In this weeks archival episode of Push to be More Host Matt Edmundson talks to Ian Finch CEO of Mando Agency. Ian shares his journey from the early days of scraping by to leading a successful digital agency that partners with big names like JCB and British Red Cross. We dive into the ups and downs of running a business, the importance of just showing up and how to push through challenges with resilience and determination. Ian's story is packed with insights about creating a sustainable future for your company and his personal mission to be better today than he was yesterday.

Key Takeaways :

1. Resilience and Adaptability in Business: Ian Finch emphasized the importance of resilience and adaptability in business. He shared his experiences of navigating through significant challenges like the dot-com bubble burst and the 9/11 aftermath, highlighting how his agency had to pivot and find new markets to survive. This resilience and ability to adapt to changing circumstances were crucial to Mando Agency's long-term success.
2. The Value of Strategic Partnerships: A significant turning point for Mando Agency was the decision to partner with best-of-breed technology providers. This shift allowed them to work with larger clients and deliver more comprehensive solutions. The partnerships with technology providers, such as diagnostic engines for e-learning systems, helped Mando scale and attract clients like United Utilities, Vodafone, and Bentley, demonstrating the power of strategic collaborations.
3. Importance of Self-Care and Mindfulness for Leaders: Ian Finch discussed his personal journey towards better self-care and mindfulness. He shared how creating space to think, checking in emotionally and spiritually, and engaging in physical activities like yoga and hiking have been crucial for his well-being. This holistic approach to self-care has not only improved his personal life but also enhanced his professional effectiveness, enabling him to add more value to his business.

If this episode of Push to be More piqued your interest make to subscribe and keep up to date with everything we do here on the Push to be More Podcast.

Push Archive : Ian Finch | Become a Resilient Leader

Sadaf Beynon: Hey, everyone. While we're busy recording some fresh new episodes for the Push To Be More podcast, I wanted to bring back an incredible conversation Matt Edmundson had with Ian Finch, CEO of Mando Agency. Ian shares his journey from the early days of scraping by to leading a successful digital agency that partners with big names like JCB and British Red Cross.

We dive into the ups and downs of running a business, the importance of just showing up, and And How To Push Through Challenges With Resilience And Determination. Ian's story is packed with insights about creating a sustainable future for your company and his personal mission to be better today than he was yesterday.

Matt Edmundson: Welcome to Push To Be More, with me your host Matt Edmundson. A show that talks about the stuff that makes life work. And to help me do just that, right here at the launch, I thought of no one better than the right Reverend Ian Finch to get on the podcast with me. My good friend Ian from Mando.

About how to create a sustainable future for your company. Uh, how when you are better, everything is better. And we're going to be talking about his desire to be better today than he was yesterday. I'm loving this music by the way. Oh yes. Uh, the show notes and transcript from my conversation with Ian are available on our website, pushtobemore.

Ian is also a husband, a dad, a mental health advocate. A big fan of outdoor pursuits and a yoga devotee, and it's probably fair to say, Finch, a big Liverpool Football Club fan as well. Indeed. Welcome to the show.

Ian Finch: It's good to be here. And three podcasts in, I think you're ready for TV. Like, you've got the X Factor boy, so excited.

I'm ready for the judges to come out. I'm loving it. Yeah, it's

Ian Finch: Oh well, I think you're well past Radio 2, I think you're on the music awards, you know, we got Eurovision.

I'm coming to Liverpool pretty soon, you just need a handful more of these to go viral.

Matt Edmundson: That would be awesome, wouldn't it? Yeah, yeah. So yeah, if you're listening to this Mr Eurovision Song Contest people, then both Ian and I will quite happily host together. It'd be quite good fun. So. Good

luck.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, no, it's awesome.

Thank you for your kind words, by the way. You're way too kind. It's just very kind of you. I've got a really good friend of mine called Tony, actually. He tells me that I've got, he always tells me I've got a good face for radio.

And I thought you'd be great to talk about this. So let's start off. Uh, I said, uh, you know, you're the CEO of Mando. Just tell us a little about, uh, tell us a little bit about Mando Agency. So

Ian Finch: yeah, sure, Mando's a digital agency, but we're a very, kind of, digital agency. It's all technology centric and perhaps more like an IT consultancy, and so it's very much managed services, professional services, consultancy services in that digital change space.

