Mark Stringer: E6 Mark's Diary - Betrayal, backstabbing and death
Guests: Mark Stringer
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
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I apologize. It's been two long weeks since I've uploaded this podcast, and I usually upload every Sunday, so I'm sorry for that. But we're back to business as usual. Here is the good news: as I told you, I wanted to invite other CEOs onto this podcast to share their deep dark diaries and secrets with you. In those two weeks, I've met with two different CEOs and delved into their diaries.
One of them is a 25-year-old CEO of one of the UK's fastest-growing companies, a tremendous company with a tremendous team. The other is a CEO of a small agency business here in Manchester who went through an experience that no one in business or life would wish on their worst enemy. In today's chapter, we delve into his diary.
He emailed me and wanted to come on this podcast to share his experience, which involves backstabbing and betrayal. Through the agency grapevine and people I knew, I already knew a little bit about his story. From the little I knew, it was horrific. It involves the majority of his team backstabbing him, serious betrayal, mental health issues, total desperation, and a business that ends up having to fold because of it.
There is so much to learn from this story and it's incredibly interesting. Just when you think things can't get any worse, this young man gets caught up in a terrorist attack in London, which changes the perception of his life and perspective on his life forever. The man in question is called Mark Stringer and he is the CEO of Ahoy, which is a Manchester-based web and graphic design agency.
Mark is an avid listener of this podcast, so he knows the score already. This is not a PR interview. He agreed to share the full details with total honesty. I also told Mark that if he wasn't raw, honest, and open, I would not share it with the world. Mark agreed, and that's exactly what he did. So, without further ado, let's open Mark's diary. This is chapter six. I'm Steve Bartlett and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
Okay. So Mark, thank you for joining me. I really, really appreciate it. You are our first-ever guest on this particular podcast. I wasn't sure at first if it made sense for the format of this being a diary and all to have a guest on. But considering your story and considering our previous conversations over the last couple of months, I knew that you also shared a lot of the hardships, pains, challenges, and unpredictable events that I shared as a CEO.
We had a conversation a couple of months ago in my office where we talked about some of the real hard moments that only people that run service businesses, where there's such unpredictability, will really be able to understand. I know you'd listened to this podcast and when you got in touch, I at first read the email and thought, no, I'm really not going to do guests. But I closed the email and reopened it because I remembered our conversations. I then went over to my team and said, listen, I think this would be a great first guest on the podcast.
I can't thank you enough. I've been binge-listening to the podcasts and it was just the honesty and the intimacy of what you were doing. It was interesting to see just somebody so successful being so honest about what was actually going on. So, when you mentioned that you'd wanted to have someone on and they couldn't come on, I thought, right, well, I'm happy to be honest. I can take your lead and I can do that. As I say, there are two major things that happened to me this year which are now part of my story, so I thought it would be a really good chance to come and share it.
Amazing. So the thing with this podcast, as you'll know because we had a little bit of a chat before, is it's all about that honesty. It's not about PR or all the other interviews you've probably ever done in your life where there was sort of an agenda there. Same for me. It's winning business, talking about business, or selling ourselves. This has always acted as the opposite of that. This is the antithesis of brand building; this is honesty. If this interview doesn't get to that place, then it will almost never be heard because it won't fit the format. That's the single most important thing today.
Just as well we're not under in your washing cupboard at your house on this one.
Yeah, so this is the first time I've not shot at home after 2:00 AM in my little washing cupboard under the stairs. I'm at the office in one of our studios that's being renovated. It is 10:00 PM on Wednesday, I believe.
What I said to you is there are three types of listeners that I've uncovered by doing this podcast. There's somebody who's potentially thinking about getting into business at some point. The second person is somebody that's just starting out and that's encountering those initial hurdles and obstacles and trying to gain some sort of inspiration or motivation. Then the third group of people are running a business, they've got teams, and they're encountering those kinds of challenges. Where I wanted to start is before. What was your story before you started your business? What were you doing? Have you always been an entrepreneur?
I think I got into my business because of a talent. I was really good at drawing, and I'd been given this idea at school. I put in for my art GCSE a year early because I was good. Then they were trying to decide what they were going to do with me in the final year and they said, "What about graphic design?" I was like, "What's that? I don't know what that is." I started to learn what it was and I just fell totally in love with it.
Straight after school, I did an ND, HND degree, and then I went to work for a few different agencies and I started to pick up how they were run. I started to learn how to manage people, that type of thing. I went and ran another agency, which I set up with another chap called Dan Clark. Lovely guy. But after a few years, we could start to see that I was becoming really ambitious and he just wanted to work a certain way.
He went away on holiday and when he came back, I said, "Look, I really want to push on. I want to advertise, I want to take on staff, I want to work long hours." There was just a real mismatch there. So we had a chat and I just left him with that business, all the SEO we'd done, everything I'd put into the business, I left him with that. I came away and then I went working from home. I was just working downstairs from my cellar and just started to slowly build up clients. I had clients knocking on the door, coming round, while I was trying to straighten up the house and things like that. I just started to build it from there.
And so at what point did your business transition from being a business in your basement to taking on staff and having an office?
I think the big move was moving into office space. We moved into a place in Heaton Chapel in Stockport and we had moved in with another developer, a chap called Kieran. We started to become really busy. He'd already been doing bits of development work for me, I was doing all the design, and it just motored on. We took on a designer, we took on another developer. We got to the point where I was thinking, "Shit, I'm doing a lot of project management here, I don't want to be doing that."
So we took on a project manager and we just slowly built the team from there. Whenever there was a need, we took it on, and as we got busier, we just grew it. I always had it at the back of my mind that I wanted to have an agency that I could be proud of, the agencies that I read about in the magazines. I had that image in my head that I wanted to develop something that was not only money-making but something that I could be proud of, that had some kind of kudos. I was trying to go for a certain aesthetic with what we were doing with the design, and it just grew and grew from there.
How did you go from being that freelancer in your basement to employing people? What was the difference?
I think the big one for us was when we went from a quarter-million turnover to a half-million turnover. That was a big one. I remember sitting down with the accountants and them saying, "You know, what you've done is pretty impressive." At that point, you start to think there's something of value here. This is not just me trying to develop something that's feeding the need in me to have a certain agency; there's all of a sudden a commercial drive that this has value now. I can build something that will have worth further down the line and you start to think then about longer-term goals, not just the next project. You start to think about the type of people you bring into the business; are they going to be good for the next four or five years? That was the real switch moment for me.
You have the whole thing where you have a client win, and all of a sudden it's a bigger accolade, and then you have that other one and it spins on from that. Then all of a sudden you think, "This is it, we're off. We're off the ground." You have those few bumps of the plane and then all of a sudden you're like, "Right, we're on it." And then all the little thing crop up, little problems.
Talk to me about those problems. And also, at this point, did you have a wife and kids?
