Meet the first female founder CEO of a $20M agency: Jennifer Quigley-Jones, Digital Voices

Strategy & Tragedy: CEO Stories with Steph Melodia is the best business podcast for curious entrepreneurs featured in the UK's Top 20 charts for business shows.

Hosted by Stephanie Melodia, Strategy & Tragedy features candid interviews with entrepreneurs who have scaled - and failed - their businesses - sharing their lessons in entrepreneurship along the way. From Simon Squibb of 'What's Your Dream?' Internet fame to Lottie Whyte of Sunday Times Top 100 Fastest-Growing company, MyoMaster. From exited founders like Nick-Telson Sillett to subject matter experts like Alex Merry in the public speaking arena and Matt Lerner, the GOAT of Growth.

This is one of the best podcasts to listen to if you're looking for educational and inspirational content on Spotify, Apple, Google, Amazon, YouTube or watch the clips on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, or YouTube Shorts

-

In this week's episode, Stephanie Melodia interviews Jennifer Quigley-Jones, the founder & CEO of Digital Voices - a $20M influencer agency, the 13th fastest-growing agency by AdWeek, and is officially the fastest-growing Influencer Marketing agency in the world.

Watch on YouTube via the link below or keep reading for the transcript, where Steph and Jennifer cover:

• The secret to hyper-scale growth (Digital Voices' guaranteed results model): Jennifer founded Digital Voices with a "we win when you win" approach, offering guaranteed results (like specific views or cost per acquisition) or refunding part of the agency fee - a disruptive model virtually no other agency uses

• Starting a business aged just 26: Left her role as a Strategic Partner Manager at YouTube with just £500, leveraging relationships with 500+ UK creators to build the agency without traditional agency experience

• Revenue-funded growth to $20M: Bootstrapped the business and later raised $120K from 7 angel investors (max 1% each), strategically choosing investors across 4 personas to fill her knowledge gaps in agency scaling, marketing, internationalisation, and tech

• Building a proprietary tech platform as a non-technical founder: Invested $500K of company funds to develop Chord, a campaign management system using AI to predict benchmarks and manage influencer campaigns at scale, now working with 100-150 creators monthly

• Ethics in influencer marketing: Refuses gambling, tobacco, and weight loss clients due to the persuasive power of influencer marketing and inability to age-gate content, concerned about potential harm to young audiences

• Championing underestimated entrepreneurs: Ensures at least 70¢ of every dollar spent goes directly to micro-entrepreneurs and creators who wouldn't exist in traditional media landscapes

SM: What's the secret to unlocking this incredible growth?

JQJ: I think there's a few secrets that you learn along the way. One of the things that really shocks me is that we've had this a similar business model for the last eight years. So when I left YouTube to found the company, I was 26 years old. I'd never worked in marketing with anyone. I'd never worked in agencies. And I thought, this model feels really broken because I a lot of agencies just pay for their time. You pay for their time. So it's an hourly rate or it's a percentage of fee, but with if you're a brand, you don't really know what you're gonna get get out of that. You the KPIs that they have aren't guaranteed to match your commercial KPIs. So when I left and thought, oh, maybe I'll freelance or found an agency, I had no idea what the industry standard was, so I'm happy to break it. So we created this model that we now call we win when you win, but it's basically guaranteed results.

So if you're a brand that's desperate to sell more products, get more app downloads, we can work to guaranteeing, like, a cost per customer acquisition or a turn on ad spend. But if you're a brand that's really trying to raise brand awareness, we'll guarantee a number of impressions or views for a campaign. And if we don't hit that, we either give back a portion of our agency fee to the client, which is giving back money, make sure the influencers get paid, and we give back some of our money I got a really or content. Right. It's really interesting because no one puts their money where their mouth is. And it interesting. Builds this trusted relationship where you're, like, more of a partnership.

