Balancing profit and purpose: An agency approach with Gavin Willis, Founder & CEO of Search Seven

In this episode of the Beautiful Business Podcast, host Yiuwin Tsang and guest, Gavin Willis, Founder of Search Seven, discuss the intricacies and benefits of balancing profit with purpose in business, particularly through charity partnerships and fundraising. Gavin shares insights and experiences from his journey, offering valuable perspectives on integrating social impact into a business model.

Gavin discusses the evolution of the company's charity initiatives, moving from a profit-based approach to dedicating a minimum percentage of profits to charitable causes. He touches upon the practical aspects of managing events and communities within a marketing agency, including the significance of passion, commitment, and structure in driving social impact initiatives. He shares success stories from past charity events, illustrating how such activities not only contribute to valuable causes but also foster a sense of purpose and unity among team members.

Listen to the episode now to learn more about:

-How to integrate charity partnerships and fundraising efforts strategically into your business model
-How to achieve a balance between profitability and social impact
-How to gain a genuine commitment to social impact from within your organisation
-How to foster team engagement in a remote-first environment through charity initiatives
-How prioritising CSR and charitable work can help attract clients aligned with your values, and foster long-term client retention.

About Gavin Willis

Gavin set up Search Seven in 2011 with a real passion for disrupting traditional search and client services. Gavin sees the company as a vehicle to make a difference, with a vision of giving back at least 7% of profits to charities and community projects every year.

Search Seven specialise in Paid Media and data driven SEO and work with clients and agencies throughout the UK, Europe and Globally to understand their business objectives and put together great search strategies that successfully engage with their target audience on the right channels, and with the right messaging, that leads to great results.

Transcript

Disclaimer: The following transcript is the output of an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.   Every possible effort has been made to transcribe accurately. However, neither Beautiful Business nor The Wow Company shall be liable for any inaccuracies, errors, or omissions.

Yiuwin Tsang  

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Beautiful Business Podcast brought to you by The Wow Company. My name is Yiuwin Tsang, and this week we're joined by Gavin Willis. Gav is CEO and founder of Search Seven, an award winning search marketing agency based in Hove, Sussex. They specialise in paid media and data driven SEO and worked with clients and agencies throughout the UK, Europe and the world. Their partners include the likes of Man City Football Club, Royal Windsor racecourse, Bulldog gin, Bowel Cancer UK, Crohn's and Colitis, London Air Ambulance to name but a few. Search Seven are an agency with a difference. And what sets them apart is they pledged at least 7% of the profits to charities and community projects each and every year. This is the inspiration behind the name, and also the driving force that keeps Gav and his team motivated to achieve excellent results for their clients and community. In this episode, Gav shares his advice on how businesses can really balance profit with purpose, and building fundraising into their plans as a business model. We chat about the challenges and undertakings you need to commit to, and the incredible impact it can have for you, your business, but also your clients and community. Let's jump straight in.

Yiuwin Tsang  

Can you give us a bit of background to Search Seven? What is it you do? And who is it you do it for?

Gavin Willis  

Yes, so at Search Seven, we are a search marketing agency for social good. And by that I mean we kind of do SEO paid media, which is PPC and paid social. We also do analytics and tracking as well, for a specialist search marketing agency, but we called Search Seven because that's the search side. And the seven is that we give 7% of our profits back to charity, each and every year through fundraising through direct donations. And yeah, that's kind of was in place since day one, really. So that's the reason why we're called Search Seven.

Yiuwin Tsang  

Fabulous. And in terms of clients that you work with, what kind of clients do you tend to work with that?

Gavin Willis  

Yes, I wouldn't say we're set to specialist in one particular sector, but over 13 years or working, we've worked with loads of different sectors. So we've worked with at Man City Football Club, we've kind of worked with the London Boat Show, Bulldog gin, we've worked in lots of retail brands, ecommerce education as well. So they're just a few names of some of the brands that we've worked with. But yeah, health and medical is quite big for us as well. Working with the likes of Johnson and Johnson, Roche skincare brands, Esper B or people like that. So it does range and we work some really nice big international brands and some big names, but also some local companies or startups as well. So it does vary in size and the sector.

Yiuwin Tsang  

Fabulous. Okay, and how long do you say you've been gone for 13 years now?

Gavin Willis  

2011 we started.

Yiuwin Tsang  

My Goodness me. That's a long time.