So it's, yeah, it's very much in that, that, um, strategic consultancy and engineering kind of place.

Matt Edmundson: And it's fair to say, I mean, that all sounds, if I'm honest with you, from my point of view, it sounds really impressive. It sounds a bit nightmarish when you're doing that much for one client, right, um, in one sense, but it's, um, see I'm from eCommerce, you don't do that much for clients, you take that money and you ship them products, right, uh, but so it's very different in some respects to what you guys are doing and, um, I know you've had really long term successful client relationships because you, you guys do that.

Do that super well, right? And you care for people really well. But it's fair to say that on your journey, you didn't always start out as you are right now. I mean, you know, the early days were not like what they are. Is that fair enough?

So, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't this big strategic plan. You know, if I, if I did a startup tomorrow, I'd do it very differently, a lot more focused, but, um, but yeah, we learned our, we learned our trade. I mean, we set up pre Google. Pre Amazon, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And so if it would have been, yeah. Um, so the web and digital was, was a wild rest, really.

Everyone was just kind of figuring it out as we went along. And so it's very like trial and error, um, and very design centric. Um, very few rules in those days, it really was kind of, let's experiment and see what happens. Um, some ways I miss those days because, you know, the creativity had a bit more space to breathe.

Why? Just there's as good copy that, you know. And so yeah, I don't want it to be an experimental fast forward with different types of like, um, button combinations. I just want it to be like that works. And so the challenge here is keeping that familiarity and making sure in our world that, you know, ultimately we want things to be better, faster and cheaper for our clients, which means things are easier, more intuitive and user friendly and, and just easy to click and say yes to for their clients.

Yeah.

And so that's why we're in that space, uh, in the engineering because. It's all well and good, guys, we should be like this, my job is done, says a person that's done the diagram. Yeah, and then there's like two thousand man days or person days of development to actually configure all the systems to allow that very simple click to happen.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, no fair place. So it's It's, you've, you've, I mean you do some great stuff now at Mandane, you've obviously started 25 years ago, so congratulations by the way, on your 25th year, that's quite impressive. Um, you started out by getting work wherever you could, uh, and it's fair to say now you've got some fairly well known and significant clients.

I don't know if you can mention who they are, I don't want to mention them. Yeah,

Ticking over. Mm-Hmm. , uh, making sure they can get their donations and, and Mm-Hmm. performing. Um, really proud of work we do in utilities, you know? Mm-Hmm. And so when, when electricity in Northwest or SC or EU Mm-Hmm. And, um, a load of other three layer acronyms that it could come , but, you know, when storm season happens?

Yeah.

Ian Finch: People wanna know when they're gonna like, get electric back, you know, and, and they need to be on their mobile 'cause there's no. Web Connections, so making sites performance scalable, mobile friendly, easy to use, you know, we're very much in that space where we support vulnerable customers and that's really close to our heart in what we do.

And we're getting out of major poverty. But what's wonderful about CAP particularly is that they don't just fix the fact that you've stumbled into 2000 percent interest, horrible loan shark scenario. There might be other issues while you got there in the first place. And so it's this holistic view. And so when you can help an organization that We'll benefit society where we'll transform, you know, and that's probably an extreme example, but we work for the University Superannuation Scheme, the biggest pension fund in the country.

Matt Edmundson: That's awesome, man. But do you remember then, um, I mean, there's some pretty big clients. You didn't, obviously, didn't start off, uh, working with the British Red Cross, right? So I'm guessing that there was sort of step, what was, what was the turning point? Do you remember your sort of first major client where you thought, goodness me, we're, we're stepping out into a zone here?

Ian Finch: Yeah, there's probably two or three examples, there's more, but really big ones that come to mind. We're about just coming up to the end of our first year and we picked up like a one page website here and a bit of a brochureware there and I did a logo and so on and then we, we did our first competitive pitch for the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation when it first opened and we bust a gut.

like, and it worked!

Ian Finch: You know, like matchsticks pricking up your eyes and the IT manager faints and we're like, okay, good.

