41:7 Unlocking your potential

Lee Jackson:
Welcome to the Agency Trailblazer Podcast. This is your host Lee and in this episode, we catch up with Imogen Allen. She takes us on a journey of discovery as she learns more about herself and unlocks her own potential. As her business takes an unexpected shift, she recognises the value she can bring in helping others unlock their identity and the story they have in sight. This has enabled her to launch a product to help others and created a fantastic opportunity to partner with one of her main clients. Now, my biggest takeaways from this episode include it’s okay to try different things. There is so much more potential inside of you than you give yourself credit for. What you have inside of you should be shared as it may very well help somebody at a time that they most need it. Believe in yourself. And finally, don’t go through all of this alone. Building long-lasting friendships is so essential along the way. So let’s join the conversation, sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. Back for a third time, it’s the one and only Imogen Allen. How are you today?

Imogen Allen:
I’m really great. I can’t believe I’m here again. Third time. Very lucky.

Lee Jackson:
Third time. Folks, if you would like to go back in that time machine, quite literally, then head on over to episode number 112, that’s the 12th of January, 2018, holy crap, that’s a long time ago, to the episode, entitled Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. It’s one of my favourite books in the whole world and me and Imogen had a great conversation about feeling that fear and going after things. She also talked about feeling valued. It was a fantastic episode, one of my favourites. We then followed up a few months later with episode number 143, where she gave us a little bit of an insight into her agency at the time. She had a focus as a technical partner for online course creators and, boy, has so much changed since 2018. So we are going to grill you and find out.

Lee Jackson:
But before we do that, I’d just like to thank our sponsors Cloudways for sponsoring yet another episode with the Agency Trailblazer Podcast. You can find out why I love them by going to trailblazer.fm/cloudways. That was a really long introduction, Imogen, but I would love for you to just give us a very quick, who is Imogen in 30 to 45 seconds for anybody who may never have met you yet.

Imogen Allen:
Okay. That was a fantastic introduction. Thank you very much. I have done lots of different things and these days a lot has changed since 2019. And these days, I like to think of myself as a website strategist, but one with a human approach and I want to help things to be really easy for other people to understand in whatever way that is.

Lee Jackson:
I like that. I’ve kind of come to this point in life and I’ve kind of slowed down and realised that I kind of want things to just be really clear and people to be happy.

Imogen Allen:
Yes.

Lee Jackson:
And I think that’s where you’re going as well.

Imogen Allen:
Yeah, absolutely. It is. It is. And people spend far too long worrying about too many things and actually becomes really complicated. I do think that life throws us different things and we learn all these different lessons as we go along. It’s like going through a sausage factory isn’t it? You put everything in, it goes through the mill and then it comes out and it’s all really simple and done. And I think that that is the thing with life in general.

Lee Jackson:
Now, you’ve not always been the strategists and you’ve not always been helping people make their websites simpler. Like I said, you were the technical partner for online course creators, which is a completely different sounding title as it were. So could you just take us through from around mid-2018? What’s been the journey to now, roughly?

Imogen Allen:
Yeah. I think that the online course thing was really quite an exploratory avenue that’s brought me here. And the reason why is, although it started off quite technical, it actually got me thinking that part of the problem is getting really wrapped up in the tech and forgetting about the front-end experience for the actual user. And over time, this area of what I identified as a real need and a really massive consideration is what experience the student or the learner’s going to get. Because, ultimately, that’s what you’re doing it four. And I’ve seen lots of examples in the WordPress space where people have made big decisions about maybe not using WordPress even as a tool for delivery, because their focus is not on trying to troubleshoot tech problems, but more importantly, they want to deliver the content to the students and spend the time concentrating on making sure that content evolves so it is still relevant and it is useful.

Imogen Allen:
There’s no point building a great big course platform if you’ve not gone out and tested what your product is or whether there is a real need for it. You’ve got to create that minimum, what they call it, the MVP, minimum viable-

Lee Jackson:
The MVP, minimum viable product.

Imogen Allen:
… product. And you’ve got to go and test that to see if there’s actually something out there that the audience wants. I came into the WordPress scene about five years ago, and it’s been a constant journey. And I think every single person who comes into this industry starts, over time, to find the thing that they’re good at because it’s such a massive discipline. If you think of all the different things that actually constitute a web agency and all the different roles within that, it’s massive. It is right that I think you can have this path to find your real sweet spot on what you’re good at and maybe help people do the other things that they’re not so good at.

Imogen Allen:
So I worked on a really big project with somebody that we both know very well, Dave [Foy 00:06:21], and he and I created this big project in WordPress using all the different technical things to deliver the course. And it just got more and more complex, much bigger. It turned into a massive project that… I think he realised that it was something that he wanted to spend his time helping the people we wanted to teach rather than having to troubleshoot the tech. I think on that realisation, that’s when something went off for me as well, thinking, “Yes, it’s about the user, it’s the end-user all of the time,” because that’s why we do anything. Anything tech-wise is for the benefit of the person coming to view it, learn from it, read from it. And I think it’s really easy to lose sight of that and get caught up in the tech.