Gavin Willis  

Yeah, 13 years, 12 years, I

Yiuwin Tsang  

Goodness me, that is time. So we're talking about fundraising as a business model. And the key thing being around balancing purpose with profit. So maybe we're gonna start with you talking us through the importance of what social impact is for you, and why it's such a core piece of the Search Seven story and the purpose behind the business? 

Gavin Willis  

I mean, like I mentioned before, with whole side of the business being, you know, around social impact was there since we started so when I used to work at my old agency, we brilliant agency, and we do so much work with them today, called a propeller base down in Brighton, have some really good friends that own it. And also that are the managing directors there now. And at the time, we were doing some really good work and the culture was fantastic. We did one charity event, I loved it. And that event just came and went pretty quickly. And we stopped. We just didn't do anything else after that. And I just had this sense of, Wow, I really loved being involved in something that benefited the community that had social impact, get the whole team involved. And a few years later, instead of search seven, with their blessing, I thought, right, this has to be around social impact. The agency has to be a vehicle that stands for change that has impact. So for me, it means everything is kind of like it is my purpose for why I started the business, you know, obviously got a bit of experience in SEO and paid media. I'm used to managing clients and I wanted to build a team but I wanted to kind of ethos to be all around social impact and giving back. And it's not just saying that you're going to do something you know, is walking the walk is getting out there and engaging with the community, building relationships actually handing money over and doing it not just from a chequebook, you know just handing the money over to someone doing it as a community. So everyone else is feeling the impact of what you're doing or what you're a part of. And me I think that is social impact is so what can you create together, where you can actually see the difference and where has money gone, rather than just handing the money over. So for me, that's kind of a big part of what we're about and what we stand for. 

Yiuwin Tsang  

Some of your clients obviously include some charities and initiatives and not for profits. I think You've got Bowel Cancer, UK, Crohn's and Colitis, London Air Ambulance just to name a few that drop in there. And obviously, that side of the business providing services for those kinds of clients enabling their success. And as soon as the the connection to impact and social impact is really clear there, but on the other side, I suppose the profit side when you're working with, you know, maybe some of the football clubs and whatnot, how does that - is that balance achieved through generating the profits working with these clients, and then that 7% That you contribute? Obviously, it's like growing the pie so to speak, the more profit, you're able to make more that you're able to impact? Is that the kind of balance that you've looked to make?

Gavin Willis  

Yes and no. So what I mean by that is, when we first started, it was, let's give up to 7% of our profits back to charity. So let's see how we do in the first year. And if we do, all right, let's give some money back. So it was profit based, but it was fueled by purpose. And our purpose was there to make you work harder, because you know, you're gonna give back more if you do well. And we've kind of done that for a little while, which was fine. And then we got to a point where I think, around 2018, to seven years in, we kind of did a big PR campaign for turning seven, you know, search seven, obviously, at least three big events. And we tried to raise the same amount of money in that year that match the first six years. And we did it, we kind of we raised 20 grand and one year through three different events. And since then we've kind of not really used that framework, we say 7%, but it's become like a minimum. So now it's not really profit based at all. It's just that is a minimum for us, because now we're raising 25 grand a year for charities for all the things that we're doing. And we've got to introduce charity initiatives in other parts of the business, whether it be charity with both these match funding and got charity with Bo league now as well, which had really good fun. So it did start off that way. But now it's, it doesn't depend how well we do how much we give back is we've now created this kind of foundation of our event, fundraising arm of the business, so to speak, where we're raising as much as we can. So it's kind of treated very differently now. But we know that it will be 7% minimum, if we had a year of not much fundraising, we didn't do very well, we would add in the rest and make it that 7%. And it's kind of flipped to usually 7%, maximum narrow, 7% minimum. So it's kind of it's really evolved.

Yiuwin Tsang  

That's interesting. And just on practical sense, saying, Gav, how have you had to like structure your business? To do it in such a way because you've got your business as usual? I mean, you've got like, the agency, you've got the work to do, you know, we were just chatting about workloads and things like this and how it things bleed. What have you had to do, to set up the business to be able to operate because it's clearly it's working, I see the pictures of the dudes that you put on LinkedIn, they look tremendous. Okay. They look, they look proper, I'm really disappointed. I have not an invite. But anyway, so a couple they look Hi great. Like they look proper. These aren't like poxy little events. These are, you know, the listeners are listening, check out the Search Seven haven't events, they look like wonderful events, they really they look like really good fun and really high production value events. They don't come easy. I mean, forget about the cost for a second, the time, effort, energy that goes into organising something like this is significant. So I mean, how do you do it? Like, how do you do it with the team?