Yeah. Well, it was interesting, I was wondering if you were going to mention this because obviously you've been speaking in your podcast about relationships, which was quite touching really. I thought that was overly honest of you. I thought it was really interesting you saying you were unsure whether you wanted to be in a relationship or not and how you felt after it. I've been in a relationship since I was 16. I met my wife Katie when she was 15; we met at school. Having that type of relationship from a young age is quite tough. We have broken off once, I think when I was about 23, 24. I had that kind of quarter-life crisis, thinking, "I've been with this same person for that amount of time."
The grass is greener maybe over there?
Yeah, or just not knowing that I'm going to experience ever being single or meeting other people. So we had a bit of a break, got back together, and then, yeah, I had my first child at 25, Mark. Then we had Mia about 18 months later. It was a conscious decision to try and keep those close together, sort of like if you're in nappies mode, get it out of the way. So when I started the business, we had a little kid running about.
When you're operating as a freelancer, it's fairly risk-free. When you start employing people, the bigger it gets, the harder it falls. You have things coming around like payday and you have greater responsibility. You have to now make money because you have to pay your staff bills even if your clients don't pay you. Things just get a little bit more nervous, I guess, and high pressure.
Massively. I think you've understated that. Typical freelancer, you've got a small amount to feed in terms of operations, sales, and finance. Then as your business gets bigger, there's the whole culture side of it. When you're smaller, you can focus very much on operations and kind of get through your projects. As you build a little team, that mouth to feed is not as big. So there's stress, but it's not the stress that we know as the team gets bigger and you have to really learn to handle that stress.
At the very start, what were the hardest things of going from just yourself to, say, a team of five? Was that fairly straightforward for you?
I think that sort of growth bit is quite easy. From five to ten, then all of a sudden you're starting to get into waters where you know you've got a target that you've got to hit every month. That's the moment where it's coming up to payday and you're thinking, "Where are we going to get this money from?" You're feeling physically sick.
And did you feel that way?
Massively. I'll tell you what we did one day. We had a run into the wages and it was like last minute whether we'd get paid, whether we'd get that money in the bank. We got paid, got the money in the bank, and we paid everyone. Typically, payday sometimes you have a few grumbles, like "I thought I was going to get paid in the morning" and they get paid in the afternoon. They don't realize what you're going through. We'd paid that money out, we'd not been taking money out ourselves. I went to the shop to go and get something to eat for myself and I had no money in the bank. I just paid all the wages and didn't have any change on me or anything. I went to the shop to get something to eat and I couldn't buy any lunch.
Did anybody realize? Did any of your team realize? How many people did you have at that point?
We probably had about 12 at that point.
So you've just paid 12 people and then you realize that you have zero yourself—not enough for lunch. Does anybody in your team realize that?
No.
How do you go home the night before knowing that in the morning people were expecting to be paid and you didn't know how that was going to happen? What's that feeling like? I can give it from my own experiences; we've been there at the very start. But I want to hear it.
You have the sleepless nights where you just can't get to sleep. People don't realize that it is always there. You just zone out when you're talking to family members because you're thinking about next Tuesday. You should be relaxing over the weekend and spending time with family, and you're thinking about Tuesday coming up, "What am I going to do on the Monday? Is there anything I can do Sunday night?" You're thinking what you can do in order to make sure that that money comes in. "That client promised to pay me." You start to just zone out. You're not typically good company. Then you've got the nights running up to it where you're in bed, you can't sleep, you stare at the ceiling thinking, "How am I going to make sure that this money's paid? It's looking a bit iffy here."
And did you ever have to let people you really cared about in the business go because of that? Because you realized that you need to scale back a little bit?
We've had periods in the business where I've held out too long. Stupidly, not wanting to let people go at Christmas time, and held out and personally suffered because of that. Not making a quick enough decision in terms of saying—in the early days, I think one of the pinch points in terms of running the business is that you make loads of mistakes, some are more costly than others. In the early days, we had pretty poor financial control.
Now we've got—and a lot of people who are starting out now will have—zero live data. It all comes in from your bank feed and it's all very, very current. You're getting your profit and loss within a week of your month end. Back then, we were sitting down and having meetings with our accountant every three months. It was really slow getting that information, even slower than that at the start. So you've not got that really relevant information in terms of how you're doing in the business and you're making decisions totally blind. We'd got to a point where we'd grown the business to a certain size and, really looking at where we were in the sales, we shouldn't have been hiring so fast.
We did exactly the same thing, and for the first year we made a loss because we scaled very, very fast and invested all our capital, but we also really had no idea how much money we were really making. I think that's the thing. You see a client is going to pay me 20 grand or whatever. Okay, that means I get 20 grand. When you do the math, you're spending three months executing the work, which including the wages, the lights, the food, the travel, you're actually spending like 14 grand to complete the work. Because it's taken you three months, you've also got tax, VAT, all these other things on top. Then you're like, "Fuck, I actually made nothing because it also took me one month to win the business and go to London and pitch." So we actually only made 100 quid there, really, gross profit. And it's all very deceptive. "The lights are off," as I used to refer to it. You're making decisions in the dark. It's the single most important thing for me in reflection, and for all business owners thinking of hiring people and adding responsibility to their plate, is to make sure you understand the numbers or, even better, you have someone like an accountant or a CFO that can educate you so you as an entrepreneur can just focus on the stuff you're good at. Because I'm shit with numbers.
Yeah, I'm dyslexic so I struggle a lot with things like that. I know what I'm doing obviously, but I can sometimes struggle to take in that information. It's like podcasts I take in well, I absorb that information. Sometimes when I'm reading stuff, I have to read things time and time again; it's really frustrating.
But another piece of advice I'd say to young people managing businesses is if the profit and loss doesn't make sense to you in how the accounts are shown to you, question it. Ask for it to be done in a different way. In terms of how our cost of sales are done in our profit and loss, I always question the accountant. I want it done one way and he wants it done the other. So always feel that you're happy to question it. There's no orthodox way of doing it. There's little hints and tips, but actually challenge it and go through it. As your business gets bigger, there's more transactions, you've got to be even more on it in terms of making sure, "What's this thing we're paying for every month? Why have we got that? Let's get it out of there." That can be quite tough, especially if things are going well and your turnover is high. You can be less scrupulous in terms of going through the pennies.
I said that to someone the other day. We have a consultant we hired and we pay him a nominal fee compared to the revenue we generate. His rebuttal to me when I canceled his contract was, "I know you're doing, say, seven figures a month or whatever. This is nothing compared to the revenue you're making. Why are you canceling this contract?" And I had said in a previous email to him when I canceled his contract that we are a young business, we have 160 people, etc. And he had rebutted me on the 160 people. My point to him was now that we have a greater head count, in fact, I have more responsibility. This whole thing can fall ten times harder. So I should be more concerned about every single penny than I was when there were only five because my responsibility is now greater than ever. So it was a great point that he mentioned my head count because it's actually the reason why I now care more about the pennies.
Going back to one of your points a second ago on relationships, how have those tough times and those hard nights, those sleepless nights, the stress of it all—how has that undoubtedly impacted your relationships with your partner? You've got to take it home with you. As you said, I've spoken to a few entrepreneurs now and there's a consistent theme of them being in the room but being a million miles away. How is that for her to understand?