SM: 100%. That's exactly the first thing that came to mind. So I just jump in, but my early years in career were agency side. And it was, like, the best part of a decade, and you're right. There was that conditioning and drilling in of, like, how it works. But, of course, your if you don't mind me saying that kind of healthy, kind of, naivete coming out to it meant that you could do something completely different that made sense, which is on thousand percent what the industry need. The risk of offering guarantees and refunds is very, very ballsy. I understand. I can definitely see how maybe there's some survivorship bias coming into this, but I can see how once you have made it, it's easy to be like, okay. You've got that confidence to put your money where your mouth is.

But in those early days, what gave you the the balls basically to do that?

JQJ: I think in the early days, it was the influencers were so much cheaper than other forms of media.

And, like, influencers well, all media's cheap influencers are much cheaper now now, but you could see this insane level of success with, like, YouTube videos that brands would never have envisioned going viral. Yeah. Or they'd never have it's something they never have made themselves. So if you partnered in a YouTube creator's successful format already and you did a sixty second sponsored segment of that, that viewership is practically guaranteed. So because we came and started with YouTube, it gave us the confidence to test that first, and then we expanded to other, like, platforms like TikTok, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

And whilst you started the business age 26, did you say, at your end in YouTube, that gives you a competitive edge, doesn't it? Literally coming from in house at YouTube Yeah. And understanding the channel and the influencers on there. Yeah. My job at YouTube was a strategic partner manager, but it was to work with the creators.

So I knew, like, 500 of The UK's kinda top creators and could message them and could get them to work with us. So it was really interesting. It's like that gave me an advantage in a place where I had none of the other structures that traditionally make agency founders succeed. So it was really good, and I think that level of and it's so interesting that eight and a half years later, we're still talking about the same model. Mhmm.

And there are so few agents doing it, and it's still very disruptive. Yeah. Yeah. Especially in America, no one's guaranteeing results. And I'm like, the industry needs to get better.

And what I really enjoy is building a product where people should be trying to catch up to keep up and to elevate the professionalism of an industry that has been seen as very wild wild west for a long time. You're so you're so right. It has been wild wild west for such a long time. You should be so proud of that, Jen. That's incredible.

So you bay just sorry. I do want, like, this guarantee again. So you're starting out £500 investment, like, fully bootstrapped, 26 years old. We look we're just like, you know, this healthy naivety, the the blind optimism is a great thing when you're starting out in business. But you had this I just wanna sort of understand a little bit more about that confidence behind that guarantee.

And were you being that explicit and black and white about this is what you're gonna get. We guarantee this has got a digital voice's seal of approval. You're gonna get this many views. It developed as we went on. I mean, like, the first nine months of the business were me freelancing, and I'd never done that before.

And that was stressful. I think I was working with startups because I thought that, like, that was what I wanted to do. Nine months in, we had, actually, I think it was on this street or, like, a street over. We ended up meeting, being introduced to someone who had convinced Rolls Royce jet engines to pay for an influencer campaign to gift to the air force. It was the Royal Air Force's hundredth birthday.

Wow. Again, not what I thought I would work on. Right. And they wanted to talk about engineering and get young people and kids excited by space and space travel and engineering and building rockets and jet planes. So they were introduced to this TV producer, and he was like, yeah.

Let's do a crazy TV show about going to Mars. And I was brought in to, like, give an opinion on this, and I was like, gen z don't watch TV. Like, gen z are not like, this is, again, this is eight years ago. I was like, no. They're they're watching YouTube, and they were like, oh, what would you what would you do?

And I was like, well, you have, like, a $50 budget. Like, I'd create a YouTube channel and literally add creators to it with science and technology and, like, how does the world work creators and give them access to, like, an f 35 jet? Like, that's so cool. And we ran engineering competitions, and we talked about careers. We put a creator in a centrifuge to explain how GeForce works.

This type of content really resonated, and Rolls Royce was so impressed with the project. The RAF actually worked with us afterwards, and that's when we realized, like, hang on. Actually, if we do campaigns with creators, the create by far the most successful. But we realized, like, the most successful successful content is coming from influencers. It's the most predictable results.

It's the most exciting content as well. So we should start just producing creative content for brands. So we, do a lot of now we do a lot of, like, hugely scaled matching creators and brands. So one of our clients works, like, a 100 to a 150 creators a month And the sponsors are in, like, 30 different markets. So we can do that.