Um, you know, but that, that was a step change deal because, you know, it's, it's, it's, You know, contextually, that was 20 percent of our revenue that year, and it all came in the end when we were, I hadn't been paid for three months. Yeah. I remember, you know, I don't know if anyone is old enough to relate to this, but, um, they gave all the assets on a zip disk, and we're like, oh wow, we haven't got a zip drive.

So we had to go and buy a zip drive to get the assets, you know, it was so hand to mouth. Um, but that was our first competitive pitch, it was also a big brand, so we PR'd the hell out of it. Every time there's a picture of Roy Cassano's trumpet, it's me and Matt, my business partner at the time, going,

Hey, we did the website.

a

Ian Finch: direct contact to seeing that, but we then, uh, came to contact with our correct director,

who,

Ian Finch: who then brought us the next few years. Um, around that time as well, we got, Mercy Television, and again, people need to be old for this, but remember Brookside?

Yeah, yeah. Before Holyokes. Um, well we did that in, in Macromedia Flash, if anyone remembers that. Oh, wow. We used plugin into browsers and got an interactive b nomination for it, and then we were set because on a new technology. There was Experiential with award winning that had national coverage, then the floodgates start to open.

And so I think the key learning really is you, one unlock in a vertical where you just catch the imagination can transform. And we went from, I think we had, well, two staff by the time Roy Castle went live, we had three to two. Then by the time we had Brookside By the time we'd done a meeting games, we're 30 and the whole thing happened in kind of three years.

And then the next step change deal occurred when we did an e learning system. And Three things happened. One, it's a tour de force in terms of visuals. It was complete state of the art. It was not form based learning. It was this immersive, almost gamification, edutainment, um, all those phrases that came out afterwards.

Crucially, though, we partnered with other technology. And, uh, the diagnostic engine that sat behind all the learning, we actually had another company produce. And we saw, ah, right, amazing experience design with best of breed technology. There's a win. Um, and actually in, in the agency space, we then quite soon after ditched our own technology and started working with bigger systems.

I mean, it took us away from some of the smaller work and we got into this kind of more business critical engineering space and, and it was that turning point of partnering with technology that then opened the floodgates to work with United Utilities, which we still do 14 years later. Um, Vodafone, Jones Lang LaSalle, Bentley and TalkTalk.

50,000 person offshores or systems integrators. Yeah. And they're. Design maybe is a bit lacking and the team's a bit disparate because we're all over the world. And the people that are integrating quite boutique don't typically have the processes to be able to cope with the support element. And so we think, well, there's a unique point of differentiation for us that within a certain mid market boundary, the fact that Onshore, we can keep systems running with bulletproof, ISO, ITIL driven processes, you know everyone who's working on your account, and it's going to be experientially and strategically driven, that, that kind of, um, Key principles all under one roof is really compelling because it makes it a better, faster, cheaper and you can really grow with a customer in a period of time.

Matt Edmundson: Now, and that's obviously what you guys have done very well over the last few years, right? And what you continue to do well in, but I'm, I mean, I know you Ian, so I know the answer to this question. Uh, but it's, um, I mean, that journey, as exciting as it sounds, it's fair to say, has not been all sunshine and rainbows, has it?

It's, there's, there's been a, there's been a few trips along the way, a few challenges. Um, so we call this podcast Push To Be More, right? So the question to you then is, where, So, have you learnt, or where have you had to push and that's had a big massive impact on you, sort of challenges you've had to overcome?

Ian Finch: Yeah, well two I think, two or three come to mind. Firstly, I mentioned it before, when the dot com bubble burst.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah.

Wow. So it's like, you know, I think pivot is a fully overused word in 2022, but man the pivot. Right. Okay. Bye. In Clerkenwell alone in London, 5, 000 people got made redundant, and they all went, Oh, what's the most interesting stuff? Media and Games. What are we doing? Media and Games, 200 miles away in Liverpool.

Um, we are staring into an empty office, it was never going to be filled, and we're like, Okay, now what are we going to do? So, um, you know, that's when we, we really doubled down on the technical partner side of things to, to ad agencies, and the, and the spend went from digital to ad agency, Because it was tried and trusted from a strategic perspective, but they didn't know how to do the tech.

And white with a blue logo with a differentiation point of personal, professional service and excellence is our value. Yeah.

