’s growth? And maybe it was the outside consultant or was it something else? Well, I think there were various ones that’s that they are important from a nostalgia and a sort of setting the vision, you know, Right.

00;12;45;13 – 00;13;13;13

In the early days, we had some incredible projects that we did in America, like working with G.E.. I remember we did this incredible campaign that went around all of these different billboards in Times Square in New York. And it was significant because it’s so that we were able to do massive scale projects alongside other creative agencies and hold our own in in America.

00;13;13;16 – 00;13;40;11

And that was I mean, I was 25, so that was like a really early one. But I think it was significant because it just gave us all the confidence that we can compete on a on a bigger scale. And then there was things like the the gaming project that allowed us to to really grow significant early. And it was my first client that I’d won that was over $1,000,000, you know, just from one client.

00;13;40;11 – 00;14;09;11

And that is such a milestone when when you realize that, that, you know, you’re able to win those large clients and the revenue per month was bigger than the revenue per year in the early years, it was just, you know, so they all matter. And I’m a big believer in looking back and it kind of gives you that’s that lens to sort of know that you are moving in the right direction and you can kind of look back and it’s it just makes you feel better.

00;14;09;11 – 00;14;32;22

But it also galvanizes team. So I think there have been so many. And then more recently we’ve sort of changed again. And that’s, you know, we are absolutely focused on social media. The social media changes so much So even things like the first time we launched a client on Tik Tok, for example, these are all significant changes because we then have proof of what we’re doing.

00;14;32;25 – 00;14;52;21

And you know, some of the clients we’re working with, like Dr. Pepper, we we have like a very different strategy that helped them change their way of doing things that we now do across all of their brands. So every time we’re experimenting and doing different things, we learn, we grow. So it’s it’s so hard to name all of them.

00;14;52;21 – 00;15;15;26

But I’m I’m so passionate about the client. So I think it’s it’s hard to sort of name all of them. There. And looking back on your journey so far, what are some lessons learned that you’d like to pass on to other agency owners? So is this the bit where I give the I’ve give the tips, Yeah. Yeah. So okay, well, let me think.

00;15;15;28 – 00;15;44;26

So I would say delegation is absolutely critical. I wasn’t always that great at it in the early days, and sometimes it felt like I sort of was forced into it when, you know, I was doing that thing where you just working so hard and you’re trying to just keep everything together and really sort of pushing things forward. And I remember going off sick and that was the thing that forced me to delegate and sort of let people in my team step up and run things.

00;15;44;26 – 00;16;08;15

And then of course, you realize that they were always capable and always brilliant and possibly much better than you. So that’s one of my philosophies now, is you hire great people who are better than you and you get out of the way and you let them fly. So that would be one sort of tip. I think also actually, it’s connected with me sort of saying that, you know, I don’t want to be awful because I’m working too hard.

00;16;08;15 – 00;16;38;09

So actually I’m a great believer in take time off. No one is going to tell me. I don’t have anyone saying to me tomorrow, you really should take some time off. That’s what I will make sure that my executive team is saying to their leaders and to everyone in the company, expect them to be doing that. No one actually does it to me, but I have to remember to do that myself when I have to prioritize my mental health, my wellbeing, and and take that time off.

00;16;38;12 – 00;16;58;22

I’d also say, you know, coming back to really bringing in the consultants, the experts read great books. It’s such a sort of thing. And I’m a bit of, I’m a bit naughty like this because I don’t always finish the business because I love them, but I tend to sort of get the concept quite quickly. So I don’t necessarily have to sort of read the whole thing.

00;16;58;22 – 00;17;26;02

But one of my favorites I definitely have read was Jim Collins Good to great. And we’ve been big fans of the agency Flywheel, and bringing that in to the team really made a difference. I mean, literally, we sort of added a couple more revenue in one year just by bringing in the flywheel because it just brought everybody together and just had such clear vision of where we were going, what we were all about.

00;17;26;02 – 00;17;48;02

And it kind of impacts on your confidence as an agency. So doing a flywheel and reading. Jim Collins It’s great is is a good tip and I’ve got a few others, I think talents. I mean, I’m obsessed with our culture. It’s it’s what keeps me sort of waking up in the morning in a positive way. I love the team.

00;17;48;04 – 00;18;17;24

We really take our time to hire the right people and we’re very sort of focused on getting the right talents. But you get the right talent in as everything is driven from there, especially in our business. You know, we are selling our talented people and their brains and their creativity and so, so really focused on that. One of the earlier tips perhaps for people in perhaps the beginning of their journey, all the sort of middle of their journey, just get PR help.

00;18;17;24 – 00;18;39;17

Honestly, it makes such a difference. There is I think I alluded to the fact that there’s a lot of competition. You have to stand out and you need PR to help you be, you know, to cut through and get press and get awards and get noticed. So honestly, whatever you’re spending on PR, spend more and a couple of other things.

00;18;39;17 – 00;19;05;15

I think probably going back to wellbeing, I found it incredibly lonely at the beginning because I didn’t really know how to find other company owners, other agency founders, and I started this on my own. I’ve since co-founded another company, which is an amazing company called Popia, which is a crisis simulation company, and we simulate brands being attacked on social and that’s that’s awesome.

00;19;05;18 – 00;19;33;18

What I really love is having a co-founder. It’s kind of I feel like it’s faster growth, but being by myself, I think I took time to ask for help and I would definitely say, Look for Communities, your podcast, obviously, you know, everything helps, doesn’t it? You kind of educate yourself, but I think speaking to other agency founders, it can just be a little bit less lonely and you can just ask really good advice.