Well, I'll tell you what's changed a lot is that Katie works in the business now. She's the finance director. Before she worked in the business, she didn't understand where I was coming from, as much as I sat down and explained, even over a glass of wine or if you're away camping. You talk a little bit more, not just arguments. When you really talk, because there are moments when you really talk and moments when you just kind of go through the emotions a little bit as all relationships do, when you really talk, you still can't get across what it's like.
There have been moments now where she's running the finance in the business and it's particularly tough. It's a really, really tough job, especially when she's had no training in it and she's kind of learned on the job. But she now really understands where I'm coming from. I get asked a lot about working with my wife, seeing her every day. My response is, you know, if you look to times of war, talk to family members and they couldn't see their loved ones for a long amount of time. I think it's great to be able to spend that amount of time together, and if you don't get on, you probably shouldn't be together.
I think it helps that I do a very different role. I'm very sales-orientated and ops-orientated, whereas Katie's credit control and finance and that side of things. So it helps that there's a bit of difference there. And also, Katie really still wants to do the mom thing, so she'll go and pick the kids up. Katie will typically start in the morning and then finish around sort of half-past two, three, and go and pick the kids up and then work from home and then work from there.
So you said before she was involved in the business she didn't really understand what it was like. Just to loop back then to try and get more of a fully appreciative answer to that question: what is it like? If you had to summarize in a couple of sentences what it's like being a CEO of a company with staff and teams and uncertainty and all these things, what is it like? For someone that's listening that's only ever watched *The Social Network* movie and seen *Dragon's Den* and has this sort of very naive perception of what being a CEO or entrepreneur is like and thinks it's all glitz, glam, and jet skis—what is it like?
It's what the public sees, so they can see and understand you've got a dream, you've got a talent, you want to create something, you're moving forward to get something that you want to attain. That's all the fluffy stuff, that's the good stuff, it's the powering forward to do it. The dark side is that there's a long, drawn-out pumping out of cortisol that's just constantly running through your body. You slowly learn to manage it. You have moments, certainly at the start of the business, where you're having panic attacks. You know, you're driving the car and just freak out, your hands are stuck around the wheel.
Moving on to mental health a little bit here, but it causes you to suffer in certain ways. Panic attacks—I didn't know what a panic attack was. You don't know what it is when you first experience it and you don't tell anyone about it at the start. You just kind of absorb it. You'll then have certain circumstances. Like my dad suffered with panic attacks and the first time he had a panic attack was when he was in the bath, so every time he gets in the bath, it comes back. I think that people—I went to an event and someone compared it to beauty and barbed wire. So you've got all that kind of glamorous, glitzy stuff and then you've got the thing that you have to be resilient to underneath.
You have to constantly take the knocks, and people don't often talk about the knocks, whether it's a legal battle you're having with a client, whether it's an issue you're having with a staff member, whether you are really beating yourself up over something you've lost or a decision you've made or whatever it is.
There is great uncertainty, right? And I don't mean uncertainty long-term, but I also mean uncertainty when you wake up in the morning. One of the things that I learned was that I can plan my days as much as I want, I can plan my week as much as I want, I can plan the month as much as I want, but I'm going to wake up one day this week and there's going to be some unexpected message which I'll get, and it will start with "Just so you know" or it'll be from one of the team telling me something that's happened, or it'll be an email saying "you know..." Do you have that thing where you can skim read? It's honestly, you don't read it almost, your brain just picks up a pattern or something and you know it's a bad email just from that first bit.
You get a preview, like a preview popup, whether it's a notification or if it's WhatsApp, you can see the start of the sentence or the subject of the email. And I'll know because after three years, you've probably received millions of messages in some form, and I'll know how the bad ones start. I know the little notification preview. I used to get a point where that would pop up and I'd get that feeling in my chest of almost like this nervous anxiousness the minute I see that notification because I'm like, "Oh no, is that another one of those ones where that's happened or..."
And I don't know if you have this thing. Where I'm at now is that the nerves kick in and you get really het up, and then this other thing kicks in.
That's the resilience, right?
That's the resilience where you think, "I've got this, I've got this." You kind of pull yourself back down. Is that something that entrepreneurs and bosses have and they've got that element and that's what they're able to sort of handle it or... I don't know.
No, that's definitely, in my opinion, that's definitely a learned thing. Because the first time those things happen, there's not that thing that kicks in in such a composed way. Being an entrepreneur has made me much, much harder, but also so much more compassionate. It's made me able to be a really nice person, but also it's turned me into this kind of like cold, resilient rock, like a hard piece of coal. I'm able to move to both places. I can be lovely, lovely, lovely when talking to new members of the teams, scootch down next to their desk and just talk to them about whatever and try to be really friendly and welcoming. And then when I get those messages, I'm able to default to my place of cold, hard rock that's been through a lot of shit and knows that this is just another piece of shit to deal with. And there's that old cliché of "more bad news, just put the next step forward." Have your brain open to the next piece of good news that's going to come. You've got to push yourself into that.
Hindsight becomes this wonderful thing you mustn't forget. In a moment, I can remember the first time I thought I was—myself and the business were—fucked. I can remember that very clearly. I can remember how I felt and then I can also remember getting past it. Because I'm here. And then I can remember the second time I thought I was fucked and the business was over and we were done. I can remember that feeling and then I remember getting past it. You do that five times and there's really no news you can break to me now where you're going to be able to convince me that there's anything to worry about. I've been through it all.
I remember people saying to me at one point, "Because our business started on Twitter, when Twitter dies, your business dies." Twitter virtually died amongst my generation in terms of engagement. We're fine. People said the same thing about this channel, and we surpassed that too. So when they say it to me now, I know it's not the case because I know that we get through those tough times with a certain self-belief, resilience, and looking forward, not dwelling.
I said to one of my members of my team about a year ago, "There's two different types of people. There's the one type of person where they're in a room and it's on fire and they'll turn to you and say, 'The room is on fire, right?' And they'll just keep saying, 'The room is on fire.' They'll keep repeating it. And then there's the resilient sort of entrepreneur type that will see the room's on fire, not tell the other person, not mention the fact that there's a fire, and just focus solely on how we get out of this fucking room." And that's the difference. That's how I identify a leader from someone who isn't cut out to be a leader.
I used to say to somebody that used to work for me, "You need to stop mentioning the fire and you need to stop focusing on the fire." He kept coming back to me every month and saying, "Steve, I'm not looking at the fire. I'm not focusing on the fire. I'm just focusing on how we get out."
But for all these things—all the hardships, all the pain and uncertainty, the anxiety and the panic attacks—why then? Why be an entrepreneur? Because it doesn't sound from what you've said like it's worth it. Why not live a comfortable, super-comfortable life, give that problem, the anxiety, the stress, to another guy or girl? Why be the entrepreneur?
