See show notes for this episode: S 02 | Ep .. Luke Tobin.
Alex Shevelenko
00:21
Welcome to Experience-Focused Leaders. I'm delighted to introduce you to Luke Tobin, a serial entrepreneur who's existed at three companies, including Digital Ethos, the UK's fastest growing marketing agency, which is sold to Cadastra. As a co-CEO of Cadastra EMEA, Luke oversaw 900 employees and a $50 million in revenue portfolio, working with small clients like Samsung, Unilever and the NHS. He now leads Tobin Capital, focused on scaling high-potential companies, with a portfolio including well-known companies like SpaceX and RELAYTO. Welcome to the pod, Luke.
Luke Tobin
01:22
Thank you. Thanks for having me, Alex, good to be here.
Alex Shevelenko
01:31
Well so many reasons to connect. We just love your insights in marketing, both in terms of running an agency and now supporting non-agency, highly scalable organizations non-agency highly scalable organizations. So perhaps let's start at the beginning. You've been running a marketing agency for quite some time. What did it take to succeed when you got started and what do you see as the key to success now?
Luke Tobin
02:00
Okay, so I think you know agencies in general and marketing is a commodity driven space these days. Right, you know, I think in the UK alone 26,000 different agencies, I think globally over half a million or something, which is, you know, just insane to think about the level of competition. So when I started, I've worked in a few other agencies. I've had, you know, exposure on client side and agency side so, I think, the kind of trappings of what did and didn't work. And I think you know you've probably experienced this, I'm sure some of the audience as well. There's almost like a no man's land that sits between the agency and the client. There's kind of this area of mistrust, like you know, who's thinking what is the agency actually aligned to the expectations and the goals of the company?
02:46
And I kind of, when I was in an agency just before I founded mine, I used to hate the fact that there wasn't really true alignment. It was more like, well, OK, we need to build as much as we can for as long as we can and deliver, ok, work. And I don't think it's the agency not wanting to do good work. It was just kind of a misalignment. So I started my agency with a, a kind of plan to bridge that gap, if you like, and the way that I approached that was very much um around going in and actually becoming a kind of a real consultant for that business. So we would go and physically, when I started it was just me I would go and sit in the client's office for two, three days at a time I think the longest was two weeks. You, you ask all the questions that you'd ask if you're a new employee and you really integrate into the business and even to this day, Alex, I don't think there's many agencies that are doing this deeply integrated model.
03:37
There's a lot of agencies that say we're an integrated agency but actually truly going and like investing that time up front to understand what those kinds of short, middle, long-term goals are and that really set us up into a I think you know, in a commodity driven space. We carved out something that was quite unique. Really quickly and effectively we're able to scale oh, you're muted.
Alex Shevelenko
04:02
Yeah, if you're in a commodity, then the relationship is the key.
Luke Tobin
4:04
It's the key, it's the thing that sets you apart. Yeah.
Alex Shevelenko
04:07
Right. Okay.
Luke Tobin
4:09
Definitely.
Alex Shevelenko
04:11
And so you and also life is more fun when you have deeper relationships with your clients. I would imagine so much better.
Luke Tobin
04:17
So much better. And you know, marketing is one of those things and we all know this where things do go wrong. Right, you could have the best campaign strategy in the world, you deploy it and, for whatever reason, it just might not work. Um, you know, it might be the wrong timing, the channels might be wrong, you know, whatever budget might not be enough, there's all sorts of things that can happen. And if you've got that relationship and you've gone and spent that time and you know, arguably you've done all of the personal bits in, in and that you get a little bit more rope from the client to try new things, test things, look, this hasn't worked, let's have a bit longer.
04:50
So what we found was, you know, even where we didn't nail the campaign straight away, the clients wouldn't churn, whereas typically in an agency relationship, once there's a burn, you know in the first six months it's over, it's done. You know, and, and I think the average turnover rate in agencies in the UK is about 40% year on year. So you're having to win all those new clients constantly and we avoided that. You know, our retention rate was 95 % in the first five years. So we were just growing, growing, growing, um, whilst everyone else was kind of churning clients, so that was the real point of difference. I think that sets us up for the success that we saw.
Alex Shevelenko
05:25
Amazing. So when you build that relationship in the pre-Covid era, right UK, relatively concentrated, everybody could go meet somewhere in central London um, oftentimes feels like you know you're doing a lot of things in person, right, go to the, to the pub at the end of the day and like, also build that relationship.
Luke Tobin
5:50
Definitely, yeah.
Alex Shevelenko
05:52
Let's say Covid era. Let's say your smaller agency, right, that doesn't, that maybe doesn't have ability to do that because it just doesn't scale the size of projects. How do you build trust and relationships in a digital first, remote first universe? It's tough.
06:08
It's tough. It's tough but it's not impossible. Um, you know, with Covid, we had to pivot as well and our strategy of going and sitting in the office wasn't a thing anymore for a couple of years. Um, so I think, just doing immersive workshop type sessions, um, you know, almost like kind of show and tell with with the client as much as you can to to really understand what makes them work and, I think, be willing to have the, the tougher quest, like conversations, I think what agencies tend to do is shy away from. They'll just accept what the client's asking for, but shy away from those tough conversations. So, like question why, and you know, if the client gives you some KPRs, okay, why and what for and what's the benefit, and you know how realistic is it, and push back early on because that just sets the right expectation for the long run and I think there are still ways and that tends –
Alex Shevelenko
06:58
So less British more American?
Luke Tobin
07:00
Exactly! Be more American.
Alex Shevelenko
07:02
Yeah, yeah, great. I can run an agency in the UK now finally.
Luke Tobin
07:08
Definitely be more American, yeah.
Alex Shevelenko
07:09
So I think, and as we joke for those of you that are not in the, you’re kind of unfamiliar with the UK business culture. I think uh, it's certainly in the England part of the uh, United Kingdom. The confrontation is a bit frowned upon, right, and there's lots of ways to avoid embarrassment of a direct confrontation that you have to read between the signs. But it's still and people do read, but it's not a direct uh read. So I think it's just too subtle to actually make as much of an impact. Is that an accurate description, Luke?
Luke Tobin
07:47
Uh, it is, it is. And I think also you know if you're trying to sell to someone in the UK, or certainly in England, you know you're. They often don't want to say no to you, so you can spend your time, you know, over and over chasing somebody. Okay, I'm still thinking about it, maybe blah, blah, blah. In the end, if they haven't made a decision in a couple of weeks, it's probably a no. So just move on. But you know, again, it is that politeness, I think the, uh, the British culture. We are overly polite, we don't like to offend, so instead we'll avoid those difficult conversations. Yeah, quite typically.