And you!

Ian Finch: Matt Doesn't that excite you. Dan And, you know, we turn the lights on, and I remember going on holiday and coming back and saying to the business partner, I'm so bored. I'm so bored!

And, um, so we had this real kind of moment like, right, okay. It was three or four years ago. Shake it off, man. Let's just get that spirit back. What is it we love? It was a design, and it was a problem solving, and let's get in charge of it again. Let's, um, you know, really go for what we want or forget it. Go big or go home, you might call it.

And, um, by getting that kind of gritty about it, people who were with you were loving it. Yeah. People that had died inside themselves were like, nah, I'm done, you know, and actually, and we shrunk by a third in the next six months. Um, but we did only kind of lose one person practically, the rest kind of moved on.

In front of the people who have an ability to solve problems or the people that need to work with the people who do the work. And so I was going to treat sales more like project management and facilitation rather than in inverted commas peddling anything. And, and that worked a treat that really, really worked.

The next one I mentioned before, where we started partnering with technology, uh, and then coming back. Autumn or the present day, there's probably two key things that have happened. One is we went quite vertical in terms of our market proposition, particularly around regulated industries. And we do really well, um, when we're serving a known customer base, making it optimal for that customer base and reducing the cost to serve those customers, which is.

Very much for the ICT consultancy cost reduction kind of side of what we do ultimately, or, you know, we have much more stringent metrics than this, but ultimately if you came down to it, we increase customer satisfaction, we reduce the cost to serve those customers. That's uniform across the customer base is the most baseline metrics and being really clear about a proposition helps your qualification, it helps your bids, it gets you the homogeneity.

And I think generally in consultancy space, um, because when you're project orientated, yeah, because you put this big picture together, you win the project and you do the project. And then everyone has a feeling and then it can last a few months, no matter what. So you always get this drop and yeah, you can put a support agreement in place, but really changing our marketing and.

That's when you can really build momentum, really get under the skin of organization and be able to project further out what your revenue forecasts are, you know, this year for the first time in 25. I know what we're gonna do by March year end of

Yeah.

Ian Finch: I know 60% of what we're gonna do by the following March and that, that's a paradigm shift for us in terms of history.

Matt Edmundson: Right. So it's fair. I mean, there's a lot there, right? I mean there's , there's a lot of learning, uh, and a lot of challenges that you've faced and that you've worked through. Some of them you've mentioned, and now you're sort of faced with. with a sort of this paradigm shift. Um, originally we were going to call this podcast when we get retainers or die trying or something like that.

Ian Finch: Yeah, so, yeah, we've evolved considerably and, you know, in terms of that particular initiative, yeah.

You know, you have to, you have to have listened to a 50 Cent album to even get the reference in fairness. Like, Get Rich or Die Trying, but Get Rich or Die Trying, the um, so it didn't translate that well. I remember people looking at a IT guy going, it's okay, we'll think of a different name. But you get my drift.

You know, I once had an exit interview with someone that went, I really, really see clearly where you're going. I don't want any of it. So it's time to leave. I'm like, that's the best exit interview ever. Cause it means I've been really clear, it means you've been really intentional. And we can just shake each other's hand and wish each other well, you know, so I was really proud of that because like, we've communicated this really well.

This has not just been a slow deterioration, you know, we're going, we're going here for these reasons. And here's what was going to happen. This is what it means to everyone. And people go, brilliant. People go, not for me. You know, I think that's great.

Matt Edmundson: You know, and it's remarkable. Really?

So, you know, so what's one of the learning points there is that you just cannot over communicate stuff. You know, so often you think, I've emailed about it, I've done a company stand up, I've sent, I've put a blog out on the company intranet, I've talked to all the key people, and then someone goes, are we doing that now?

And you're just like, what? You know, well I could just I could just, just let my shoulders slump and just cry over my cup of tea, and no one understands me. Or I could go, this is the job. You know, I may feel like I've done a song and dance and an email and an expressive mime about it and a video and, and, and talk to everybody individually at the water cooler about how, and they still don't get it.

Yeah.