Oh God, it's tough, that. Because I'm—it'd be easier? Yeah. And you must have asked yourself that question. I've asked myself that question a few times and you have those moments when you're down and you think, "This would be easier if I just went and got a creative director role somewhere" or whatever it was. But I think it's creating something. It just feels like more of a—it's a more rounded challenge. If I go and be the best creative director I can be or the best designer I can be versus doing it all off my own back and creating something and having something, some kind of legacy, whether my kids come in and manage the business or whether we sell it and do amazingly well or whatever happens with the business, it just feels like a more visceral project. Maybe it's because of the risk. Maybe that's the whole entrepreneur thing.
Do you think you're a bit addicted to it? A little bit addicted to the fluctuation, to how much it makes you feel?
I'm the same as you and I think a lot of people are like that. I seem to kick into an extra gear when my back's to the wall. I seem to perform better when I'm under a certain amount of stress. Am I addicted to it? Perversely, maybe. It's like pitching. I absolutely hate pitching. But I was speaking to another agency owner about this, and you get addicted to the pitch and winning. But from a business perspective, it just doesn't make any sense at all. If you can run your agency without pitching, you would be so much more profitable. But it's part and parcel of agency life and growing and winning your customers. Maybe, yeah, if I'm speaking honestly, maybe I'm a little bit addicted to the feeling.
Because I think I'm a little bit addicted to the—I feel like it's a developed addiction where the days that I feel most fulfilled are the days that at the end of a tough day, when things have been resolved and I've gone home and got into bed, I'm just relaxing. I feel like I'm almost addicted to the relaxation after solving some tough problems. In a way, the days where everything goes swimmingly and I get in bed are quite boring to me now. It's kind of perverse.
What I wanted to get to then is: you're now running this business, there's 10 people there, the tough times, the being sick, physically sick. And when people hear you say that, they think, "Okay, that's an expression," but it's actually feeling genuinely sick. The blood has gone from your face; you are physically stopping yourself from being sick in the toilet. That is how tough things get. How many times did that happen?
It's happened on three occasions. Two of those occasions were when it was close to the bone in terms of payday. And when the business had failed once before—I started business in 2008, it was the start of the recession. It wasn't a good time to be starting a business, really. So yeah, once was when I thought, "Oh shit, this is it, we're not going to be able to pay wages." The other time was when the business had gone down the pan a little bit and I had to let some people go.
And the other time was when I read through some information on something that had happened in the business very recently when some staff had left and it was all very underhand. I remember reading through some messages that weren't meant for me and it was all behind my back. A person who was with me said, "You are right, you are totally white. The blood is just totally drained from your face." And I went to the toilet and I was sick.
So I want to get into those two significant life events that you referenced at the start of this podcast. The first one, from what I understand, is the terrorist attack.
That was the second one. It was the more frightening one, but it came after.
Okay. So touching then on that thing you just mentioned about being sick because you discovered messages. Tell me that story. From what I understand, a significant proportion of your team and your senior leadership team left abruptly and out of the blue and kind of left you in the lurch unannounced and took some of your key contacts with them.
What happened was at the end of March, we'd just paid wages, we'd just paid bonuses, things were going well in the business. It was a Friday, I just finished a game of pool, talking with two of the other managers. One of them said, "The other manager's coming in, just wants to have a quick chat with you." So I said, "Okay, no problem. I've got friends round for tea tonight, so I can hang on but I can't wait too long." We went into the meeting room and the other two managers walked in behind the other one and said, "We actually all want to talk to you."
One of those people I'd known for 15 years, worked for me for five. The other two had worked for me for around the same time. And they sat down and said, "We're leaving. We're taking three staff and we're setting up a competing agency." I just had this out-of-body experience where I was thinking, "This is actually happening to me now. What they have just said is real, this is really happening, it's happening now. This could destroy me, could totally change my life." It went from "this is a joke" to "this is real." I remember just being stuck there and frozen and then all of a sudden thinking, "Right, I need to start asking some relevant questions here. I need to try and work out what it is that I can ask to get some kind of advantage out of it."
And in that moment, how do you feel? How do you react? Because I imagine you felt an array of things.
Shock, fear, and then anger. They got to a point where they turned and said, you know, I'd ask some questions, "Do clients know? Have you spoken to other staff about this?" They said "No, we know our legal obligations." So I'm thinking, "All right, they've spoken to a solicitor already, they're really ahead of the game on this than me." And they said, "You know, we want this to be amicable." And I was like, "Amicable? What do you mean amicable? How can this be amicable? You're giving me no notice, you're taking three of my staff, you've set up a competing agency." I remember feeling my voice getting louder and louder and louder.
I had this thing where I thought, "I need to get out of the room because if I stay, I'm going to do something stupid." I started to think, "They could be recording this. I am—they've all of a sudden had time to think about this and I'm just getting told this now." So your brain's trying to catch up and think, "Right, just get out of the room, pull yourself together and then look at what you're going to do." So I went out of the room, I was pacing up and down, just fuming, thinking, "What do I do? What's my next move?" So I just went back in and said, "Look, I can't speak to you now. I am going to totally lose it. I'm worried about what I'm going to do. I'm fuming."
I spoke to Jason, who's my cousin who works for us as well, he's an account manager. I told him what had happened because I'd slammed the door when I walked out. And he was just in shock, he's like, "What?" So I said, "Yeah, this has happened." I said, "Make sure you get the keys and the laptops. I'm just going to go home and pull myself together and then I'll speak to you." I went home, and again, being fully honest, I was really upset. I was in tears. I spoke to Katie about it and she just couldn't compute it.
What was her reaction?
Just shock. Just like I'd gone home and told her that I'd got some kind of disease. It was just total shock. She just didn't know, she just could just compute—she's like, "No, why? No, they wouldn't. Why would they do that? They wouldn't do that to you." One of them I'd known for 15 years.
Has that made you not trust people in the same way?
It's like being hurt in love. What do you do, just all of a sudden have a cold heart and never trust anybody again? I think I'm a bit more cautious about how much I tell people about the business and how much maybe I give. But in terms of trusting people and throwing myself into it, I've got to do that. Running an agency is a person-led business. You've got to have really close relationships with people. I know they all say you shouldn't have friends in business and all the rest of it, but you spend a lot of time together, especially agency life when you're doing more hours than you should be doing.
I thought there was love there. I thought there was a good friendship. We'd gone to events together, gone to festivals, spent a lot of time together out of work and things like that. Always done everything I possibly could, whether it was people being paid early or helping stuff out in the personal life. One of them got injured and I went and picked him up every single day while he had a bad leg from quite far out. You just try and do everything you can. There was profit share put forward and you talk about their career. You give and do as much as you possibly can. But I think the truth is that however much you try and do, they still see you as a boss. However much you try and change that, there's either that realization that you're being stupid, you are a boss and you've got to live up to that, or you try and change that. I think I was trying to change that. I didn't want to be—I could see elements of the fact that I was boss-like, and I wanted to kind of undo it.
Going back to that day then. You go home, you tell your wife what's happened. You've had your key people leave and they've taken some of the other team with them. What happened then after from that point?