Alex Shevelenko
08:16
And then, like I'm gonna interject here, because we I've ran an agency and we support a few agencies it feels like there's some clients expect at least when they get a new business, they really expect agencies to do a bunch of free work and I think that doubles down on the problem, right. Like you're busting your chops trying to please somebody who's not going to say no and for all intents and purposes they're you know they may be just kind of keeping you along or they're afraid of like maybe they're not that evil, they just are afraid of, like you said, afraid of having a harder conversation. But you end up as an agency, as individuals, wasting quite a lot of cycles and we noticed this interestingly in RELAYTO World. We noticed that people would be like submitting some kind of a leave behind or deliverables, digitally and verbally, of your email, people would be like “Oh yeah, this is great. Keep it coming. Good job there. Attaboy!”
09:19
And then they wouldn't be looking at that stuff because we can capture the actual engagement data. So that was like what's going on? People are basically wasting your cycles and making you spin and work on some deadline on an RFP process that you're not even even in column B. You're like column you know that you can't see in the spreadsheet uh type of person. So, and that felt tragic actually for a lot of these great creative businesses. What are your thoughts on that?
Luke Tobin
09:58
No, I mean, it's uh, it's a challenge. And you know those RFP processes are just a touch on that start with being client-side and running a few of them before. Quite often you do it just to get fresh ideas right. Yes, you're probably going to give some work to somebody, but some of them are a bit of a ruse. You know they're ran and actually you know they already have the agency they're going to go with, but they want some ideas from 10 other companies and agencies pour their heart and souls and hours and hours into these things. So it is soul destroying.
10:24
And I think there's also this, this kind of bit that you touched on at the start. There around, um, some clients realize that if you jump up and down and shout the loudest, you probably get more, and then that makes it because, again, people are polite in the agency and they want to do well, they want to please the clients. Um, they will jump up and down and do all that extra work. So it's tricky. Yeah, that part of it is really really challenging and the only way to deal with it is to have a quite strict process. But then the caveat to that is that it can affect relationships, right.
Alex Shevelenko
10:53
So, yeah, but the relationship goes both ways right. I think one of the things we've noticed is from agency folks. If the client is asking I need this deliverable on Sunday, and then you basically ruin the weekend. You work, work through, you know like to get this done, send the deliverable, you feel good about yourself and then the analytics data shows that they didn't look at it and that's like and that's interesting, right, and that holds some accountability both ways, actually in a good way, because it basically means hey, um, these people they're creative, you know great human beings.
11:36
They’ve got lives. They're not just there to serve you, like, you need to build a trusted mutual relationship and, um, I think, uh, I think that's just a better foundation for for life, right, and and, uh, and you know, maybe you need to fire some clients that are kind of abusive to you, uh, in that way, right. So I felt like this is not just for proposals, this could be even for delivery. There's just some mutual accountability that drives better practice. What are your thoughts on that? Have you done anything like that? Like fired clients? Yeah, how did that go?
Luke Tobin
12:14
I have. I think you know if you notice those analytics, that's a perfect example. I think you should be questioning that client straight away so we can see you've not opened it. You know our team and I would be happy to have that frank conversation. You know, probably not a typical Brit in that sense, you know, be like, look, I can see you didn't look or open it till Tuesday. Our team works over the weekend, as promised, um, but yeah, I think you know the firing of clients.
12:36
A lot of agency owners, especially till they get to a certain kind of cushion or size, find it really difficult to do.
12:41
But what I found is that if you show the team that you're willing to make those tough decisions and sometimes sacrifice revenue in exchange for their um, their mental health and their kind of supporting them, they will work harder for you.
12:55
On the clients that actually are the ones that are probably going to drive performance and the other thing that happens with those clients anyway that drive you into the ground, they end up becoming really unprofitable when you work on a kind of hour cost basis. So letting them go is probably the best thing you can do, because I've seen it in a lot of agencies where you put all of your time and energy into that one or two clients that are jumping up and down and causing havoc. You drop the ball on a few others that are great clients and in the end they are the ones that churn. You're like, hold on, now we're stuck with these bad apples when actually we have this, you know, basket of good ones. So, um, so yeah, I think. Just always be willing to make those tough decisions and you get the team loyalty as well.
Alex Shevelenko
13:34
Let's make this, uh, not as hypothetical, but a harder decision. Let's say that a big annoying client like a client is actually important in terms of revenue. But b yeah, it's a great brand. Yeah, it's the, it's the. You know, I'm not saying NHS is like, it's the NHS, it's the brand everybody knows what's your take on. How do you manage these conversations where there's a lot more at stake?
Luke Tobin
14:02
Yeah yeah, and we've had these as well before, to be fair, um, when we were building the agency year four or five, I can remember our biggest client at the time was about 20% of our revenue and probably nine or ten of the staff were running ragged. Every month we were doubling the hours. It was really, really difficult. When it came up for renewal, we quoted them double um and they said, well, we're gonna have to RFP this out. You know, this isn't where we want it to be. And we said, well, it's okay, because we just can't run at this level anymore. And and you know, the team members are getting burnt out. It's not going to work. You know they're our strongest members. So you still got to be willing to make that call. And it's hard. You can always keep the brand as a previous client right, but 20% drop is going to hurt anybody, so so I think what you have to do before you just make that decision is start putting some plans in place to try, and you know, alleviate some of that um, that that pressure that's going to.
Alex Shevelenko
14:53
So basically the more, but BATNA, which is a negotiation term, best alternative to negotiated agreement. The more cushion you have, the more, the more. You kind of like hey, I am, I'm Luke, I'm, you know, I make Skywalker look like he's got, he's got some self-esteem issues. Like I can do whatever I could lead this through, I could take on this challenge right. Like it could be mental preparedness, it could be, you know, contingency plans in terms of business, but you want to basically have that optionality so that you're not at a mercy of something that you have to do. That's fundamentally suboptimal.
Luke Tobin
15:34
A hundred percent and I also think in a revenue like kind of a service model. Um, ideally you don't really want clients that are more than 10 or 15 percent of revenues in a single client. It's just too much risk. Um, whenever we got above that, we always tried to work to pull it back and get other clients to pull it back in line. So you know, you're always, I think, in an agency business, you're a phone call away from success or failure at any one time. But if you stack too many eggs in one client, you know it's just too risky. So, yeah, I think, um, you know, diversify as much as possible.