Ian Finch: We just go again, you know, and in terms of, I think, Where you are coming from in this, in this podcast series is I don't think there's any greater real headline than we go again.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. ,

Ian Finch: we get No, it's

Matt Edmundson: true. Right? We get it. We just ourselves down and we, we we keep going, right? Yeah.

Ian Finch: And because some stuff's worked really well, some stuff's worked a bit and could be optimized.

Matt Edmundson: Just

Ian Finch: don't keep failing.

You know, doing it once and it works fine. Tweak it, do it twice and didn't work. Do it three times. It's like, are you kidding me? We just, we just have to learn this now and tweak. And it doesn't always need to be a wholesale change. It needs to be a tweak and even that needs explaining because I think the vast majority of humans live in an either or world.

We do this, we do that. All we do that, but in business transformation and change in digital specifically, we do this and we do that. So let's live in an and world, not in an either or world. And everything's just a micro adjustment. You know, it's hilarious when people want to flick to an agile delivery methodology, um, rather than an old school waterfall methodology.

know?

Ian Finch: No! No! Missed the point. Missed the point. Let's start, iterate as we go along, and have a cadence where we go, whatever it is. Every two weeks, right, here's where we are, what have we learned, what are we going to do next?

Alright, here's where we are, and, you know, and, and, but that takes time and training, because I think, Yeah. From the schooling system. Up where you just get it right, have some incompetence, do the thing, get marked for it, okay, now go on to the next assessment, but in the real world you go, try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, the creative process.

is endlessly trying and failing. You write a song, it's like that chorus doesn't work, that chorus doesn't work, that chorus works, but you don't stop trying, and it's not like you've done a completely different song. Even if it ends up differently, you've iterated your way there. And so it is with life.

There might be a slight frustration, but they figure it out. And I think one thing that school does is it teaches you to fail badly. And we, we carry that through, right? And one of the things that I've noticed with entrepreneurs like yourself is your ability to take failure almost within your stride and not worry about it and just, and just relentlessly keep going, which I think.

Um, it's peculiar in a lot of ways to entrepreneurs and leaders.

Cause if no doubt got another video call, it starts at the hour and really, really basic stuff like that. But then when you actually get into the concept of agenda setting and you get a bit further into it, you go, well, I can set an agenda, but the word agenda that plays out in multiple different ways.

And actually people are coming to that agenda with an agenda and their agenda could be driven by. An argument at breakfast with their spouse or some other trigger. Um, but maybe agendas with a harsh word, but it, it led to us going, people don't contribute in these meetings because they're scared to look bad.

I was on that session like the rest of people in the business. I was like, with the greatest respect, yeah, I know. Yeah, I know. Well, of course, yeah, I know. And, and there's I've got 50 people going, oh, it's life changing, oh, I filmed so well, and yeah, and I'm like, oh, oh, okay, right, I've got some learning to do here because I live in this permanent place of failure, iterate, failure, iterate, success, iterate a bit more, now it's a failure.

And everything I do is public. Every failure I make, 50 people go, yeah, you failed on that.

Well done, boss. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ian Finch: You know, because entrepreneurs fail in public, because, you know, particularly when you've got staff, you don't end up doing the work. Other people are doing the decisions you make about a direction in business, other people are doing it, but it's still you that's failed to deliver to that client.

You have to see failure. You have to see a challenge and, and, and your failings. And when you run a business, where you see all the bits you hate about your character played out culturally, as well as the good bits as well, you know, and there's no hiding,

Matt Edmundson: right? There's no

Ian Finch: hiding. And it's most exhilarating and terrifying experience, probably outside of your kids up where the same thing happens.

So we live in a place where actually failure is getting eliminated all the time. And then the nutty founder entrepreneur comes along and goes, Hey,

let's experiment. Let's try something.

Ian Finch: You know, and, um, yeah, not strictly true because, yeah, I'm not like, let's have experimental code practices that maybe aren't as secure as others know.

You know, let's, let's learn the basics, but can we optimize that? Do we need to build ourselves? Could we be part of the technology? And you're constantly nibbling around the edges to try and, um, and it's your job to go, can we do that quicker? Yeah. Really? Really? Is that actually true? Yeah, I've found it, you know, like the classic thing, I've just searched on Google for 30 seconds and I found this and you've done it for 30 years, but what about this?