But at that point, it was just it was still marketing was so new and the budgets were so small. If you got a $10 budget for a campaign, you were thrilled. Yeah. So we were crafting those campaigns with often, like, one or two creators. And now it's just the same thing but at a huge scale.

And the thing I don't know. This is this is where I get geeky. I think in marketing, there are so many people who love doing the creative. And I think if you are running a lifestyle business where that is what you want to do forever, great. Hold on to the creative.

But for me, I love the data. I love the process. I love, like, hiring the right people and putting them in the right roles. I always wanna be uncomfortable and learn something new. So to me, scaling has always been the aim.

I don't need to hold on to the creative. I don't need to be the one with the creative ideas. I wanna find people who are good at that. Incredible. So I love that.

That's the message. And that confidence to give those guarantees, seeing that, like, no one else is doing this. Like, where did even, like, the idea come from for you? Was that also did that come from a place of, like, we need to stand out in this market, or, like, is this, like, a savvy BD strategy? Again, I just wanna unpack that guarantee, that risk.

Yeah. Be honest. Just comes from the fact that I'm really bad at lying. And I I think innately, it's probably quite people pleases. And also when you're edible.

I don't know how to describe it. Like, it is not a disadvantage, but your people are so much less likely to take you seriously. Yeah. You are a 26 year old woman. For sure.

Like, what? For sure. And I understand why. Like, it's it's fine, but you were we were new. We didn't have funding.

We were competing in a really saturated space. I was, yeah, I was like, how can I prove to someone that they should take a risk on this? And I also can't I think it's my spicy brain. I I it's spicy in some form in, like, a mixture of probably autism anxiety and ADHD somewhere. I literally find it so hard to lie.

Yeah. So to me, I was like, right. If you can stand out in an industry by literally being a partner who wants to grow someone's business Yeah. Love it. Which again is, like, it should be that way.

Right? When you're in the service business, you are in servitude of your client. You want what's best for them, and it goes all the way back to your awesome one liner of we win when you win. And I think it also what I'm observing here from the outside of the table is it links back to your ambitions to scale. Because it isn't just kinda like, we're doing for because I think you could do decently as another kind of regular creator marketing business.

Right? But those ambitions, I think, have pushed you to, like, do something different, be a bit more disruptive, do something that is genuinely innovative that no one else is doing. Yeah. I think this is like, going on to the founder mindset and founder mentality, I think this is where wanting to learn is crucial. Mhmm.

So to me, I get very bored if I'm doing the same thing. There's a reason I have to move country every two years, job, specialism. I find it so hard to stay on one thing. The fact I've been doing this for eight and a half years is terrifying to me. That's it.

But it's so interesting, and I'm still loving it because every time the business scales, it becomes a different challenge. Mhmm. So once as soon as I master a skill, I get to pass it on to someone else, get to hire for that, pass it on to that. Amazing. Like, here's a system that works.

Run with it. Edit it. I don't care. Here you go. And so to me, I think I could see that the more data we had, the more calculated risks we could take scale.

So it's like, okay. Would this model work in Sweden? Will this model work in The US? If we build tech that more accurately predicts and benchmarks what guarantees we should be giving and use AI for that, that's interesting to me. So we built that.

I was gonna ask you about this as well. So not only are you founder of this influence marketing agency, but you are a fully fledged tech CEO as well now. What's this product? That's so that's so interesting. Because, like, I applied for I can't remember what it was called.

It was like a founder community. And I was like, I really need help. This was four years ago. Someone recommended it, so I applied. And I was like, I really need help.

Like, I'm so revenue funded. So also I mean, we can get onto this. But when you're revenue funded, you have to watch your cash flow, and you have to make sure your investment's really careful. So being revenue funded and expanding to The US and building tech is like taking everything you've built in your life and putting it on red because that was, like, a million dollars. So I really need help.

I was, like, in it was like 2020 or 2021. I was like, I need in my situation who can help me shortcut learnings more quickly. Incredible. Yeah. So I did a couple of things.

