Paddy Moogan is the latest interviewee in our series of features where we ask our talented team of non-execs a few brief questions about how they got to where they are and what they believe they can offer our growing pool of ambitious agencies.
Paddy, you discovered your entrepreneurial streak at an early stage selling sweets to fellow school kids at lunchtimes: how long do you recall it took you before you realised that that you might be cut out for self-employment
I think that I always knew that I wanted to work for myself at some point, but the entrepreneurial stuff always felt like a "spare time" thing rather than anything bigger than that, which is why I think I still went the academic route for a while and went to University. Having said that, after selling sweets at school, I moved onto selling DVDs and PlayStation games to my school mates which may or may not have been a legal enterprise! So I was forming a habit of finding ways to make money for myself throughout school and college.
You built your first website aged 14, is digital creation still effectively your core skill
I think it was but more than this, I just really enjoyed learning and understanding how things work. So after starting to use the internet for the first time and understanding what a website was, the natural progression was to learn how to make one. I remember that my very, very first website was a wrestling one and reported on WWF (at the time) news. I even managed to get the very long URL read out on a local radio station once! That's definitely carried through to now and whilst I'm definitely not a developer, I enjoy hacking around with code and seeing what I can do. It also definitely helped me as I moved into SEO because I could see how a website really worked and understand how it all fitted together.
You co-founded Aira 10 years ago but stepped back more recently before finally exiting in 2024. You were keen to stress that Aira was widely recognised as a "great agency to work for". What was behind that assertion and how important is employee engagement in terms of the hierarchy of running an agency/a people business
I knew that we built a great place to work because generally, everyone enjoyed working at the agency and more importantly, I could see just how quickly people progressed in their careers at Aira.
Many have moved on to do great things with their careers and have said that Aira was an important step along that journey. In terms of how important employee engagement is for running an agency, I'd say it's vital. If you distil it all down, an agency is basically people working with people: an agency working with a client. So if the people within the agency are engaged and motivated, that will lead to them doing better work for a client and a client having a better experience. I don't love the phrasing, but for an agency, people are the product so if those people are unhappy, disengaged and don't care about their jobs, the experience of the client will be negative.
At Aira, my co-founder and I understood this from the very beginning and tried to shape what we did to allow for a working environment that led to better work for clients.
Did you consider growth by acquisition as well as organic and if so, why did you not progress that avenue as well
We did consider this a couple of times, mostly to help build out other skills/departments that would allow us to do a better job for clients, we also considered (pre-pandemic!) geographic expansion into the US and Australia.
The pandemic however probably played the biggest role in halting these plans and even when we came out of that tough period, decided that we were better to focus on continuing organic growth as opposed to using cash reserves or taking investment in order to grow via acquisition.
Why did you decide to step back from day to day management of the agency
To be completely transparent, I stepped back because I'd had several years of very difficult times running the agency and the compound effect of this on my mental health was pretty severe. At first, I thought that I simply needed to take a couple of weeks off and then go back to my role. But as time went on, I realised that my mental (and physical) health was in a really bad way and I needed to step away from the agency completely, eventually leading to my business partner taking over completely and me exiting the agency in the summer of 2024. It wasn't the exit or ending that I dreamt of, but it was the one that I needed at that point in time.
And any insight, scars or experiences you can share that you learnt on your journey
Lots! I've spent a long, long time since my exit reflecting on the 10 years I spent running an agency. One of the main things that I realised was that we were told by a few people that as founders, we should seek to "let everything go" and put a team in place that could run the business without us. Whilst well-intentioned, I think that this led to us moving away from parts of the business that we were actually very good at and also enjoyed.
For example, I stepped away from hiring people which I know is a key strength of mine and I also enjoyed this process. The same could be said for the sales process which I and my co-founder very much enjoyed being part of, but let go of.
You state that you are particularly keen to work with agency founders so they are better equipped to face up to personal as well as business challenges. What do you mean by this please and can you give some examples
I think that running an agency is hard on a person and I can speak from experience here, as well as experience having worked with and spoken to many agency owners over the years. Whilst the owner can feel one and the same as the agency, they are different and I think that in order to run an effective agency, the owner(s) need to be very deliberate about how they work with the agency, their relationship with the agency, and how they handle challenges that come along.
Essentially, running an agency is a huge mix of highs and lows and everything in the middle and it can take a toll on a person. I want to help people ride those highs and lows and always remember that there is a real human being behind every agency.
Now you've embarked on a portfolio non-exec career, what type of companies/agencies are you ideally seeking to work with and what are the specific plus points that you believe you can add to their management teams
I think that I work best with agency founders who care about the work that they do and the team that works for them. I think this needs to form the basis of any successful agency, so having this foundation in place is really important for me.
Alongside that, I currently do my best work with agencies who are on a growth trajectory and experiencing (or are about to experience) the inevitable challenges that come with that - because I've seen most of them! Ultimately though, I'd say that for me, it's less about the ideal agency and more about the ideal founder.
The ideal founder for me is someone who is prepared to listen, take advice but then take accountability for their execution and work.
Thank you Paddy and enjoy your AgencyNXD challenges and supporting other ambitious agency founders and owners.