It was even more—just to let you know how sort of complicated it was and how ingrained we were with each other outside of work. One of the managers, my future best man, was round at my house. I was going to meet him and his wife and to have a drink that evening, have a bite to eat. I got in and I thought, "Right, well I won't drop this on them," but I did. They couldn't understand it, couldn't believe it.
Then the big shock was on the—I was upset. I had a couple of people come round on the Saturday and try and help me out and understand what was going on. I had a competitor friend of mine, Neely, come round and my accountant come round on the Saturday. They'd never been to my house before, so it was a big deal. All of a sudden you've got these people you'd always seen as just your business buddies to a certain degree, all of a sudden they're round at your house. That's quite a big message.
Then on the Sunday, we went to the studio and started to look for evidence of wrongdoing. I'd spoken to my solicitor and he was kind of saying, "Look for X, Y, and Z and these are the things you can look at." The first smoking gun was that we'd seen an intellectual property release form which should have been signed by me, and I wasn't aware of it, for one of our clients. That was the first thing.
What does that mean for anybody that doesn't know?
When we create something or design something for a customer, we own the IP to it. It resides with us and we have to release that to a customer. Customers sometimes ask for it, but we very rarely release it. Typically we're a pretty good agency, we say once it's paid for in full we release it, but some customers will also ask for it. It's quite unusual though. So to see it signed on the date that they left by one of the people that left was really worrying.
We then found another one for another brand, another client. Then we got onto one of the computers and we'd seen that there was a WeTransfer thank-you message saying "Thank you for transferring your files from here to this new email address." This new email address was this new agency that they'd set up. I was kind of expected it but was just feeling lower and lower. Then we got onto one of the machines and one of the managers had left a huge amount of evidence on there in terms of messages. When we started to read through that, that's when the shock of how long it had been planned over, what they'd been doing, what they'd been saying.
How long had it been?
Three months. It'd been planned over three months. So going through the details of that was just the betrayal. It was tough to read and I knew I needed to read through it to get the evidence together to protect the business.
And had they said things about you personally? Things that I imagine weren't very nice.
Yeah, it was kind of laughing and joking about how people I knew in Manchester and other business owners would find out about it and it was kind of laughing around what they thought would be my demise. It was laughing around the fact that how the other staff would feel.
Those aren't friends, are they? These aren't people that are friends. If someone's laughing at your demise, that's somebody that doesn't like you. They don't want the best for you. How does it get to the point where someone that's been with you for five years or known you for 15 years is laughing at your demise? I don't understand that. That's so tough because I've got people here who I've known for five years and those people are like my brothers. So the thought of what would have to have happened for them to get to a point where they laughed at me?
I think from what I can see on the messages, it's gone from "we're going to do this" to "we'll approach another staff member," "we'll spend a bit of time working on our strategy," "we'll start working on our branding, our logo," "we've approached these staff, this person's on board, that person's on board," "we'll work on the website." So in Ahoy time, they're working on their new agency website and there was 27 pieces of evidence, including six contracts for the six full-time staff. So reading through that, it's almost like you feel stupid because I thought there was a genuine relationship there and it was just all facade. So you feel really, really dumb.
How could you have misread that? In hindsight, what have you learned about the warning signs?
It's a really, really good question, and this is something that's kind of haunted me a little bit in terms of were there little clues. I remember noticing that one of the managers was just a little bit off and I'd said to him, "You all right? Is everything okay? Do you want to have a chat?" Just kind of thinking he's having a bit of a bad time in his own life, just a bit worried or he was worried about something at work and he would just always dismiss it. The staff were always really open to coming and having a chat with me and I've had staff that have been through really tough personal health issues and things like that, so I always had an open door. I always said that you can talk to me any minute, no matter how busy I am, pull me aside. And for him to just kind of dismiss it a little bit. In retrospect now, I feel there was a sign there.
But your perception of the situation was so far from what was actually going on. As a CEO, I'm trying to figure out how that's the case.
It was well-choreographed. They had this thing of working with a black screen with black text if they were doing anything. I remember—again in retrospect—I think I nearly—I remember them switching something off. But you have staff like that, they might have been looking at something they shouldn't have been looking at, social media or whatever. So there were little elements of that. But they would work a way that if I was coming in and they were in the meeting room talking about their new venture, one of the other ones would guide me away and distract me and talk to me about something else. "Mark's supposed to be coming at such and such a time, take him over to the pool table and distract him because we're in there talking about such and such a thing." So at that level, you do feel stupid. You start to think other people looking in on this are going to think, "Nah, something was going on there. How did he miss that?" But all the other staff were in total shock; nobody knew anything.
I've always been this way—my mom taught me this because my mom started probably 18 or 20 businesses and all of them have gone bust one by one. If you ask my mom why the business went bust, she'll either blame it on the government or she'll blame it on either thieves or NatWest because eight of her properties got repossessed. She taught me, inadvertently she taught me, to just blame everything on myself. We call it an internal locus of control, always trying to look at what I did that could have been better. That's honestly what I attribute to being able to progress and learn from situations. When you look back, what are the things you think, "I wish I'd done that differently"? What areas do you think "I should take the blame for that"?
I think I'm quick to take the blame. I spoke to Matthew, one of my designers, the first designer that I took on who still works for me. I was saying to him, "I think I'm to blame for some of these things." I was too open about what we were doing with the business, where we were going, what I was trying to do, and maybe just showed them too much and gave them a little bit too much control. You always speak to your mentors and they say you need to look to build a business that will run without you being there. You always get pushed that way. I was doing that and thinking, "I'll just let go, let go too much." I was there and I was running things and typically if something happens, shit hits the fan, I'll go in and take the blame for it. If something good's happened or whatever, then you'll try and not take the accolade for it, you'll let one of the other guys do it. Matthew had said to me, "Look, you've been really good to these people. You can't take the blame for what's gone on; they've just took advantage." So, I think I was maybe too open, especially with the finance of the business. We did about 90k turnover in December, which was bouncing about towards getting up to a million turnover, which is where we wanted to be. I was always open and transparent and I think there's a layer there that you shouldn't go past. I've dropped that a little bit with my team now; I don't discuss too much of what's discussed with the accountants with the senior team. I'll give them enough information for them to push on and do what they need to do for the business, but not the granular detail. I was always warned about that from my mom and dad: "You're too open, you're telling them too much."
For the interest of fairness, I'd love those individuals to be here because they'll I'm sure as hell they'll have a different perspective on the situation. They spoke to *Prolific North*, didn't they? Did you read what they said? Am I okay to read it? They said, "We were informed at the end of January of Mark's intentions to put the company into administration, followed by a two-month absence of both Ahoy directors." (Referring to yourself and another person). "We decided to be proactive and set up this new agency so we could fully utilize our skills and the things we'd learned. We were conscious of our own reputations, particularly with this not being the first time yourself had entered a company into the position of administration." What's your response to that?