One, I applied for a founder group, and they were like, you don't your business isn't technical. And I was like, I'm building tech. I need help to build tech. I was like, I really need help. And they were like, no.

You're not a technical founder. And I was like, did you just hear influencer marketing? Also, did you look woman and think but fine. If you did dove. History.

So interesting because you try and get help and you I think that's why you need to try multiple avenues. So the other thing I did was I raised, a $120 to seven angel investors. So each of them owns max 1% in the company, but I basically, the way I fundraise was quite different. And sorry. Just I'm gonna jump in here because I know listeners are gonna wanna know.

How did you find those angels? Yeah. Random asking for introductions. I presented once an ex Googler meeting. They had, like, five, six startups present, but most of the others were, like, random.

So I came up with four personas. Okay. This is I was like, I know I will need help in these four areas, so I'm not going to just I'm just asking anyone for money. The relationship power dynamic is wrong. Like, you are on the back foot Mhmm.

Asking help. Mhmm. Investors don't really like that. Angels want to feel like there's a mutual exchange. So the four areas I really needed help with were, one, I'd never worked at an agency.

So I needed someone who knew how to scale agencies, had run them, knew how to run them, knew how to build agency sales teams. I was like, I need that. That's number one. We actually found two people from that persona. One was I've never worked in marketing before, so I need to find someone who's worked in marketing at big organizations.

And given you're asking for, like, it's, like, $20 from each person, Max, like, you, it's it's of money, but it's not a huge amount. So you could approach people who might not have angel invested before, and the SCIS scheme really helps people in The UK. So so I found someone who had been really senior at Spotify and really senior at Virgin. She became a CMO, so she was really helpful. The other thing was internationalizing the business.

I was like, I've never done that before. I need to find someone who's internationalized an agency so they can help me with that. And the fourth one was I've never built tech. I wanna find someone who's a bit of a tech expert so I can just sense check what I wanna build. So I created those personas.

Do you know what? Sorry. I'd again, jump in. But what I love about this process is early first time founders or, you know, budding entrepreneurs would just be so overwhelmed by the amount of things. And as always, I mean, I do hate to be gendered about it, but it is more so women than men.

Men are still definitely victims of this too. But to feel so overwhelmed, I don't even know where to start. And what you've done there is broken it down. Take that time to break down where what are your blind spots? What are your gaps?

What do you need? And then suddenly, there's an action plan. It's like, right. Somebody fill in these and it's like, okay. Now this plan is coming together.

Goosebumps because I think that's the thing. So many of these tasks, like, starting a business Right. Feels like such this amorphous, like, how am I ever gonna tackle it? Mhmm. Often when I say to people, oh, if you wanna start a business, I'm like, cool.

You know, it's like £13 on company's house. If you actually keep it as this big amorphous, oh my god, you're never gonna do it. But if you go to okay. What are literally the next steps to start it? My first logo, I tried to pay someone, like, $20 on Fiverr to order it, to delight design it, and it was so shit.

I was like, okay. I can't do that. So I then paid someone £40. Well, that one's fine. Like, it's literally like break these big goals down into small things.

Yeah. So then it means when you're asking people, hey. Do you know anyone who's looking to invest in a company?

It's not like investment thing. It's like, who do you know that is an expert in agencies? Because if it doesn't work out, the conversation will be useful. Amazing. So my theory on Jeeps.

So in this process, one, you never want the power to be like them versus you and that dynamic. So you have to be so confident. And all the best founders I've spoken to and these are I found this who are incredible all the time because often they've done this. They are like, do not let there be a chink in your armor. So firstly, that helps Amazing.

As confident you can be. Secondly, my brother who actually is not anything to do with business, he said to me, Jenny, isn't it really exciting that this is gonna be your last first time raising capital, raising investment? I've never heard that rifling before. It made me I was like, oh my god. This is cool.

Last first Last first time. Name. I mean yeah. And I was like, this is it shifts it. So you're like, oh, how what what's gonna happen next?

How am I gonna reframe this my so it was really cool. And then finally, this is so silly. It's so stupid, and I don't buy into any of this. But my parents had been to stopped in Dubai. Somewhat.