00;19;33;18 – 00;20;05;23

So find, find your community, find the fellow founders, and it really makes a difference. And past my last one actually podcasts, I actually ended up starting a podcast during during the pandemic called Genuine Humans, and it’s been such a great thing to do in terms of it’s good content, but it’s also allows me to talk to people who then may become customers and clients and maybe they won’t.

00;20;05;23 – 00;20;27;08

And that doesn’t matter. That’s not what I’m doing, why I’m doing it. But just you just widen your network and meet incredible people and it’s great to sort of get to know people’s stories and get them on the podcast. So I would say that actually agency founders, if you can start a podcast or go on this one. Yeah, exactly.

00;20;27;10 – 00;20;57;05

Get on a podcast, host that one or do both. Yeah, that and that’s awesome. Awesome. Now, as a female video in the social media agency space, what advice would you have for other women who are aspiring to grow their own agencies? Well, number one, do it. It’s brilliant. It’s awesome. I think a lot of people and a lot of the fellows and female founders that I speak to talk about that sense of autonomy and freedom.

00;20;57;05 – 00;21;16;07

And, you know, you can choose the clients that you want to work with. You get to build the agency that you want to work out. That was one of my sort of philosophies. So I think definitely go for it if there aren’t enough of us and I think there should be more. So I think it’s it’s really important.

00;21;16;10 – 00;21;35;22

And, you know, whatever barriers come in the way, there’s always ways around them. And, you know, some of the advice that I gave and delegating and bringing in people that you worked with before can be really useful. So I think the main advice is it would be wrapped up in some of the things I’ve said, find your angle as well.

00;21;35;22 – 00;21;59;01

I think that PR but it’s not just about powering the agency. You have to PR yourself as well. And so sometimes you have to find what’s what makes you special. Why? Why would people come and want to work with you? And that is really critical. And I know that not everyone finds that comfortable or I don’t know if it’s if it’s a gendered thing.

00;21;59;01 – 00;22;22;00

I think pretty much all founders find it a little bit difficult sort of having you just say to anyone personal brand and they go, Oh God, that’s the you know, So sometimes you just need help on that. It’s easier to get someone else to help you push your personal brand a bit more and get over that feeling of unease that you’re just you know, it’s it’s hard.

00;22;22;00 – 00;22;47;11

Not everyone wants to sort of put their head above the parapet, but honestly, you have to in order to cut through and to get noticed and to get, you know, LinkedIn driving connections on LinkedIn. So try, try and push through that uneasiness and push your your personal brand. Awesome. And lastly, how do you envision the future growth of the social element?

00;22;47;11 – 00;23;13;09

Like what are you working on right now? What do you excited about in the next maybe 1 to 3 years? Sure. So world domination always with world domination. So what I would say is we’ve had some really exciting times, actually, I think I’ve never felt so connected to a proposition. And it is about helping brands have this, you know, harnessing the power of social and creating these genuine human connections.

00;23;13;09 – 00;23;34;18

And it feels really important, especially now coming out of lockdown, that I think brands are really understanding the power of being so close to to consumers on social. And there’s just so much fun stuff to be to be had. So we’ve been investing heavily, we’ve been hiring a lot and we’ve been investing in much more of our creative skills.

00;23;34;18 – 00;24;07;15

So connecting with influencers and content creators on on social investing in insights and strategy and and also just looking at other areas where, you know, there’s there’s quite a lot of work going on in, in how we’re helping brands understand the technology side of things as well. You know, so sometimes there are gaps in the market we’re working with and tool providers and not all brands have time to figure out how to get the best insights.

00;24;07;15 – 00;24;25;29

We’ll do social listening. So there are sort of little gaps that we end up helping them with various things. And of course, crisis is all part of that as well with my second company of how do we sort of weave it all together so that we can help brands protect themselves from a crisis, or at least be prepared when they go through one?

00;24;25;29 – 00;24;54;22

Because honestly, most brands are going to go through a crisis at some point. So so really, we’re doing a lot of growth, bringing in new talents, really focusing on our flywheel. And and it’s working. We we’ve grown significantly over the last few years. And so yeah, just keep doing more of the same but never sit still. Yeah well I thought well, what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you or follow you and, and your journey.

00;24;54;24 – 00;25;17;11

Thank you. Thank you. So LinkedIn is probably where I spend most of my time, so you can just search for tomorrow. Listen on on LinkedIn if you want to connect, I would say can you send a personalized request because I, I tend to delete people who don’t do. That’s so you said send a personalized connection request that works.

00;25;17;13 – 00;25;44;05

Also, you can find the social elements or the social element or agency. And so we’re based in US Europe and we’re as you can imagine, on every single social platform, including threads to the newest platform. So yeah, just sort of search across Instagram. But I would say to get to me personally, LinkedIn is the best offer. Oh, and listen to my podcast, Genuine Human.

00;25;44;09 – 00;26;03;29

Is that rude to talk about my own podcast on your podcast? I don’t know what it is, just a Yeah, no, it’s really fine for anybody that’s listening. I’ll include all of the links to Tamara and the podcast, as well as the social element in the show notes. And Tamara, I just want to thank you very much for being on the show today.

00;26;04;01 – 00;26;25;17

Thank you. It’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. Agency owners. If you want to transform your agency to sustain and grow without your direct involvement, where you can stop working in the business and switch to working on the business, where you can regain control of your time to delegate effectively, get paid what you’re worth, and have your team run the day to day.

00;26;25;24 – 00;26;43;25

Go to niche in control. That com slash case study right now. To learn more about leverage for growth, you can book a free strategy session with us to look at your systems, understand what needs to be done in order for you to scale and get a free strategic plan for the next year to live the life of entrepreneurship that you’ve always dreamed about.

00;26;43;27 – 00;27;08;15

Go to niche in control dot com slash case study that is niche in control dot com slash case of now.