Yeah,

Ian Finch: that's true. The more, forgive me. And they're intentional.

Yeah.

Ian Finch: Because the better you get without people stretching you, the closer the blinkers are because you're going deeper. And I think part of the joy and part of the job, but also the part you've really got to handle culturally, it's constantly going, is there something else?

Is it something else? Is it something else? Have we thought about, have we thought about, without winding everyone else up and dismissing what their value is. And, and so we constantly trying to get that tension between best practice and is there more?

I think it's, it's a really sort of fascinating Uh, traits that business leaders have this constant drive and have you ever read the book, um, black box thinking? I have not. So this is a book I think everybody should read is a black box thinking by a guy called Matthew. I can't remember his name. Matthew Syed.

I think it is. And he, in the book, he talks about how to deal with failure and he contrasts the U S medical industry, which cannot abide the word failure because it means lawsuit with the airline industry, which goes.

Ian Finch: All of the above, yeah, but I think particularly in digital, it's, you know, it's 25, well no, it's not, is it?

It's 30 to 35 years old since a non linear hyperlink got created, um, which compared to architecture, which is several thousands year old, there's, there's a few more standards, uh, you know, and, and so while that makes it challenging, it also means it's not. Every day is different and it's exciting, you know, and we can evolve further, but the human issues don't, don't change.

Um, but yeah, it's a challenge, which I'm sure my next question will be, how do you handle that in the rest of life as well? Well, yeah,

Matt Edmundson: we could, we could go that route. Yeah. What do you do to sort of change that? What stay on top? What do you do to charge your batteries? What do you do to be, um, the Push To Be More?

It's that kind of what fills your tank kind of thing. I'm curious to know how you, how you recharge Finch?

I think particularly if you've worked in IT, like this, you know, getting more and more stress, and you know, cramming over a desk, and your hamstrings are getting tight, and um, I think you end up carrying. stuff and adrenaline and energy, maybe in my case, nervous energy in your twenties and thirties carries you through.

Because you haven't done it before and so things take longer. And then, you know, your 30s, you start getting a better sense of where you are. And then in your 40s, you realize actually less

is way more.

Ian Finch: And I've actually allowed myself to see part of my job is thinking clearly. And ridiculously, with a benefit of hindsight, for years, I thought that, well, the job is doing.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah.

Ian Finch: And you know, I'm thinking, frankly, while driving and getting dictaphone notes, reading on the toilet, dictaphone on the toilet, because that's where the ideas come, thinking on holidays, and actually, I've allowed myself to spend some of my working day thinking. , uh, part of that is 'cause I trust myself more.

And so there's the emotional room, the physical room, the, um, uh, the mental room and the spiritual room and actually really dwelling on where am I at in those four paradigms was really interesting. So mentally. I'm continually challenged. I'm always firing and actually I'm always learning something new.

So I'm probably in a pretty good place mentally. I make good decisions and my job is making decisions and well practiced. Physically, I was a bit binge and purge, you know, my weight can shift. So I think it's very easy to shift weight by a couple of stone, very easily, based on biscuits and walking.

It's like what pounds? What is it? Is it like

Ian Finch: kilograms? Yeah, something like that, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, my weight can shift by 15 kilograms quite easily in a matter of months and so why is that? Um, my emotional room, I realised, and I think this perhaps comes from a lot of stuff we talked about.

Professionally, it's always been about what's next? How can we improve? What's next? How can we improve? Oh, that was disappointing. Shake off disappointment. How can we improve? How can we improve? And that has an effect maybe on this chicken egg. Have I been trained professionally because I've always had to lead people for 25 years?

Am I that way inclined anyway? Yeah, bit anxiously driven?

Matt Edmundson: Who knows?

I'm like, I don't.

Yeah,

Ian Finch: and so in the last 18 months particularly I've really gone I need to check in more actually and you know, allow myself to be sad, allow myself to be disappointed and yeah allow myself to acknowledge for other people their actions of I've allowed to hurt me and we need to talk about it.

I'm a much better listener to books. I am reading them. Yeah. Um, trying to yoga four or five times a week and do some kind of physical activity. I love, yeah, hiking, try and try and do something. mentally, physically, uh, and checking emotionally and spiritually on a daily basis. And it's funny, you know, since doing that, I sleep more, I work less, and I'm adding more value and I'm more productive on a daily basis, which man, if I could have really grasped that.