A friend of a friend. Yeah. Lying. So she had, like I'm so bad at lying, and I'm also so bad at editing. I give away everything.

So I'm like, oh. So she bought, like, a fake, Yves Saint Laurent and a fake Prada bag, and they were, like, bigger ones that could fit laptops. So I said, oh, can I can I borrow these? Like, oh, they're cool. She was like, well, you and I was like, Nick, can I just borrow them?

So, I was wearing one on the train, and I was talking to this random woman next to me on the tube. And she was like, oh, by the way, I'm an investor. And, here's my card. Because you have that handbag, I know your business is doing well. And I didn't she's not one of the ones who I let invest in the end, but she literally offered me investment on the tube in London.

No one talks to each other because of the fake handbag. And then another guy This is insane. Was she that explicit about it? Did she Yeah. She said, here's my card.

Yeah. Exactly. And then another guy, we were doing, like, the interview for it. And, again, he didn't invest. But at the end of the meeting, he goes, I had the fake Prada that time.

The the fake Prada. And he goes, by the way, my wife's really into handbags, so I know what that means. So I know your business must be doing well. So, like and it's so funny. Fun news.

Buy into it, but I think people sometimes need social signifiers, And they're trying to shortcut, and I think it's an unjust system. Yeah. The system is not fair. The system is rigged against you. This is how humans operate.

It's the reality. And they are trying to, especially if they were meeting a startup founder. Mhmm. They are trying to rightfully spend time working out who is bullshit and who isn't because so many people lie. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm incapable of it, but so many people lie. So I think little things shift the power dynamics.

So, again, I I actually don't I, yeah, don't do the design handbag game, but I think it's really interesting because I do understand there is That's brilliant. Social purpose. Yeah. 100%. So social the status signaling.

And it is it is those shortcuts to your point. Con conscious or unconscious is like, what am I what what can I mentally sort of attach to to to build trust in this especially if you're talking about however much money that you're gonna put on the table there? You want that reassurance. Yeah. So back to if someone to me asked me for $20 and had, like, a Birkin bag, I'd be like, you're gonna take my money, and you're gonna spend it on a Birkin bag.

Turns out most people don't that way. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that funny? Yeah.

Yeah. It's so true. Yeah. I, I justify walking around like a slob. Like, I'm, like, tramp rich.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I'm not being rich. I'm, like, I'm, like, beyond. Like, I don't need Yeah.

You don't you don't need the logos. I don't need the logos. But it's interesting as well because, similarly, like, I think so many people who are wealthy don't don't wear logos. Around like a homeless. It's like Pursue next level.

Because you own your confidence. But I think sometimes and I think at that stage where I was, like, '28, '28, '29 trying to raise this money. Yeah. Had no idea what I was doing. Do what I was doing.

I know I was gonna make make mistakes. So yeah. But do but do you know what? On that note, sticking with that as well, though, there is there is a topic here to discuss on playing the game, on being strategic. Know that this is gonna come off sounding this you know, in the worst way, this could be taken as, you know, being manipulative or not being a 100% truthful.

But we've already mentioned a few times about you being a woman, about starting this business in your twenties. Like like, that's objectively young. You know? You're literally in your second pick. Friends were old enough to be budget holders in marketing.

It changes when you get to into your, like, mid to late thirties because your friends who are your age are finding positions of authority. There you go. But no one is able to give you budget. Everything around that we have to look at headwinds and tailwinds in strategy. We've got to look at what's working for us and against us.

So I would love to get I mean, obviously, I hear your views now on kind of the the designer handbags and the dupes and things, But I wanna stick with this topic. I think it's really interesting to look at, like, would we be idiots for not using certain tools in our armory? I guess you can get into very dangerous territory. Because, I mean, I saw like Cody Sanchez, she talks about women who wear make on average earn, like, 20% more or whatever. It's yeah.

It's it's so interesting men taller people men in sales, who are taller and wearing suit. Yeah. Yeah. I think men make, like, 15% more if they are dressed well and make 30% more. So ridiculous.