Gavin Willis  

I got asked the same question a couple of months ago, but at an agency collective session, Brian and I were speaking out and someone asked me the same thing on how would you create the time for that? I said, well, it's my role I made my role, literally be a third of my week or third of my month is focused on events, is on communities, it's on engagement. So it seemed my job spec. So I'm not doing it in my free time and weekends and evenings, it's part of my day to day. And to enable me to do that I've had to build a leadership team around me. Because as you say, I can't do that for a third of my month, with all the other things going on as well too, but to do new business, and to speak to clients about management team. And it got to a point where I was juggling way too much as we started to grow more and more. And me to maintain that amount of that purpose, I wanted to build this, this is what I'm really, really passionate about. So I'm not going to let that go and just do more stuff over here. So I brought in a managing director with no one Operations Director, often commercials director, so really kind of strong leadership team where I've got people around me that can do all those things that they're really good at. And I can focus on my role, which is not diluted by everything. It's kind of protected time. So that's kind of how we've managed to make it work. We also brought in a CSR committee about a year and a half ago within the team, which is brilliant, that everyone then is really really passionate about you know, helping out to organise events and be on there on the day and ideas for marketing or design or how to promote it as you said earlier about how promotion that's not on me anymore as it used to be. So now we've kind of got more people involved in what it is we want to be doing in terms of events. How can people support okay, I might be the one trying to send out The invites and get people involved in being sponsored and come along as attendees. But the team are really, really so passionate, as much as me about making this happen and making it work. So yeah, there's been lots of stuff that we've had to kind of think about in terms of structure, how we structured to make this, to maintain this and to grow this. And for me, it's making sure that I've got that dedicated time to in my role, to really make it something that I'm really passionate in succeeding. And we do spend a lot of time and effort on our design, we work with some amazing partners. One is another agency collective member actually called Matt. Ema are mainly an arrow, charity design partner. So all the posters that you see online, and the things that we put our bags, they do all that for us for free, is our charity partner, which is unbelievable. And every time we do an event, we get partners for each event. So like the faces of what Abby mela from wherever, and George Chang from mica and V on the videos, we have people that specialise in different things and can support us as our charity partners. So it's not just me sitting there making it happen. It's such a community of people that really care want to make a difference. The team and also external team and partners that make it all happen, really, but yes, a lot of effort involved. And it's just because we're so passionate about this being a key part of who we are, it's making it part of the day to day rather than just to kind of add.

Yiuwin Tsang  

It can't just be like a virtue signal, like sticking plaster type thing, there has to be, like, deeply passionate within you, as the founder within you as a business owner, and also through the rest of your team as well to make it work. It can't just be a, oh, we're going to do this just to look good, you know, to get some nice kind of PR that comes with it.

Gavin Willis  

Exactly that because it's not a tick box exercise, you know, especially for us, I mean, there are people out there that might say, Oh, we're gonna do this and this and it's part of their business, you know, something that they want to try and do a bit of what we do we do social impact, we do CSR, and we go out there and do stuff, we don't need badges. I mean, obviously, that would be cool that we are thinking about, but we've been thinking about it for four or five years. But the time and investment to do that, as you know, is quite labour intensive. We've just got on and just done events and just make money goes somewhere straightaway, rather than doing it the other way around and getting that you know that Pat in the back first and then do it, we just want to get out there and all the walk and just I didn't know about the call. I didn't know about the word CSR, before I started the business. And as you said, just from the heart, you know, just being passionate about making a difference. And just just doing it just getting out there and doing it and just getting everyone involved. 

Yiuwin Tsang  

I'd say, you know, speaking from the presence of someone who's done events before they get a buzz from events that Yeah, it's really hard to replicate anywhere else, especially when you're running it. It's like that roller coaster isn't it, you get to the top. And then it's like before doors open, it's like there's nothing more you can do. You've just got to run it and deal with the comes down to you. You deal with it when it comes at you and you deal with what's in front of you. But there is that point where there's nothing more you can do. And you're in the right. And it's exhilarating when you do it. But the reality is, is that it comes with a lot of pain. It's exhausting. There's a lot that comes with it. And if you go into like running a charity event or something like that, when it's not core to what you want to do if it is a bit of a sticking plaster, oh, let's do this. So we look good, and we kind of feel good, you'll very quickly find out that it's hard on work. So back to your point about how you structure your time, it sounds like Well, first of all, you've got to have that passion, you've got to have that commitment to want to do it. Because the next part is as you say, it's like ring fencing, protecting that time structuring your day so that you can go into it. And assume that goes for the rest of the team as well with the CSR panel. 