Alex Shevelenko
16:12
Got it. So back to digital experience. So imagine you're doing a pitch right and there's a maybe life component sometimes right, but sometimes components sometimes right, but sometimes it's an RFP, like you said, and you have to submit it. So what's your dream case scenario for standing out in that environment? If you start, you're building a new agency from scratch, right? You want to equip yourself to crank these out efficiently, crank them out in a way that they feel like they lead to this authentic relationship and stand out right and help you get an edge on the competition.
Luke Tobin
16:55
Standing out is the key, isn't it? And I think you know there's ways that you can do that to punch above your weight. Um, typically, what most agencies are still doing is submitting a you know, a PDF document and just sending it over. So if there's a way, here's a plug for RELAYTO. But it is true, you know, um, it is true, if you can visualize that in a better format or you can put it across in a way that's going to actually stand out over and above the crowd, if they're getting 10 proposals and one comes across as like a mini site, and it's beautiful and it's organized and it's it's different that that just gives you a slight edge. I think, and you know um RELAYTO–
Alex Shevelenko
17:35
And slight edge matters. Right like slight, slight edge in these competitive bids because you you don't know like you, like they're pretty, these things are tight, right like, unless it's like an established relationship and all the other people are there just to kind of, you know, put you, push you a little bit on price. If it's a genuine competition, it's not like you rarely get this 80, 20 likelihood outcomes. It's like 55, 45 at best, right?
Luke Tobin
17:59
Yeah, and it's commoditized again, right, so everyone's selling the same service. They might have a slightly different price, they might have a different narrative, but effectively it's the same thing. You're selling SEO, PPC, Social, whatever it is. So, yeah, this is interesting.
Alex Shevelenko
18:16
So, yeah, this is interesting. We noticed this across not just like marketing agencies, but any agencies, like in the US, like in employee benefits brokers, are effectively agencies that deliver similar, uh, similar services, and one of the services relates to employee communications around their, their benefits and health care plans.
18:37
And what was interesting to us is, um, we just assume, well, look, this is doesn't have to be super like, it's like whatever the people are doing is not like the top end of creativity, it's not like what you know, it's not Nike type of you know doing, doing their kind of some some brand pitch, but actually small things about something that matters in an industry that has some commodity pressures, they matter a whole lot than small. Right, it's a difference between getting a client and or keeping a client, um, and and losing you know substantial amount of commission in that part of the world, very similar. So it was surprising to me that it doesn't have to be the industry, doesn't have to be sexy, Madman, you know Luke the Ogilvy Tobin, you know it could be an industry we don't typically associate with wild communication requirements like employee benefits, but it actually is a big differentiator there Is that what you've seen for some of your clients as well that are dealing with these commodity pressures?
Luke Tobin
19:45
Absolutely. I think any business that's in a highly competitive or commodity type space, every single point difference that you can make is critical, right. And if you can do that leveraging technology, leveraging design, tweaks, support, whatever it is it makes a massive impact. So yeah, I mean, I've seen it time and time again, even with our own pitching you know, by leveraging tech and trying to do things to stand out makes a massive, massive impact. And all the big companies out there, all the you know we touched on Samsung and Unilever and those guys they're all constantly looking for ways to elevate themselves. So if you're a smaller business or a mid-tier business, you absolutely have to, because otherwise you know you've got to follow the leaders and people that are setting the standard.
Alex Shevelenko
20:34
So yeah, so you're saying the leaders are not standing still either. It's not one of those things that like, oh, I'm asleep at the wheel. So you feel like, because they're getting pitched a lot, they get creative ideas, so they're getting there. So if you're not congruent and you show up and you say, Samsung, we're the world's most creative agency for performance marketing, and then you're not creative at all in terms of how you look and feel and your first impressions, which tend to be digital quite a lot of times, at least for some people, right, not everybody. But, like, typically, the senior decision maker that signs off and scans the proposal does not go have a lot of initial debrief meetings with you, right, like, do you get like one chance to get that CMO or CEO to say, oh yeah, I like these guys right, like this feels aligned with my vision and it's a very intuitive decision oftentimes as well. And then, if you miss that chance, you're sort of all that work yeah.
Luke Tobin
21:35
It sounds like one of the things we did actually a lot of the agency is we would rebrand our pitches to the client that we were pitching, so to them and effectively, then just have a very subtle mention of our own logo, but it'll be all all about them, right?
21:54
It's all about fixing their challenges, their problems, but presenting that in a way that maybe they haven't thought to present their own pitch. That again stands out to them and it will. It will just resonate. So it's just coming at it in a slightly different way. A lot of people that are presenting, they present. It's all about them and their design.
Alex Shevelenko
22:12
Me, me, me, me me! Look at me! I have this many people in my company. We have offices here.
22:17
We're there, it's like yeah yeah yeah unless, unless you are like, maybe, like there are some brands like Ogilvy or whatever that are sort of have a maybe an unfair advantage, it's not obvious, right, but because they could appear arrogant. Um, but so, so that's interesting insight. We noticed that something similar started to happen where, uh, for strategic pitches, people on a cover page, as you know and relate to you, could add a video and the AI kind of the background fills it in. So you would write your deck and then people would take a little B-roll of a video from some corporate video that the client has put out and roll that underneath. And so you, basically people were like, hey, we're Sony and we're like looking at some Sony, Sony studio content and we feel good and it's sort of like it feels like it's definitely done for us. It's a small touch, tiny touch, right, it has very little to do with what's like on page 54 in the pricing, which is where, but it moves you out of an analytical, cerebral, skeptical mode as a client into somebody who's like okay, well, at least they put in an effort, they care enough to to, to feel like you're their line, which just sounds like your vision.
23:48
And then I think separately, there's something that generates excitement, right, like very often, like some people, some content. You'd be like oh, I'm really looking forward to reading your proposal, but I'd say that's a minority. I don't know what your experience has been like. People don't wake up in the morning. It's like I want to look at a 50 page, 54 page PDF on my screen. You know like that. But then you see this video and it's exciting and it feels like it's tuned and it's like, oh, something happens emotionally. We're not conscious of what it is. Have you seen things like that work and pitches as well in your experience?