It's dark, could you imagine, could you imagine meeting yourself 20 years ahead of time and going, no seriously, do this, and if you were not so black and white and so ego driven in your 20s that you'd actually listen to start with, you know. I

Matt Edmundson: was going to say, you'd meet your 20s seeing, if I met my 20 year old self, my 20 year old self would not listen to my 40 year old self, yeah, they'd just be like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

you've become? You've just talked about home furnishings. Why have you talked about home furnishings? You, you garden? What?

Matt Edmundson: So do you feel, right, with this sort of, um, new approach where you're creating space, you're creating space to think and to be and to check in.

Do you feel a sense of guilt because you're not doing,

Ian Finch: so how do you deal with

Matt Edmundson: that?

Driving it, um, you know, uh, for me, I was like, I just pathologically have to fix everything and everyone

and

Ian Finch: take personal responsibility for everything. Taking a step back and talk to a few people, that's not normal. So where does that come from? Cause actually this kind of nervous energy, this guilt, it's, it's just always there.

It's like, I've got this thing I just need to do better and strive. And why do I have to fix everything and everyone? Why can't I like, cause actually what that does in business or life generally is it creates learned helplessness. Because people don't have to answer their own problems or self regulate because Fincher's doing it for them the whole time.

And so I think being aware and being intentional is huge. And then when you are aware, uh, uh, going, Okay, why does this feel more urgent to me than anyone else? Oh, because we have no money to pay the wages next week. Okay, fine. That's a normal level of urgency. But actually, no, there's something driving this and actually The big shift to me was I was always going to feel guilty working less unless I shifted to a value based mindset rather than a [00:49:00] pounds per square inch of effort per second mindset, you know, and actually really tracking The value I bring to a conversation by planning it for 10 more minutes rather than winging it because I've been doing something else for 10 minutes and, and experimenting, really testing, iterating, failing forward to going, what if I didn't have to work harder, longer and more intensely than anyone else?

What if I could trust myself that the value I bring is actually better now than it was then? And actually, particularly with a comms lens. I mean, that was the next phase really is like, I know the value is good, but I'm not landing this. And so actually I need to take more time to land it. So being a bit more considered and just losing some of that kind of entrepreneurial energy, you know, what got you here won't get you there.

Some of that goes away, but it was practical things as well. But I think it, it's much more on a Personal level of giving yourself a break and trusting and then and seeing the value you're giving and that's, that's been massive.

Matt Edmundson: That sounds like quite a journey. I mean, you know, heck of a journey, uh, that you've, that you've, uh, been on there.

So what does that mean for the future? What are you hoping to see more of grow into, uh, over the next few years?

Um, this whole year has been about proving it out and so far it's been very successful. You know, revenues up, profits up, best year so far. So good. Good. Yeah. We want to test that it's not just another good year followed by a fallow year. And the ultimate test will be doing that going into a recession. So probably next year is going to be more of the same.

Just try and, you know, throw some, throw some time, resource, energy, some money, and a bit more ambition, a bit more drive to kind of grow the top line once we're certain that the bottom line is going to remain like a consistent margin. Yeah. Um, once we've scaled it, so I scaled it, um, yeah, scaled it. which we expect to be organic, even if there's some investment to do that.

So, and there'll be, there'll be decisions to make, you know, right now we're, we're growing organically a data and insight, uh, team, um, when we scale it, it might be quicker to just buy a data insight team, bring them in, um, and that, that would kind of lend itself to for scale us world, um, or it could be that there's a mix and match with the data insight grows and the US grows, but actually we've got this huge commerce opportunity.

It's, it's like. Yeah. First 100 days integration job, rather than a two year, so yeah, prove it, scale it, scale us. Um, that, that's, and to do that in terms of coming back to the core of this, this chat is, I need space. To, to flip from. I mean, I, we introduced me as CEO I'm still doing quite a bit of md really.