Just to be clear on this, I was given a call the night before that went live and they said they were going to run this story. I said, "Please don't run the story. We've been through enough. Don't run the story; it's going to kill us." And I was told *Prolific North* have always been good, but they said, "Look, we've got to run it." So we checked what I was going to write with my solicitor and then we got that response and I was fuming. We "disappeared for two months"—we had work going on at home so I wasn't in as much as I would normally be.
Talk to me about that, because from my own perspective, my business is at a point where I'm required to be all over. This month alone I've got 16 speaking appointments in different places. So with traveling, all things considered, I'm here five days this month. So one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is to understand if absence and not being—because you've got these two things that are at play. You've got something went on that you didn't see. The question becomes why didn't you see it? You say that you were out. I want to make sure from a personal standpoint that I'm not out too much that something similar could take place where I lose touch.
One of the key things that I wanted to do with running the business was to make sure that I didn't take drastic sacrifices that I would really deeply regret as I got older. So, trying to spend a bit more time with family. My big thing was that I didn't really want to take any other holidays, but in August when things went a little bit quiet with decision-makers in the business, my dream was to take four weeks off and we'd do camping with the family. I did that four years, every August, and it was great because each time I went away, there were mistakes that were made but then I would come back and we'd talk them through with the team. So there were things that we missed out on while I was away that could have took the business forward, but in general, we'd go away, I'd spend time with family, I wouldn't regret that as I got older.
Katie had asked me God knows how many times, must be over 12 years, "We've had the same kitchen in the house, can we have a new kitchen? Can we have a new kitchen?" Next year, next year. I always put it off. We'd started to talk about the fact that we'd do it. I said we'll do it as long as it's on a low budget and I don't want it to affect us. So we'll sell one of the cars, we'll do up the kitchen. Katie's brother was doing it on the cheap, I had a mate who could supply the granite. We did it on the cheap and I was spending a bit more time doing that.
But to say I wasn't in the business—I mean, we did *Prolific North Live*, I put the stand up myself and stood on there for two days. We did *Restaurant and Bar Show* and again, helped set that up. I was there and I was on emails and I was in the business. So to say I disappeared is—there's—I had a chance to respond to *Prolific North* and I looked at that and I thought I'm not getting into that because you've got to go back and forth and back and forth. It was almost besides the point a little bit.
You being absent isn't necessarily a good enough reason for a team—I can see why it happened, but it doesn't really justify their actions. But from my perspective, as a CEO you're just conditioned for the buck to stop with you. I take both in equal measure. I wondered if upon hindsight you regret not being there more through that period if that's the first thing they cited in this response. It makes me think it was one of the key reasons why they were able to gather.
To be fair to them, you could say that was part of it, but it doesn't add up. It was three months planning. So it doesn't even add up. They started this in start of January.
What do you think it is then? Do you think it's bad people?
No, I don't think they're bad people. I think they've just made a really bad decision with what they were doing. I just think they've made a really rash decision. I think they've got caught up in "we could start our own business." It's almost like kids in a sweet shop and the sweet shop owner's gone out and you know you shouldn't be putting sweets in your pocket, but you think, "Right, okay, we'll do this. Right, we'll take a couple of staff because we're recruiting people, so we'll get some of the staff and take them. Right, well we won't take one, we'll take two, we'll take three." Before you know it, you're trying to build up your stepping stone and you've kind of just gone over but you've kind of lost yourself.
Do you think if they had a closer bond to you, or the company, or the vision, or why they were there, they would have done that? Do you think they were engaged with the company and with you?
Yeah, a really strong relationship. Very strong relationship. I don't think that was the issue. I think it was they've had ambition about what they want to do and it's just overridden everything else.
The thing I'm trying to understand as well is how they managed to gain that consensus to do that. Because I'm thinking about it from my own perspective. I'm like, what would have to have happened for any six people here to get to a point where they come to me one day and they say, "Steve, by the way, all six of us are leaving, starting a new business." I think the first thing would be I wouldn't have been here for a while. I would go to New York and they'd see me on jet skis in the harbor flying around and they think, "Well, we're working here while he's off on jet skis." Second thing is they get really disillusioned about why are we here, they don't really like being here. The third thing is maybe you've shared so much and the affinity to the company and what we're doing here is quite weak, so they think, "You know what, we can actually do this ourselves and make something better than what we were recruited to create."
That's it. From what I can see, they've thought, "We can do this. We've learned now, we can do this and we can maybe do it in a different way."
What about their regard for you though as a person? Do you think they just didn't care about your position? Were they remorseful at all?
Messages aside, because they weren't meant for my eyes—I think it was a bit of lad culture bravado in the messages. So on first sight of that, you take that, it hurts, really hurts. But then you take a step back and go, "Look, it was a frame of mind, you've got to take a bit of context with it." It's the excitement of we're setting this up and we're going to do things differently. So I don't hold that against them in any way. I think that kind of het up—and I think there was respect for me. I would think that they'll probably have moments when they're not around each other where they'll look at themselves in a mirror and they'll have a moment where they think, "Pretty bad what we did to him there. We left him high and dry, that could have been the end of Ahoy, that could have been the end of his career." We could have done that differently.
And was it the end of your career?
No, I'm still here.
So talk to me about that transition out of that then. That happens to you, you go through that. You then put the company into administration to recover the assets essentially so you can keep the brand.
So we had legal fees going up, really high. We had a really good legal team. The reason we defended our position was because there was such an abundance of evidence. We wanted to try and protect them taking clients or—for instance, one of the pieces of evidence that come forward is they'd put a credentials pack together for this new brand they'd created and they'd used assets from Ahoy. So they'd used their own pictures and in this credentials pack who we've worked with, it was all the logos that we'd used. It was to a customer that had inquired to Ahoy, so it looked like they'd scooped an inquiry away from Ahoy.
Without going into all those details, because it's not really quite painting the picture and I'm trying to not go into that—you look at that and think, "Right, okay, how far is this going to go?" I've got to protect it some way. For a start, the IP, the intellectual property of what they've created in Ahoy time, actually belongs to me, so they're using something that belongs to Ahoy. So that was something that we did protect and I had to change their brand, which will have been a massive inconvenience for them.
So talk to me about that process out of that then.
We then went through the evidence. That was just tough, going through evidence until 5:00 in the morning and pulling stuff together for the solicitors and then going to a meeting in Liverpool or whatever is just a massive, massive drain. Lots of backwards and forwards with the solicitors, knowing that this is going to be in the High Court in Manchester. We'd got a barrister booked and everything was set, a date was set, and then their solicitor came back and said, "We don't want to move forward, we need more time."
So at that juncture, we said, "Right, we're going to give you more time but we want an affidavit," so it's like a sworn oath of what had happened. So they signed this oath in order for us to give them more time and they admitted the clients they'd met, files they'd taken, basically a lot of the things they'd done. And at that time, we've got clients that are saying, "We don't want to be involved in this tiff. we can't place the work with you, we've not got the confidence." We worked out we lost about 160, 170 grand's worth of work. So I've got costs going up, revenue's going down.