Luke Tobin
24:29
Yeah, I mean, look people, people's attention span is minute these days. Right, we're all so used to like instant gratification, being able to watch things on social media, whatever, and get an instant feeling for what the the core message is, and I think the the beauty of being able to digitize, like a sales process, into a truly digital form, is that they don't want to read all the gunk and they want to just go straight to the pricing page, just click click to that section, or, you know, having an embedded video just allows you to control the narrative. What we used to do, actually kind of early on with pictures in Covid, where we couldn't always get one of the people, is we'd send the loom video you know, basic level, very basic level, yeah along with it, and actually early on that really works.
25:10
And then obviously, everyone did it. Yeah, everyone did it, but to begin with it really worked. And I think this kind of the more digitally integrated your pitch and sales process can be, the easier it is for a client to find exactly what they need. And if they're scanning and they're trying to make a decision, they might already be brought in from the pitch, but they're going back in the deck to have a look for something specific.
25:30
If you can kind of index that out, making this click to that section, and the video just talks them through it in two minutes excuse me, it just makes life easy and again easier than nine out of the the 10 pitches they will have received, which they've got to scroll through all the pages and try, and you know. So yeah, simplifying it is critical.
Alex Shevelenko
25:46
So you kind of said something that's different, something that's simpler, which is an indication that “Hey, we're organized, we are easy to work with”, right, that you don't. You can say that in your pitch and then if you show up with, like, something that's really not intuitive and a lot of work to get to the things you need, that's again that's incongruent. And somebody that is more congruent, more connected with their message, says it louder than any words. Like hey, especially if you have a complex pitch, I would imagine it's harder to find that balance, but that's exactly what matters. Like “Hey, trust us with your full flow because we're really well organized and we're gonna, and and here's this proposal” and it's it, without saying anything. It shows that hey, we're very well organized and easy to work with and so you can trust us.
26:42
And this is back to that thing about trust. I think we often think that trust is sometimes when the time is right, but sometimes it's just being congruent is just as important as time. You could spend a lot of time with somebody and come across like a douchebag because you're not congruent, you're not thinking through, are not following through on the commitments and or just as discontinuity.
Luke Tobin
27:25
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, it's critical.
Alex Shevelenko
27:30
So, um, when, when, uh, when we mentioned trust, then we said, like there's some specific things about the UK and the origins are in the UK, but what's remarkable is they actually?
uh, when we met at first, you told me about your expansion across Europe, and beyond. Tell me a little bit about that, and how did you, how'd you manage that? What were particular challenges? Uh, you know, spreading when you can't be, that, you know, in all these new markets all the time, and that there's, on top, of the cultural challenge these new markets all the time, and that there's, on top of it, the cultural challenge.
Luke Tobin
27:49
Yes, yeah, no, it was. It was definitely fraught with challenges and road bumps. Um, in 2021, I was a bit of a sucker for punishment. Actually we did two acquisitions in the UK, we launched in Germany and we launched in Canada, so all in one year. So, um, the momentum was in the sales and I thought, well, you gotta ride it whilst the momentum's there. So it was an incredible experience, but I think in hindsight I probably needed two or three of me to do a really thorough job of it.
28:11
Um, we launched in Germany, quite opportunistically. Really, there was a content agency there that needed support and they had a lot of UK clients and we kind of managed to tee up and um, in the end, that was fairly successful. You, I think we signed 15 or so clients in our first year, a few less in the second year, trying to get the sales process right, and the language piece was a challenge, but generally it was a successful launch. Canada was easier because we started just with a couple of salespeople on the ground there. I went over and spent two months in Toronto door knocking, doing everything back to back, kind of grassroots, like sales tactics and it works really well.
28:51
You know, we signed 30 or so clients in the first six months, um, and we had a you know we had a you know a good agency just in Toronto which was awesome.
29:00
Um, I think the kind of the challenge then with sustaining all of that level of growth at the same time is you've got this kind of seesaw effect internally right. So if you focus on sales too much, stuff starts falling out in the operations and you focus on operations too much, your sales will. So, trying to get that balance right, it was always the challenge, um, but it was, uh, it was all about getting the right senior leadership in place. So I spent a lot of time recruiting and hiring and luckily, a couple of the acquisitions I did brought a couple of team members in that were quite strong, for the senior leadership team did a lot of cherry picking of competitor staff that you know I thought stood out to me in the market and I'd come across and had some experience with. So, yeah, we kind of battled through that, but it was. Yeah, it was fraught with challenges and road bumps, but we pulled it off.
Alex Shevelenko
29:50
What do you account for your success, particularly in Canada? Is it just that the market was not as competitive? Is it that you treated it like it was another startup and you kind of went, became like a Toronto native, and what was that all about? And uh, what was that all about? boot. What was that all good to use? My stereotypical canadian phrase I've actually got it canadian milk
Luke Tobin
30:13
Someone uh says, um, I think the thing that stood out was you know, we came out the back of covid it was 21, 22, um, 22 really that I was in Canada for for those few months and we were door knocking again and we were like phone bashing and we were like doing all this like kind of cold calling stuff that I think for a couple of years have been rested. I think that actually really played to our benefit and also, um, you know, Canadians are generally quite, quite nice, so when you call them they're up for a five minute chat. Or you know, there were a few exceptions to that rule, but generally we were able to talk to them. Um, arguably, I think, the English
Alex Shevelenko
30:56
Not of the Canadians, of the Ukrainian descent man I have to tell you that's that's a tough, that's a tough bunch, but you must have avoided those.
Luke Tobin
31:08
Definitely avoided those somehow, but yeah, no, it just seemed to gel.
Alex Shevelenko
31:14
For those that are listening, my last name is Shevelenko and I was born in Ukraine, so I get a right to beat that up a little bit, but yeah, so they were more open. It sounds like somebody coming in from a call.
Luke Tobin
31:32
Exactly. We were pitching at prices as well, which was still a good margin for us, kind of UK type rates converted into dollars, which arguably was cheap for the market. So I think that also really helped. So we were still happy with what we were making. But the typical agency based out of North America was charging, you know, at least a third, if not, you know, up to double the um, double the cost.
31:54
So you know, I think that competitive piece was quite good. There was also a piece that we talked about a lot. A lot of the targeting we did was around companies that wanted to internationalize into Europe. I think this gave us a really nice sweet spot of hey, we've got a dot on each side of the pond and we can help, kind of you know, get you set up in the UK. And most North Americans, as you know, North American businesses want to launch into Ireland and UK first and then they spring forward to the UK because of the language. So it was a really nice compelling message to be like hey, we'll help you jump over the pond and then we'll help you into Europe. So that worked pretty well.