I do think it's everyone draws the line for what's morally acceptable behavior just underneath their own. And I think you need to know your values. So to me and, also, there are infinite battles you can pick. Pick yours. So to me, our red lines are, like, transparent.

We don't lie in anything we do. There are influencer agencies who do crazy things, buy views and say that, you know, whatever. That's not what we do. Secondly, we don't take any gambling gambling affiliated brands, tobacco affiliated brands. We've not done any weight loss brands clients.

Oh, interesting. So I my fear with this is, alcohol, I think, is so again, drawing the moral line underneath what I think is okay. Mhmm. Alcohol is so prevalent. Everyone knows what alcohol does.

Gambling, we are very persuasive. Like, these campaigns we run get people to buy things or go to sites and Get things to take action. Yeah. And I you can't age gate influencer content. You can't age gate YouTube content.

So if we do a great, really, like, encouraging psychologically impactful campaign, there is nothing to stop a 14 year old taking mom's credit card logging into a gambling Yeah. Site and ruining his family's natural. Yeah. So to me, my red lines are the clients we take on. The culture I build internally is really big as well.

I have been in situations that have made me feel very uncomfortable as a woman and realized that I am only seen as a sexual object, not a brain. And that is really hard to rebuild from. And I think as an employer, your duty is to help get the best out of your team. Mhmm. So we have a culture which is super feed open to feedback.

It's like feedback is a gift. And everyone says it, but really, no one wants to have an uncomfortable conversation. And if someone is giving you critical feedback or constructively critical feedback, it is because they've thought about it, and they think it can be better. Yeah. Yeah.

The easiest nothing. Yeah. So I really want to build, hopefully, a respected workforce who feel like they're heard. Yeah. And I want to build a generation of leadership in the marketing industry that is gonna do things differently.

Oh, But those are the values to me that I can stick with. Other things like is is is, I don't know, is Plainly. Sexual discrimination bad or, like, are there things people think about women? I'm like, it's I all I can do is be an example to hopefully, women are really smart and really good at business. Awesome.

I can't fight other battles. Like Yeah. That's I'm trying to stay in my lane and accept the things I can't change. And that's the thing. You're doing that through your actions, through the evidence, through what you built, through literally your profile as The UK's only female founder CEO of an agency of this scale.

You're you're letting your, your results speak for themselves. It's It's one of the things I find really frustrating about this industry. I think it's I think it's something ridiculous. Like, 78% of people who work in marketing are women, but the founders at the top are less than 2% Yeah. Of agencies found by women.

Yeah. And I find it really interesting when you see agencies that are like, oh, we've got a female CEO. I'm like, if they're on the cap table, great. But if you sell that business, whose life is gonna be transformed financially? Yeah.

The founder who might be a man. So I'm like, you really need to again But you might put your money back. Yeah. Think about who is making the bulk of this money. Yeah.

Yeah. And not just performative, like empty words. Something else I do just want to kind of underscore on what you said there, which really, really resonated, is the is the deeper ethical consideration of influence. And I think that this needs to be talked about today at this very point in time because I'm a big you know, I'm a millennial, and I remember it's not it's not too distant a memory for me of uploading blurry pics from a night out on a Facebook album taken by a digital camera that wasn't listening into every conversation. Social media has changed fundamentally.

It's changed hugely. I believe now it is a mass manipulation machine. And so on the surface, oh, cool. Influencer fun making cool videos. But, actually, it doesn't take much beneath the surface to say, this is real influence.

This is real power influencing whatever you use kind of a 14 year old kid's example before. But whoever it is that you're influencing, what we're seeing now is, like, with this, it's really the world we live in, and it's powerful. Yes. And it it's really interesting because I really don't like the polarization Yeah. Of of influencer content.

One of the things I find really exciting about this industry and the reason I'm excited about it, I think there are very there are, for me, when I look back across my career and my interest in life, the red thread is, like, championing entrepreneurship from underestimated places. So whether that was, like, working with refugees who I think should be integrated into the the economy they're living in, specialized in Syrian refugees before, or creating entrepreneurs who did not exist in a different media landscape. Yeah. I love the fact that every dollar spent with us, at least 70¢ of it goes to entrepreneurs who might not micro entrepreneurs who might not exist in another context because they do own Genuine power. Yeah.