Lee Jackson:
You’re absolutely right. What I’m hearing here is you’ve gone through a journey. You’ve explored different areas that you are interested in, maybe passionate about and recognise that there is something deeper. I think we all go through seasons that we, me and Paul, were talking on last week’s episode, about how everything seems to be seasonal. We might be doing development for a few years and then we might be into design, or we might be, in my case, event organising, et cetera. There’s so many different things, but I think it’s okay and natural for agency owners and for freelancers to naturally flow through life and find those elements of life that really excite them, or really plug them in. And, for you, it’s been this process of, “I know how to do the tech,” but then eventually recognising that the tech is less and less important. And actually, what is the most important is that content.

Imogen Allen:
I think, from a tech point of view, is whatever the tools are that you have available. And no, not necessarily one thing fits everything. And I think each business needs to be just open-minded. But I also think there is a real case for being very good at your craft and very good at what you do. And I’m not saying that WordPress isn’t the right thing, and it totally is. It just means that you have to use the right thing for the right project that you’re doing with the minimum of headaches.

Lee Jackson:
You kind of came to this realisation that perhaps it wasn’t all about the tech and you wanted to focus more and more on things like the communication, the content simplifying user experience, et cetera, how did you kind of make that shift?

Imogen Allen:
It was gradual if I’m honest. One of the things I did do around that time, not long after we spoke, is I joined with Chris [Marin 00:09:13]. I went to join the Content Marketing Academy, and I spent a year with them. Unfortunately, the academy closed, it’s no longer running. Chris is doing other things. But that’s where I really learned my craft in being able to write content. And the other thing was that realising that I had this skill all the time, it was something I loved to do when I was young, but I never… I think sometimes you don’t realise your good at something until you use it for something else. And then people perhaps give you feedback and comments and say, “That was really helpful.” So working with Chris and honing my craft and realising that I really enjoy pulling together content to explain things for the people started all of this, really.

Imogen Allen:
You’ve got to be sure about your topic to be able to write it, but you don’t have to be an expert, expert because if you’re one step ahead of somebody else who doesn’t have that knowledge that you do, then you’re more of an expert than them. And I think people get really hung up about, “Well, I can’t write about that because I don’t know everything about that topic.” Nobody knows everything about every topic. You know what you know, and that could be really helpful for somebody else. So I think that’s a barrier to get over. It’s a big one because everybody feels that maybe they’re not good enough to write such an article but, actually, they are, because it’s their viewpoint, their experience. Everybody brings something different to the table.

Lee Jackson:
Absolutely. And from that then, how did your service start to evolve, and the way you attract customers? I’m hearing you’ve got some form of content marketing going on and you’ve started to realise that you know more than you probably thought, you’re building up your confidence, you’re growing your business through content, et cetera. But how did you converting customers and the type of customers that you convert transpire over 2019, 2020 and so on?

Imogen Allen:
Well, it probably was a bit of a journey that might be a bit unexpected when I explain it. I actually have much fewer clients than I ever have had. Now, I have been working with a particular client for five years. And over that time, I’ve done more and more and more with this client, so much so that later this year there’s going to be some projects that we’re going on, on an equal footing.

Lee Jackson:
Wow.

Imogen Allen:
It’s a totally different audience, but the principles are exactly the same. And in fact, the audience has a very similar profile to web design agencies who tend to be quite introvert, not necessarily put their hand up for things, happy to read things, but don’t like to maybe interact or feel shy about that. I then started getting involved in the customer journey and have become an integral part of the business. So I’m bringing the user experience side of things into this. In between all of this, I’m thinking I’ve got something here. How can I help other people in the industry that I love, which is the web industry, then have the two things kind of running in parallel?

Imogen Allen:
And of course, in all the groups and amazing groups that I’m in, there was always this real crisis that web agencies have about the content and getting the content from the clients. A lot of the focus was on how you actually get the content physically. James Rose has got a great product content snare, where you can capture all of that or people using things like sharing Dropbox files, or the technical ways of how to get the content. Then I saw a lot of people being really disgruntled and having projects that weren’t moving and they were six months down the line and what are they waiting for?They’re waiting on content. There was a lot of frustration around this. And so I thought, “Well, there’s got to be a way to solve this problem or go towards helping this problem.” And through the experience of the last couple of years, it made me realise that the problem isn’t actually getting the content itself.

Imogen Allen:
If you think… Yourself as a web agency owner, you have got to start writing your own content. You’ve got a blank piece of paper. You’ve got a brand new website. Can you really ask yourself the question? Can you produce out thinner, the content? Business owners are exactly the same as us. There are a lot of problems that we all have that are the same, but because we’re in the industry and we know these things, we assume everyone else does. And so I thought there’s got to be a way to be proactive and help these business owners who are really stuck with their content and ease the frustration that the web agencies think that they’ve got to have the content in their hands before they start anything, but without giving them any help or any assistance or having a conversation.

Lee Jackson:
And this is this where the WIF was born?