Gavin Willis  

Yeah, definitely, definitely. Yeah, the way we work obviously, everyone gets the most agencies, you have your billable percentages for different people in the team different seniority and things like that people are more strategic or account based. And we factor that all in so the CSR team will have amount of time each month dedicated to being on those polls to coming together thinking of ideas. And then if there's an event coming up, I mean, wow, you said last year was our first ever charity ball. We had 230 People in Brighton just celebrating us hitting over 100 grand raising 100 over 100 grand for charity. And we've done golf days on top of matches at the AMEX stadium and you know quiz nights and things like that. But this was a another level of we did not expense. How big of a task was it due to the stress and everything it was it's organising this huge event for loads of people and you want to bring lots of people together and you got to get the staging right and what's gonna be shown on the screen where are you going to sell the stage who's going to say it? It was insane so that took up so much time and not just me but Becky and Jordan and Jay the other guys in In the CSR team, we had to make sure that time was ring fenced away from billable time. So okay, we might not have taken as much billable work. But we really wanted to do this event. And we wanted this big part of what we're about. So we had to make it work, we had to give it the time that the final attention deserved. And we wanted it to be amazing. Like all the events we do, we put so much effort into them to make sure that they all look great, and they are great. And the build up is really good. We think of everything, as you do with most events. And as you said, it's that, Ryan, that that one last year was huge. It was the biggest one we've ever done. And we learned a lot. Let me tell you that. 

Yiuwin Tsang  

I mean, it will move off the events a second, but the buzz that you get when you finish that night, when it's just you and the team left with a mess on the dance floor. And you're like, right, yeah, let's hit the bar. Everybody deserves a drink. And it's, it brings the team together, doesn't it because you shared this experience of delivering it and everybody who's played their part to play, can say my fingerprints are on this, you know, I helped do this, I helped deliver a sense of ownership and a sense of pride that you've done that, then connect that with the fact that it was a charity that you raise money for it as well. Your team must have been absolutely buzzing off the back of that.

Gavin Willis  

They were and everyone in the team. So when someone join Search Seven, they get to choose a charity to support. So everyone has their own charity each year. And all the stuff that we do throughout the year, we just divvy it out for all the charities, we ask the team to get to know their charity, to email them to maybe go and meet them to understand their challenges and set up a call. We want to share their stuff on LinkedIn on social media to try and be like a big brand ambassador for them. We invite them along the charities. So if you watch our events as well, to give them a platform to have a voice. So we want to build a relationship with our charities and the team. When they join and they get told this they go wow, this is pretty cool. I mean, you're right when they were there at the event in October. And they could see it in all their names and their faces up on the screen saying, you know, starlets charities WaterAid. And this is why I support them. Everyone did feel this sense of wow, I'm part of something special here. And it was such a special night. We are a remote first agencies that doing things like that is quite doesn't happen all the time. We don't meet up all the time and talk about the charity work that we're doing. Obviously, every week, we have a team call. And we kind of talk through the charity events that are coming up. And people are asked a few questions. But to be there all together and to see to witness it and see all the way over 18 different charities they're on a diet as well, once we supported last year, and some legacy ones over the years as well. And we just wanted to invite them along for a really good night. And yeah, just that vibe that we all got it was brilliant. And as you said, you weren't that high and just makes you want to do it more. So when you get that feeling of you're using your business to do something good, is nothing better than that, because it is that balance, okay, business wants to be profitable. And you will look after your people. But you also want to have a strong purpose. And for us getting those free things kind of a third each. That's kind of where we want it to be. There's a little diagram I've got, we've got the three circles kind of overlapping. And for me, that is our kind of free Peasy sub KPIs. When we do our team and quarterly meetings, we talk about those three things in parallel. But yeah, let's talk about four. But But let's also talk about the team. Let's also talk about what we're doing as a business. It's those three things. It's not all about profit. But if you do those other things, right, you're going to do well, because the team are going to be engaged and be motivated, the client is going to be more likely to be inclined to work with you in the first place and more aligned to you like moving on as well in terms of retention. Also, they're coming along to the events and I'm really feeling what it is to work with search seven who are search seven, that builds up those relationships as well. And you said about you know, having a drink at the bar afterwards. I remember there's a drink that and Brian called to Akka no one's heard of them. He heard some reason I have, but I don't carry on. There you go. So literally with apartment, right? Massive leaves, I've been doing this for like 25, two hours, I think when a train came out to everyone who was there to anchor like half a team, I dropped them in half, like everyone else in the room came over and took awhile, just an auto cloudnine. So it was good.