They're yeah. But they are making money from ad revenue. They're making money from brand deals. And so we are kind of choosing which voices are allowed to exist and can afford to exist. Yeah.

So I find that really interesting. So I think there's an ethics part that's, like, democratizing media, and it is truly democratizing media. There's extremes on that, and that's where I worry about social because I don't wanna funnel users to the extremes Yeah. From a watch time. So the people we do work with are brand safe creators, who might be showing, I don't know, a different wedding or showing that you can be a single mom with a couple of kids running essentially a business from your house.

Yeah. Incredible. That I like, but, like, I agree. The extremes is problematic, and I worry that they're getting worse. Yeah.

I agree. I totally agree. Just for the sake of time, I'm already kind of deep and heavy on this, but I have got a load more questions that I wanna squeeze in there. But, Jen, kudos to you. I wanna give you such a pat on the back.

This is incredible. You know, beyond I opened with, obviously, the stats, the metrics, and all this stuff, but it's like, for a reason. You know? It's for a reason, and it shows through in the delivery of your work, the the promises that you make and you keep to your clients, the transparency, the putting them first. This is the best part of being an entrepreneur.

You get to you get to kinda world build. Yeah. Yeah. And it sounds really weird, but I think if you're someone who pokes holes in systems and wishes they could be better like, sometimes being an entrepreneur gives you the power to do that. Like, I don't I never want any wanted any of my staff to feel the way I did when, you know, I felt underestimated at work being Yeah.

Or whatever. Yeah. And I and I I'm like, oh, hang on. Actually, you can build a system that changes that. Oh, and you can run it?

Like, great. Okay. So it's quite, I think if you think differently Yeah. And you're willing to be a bit uncomfortable Yeah. It makes sense to to be an entrepreneur.

Incredible. I'm so happy for you, Jennifer. I'm so proud of you. Honestly, I can almost, like, feel my heart physically, like, swell up. I'm I'm so proud and happy of you.

Praise. A lot. You're going on my face. You're weird. It was swelling in your chair.

There's always much more do when you're changing. This is why because you are dare you are only just getting started. We're only just just getting started. Did we close on the tech story a little bit? I just wanted to come back.

I have got a few more questions. But what ended up how did you build this tech build, and what is give us the elevator pitch of the tech product. Yes. So, right. My CFO a couple of years ago sat me down and was like, Jenny, there's, like, a million dollars in the bank.

Like, what do you wanna do with it? Do you wanna take out and buy a house? Like, what do you wanna do? And I was like, no. Actually, let's take half it and invest in expanding to The US so that we had to put a business case together, get an investor visa, all that stuff, and then let's take half it and invest in tech.

I have a very, hopefully, sensible approach to tech that's like, you shouldn't duplicate what's already out there to build something out of vanity. So partner right makes sense and build where it doesn't exist or where only you can build. So we built our own campaign management system called Chord, which basically clients log in to, they can see all the influencer data, see all the updates on the campaign, approve creators, approve content, see reports. Why Chord? Any reason for the name?

JQJ: Work in harmony with our clients. My team me name anything anymore because you'll notice there's a slightly musical theme. We then built Composer.

SM: Hey it's all good to miss Melodia here. I'm loving it. I'm here for it.

JQJ: You should just come on board. I'm like, oh, I love it. We'd love it. Actually, it's perfect.

-

Tune in to Strategy & Tragedy wherever you get your podcasts to listen to the rest of the interview.

In the meantime, please hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. Thank you. Really hope you've enjoyed this. Episodes are weekly, so make sure to tune in next time.

Strategy & Tragedy: CEO Stories with Steph Melodia is the best podcast for curious entrepreneurs and ambitious founders. Learn from those a few steps ahead of you in these candid interviews of the highs and lows of scaling and failing business.

Watch the full episode here, subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music.

Thank you for listening and for supporting the show!