We had tax repayments that we were paying through a voluntary agreement. So I'm paying off tax every month which we'd been paying. I've got costs going up, I've got income going down, and I've not got a crystal ball, don't know which way this is going to go. So I sat down, spoke to someone I know who's advising me and he just said, "You might have to look at a possible administration."
So you do the administration.
Then the story came out in *Prolific North* and just couldn't believe it. I was just kind of bracing myself for it. The next day I was then going to London because my daughter had an acting audition down there. My phone just wouldn't stop going. I was on the train to London, you can never get reception. It was just—I remember just sweating profusely, just sweating and trying to not show that I was stressed to my daughter Mia.
What was the response like when the agency world found out that had happened?
It was supportive. I'd had a lot of people get in touch and say keep going, don't give up. And I think there was a lot of bad-mouthing them to a certain degree, but it was nice to get the messages to say, you know, "You'll get through this, keep going," that type of thing. So it was moving really, because some of these agency owners I'd never spoken to, some I had really good relationships I'd met at different networking events and things like that. So that was really nice to get those messages. It was nice.
And then you end up restarting Ahoy, you're running it again, you're serving clients again.
Yeah. So we had to rehire managers, get on really well with those people now. It's really positive. It's a smaller team, so it's a little bit more manageable, not a big mouth to feed, less stress. We have our existing clients—so they got a couple of clients—and we've got other clients that we're still working with. We've won new pitches and new clients and it's positive. We moved into a new office. I'm not trying to say everything's sunshine and rainbows, you know, it still hurts what happened and I have moments where I found out one of them was having a baby and I thought it would have been nice to wish him well and I kind of really, deep down, hoped that I could probably speak to them at some point in the future. It's just a bit raw at the minute.
Do you think you're going to get to a point where you can forgive them and move on? Someone once said to me, and I think I've said this in my podcast, it always stayed with me the day that someone said it: "Forgiveness is letting a prisoner go and as they run off into the distance, realizing that you were the prisoner the whole time."
God, yeah. What's not healthy is just having that anger, and as time moves on, that gets easier. You know, having those moments where you lay in bed thinking, "How can those people do that to me?" I've had loads of people say, "How did you get out of that room? How did you get out of that room without fighting or smashing something or whatever?" I think you're right, I think you've got to forgive, but they might feel, "Well, what's there to forgive? We went and set up our own agency and we took a few of your staff." That's fine, but it's not for them, is it? That's what forgiveness is. I've learned forgiveness is all about you; it's for you. And for your daughter and it's for family, it's for your sanity and your mind and you just gotta—people do you wrong, that's guaranteed. Your reaction to those situations isn't, and you can—that's the thing you have power over now is, you know, you can't change the past, but you can certainly make your future much more pleasant by just letting it go. And I think you'll find total peace in that. The only reason you wouldn't have peace now is because you're still holding it a little bit or there is resentment. And that's also rising above them, you know? That's a classy thing to do in my mind.
I've tried to. But you're only human. I know that to let it go will be a lot easier and I'll be able to move on and I've tried to do that and I think I have done that. It's better, you know, we've said in the agency we just won't talk about it, you know, I'll try not to look at what they're doing on social media. Again, just being totally honest, you do keep an eye on what they're doing. It's like an ex, like flicking through her, "Oh, they've got that job" or whatever. But I think for me, what happened with the terrorist attack thing, it really helped to bring home just perspective.
Talk to me about the terrorist attack then. What happened there?
Yeah, this is a bit more difficult to talk about. So I got news of what had happened in *Prolific North*, the story breaking and then I had seen their response, which I was really gutted about. Decided not to do a response and call them out on a few things, I just thought I'd just leave it. Got into London, we went and had a night out, and then on the Saturday we went to Mia's audition. Then in the evening, we were just looking for a pub because the Champions League final was on. I had said, "Oh, this pub, there's a bit of a beer garden at the back sort of, it's quite closed, the kids can kind of mill about there if they don't want to sit upstairs and watch the football." We went and watched the footy. Footy finished and we were just about to leave and they had made a mistake with our nachos. Nachos saved our life. So they said, "I'll get you another round of drinks just as an apology." I was like, "No, no, don't be daft, it's fine. These things happen." They were like, "No, no, please let me get you another round of drinks." "Yeah, okay, no worries, get us another round of drinks."
We had another round of drinks and then I stood up to put my jacket on and I looked out into the beer garden and there was a lady lay on the floor with about six people around her just trying to resuscitate her. I think she must have choked or had a heart attack, something like that. Turns out that was the Australian lady that had had her throat slit and died. And then again, unbeknown, there was a lady that had been stabbed in the neck downstairs in the pub.
We went downstairs and onto underneath the bridge where the attack happened and it was just chaos. There were people screaming, shouting. The bouncer was telling us like, "You're either in or you're out. Get out of here." Didn't know what to do. The family that we were with, there was Gordon, Leslie, and their two daughters, they went up onto the bridge and we turned left towards Borough Market. Gordon phoned me, said, "There's just carnage on the bridge, it's people dead, people screaming, there's blood everywhere. You need to—there's a terrorist attack going on, you need to get home."
So I was saying, "Well, what are you going to do? You're going to carry on across the bridge, you're going to come back?" He says, "No, I'll get to the hotel." So I said, "Right, well you just get to safety, we'll get to safety and I'll phone you when we're there." So we carried on past—so the pub we were in, the terrorists crashed into the Borough Bank or whatever it was. We were in the pub behind it and they had run around the back of the cathedral towards Borough Market. Unbeknown to us, we were walking or running behind them.
We got into the main bit where the market is and we could see a lot going on. So we were trying to see if we could get in anywhere just to get off the street. Just had that kind of sense of "doesn't feel safe," you know? "How many people are there? How many people are on the street?" We didn't know. Couldn't get in any of the doors, everyone just nobody let you in any of the restaurants because everyone was scared and locked inside. Maybe it's because I've got a beard, looked like a terrorist attacker.
So to cut the story short, we got into this side entrance, got into the restaurant, stayed there and just sat there and there was just this fear of "do we stay here or are we sitting ducks? Could a gun be shot through the window? Could an explosion happen?" And then before we went into the restaurant, the police had turned up and these three policemen got out with machine guns, rifles, whatever, automatic weapons. And then I knew it was bad. Then we hid in the restaurant. You're just there checking your phone. I'd never seen my daughter or wife so scared. It was just—I can vividly remember it now just sort of thinking back. And everyone was really scared, huddled at the back. And then you just heard shots outside, police running past.
Then eventually the police came in and they're screaming and shouting, you know, "Hands on heads" and everything. That's the tactic that they use. Then we went out again at the back around the back of the cathedral. We couldn't go right towards our hotel; we found our hotel was being used as a makeshift hospital. Then we had to go left over the bridge and again, seeing everything that had happened, was worried about what my daughter would see. Just scared. And then we got to the other side of the bridge and we'd seen everything that had happened and then it was just this fear of "we're on the street still."