Alex Shevelenko
32:32
Got it. So how do you, kind of coming back to this international theme, so most UK companies, right, and you had a few UK smaller clients that needed to have presence in North America, right, and how do you support them in a world-class way when you are yourself, you know, even pre-Canada right, like not physically in New York, in San Fran? What did you find to be your kind of levers of succeeding there? Was it possible, difficult, you know? Was it easier to do the European play or Pan-European play versus the North American global play?
Luke Tobin
33:11
We definitely did a lot more helping, I think, North American businesses in Europe than we did the other way around. Interesting, I think. I think maybe that's because, one, they had the budgets and they were. They wanted to be aggressive and they were looking for agencies that understood both sides of the market because we were running a lot of campaigns still in North America. But I was also very willing to work with US-based and North American-based contractors to support and kind of get that leverage.
33:41
So we had three or four contractors dotted around, depending on, you know, one was in the Midwest, one was on the West coast, one, a couple of weeks ago and that just gave us a bit of capacity, I guess, in country and access to media buying and some of the networks that we probably didn't have that natural connection with. Over time we started to build a good database and it was easier to deploy some of that from the UK. But it does come with natural challenges. I mean the agencies that do this really well. Um, do what we did in the end and put a dot on the map and actually start staffing up in North America, because it is very hard to do and also our kind of experience with.
34:16
You know, US businesses specifically liked to have US natives and people that were local to them working on the account. They didn't mind that some of the delivery was done in the UK. There was something quite novel about that, I think. But they wanted to have a US entity or a North American entity and there's kind of that trust factor element. So yeah, we kind of navigated that, I think, quite well by having contractors and building out more of a global network than anything else. In the end we had a network of contractors across about 11 markets.
34:50
So that really helped us. So we didn't need to have dedicated staff because we were able to kind of dial up or dial down depending on the demands of the clients.
Alex Shevelenko
34:59
Got it. Now let's fast forward a little bit to your current hat as an investor. But to your current hat as an investor, how do you look at the marketing component of some of your portfolio? Are you actually evaluating, are you including their marketing savviness or not into the investment strategy? And you can say, hey, if these guys are marketing like shit or not marketing at all and they're getting these results, this is great, this is a great opportunity. Or you could say, hey, these guys have you know, are they turned on. They're executing. Because I have this deep expertise and in five minutes from my looking at their SEO strategy and scores and I could see that at least that the go-to-market machine is on. Like to guide me a little bit on what's your. Is this an important consideration compared to other areas?
Luke Tobin
35:59
It definitely plays a part and I think you know I've done investments where it's just capital deployment and and typically to be comfortable to do that and not have any kind of advisory um sway or support element, um, I definitely look at their marketing component and understand they go to market and try to get as detailed as possible.
36:18
So if that looks strong and actually you know they've got a good team and they're executing like hey, cool um, I would be more comfortable at that point just putting a bit of capital in and being passive. On the ones where I see opportunity um for, you know, enhancement of those strategies, um, typically I will do investment plus advisory or some sort of um packaged approach. So you know, a bit of capital on the table, a bit of equity for services, something like that, because it just benefits both sides. Also, I just know that with small tweaks and enhancements it will, you know, work for everybody's benefit. So yeah, it's two-sided when it comes to that, but I'm always evaluating whether I think they've got a strong go-to-market definitely.
Alex Shevelenko
37:01
So since you brought that up, we have a pretty unusual relationship. You've invested in RELAYTO and you're continuing to advise us and you're bringing in some folks that you know and work with to help us out, and we're thrilled about this. I would be curious to hear unfiltered take on what was going on through your mind when you first could have learned about what we're doing and then and then started looking and now, like you know, hey, you have a lot of opportunities. Why do you decide to allocate both your time and your money towards uh, towards helping an upstart like us?
Luke Tobin
37:45
No, awesome. I mean, first of all, Alex, you know we had, you know, that meet and chat and I think we were kind of glued to each other for an hour or two chatting and really brought into the vision. Um, I think you've got a great vision, um, for where you want RELAYTO to be. And I, you know I really bought into that and then, you know, went and played with the platform. Um, I was like actually, you know, this tech is, it's cool, it's pretty sexy, it works well, like it's easy um, and I test a lot of tech solutions that just aren't actually as simple and easy to use.
Alex Shevelenko
38:21
So I didn't oversell the tech?
Luke Tobin
38:23
No, no, you didn't, you didn't. That's good, I think. Really, if anything, you underplayed the tech. You were talking more about the vision of where you want to be, and I think that's always in a founder, right, to talk about “Hey, there are problems today. We want to be here and nothing's ever perfect”, which is great.
38:39
But no, I was pleasantly surprised when I got hold of the tech and started messing around and I've been using it actually as a kind of, you know, a customer in a sense. You know, I've been using it when I'm going out and doing pitches now and presentations. I did a training workshop using RELAYTO the other day. So, genuinely, you know, it has been excellent for me. But I think, you know, from an investment advisory point of view, what I liked was you're still at this kind of early stage in the platform journey and taking it to market, trying to find the right fit for the ICPs, and I do realize that, like I think there's a lot of businesses that will benefit from RELAYTO. But I think there's just ways that we can tweak the go to market to make it accelerate a lot faster, and I saw the opportunity there to add some benefit support. I knew we'd work well together and I can see that the future and the opportunity is good, so that's fine.
Alex Shevelenko
39:29
You politely, in a very British way, just pointed out that for a marketing-oriented company, I would say we're not only for marketing because we support sales and broader comms. But you know, marketers get it really quickly, but we have done very little marketing. Yeah, and that's good in the sense that let the product do the work, because you hate these products that are really well marketed, but then you go what's there afterwards? But I think that's also exciting that it is early days and the future is still ahead and I think companies need to find things like.
40:18
I don't know what your take is, but I think there's a lot of talk about the product market fit, but also there is like a kind of distribution and go-to market kind of fit to that, to that for that product right and then so I think it's not just about is the product rate is like, is this distribution channel going to be delivering disproportionate results and getting you those kind of uh, great customers and that is not an obvious one right. Like, as we discussed, like you almost have to do based on the overall playbook and you have to then find your equivalent of what's the PayPal? You know, PayPal finding eBay as their perfect distribution strategy, that version right of the rapidly moving water. What's your take on the kind of those challenges in a resource constrained environment where you can't easily try everything but you still you need to need to play well enough in multiple areas
Luke Tobin
41:06
You do and and I spend a lot of time talking to founders and tech founders, and I think there's an obsession and I understand why around the products and getting like the best possible product ready and built and to market.
