A Lesson in Timing

In my early thirties our business, Maven Agency, was really struggling.

The big advertising networks like WPP and Publicis were buying up digital agencies left and right. They were ring fencing clients and locking down talent. Companies like ours were being left with scraps.

The pressure was obvious. My staff could see it. I could feel it.

I was searching for answers when one of my employees suggested I meet Ludi Koekemoer, the head of the AAA School of Advertising. They had studied under him and spoke about him with huge respect.

At first I was hesitant. Why would the head of an ad school know anything about running a digital agency. But eventually I thought to myself, what the hell, I’ve got nothing to lose. So I reached out and travelled up to Joburg to meet him.

When I arrived he welcomed me into his office and sat me down on the couch in front of his desk. I couldn’t help thinking this felt more like a therapy session than a business meeting ... not the usual boardroom table chat I was used to.

However. The conversation was casual and disarming. He asked me who I was and how I’d ended up there. I told him the truth. I didn’t really know. But if he didn’t mind indulging me, I just needed to talk.

And so I did. I let it all out.

The frustration of building an agency, the grind, the uphill battle, the lack of traction. He didn’t interrupt me once. After about ten minutes of venting I finally ran out of words.

He leaned back, looked at me, and started sharing a perspective I hadn’t considered.

He gave me a history lesson on the big ad agencies. Their heritage, their roots, how long they’d been around. How they recruited the best talent and locked down the biggest brands.

He spoke at length as to why they were so hard to compete with. And why digital, even though it was a small part of their business at the time, would eventually become their main focus.

They were already on a mission to acquire digital talent and bring it to their clients.

Then he showed me the other side. The smaller agencies, the so called bottom feeders. Hundreds of shops fighting over SMEs, all doing the same thing, competing for scraps. He pulled things off the wall, showed me slides, and then he stopped. He looked me straight in the eye and asked me.

“Why are you trying to compete with all these agencies doing exactly what you do?”

I had no answer.

That question rattled me. Here was some oke i just met, telling me that the business I’d been building for +-ten years wasn’t unique.

He went on to tell me stories of entrepreneurs who had broken away from the pack. People who carved out their own lanes and owned them.

One story was about a guy in Pretoria who was making high end corporate videos. At first I didn’t get it, but he explained that no one else was doing it properly. This guy had built out multiple booths, shooting and editing nonstop, and had landed huge government contracts. It wasn’t flashy, but he dominated that space...That was the lesson.

I walked out of that office totally freaked out with the idea of doing things differently.

Back home we took a hard look at our model. At the time we did everything in digital from Copywriting, social media, creative direction, Seo, media buying, the works.

But to survive we had to choose our lane.

We decided to focus on what others weren’t doing. Finding and placing real tech talent. Building international capability and pairing it with local service. That became our space.

I couldn’t have seen what was coming next. The world was heading straight into the great software boom. Demand for digital ecosystems was about to explode and the need for tech talent would be unprecedented over the next 5 -10 years.

That meeting lit the spark that set us on a different path. And ultimately, it led to the invention of Code Maven. A sexier way to hire tech talent.

So was It perfect timing ?

When I look back at how it all unfolded, there’s no way I could have planned it the way it happened. I couldn’t have lined it up with the software boom even if I tried.

What made the difference wasn’t timing. It was adapting. The ability to move, to bend, to adjust quicker than the world was shifting around us.

Ive come to beleive that its about changing with the times. Because if you wait for the perfect moment you’ll never start, and if you wait too long you’ll already be too late.

Better to build resilience around change than spend your life chasing the illusion of perfect timing.