That whole incident, what lasting impact has that had on you? Because I know Dom, co-founder of Social Chain, he was in Paris on the first night when the attacks happened outside the football stadium and then in all the coffee shops. He again was stranded out on the streets. He's changed—it's changed him in many ways I think. He's also got a fear of certain situations to a degree.
My son didn't go to London because of what had happened in the Manchester attack. He was also scared because we'd been to Old Trafford when the fake bomb scare happened and that was—we nearly got crushed and it was bad. So he's in his mind, he just didn't want to go with me. We were like, "Oh it'll be fine, be absolutely fine." There's just certain situations where—like the Christmas markets open in Manchester, the thing I think straight away is, "You know, what if there's an attack there?" It's just on your mind. It's just always on your mind. You just see situations differently and there might be something that flags up. You might see a certain type of top that someone was wearing that you remember when they were there, or a certain noise, it's just always there at the back of your mind.
The toughest thing is dealing with the serendipity of it. It freaks you out. What if he'd not forgotten those nachos? How would I have dealt with being on the street with three men with knives wrapped around their... who—what could I have done? Would I have just took the blows and got my wife and daughter to run away? Gordon got really upset at one point because he was thinking if he had to jump off the bridge—again if the nachos—he would have been on the bridge as the van was coming down the bridge. If he'd had to jump over into the water, could he have treaded water with—he was swimming in a pool and it just he just got really upset, just this cycle of thought had gone through his head: "What if?" And he just couldn't get out of the loop. Which would he have saved, his wife or which daughter, or how would he have been able to do that? It just really freaks you out.
It's one of those experiences I imagine you can only really appreciate if you were there as well and you go through it. So to conclude then. It's hard to—to be honest, Steve, it's easy to tell you the facts of what happened. That one is a bit more difficult to tell you how it felt. And for anyone to resonate with how it felt, I imagine. You don't want me getting upset on your podcast.
No, it's okay, it's really—it's okay. So to conclude then, what would you say to 18-year-old Mark? What advice would you give him? Looking back on the things that have happened to you—this incident where there was immense betrayal and you were stabbed in the back, and the stresses of running a business and all these wonderful things which you only learn from doing, and then you've got this incident in London which puts things into perspective—what would you say to 19, 18-year-old Mark to prepare him for the life that was ahead of him?
Listen to the people around you that are saying you're saying too much. Be a little bit more guarded about the information. I think I would say to him be genuine, and be genuine, don't be scared of giving. Be open and honest, but not at your detriment. I think it's difficult because it's hard to look at what decisions I could have made. There are these little details of what I could have made differently, but I wouldn't change how I've been with those staff members and with my existing staff members. I think I would say continue to be that way, but when things are going well, when you're flying, be prepared that things can come from all different angles and you've just got to deal with it. You've just got to deal with it.
And had you known at the very start before you started Ahoy that that was going to happen, would you have started it?
I think so.
So if I told you it was going to happen again, would you carry on?
There's the danger that it could. I think it's always at the back of your mind. I think yeah, I would, absolutely. I absolutely love what I do. I love design, I love photography. Running an agency and being in control of what you do and the clients you have and the staff you bring on and bringing people together and all that kind of thing, it is the best feeling in the world. But you will continually have the stress. That can be alleviated with things like investment and things like that to a certain degree, but you still got that stress.
And so what's the big dream then for you? What's the end goal for Mark?
I think long, long term, I'd like to—I love France, I'd like to retire in France at some point. I'd like to go into teaching at some point, whether that's mentoring or more one-on-one at a lower level, maybe teaching within design. With the agency, our dream is that we want to be known as a branding agency for working with challenger brands. So taking brands that are unheard of or are a certain peg down and just allowing them to punch way above their weight. That's still the key for us. We want to be known for—I kind of like that feeling when you look at the site and go, "Oh, I know a few of those brands. Oh, that makes sense now, all those little brands that I like, all those different things I like, it's all from this one particular agency." Just for that, I just want to make sure we've got respect from the clients that we do work with, that it's commercial, it works for them, it makes a big impact on their business. And also having kudos and respect from peers, so the other agencies look at us and go, "You know what, wow, they're doing really, really good stuff."
And on a personal level, what is your happiness? Are you happy now?
Yeah, well I was saying this to someone the other day. I'm working a lot harder, I'm working longer hours and doing more things and like you were saying as well, sort of managing my time. I'm having to sort of really be decisive about the things I do and don't do. But I do feel a lot happier at the moment. I don't know what it is. I think maybe I'm a little bit closer—maybe because it's a little bit smaller. I feel like I've got my agency back. That's what it feels like. I feel I've got my agency back. Some of the kind of "laddy culture" which was there has gone, which is quite nice. It's kind of like a bit of a clean slate, bit more measured. I feel I've got the agency back, it feels a bit more small and manageable. It's been great to see some of the other members of the team that were more junior when they started have a better bond with them and see them and give them the ability to have a bit more impact on the business. That's been absolutely amazing. Seeing them move into a new office which, in all honesty, maybe that's something I should have done earlier. Maybe the team talked about moving to Manchester and that's what they did when they set up their other agency. Maybe that's something I could kick myself for; maybe I should have done that sooner. So getting our team into Manchester and seeing how happy they've been, that's been really, really rewarding.
Amazing. So that was a very long interview and it's been a long journey. But I think it's given a very honest account of a situation that's happened, and I thank you for being so open and honest. I'm very excited for to be able to share this with people and from my perspective, and from what I've heard from the grapevine as being an agency owner in Manchester, one of the things I've always heard people say is how good the work is you do. People will talk about your story because people will gossip and they'll say good things and bad things or there'll be speculation, but something that's never come under speculation is how good your work is. It's always been held in such a high account—almost, from the conversations I've had, and I'm not involved in design, but as the standard. So that's something that irrespective of betrayal or bad times, no one can really take from you. And that's the foundation of you being able to then in my opinion go on and build something great again because no matter how you look at it, it kind of started with you and so no one can take that. So I wanted to thank you for coming on. How's it been?
I'm worried I've been too honest, but I think that's the whole point of it. Yeah, I just can't thank you enough. I think I appreciate your position and how busy you are and what you're doing and you're all over the world, not just all over Manchester. It's been really good actually. I think, do you know what I'm really happy about? That you've challenged me on it. You've actually read out that response in *Prolific North*, which you didn't tell me about, you bugger. But I'm glad you've done that because it gives them a fair bite at it as well. It feels alright, they're not in the room to be able to talk about it, but it gives—you tried to see it from their side as well, which I think is important. I really do. So yeah, just to add, yeah, can't thank you enough. Really good. It'll be a bit weird listening to myself on the podcast when I'm driving in my van now, but yeah, it's great and I'm really looking forward to the other podcasts. I know you've been saying you're going to do one about Gymshark and all that kind of thing. So yeah, can't wait. And thanks for me being the first one!
Thanks for coming on Mark, and I really, really appreciate it. Thank you. Cheers.
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