41:36
But actually, um, that kind of like, how do we scale and sell this piece? Often gets kind of like well, it's, if we have a great product, it will obviously just sell and it will obviously just fly off the shelves. And it's like well, it's, if we have a great product, it will obviously just sell and it will obviously just fly off the shelves. And it's like well, not in, not in today's world. No, that that go-to-market and that kind of that way of positioning yourself and understanding like who the end user is, is so much more uh, almost arguably more important. The product piece. If you've got a good idea, you can almost backfill the product, right it's how you're going to sell it and enable it.
42:06
You know new revenue fixes all problems. So how can we get the revenue flowing to then to keep the scale? So, yeah, no, for me, I think, um it is. It is often underlooked at, and actually that's an area that I love to work in, because I think I can try and add some extra padding to what's probably a good product there, or certainly conceptually a good product, um, and then work out how we can actually go out and sell it, which is, you know, the key, and that's, that's the beauty.
Alex Shevelenko
42:39
Yeah, there's a saying that I like, that first-time founders care about the product and second-time founders care about distribution. Yeah, and, and it's a seesaw right, because if you totally get the distribution and then the product is not particularly differentiated and not sustainable, somebody will go and steal your distribution play eventually. So it's not super simple like that. You need to build something especially if we're working a lot in AI and so it's very fortunate that we were an agency and put a lot of our workflows as an agency which are just impossible to copy for somebody who has not gone deep enough in the domain to understand, like, what does a human do? And kind of, how do you tweak that algorithmically for our AIs for a number of tools, but that's time consuming, but it still doesn't, like you said. It still doesn't solve the distribution thing and, in fact, if you don't test the distribution at the same time, maybe you build an amazing product that is just very inefficient to distribute.
Luke Tobin
43:47
I think that's actually a really good point, Alex, because you, you built this almost for yourselves, right? And actually that is the product market fit right. You built it for yourself as, like you know, to be able to internally use.
Alex Shevelenko
43:57
Yeah, then we're like actually I mean it was the problem that you were outlining is like, hey, some of our customers like, “Hey, I love, I love your vision, your decks, this is all great”. Thinking like how does this stand out, how do we deliver it, you know, in a way that helps us, actually helps this idea get from the deck to the customer's head and get from their head into their hands and actions and behaviors. And that was, like you know, a big enough problem, unfortunately, right. But you were, you were saying something similar, like in terms of the challenges that you saw. So you could relate, I guess. But back to you, back to sorry, I interrupted your flow.
Luke Tobin
44:42
No, no, all good, all good. Yeah, no, I, I, I, I. I feel like that is the perfect. You have this perfect use case because you tested it. But I think that the key is, yeah, being able to look at. You obviously need to build a good product, but being able to look at what is that actual strategy for distribution and growth and how does that come together and fit in, and identifying that ICP early and then getting some buy-in is critical.
Alex Shevelenko
45:10
Well, and I think one of the things that I'm curious about, your views and surprises in marketing and as you go to market. So the ICP that I had in mind looked a lot more similar to myself and the challenges that I faced, but I certainly did not predict the employee benefit broker in the US is going to be like “Hey, this is amazing for this, this and reason”.
45:36
I'm ripping out these other tools that are 20 years old that I've been using and I had no idea, even though I was sort of coming from success factors in the world of HR tech. I didn't see it, and so that is maybe something that you would say is an interesting site. Benefit of doing a lot of experimentation, including on performance marketing. What have you seen that are some of the biggest surprises for your clients that you could talk about that come out of creative marketing?
Luke Tobin
46:13
Yeah, I mean for us, we always call it in performance, like AB testing, and then that leads into you know learnings and cross learnings and opportunities. But, um, you know, I think, finding those and identifying those different um distribution channels, ICPs, whatever you want to call them, um, you can't. I think what we're talking about here is you can't plan for everything so like that element of like, okay, look, you think you've got this perfect fit, because it's something that, like in your case, solved your problem.
46:41
It's going to solve look-alike problems, which it does, but then also there's all these segues and opportunities that open up when you go out and you start testing it. So I think really what we're talking about here is you can prepare, but you can't over-prepare and you need to be willing to kind of leverage and learn as you go. And I think the beauty of marketing is it gives you a fairly inexpensive way of testing some of that feedback if you do it right and then obviously you can scale it up and you can push more budget into it and more demand.
Alex Shevelenko
47:16
Right. So I'm going to rework this there. There's this famous quote “Chance favors a prepared mind”. But I think it's a combination of “Chance favors a prepared mind” and a flexible stance. You know, like when in sports, you're kind of, if you stand like a stick with legs not bent, you're, you're, and the ball runs over there, you're gonna miss it. But if you're like this and you're in position to pounce and you're, you're and the ball runs over there, you're gonna miss it. But if you're like this and you're positioned to pounce and you're, you're like, if you have to move, you can grab at it, and it feels like this is something that, um, that what you're describing is like you, you could probably have hypotheses, but you never know where the ball is going to end up, so you better be in a position and agility to get to the ball.
47:59
Uh, for the opportunity. So we're moving into sports and I think maybe let's tie into a more holistic way of living and at work. I think some one of the things I admire about you and our conversation is that it is just well-rounded. You approach building your career, defining what success looks like, and you've started a series, pro bono, of sharing these insights. Tell me a little bit more about that and how that plays along with Tobin Capital and your general vision for life.
Luke Tobin
48:36
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I have to be honest, Alex. There's been times, like in my career, where I've hit burnout. I've, I've lent too much into the career pillar, the archetypal. You know what success is chasing money, chasing whatever that brings, and over the last few years and I think this is arguably what exits and success, you know, financial success gives you this ability to reflect a bit more. So I appreciate maybe I'm coming at it from a position of privilege.
49:03
However, um, even before the last exit, which was my largest one today I was thinking more and more about this kind of purpose piece and like what actually, who have I had around me that have inspired me and actually helped me? They might not have realized at the time they were helping me, but they have, and there's a few people I think of just little conversations or times when I've been close to burnout and they've been able to help me. And I thought there is a model to success and there's a blueprint to success. But success isn't just wealth and career, it's it's family, it's health, it's it's perception of life, which you know. What is life if it's not happiness?
49:43
So I thought, well, how do I start taking some of these learnings? And I'm still on the journey a lot myself. I'm trying to figure out “How do I start sharing this”?