Imogen Allen:
It was really, yes. And I thought I’ve realised over this time, two, nearly three years is a long time for things to change, isn’t it? And I’ve realised that everybody has a skill. And I think one of my skills is being quite empathetic to people, envisaging myself stepping in their shoes and being them. I realised I was sitting on a gold mine of something absolutely, totally, 100% positive, realising that I might be able to do that, and the way I was dealing with my clients and I thought, “How do you…” You get the proposal signed off and then you think, “Great.” And then, “Oh, what’s next?” And you don’t have a plan. Yes, you’ve got to do a discovery, but this is a tiny little bit of that discovery jigsaw that I think actually can help people get really into the client’s head and get the information that they need.

Imogen Allen:
If you follow a process, it relieves you of that thinking and working out every single time you’ve got a project that, “Oh, right, okay. Now what do I need to do? How do I need to get started?” So I thought putting my skillset into a process could be a way to help other people to work through it with their clients, for the clients to unravel what’s in their head. Because it’s very difficult to sum up sometimes what you do who you do it for. You feel it inside of you, but you don’t know how to articulate it. You don’t know the words to use. Part of the big struggle is that you don’t know who you are or what you are.

Lee Jackson:
You’ve gone from taking on this big client several years ago and that’s grown and grown and grown, and you’ve come to recognise that you’ve got amazing skills and value that you can offer in there. You can then start to reduce the client set that you do have so you can start to focus on what you really love to do and your key skills. And then you’ve recognised that both agency owners and their clients struggle so much with identity and being able to then outwork that into the content for their site. Massive shout out, of course, to James Rose in Content Snare, but if you don’t know what to say, then you can’t even feel content snaring, can you?

Imogen Allen:
No, you can’t.

Lee Jackson:
And that’s why you’ve developed the website identity framework, really helping people to unpack that and help them understand their identity, how to articulate that to the people that they need to articulate that to. It’s really hard to unlock that and just to splurge that out on paper, without being able to follow some sort of process. I had the picture of a roadmap, the idea of trying to find my way somewhere without the directions. I absolutely to this day still can not drive to the same place without the satnav. Because despite the fact I follow the same instructions every time, I simply follow the satnav and I don’t necessarily remember all those instructions. I don’t necessarily remember the right order. Without that satnav, I might not necessarily get to my destination. And you’re so right, having some form of documented process I think is perfect to go through that.

Lee Jackson:
Folks, you can check that out over on umbrelladigitalmedia.co.uk/wif, because it is definitely worth checking out and we will put a link into the show notes. So Imogen, it’s been quite a journey. You’ve gone from agency owner back when you did agency life focusing with a larger client set to bringing that down to a smaller client set and launching a digital product as well. Before we wrap up, is there any advice you’d love to drop into the community to help people deal with life wherever they’re at right now?

Imogen Allen:
I think the biggest thing is to always believe in yourself. We go through so many things. Along the way we pick up different skills. We pick up lots of things that we know which are unique to our own journeys. And it doesn’t mean that everybody else goes through the same. And sometimes what you think is not helpful for somebody else actually, actually really is. And I think it’s okay to be yourself. That way you’re genuine. People really get to know you. The other thing to do is to not do it on your own. Hook up with people who are perhaps on a similar part of their journey, make relationships within Facebook groups and have calls with people. I have some amazing people I speak to on a regular basis and I have done for a few years now. [Leanne Mitten 00:18:37], David [Hibbit 00:18:38], they are my sidekicks and we help each other. Pete [Chenary 00:18:44]. Just some amazing people that I’ve met along the way.

Imogen Allen:
Have those conversations because when you connect with like-minded people, it helps you get through the tough days. You really can’t undervalue that. So don’t ever feel alone. We’ve got friends from all around the world in this business. It’s such a small place, the world, when you’re online. You may make some great friendships. And I certainly have and you’ve been an integral part of all of this massive journey. So I thank you for that too.

Lee Jackson:
Believe in yourself, be unapologetically you, especially earlier, when you said that there are things you know that others don’t, and some people need to hear it where they’re at. Don’t do it alone. Do make those friendships. I know you and Leanne have been friends for such a long time. And in fact, we’ve got friends, both you and I have, we kind of merged that we’ve got a lot of the same friends and we talk to a lot of the same people and it’s been really helpful. All of those people have been really, really helpful in both our lives, just to kind of build our confidence, keep us going, encourage us when we’re down and to be able to share the highs and the lows. Because when you listen to a podcast like this, you probably only ever hear these highs or most of these highs. One last question, what’s the best way for people to connect with you, Imogen? And then we shall say goodbye.

Imogen Allen:
They can come and connect with me through the website, which you put a link to in the show notes, or they can connect with me on LinkedIn.

Lee Jackson:
I will make sure there are links to all of that. Imogen, thank you so much for your time.

Imogen Allen:
Thank you.

Lee Jackson:
Let’s do this again soon.

Imogen Allen:
We certainly will. Thank you for having me.

Lee Jackson:
Cheerio.