Mm-Hmm. But that be, that that real shift to pure strategic level is happening. Mm-Hmm. But I'm, I'm still in the weeds and bits, but we get to a place where we're, we're growing at scale and I'm, I'm growing a team, but can cope with scale like a growth officer and so on. And particularly when it comes to an acquisition journey, which might involve partners and nels.

Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. Fantastic. That sounds great, doesn't it? And it's one of those things where, um, You know, when your business works really well, when you're not involved in the detail, that, that's a really good thing. But it's also, if you're, if you're marginally insecure, it's going to be a really, really painful thing to deal with.

And so, um, that's really cool, man. And, uh, I hope that sort of all pays off. So let me ask you, uh, one of my final questions, right? As you know, this show is sponsored by Aurion Media, which specializes in helping folks like yourself set up and run their own podcast. So I want you to do an imaginary exercise for me.

Ian Finch: Oh, oh wow, okay, um,

Mm-Hmm. Um, but his story is fascinating in that, you know, fairly dysfunctional growing up period. And then he ended up in a place that was quite suicidal and he had a moment ago, I, I don't think it needs to be like this, , uh, and actually took himself off a grid and I think went and studied in. Buddhist monasteries and so on, but you know, I don't mean he's a Buddhist.

He's just, for me, he's a father of mindfulness. And, uh, but that journey and understanding his experience and his unlocks with people, I'd be quite fascinated by that. And I'm, you know, and I'm particularly interested, but that has nothing to do with technology because that's actually My thing in the, and I think I said this in the last time we met, is that for this is the first time in human history where technology is a lot of limitation people are.

What's really making you ask that question? What, um, you know, I have a values violation when it's really clear when a client. Or potential client, should I say, uh, wants to look good rather than be good. Yeah. Um, you know, and I have like a massive reaction to that, but then part of that is like, why am I judging them like that?

You know, they might be in a political context. We can't afford to think of anything but looking good because that's, you know, and they're fighting their own battles and actually, maybe I could bring some more grace into this situation. What can I learn from this? And

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, well, when he comes on as a guest to your podcast, uh, I will definitely listen to the episode.

Absolutely. Mate, you've been an absolute legend. If people want to reach out to you, if people want to get a hold of you, um, we took, we said earlier, didn't we? That Mando, um, engineers positive change. So if people need help with IT systems, if you're an agency who wants to do some kind of strategic partnership with you guys, I know you do that, um, on the IT side, Yeah,

Ian Finch: no, partnership's really, really key.

Matt Edmundson: Sounds ideal. Sounds lush. Uh, how do people reach you then if they, if they want to engage with such activities?

Ian Finch: So, you can contact me via our website, mando. agency, or indeed email me, ian. finch at mando. agency. Very good. Are you on LinkedIn? I am. Uh, and, uh, I can't actually remember mine. I think it's iandavidfinch on LinkedIn, because I think, how dare it, but Ian Finch has already gone.

Um, so LinkedIn, but you can search Ian Finch, Mando on LinkedIn and I'll answer those twice a day as well.

Matt Edmundson: Oh, do you? Uh, I'm still trying to get into that daily habit of doing LinkedIn. Uh, I'm not very good, uh, . It's just one of those things. So we will obviously, uh, link to Ian, uh, to Mando and to his linked in the show notes.

So, oh, sorry, Matt.

Matt Edmundson: But you do some reels as well, right? Yeah, well I was inspired by you.

Ian Finch: I was like, yeah, I haven't quite got the kind of like the, uh, the statements and the little insight bits, but they're coming, but yeah, I like, I'm liking putting together.

Matt Edmundson: And I'm very envious when you get up in the hills, I keep meaning to call you and say next time you go, give me a call you bugger. Oh I will, I'll give you a shout out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, let me know, let me know. Well thanks for coming on, but honestly, I love doing podcasts with you, you're an absolute legend, always enjoy the conversation, so thank you very, very, very much.

Be sure to follow Push To Be More Podcast wherever you get your podcasts from because this is just the beginning.

Finch has to bear it, I have to bear it, you've got to bear it too.

Our theme music is by Josh Edmundson. And as I mentioned, if you'd like to read the transcript and show notes, head over to Push To Be More, where you can also sign up for our newsletter. So, that's it from me, that's it from Ian. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week, wherever you are. I'll see you next time.

Bye for now.