49:51
So it started with a newsletter called the Success Method. I've been interviewing and talking to lots of different people that have been archetypally successful. Other people that are successful, you know, maybe just in a different sense, you know, whether that be in their marriages, you know families, health. Trying to understand and un-hack a little bit of what makes these people successful in their own right um, and I feed that through the newsletter.
50:17
We do a weekly issue and I started doing elements of kind of a pro bono advisory and bits and bobs and at the moment, you know, I'm really finding some kind of purpose in that because I'm exploring and I'm figuring out things for myself.
50:29
I'm getting as much from it probably as I'm giving it out, um, which is great. And you know, I know I think it's kind of a constant learning journey together and hopefully that kind of comes across in the newsletter. And then outside of that I'm doing a little bit of just some advisory and a little bit of paid work whilst I figure out what comes next for me. You know I exited the agency only at the end of last year, so it's early, you know, still taking a bit again position of privilege to be able to kind of just sit and think and figure that out and I want to help other entrepreneurs and other founders on their journey whilst I'm doing that and share that process.
Alex Shevelenko
51:18
Well, I for one, anybody who's thinking about getting investment from you and advice from you I'm a huge fan and I think it is a privilege to get advice on these multiple levels, right, like. One level is like hey, I've grown successful businesses, exited them, et cetera, scaled internationally. The other is deep expertise in your domain, right, which is quite broad, because to run a modern marketing agency, you can't just be like a super niche specialist, you have to be good at a number of disciplines and integrating. That is non-trivial. Um, I think you could, if you find people that that can bring it all together, hold on to them that's a pretty, pretty rare uh gift, uh, and then all at the same time have this, you know, personal growth as a leader, as a human being component, and that's something we connected at the beginning. And also recognizing that you know, success like, it's not necessarily defined as an exit only right, like, it's it. You know, my, I even like, even like the like.
52:13
I obviously work at a company called success factors that allow the exit from which allowed me to pursue some entrepreneurial and other passions.
52:23
But, uh, what I found interesting uh, is that the word that I'm gravitating more towards is the word fulfillment and I, I think you can. You could run into issues, in into doing something, uh, but you could still be deeply fulfilling because it's a line was your, maybe a line was your mission, but also the way you you're wired, the way you're looking at it, if you, if you have a growth mindset.
52:37
You could look at the, at the, at the challenges and they could be, they could be seen as a source of motivation and enjoying that. The challenge, the challenge becomes the destination and the journey and overcoming it and that's. You know that that feels really congruent and I know that's a lot of the thinking and you know we're not not to nitpick, and I know that's a lot of the thinking and you know not to nitpick on words, but that's a lot of the thinking behind what you're sharing. What's your take on that? You know, now that you've, you know you also talk to other entrepreneurs. You know what are the traps that people get caught on, in the sort of their career journey, entrepreneurial journey, that you know you find are easily avoidable?
Luke Tobin
53:41
I think I'm not sure any of them are easily avoidable, but maybe with the right approach.
Alex Shevelenko
53:46
At least should be aware of like, let's just say like, like awareness is the beginning, right, like awareness is the beginning. Like, we’re people it's like I'm gonna exit and everything is gonna be great. I'm gonna meet the girl of my life or the boy of my life or you know whatever trans, trans, neutral person, neutral gender person of my life and everything is going to be great. Um, these are sort of like the narratives that society feeds us.
54:11
Yes, and you're having had exits, right? We know that that's not okay. That's just going to raise more questions than that. Gives you more answers.
Luke Tobin
54:21
It does it does it definitely raises more questions I think the um, the key with all of this is you know it. The expectation that's set in us from a young age, I think, is you know, work hard, chase the dream like if you because if you're entrepreneurial you go okay. Well, I want to be able to sell. If I sell, I get all this money. If I get money, I can do whatever I want it gives me. I think the freedom piece is important that comes with being out of business.
54:48
But that purpose bit you alluded to is the bit that I don't think you really think about until you're there, because you forget. You're so busy trying to drive to this goal you forget sometimes to enjoy that journey.
55:00
And the journey is the piece that matters the most, because when you get there, it's kind of like on a cliff and all of a sudden you kind of come back down to earth and you go, oh, okay, so money can sit in a bank account, but it's not like I carry it on my person and I, I walk around and everyone goes, oh, my god, look, you know, you're still the same person and you, okay, yeah, you might have a bit more time, a bit more luxury, whatever, but you, if you still got stuff going on inside, you still got to deal with that stuff regardless.
55:29
In fact, you might, you might force you to deal with it a bit faster than you would have otherwise. So yeah, I think it's important that people understand that the perception of archetypal success isn't actually all it's cracked up to be. I also think that there's a lot of pressure on people these days, and especially on younger generations, because social media, the expertise and that perception of how other people are doing is never good enough, right? So I know I've had these exits and I'm always going oh, look at that guy, you know he's gone three times the value of 10 times that you know and you go, you know and you meet them and you go. Sure, I could do that like what's so
Alex Shevelenko
56:10
They're human, they're human.
Luke Tobin
56:12
You know there’s only twenty-four hours in a day as well. So it's always like you're always reaching and I think you've just got to find an ability to and this is a lot of what this kind of success method is about. It's like I find an ability to be okay with being okay, but obviously it doesn't mean take ambition out of the frame. It doesn't mean keep pushing, because I think we should.
Alex Shevelenko
56:32
This is the really tricky part, right like because it's like, try that I'm just gonna meditate all day, right like, and and just kind of be, you know, finding the joy from within. Maybe it works, actually. Maybe for some people, this is, this is their wiring and they just don't, don't need something like that. And then for others, like they're wired to grow, they need challenges to thrive and it doesn't mean that you need to be disconnected. No, uh to have these right um. So you know, I'll share, just to make this a little bit more human as we wrap up, I'll share my, my kind of maybe three stories are coming tonight really quick, and maybe you could share yours as well of these sort of realizations. So I remember one was, you know, kind of accidental exit of something I worked on, you know, before Stanford, during Stanford, and you know we had um exited and I had like a little bit of money and I, instead of, instead of getting a job, like everyone, I went on a backpacking trip around around the world, which is, in the UK, pretty common, called the gap year, in my case, I was, you know, turning 30 and I've never, you know, having come from a background where you couldn't travel outside of Soviet Union, I was really excited, excited to kind of go see the world. And I was having the time of my life, I thought, and like dreams come true, all those places, kind of reliving the story of Jules Verne, kind of around the world in whatever number of days, just you know, coming out with challenges. But eventually I felt like I was getting bored and not like, and even if I volunteered and did some things here and there and you know, made this kind of conquer, every fear type of thing, it was just eventually it just felt like yeah, you know, not, not enough, and I was like very clear, like I'm not ready to retire, like because that I would just kind of go crazy on that. Even though it was that much excitement. So that was one another. I think everyone is like you, some people may get a promotion and I remember that eventually I joined a great company, success factors I mentioned. I got my promotion, uh, you know, big boost in equity. I was very happy and ended up what six ended up being helpful for me in more ways than that original exit.
58:55
But right after I got the promotion which I was aiming for, I was like is that it? Is that all that was there? And I felt almost more disappointed, um, and so I needed to start doing some work on that or like to understand what, what was behind it, why it wasn't like it wasn't the fulfillment?
59:16
And then some people, lastly, like on a really human level, lots of people that are looking for their loved ones, they're looking for that perfect relationship, and I was like that. And you know, when I found one, I was super happy. And now, to all my friends that are not married or haven't had, you know, married but haven't had kids, I was like, well, the work just begins, you know, once, right afterwards, because I think there's a lot, a lot more learning, uh, in these intimate relationships that are, you know, sometimes even more challenging than the work, work learning about who you are, how you react, what triggers you, and so on. And so these are kind of three stories of like exits, you know, more conventional, like career success milestones and human milestones that felt like they're just, you know, a new journey, right, like that's not the destination. What are your examples where you kind of had to learn something, feeling you know, feeling like you've achieved it, but then you restart that are personal, just so people get to look behind the blueprint.
Luke Tobin
01:00:31
No, I love it. I mean, I left home very young. So I left home at like 16 and then kind of went to college and kind of carried on my kind of my route on my own. Lots of different reasons behind that, but I found very early on that I needed to be like a go-getter, to like fend for myself, and you know that came with immense pressure. Um, I did do a similar story to you.
01:00:55
So I had my first exit when I was kind of 19, 20. I was, you know, fairly young. It was a bar hire hospitality business that basically I was. I got a really cool concert lined up and I'm going to show my age here. I was doing concerts with like Beverly Knight, Suga Babes, Slim R, people like that, and basically was doing the bar units. And at the time I remember when I won the contract, I kind of was on this pitch, sales pitch call, and they're like do you have bar units, do you have stock? Do you have what? I was like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Put the phone down. I was like shit, I need to go and get this stuff now. I don't have any of it. So I was ringing around at Bergstein borrowing.
01:01:31
I set this business, and did a really good job of it. Two years in, our biggest competitor bought me out and I was like, okay, cool, so six figure exit was like, okay, awesome, I can have a bit of time now to um, to kind of go traveling. So I did a similar thing to you and I kind of reset, went to Australia, lived in Oz for a year, did a lot of backpacking, made some money as well, um, and then did Asia for six months on the way back and at the end of that, well, actually about a month in, you know, into Asia especially, I was kind of coming up with, brainstorming loads of ideas and I realized that you know a similar story to yours. I, I have to be doing something. My brain if I, if I went on a reflection week a week ago and I sat for a week and I came up like 100 new business ideas, just how I am. So I came back, you know, got got myself stuck into uh, my next business, which is an experienced company selling um anything from hot air balloons to paintballing to car racing, um, online and offline. I had sales teams in Australia and the UK.
01:02:27
Amazing journey, absolutely loved that business, you know, uh, it was great, fun, um, quite challenging, going through the financial crisis and all of that, and you know people not wanting to buy these types of luxury items, but we pulled through, we did well. And then I exited that to Virgin, which was amazing. So that was kind of the second exit at that point. But at the back of that I was like, ok, what now? Like I've had two completely different experiences, but I felt really unfulfilled then because I'd enjoyed the ride with the experience of business so much but I knew I didn't want to do it again. So at that point I was like, okay, what do I do? I haven't done the archetypal career path yet.
01:03:03
Let's step into it. Let's give it a go. So at that point I stepped into working in different consultancies, agencies. That's where I got my first kind of eye in on the marketing side and that led me in the end to obviously having the marketing, the marketing business. But at each stage and at each point I felt like I hadn't done enough and that I needed to chase something else. And I tried to take those moments to reset, but always found myself wanting to kind of jump back in and do something else. And the thing that I've found that has kept me energized, I think, is that I've always jumped to different industries and different focuses and it's given me a lot of learning. Um, but the bit you mentioned at the end, there around kinds of relationships as well. We talk about those pillars of life and relationship love is one of them.
01:03:49
I think everybody has this kind of expectation, again like Instagram expectation of love, that you're going to end up in a relationship, it's going to be lost forever and it's going to be. You know, it takes just as much work, as you say, as building a business, and you know that that's part of the journey. So, yeah, that was a kind of a whistle stop tour. I tried to go through it quickly, but little bits at each stage and at every point I think it's okay to go. I think it's okay to go, each of those have have a mix of success and failure there, um, but, like, each one of them is just part of that stepping stone and that ladder of learning about yourself, right?
01:04:17
So, yeah, and then this most recent one with um, the marketing agency, you know, uh, joined South America's largest independent agency group on a path to IPO, um, paying with a whole crafter of new experiences and learnings and imposter syndrome and all that stuff. And then you know, you do that, you complete that and you go oh, okay, is that it? Again, you know again, like, each time it's like is that it? And then what now? And I think just human beings, we're always um, always, aren't we to have new experiences and to learn new things, and I think experience is the key word. And then it's about again just being okay with, being okay with. You know the changes and the trials and tribulations.
Alex Shevelenko
01:05:08
Brilliant Luke. Well, so good to deep dive. I did not know that you've sold the business to Virgin. I kind of missed that part, and it was an experienced business. So anybody who sells an experienced business to Virgin is my hero, because I think they've kind of created a brand for great experiences. So, uh, all the more valuable to have you on our team and have these discussions. Thank you so much for sharing insights with our audience. If people want to dig into Luke's story or wisdom, again backed by you, where can they find you?
Luke Tobin
01:05:42
Yeah, absolutely luketobin.com or tobincapital.com or .couk in order to uh connect on the investing side. But luketobin.com is probably the best place, and also Linkedin and all the typical channels. Just search Luke Tobin and you'll find me.
Alex Shevelenko
01:05:58
Luke, so good to have you here.
Luke Tobin
01:05:59
Awesome. Thank you for having me.