Yiuwin Tsang  

Fantastic oh my goodness, it's making me tingle. Just think about it. And let's be, as I said, must have been absolutely incredible must been really incredible from a team, you know, sense of purpose, a sense of pride as well being part of it, which you can't put a price on, you know, and that kind of engagement on a team level, you know, pays itself back, you know, tenfold before the engagement you have with charities of goodwill and again through the clients through association as he says those, the three P's the balance out and you can't let one, get ahead of the other as such, and to lose that kind of balance.

Gavin Willis  

You can't work the same way, right? If you're 99% on people and you're not thinking about the profit, then things might not go wrong, because you're kind of to one way than the other. So you need to get the balance right. You still need to be making sure that decisions that you're making are right for the business. And if you can put them all focusing an onus on the people to get them working really hard and more productive and more happy, their parents are going to be happier as well. And therefore that you will make more profit from that at the end of the day. So it's it's moving parts, but it's trying to get the balance, right, because you can't go more one with all of it than the other two, you got to try and get the balance, right.

Yiuwin Tsang  

That sounds like such a sensible approach to take the habit search haven't got. So tell us a bit about you mentioned community a few times there and the level of engagement that you have with the community. So let's know a bit about the community work seven has been involved in but I'm really interested in know, what are the challenges that you face when you're kind of working in this space? Because it's like anything, it's not all rainbows and butterflies, there's gonna be, there's gonna be some stuff, you need to kind of get your head around to embark on this sort of thing.

Gavin Willis  

Yeah, I mean, two parts of that. So the first part is the community side, I guess, is building the community in the first place. So for us, we have the clients, we have the team we have, most of our work comes through partner agencies, and country partnerships. So we are specialists search agency, but we work very closely with developers or what designers or PR companies, social media, branding, people like that. So we have a big agency kind of support network, I run a lot of partnership events, as well as the owners. So it's building up those communities around you. And over the years being on beta and Brighton. So being involved in a lot more b2b events as well and networking events. So it's the agency side was was the agencies is building up those communities and that support network and just getting to know people during your event. And now when we kind of put out a new idea of a week, we've got our new events we're going to do this year, it goes up to around 1000 People that have been part of our events over the years. So we've got a really strong network of seven supporters I call them that wants to stay involved in what we're doing and what we're about. So that's that side of building community. And in terms of charities, I think we've helped 50 charities now in terms of support, like raising money for them. We have one flagship charity, which is rockinghorse, children's charity based in Sussex, I actually got asked to be a trustee a few months ago, which is brilliant. So I'm actually on the board. Now. I've got my paperwork for you from Companies House yesterday. So it's all official, which is brilliant. And it's a real honour for me, because I think out of the 125 Grand we've raised so far, I'd say 60 grand has been for them. So the other 65 has gone split between the other 49 charities. So that sense of building community with the charities, getting community like people around you is absolutely massive. But it does come with challenges. You mentioned around what are the challenges. So we try and do three or four events a year, some are smaller than others. Some are partner events with like a charity raffle. And some are golf days or quiz nights or a big charity ball. For example. I've got a really cool one coming up in June, which is a bowling green bowls event, which is 18 business owners versus 18 agency owners. So again, filling in both networks to kind of compete against each other. And that should be great fun challenges is you got to try and find venues sponsorship is massive, you've got to try and find the right sponsors. And you've got to try and get the price point, right. And sponsors want to get a brand from lots of people obviously, but they will sort of be aligned to you. The sponsors just want to just help is they want to get to know me or they get to know the brand and get to know the team. They want to help. They want to be a sponsor, but they kind of like the brand exposure by little die a lot of money that we get from events. But we don't take any money for organising events, I don't charge a penny. So it's all just time, it's all free time. And then that means there's more money, they're going straight to charities. And we've always been that way in 13 years. That's why we've raised so much money, we don't try and offset any of that funds that we're making into our own kind of time in terms of fees, obviously have to pay suppliers and stuff. That's all part of it. But it does come with challenges. Because you know, last year we had three sponsors put out with the charity ball a few weeks before the event. So it is stressful is that constant kind of revolving line of escalate in a way where you just you're trying to engage with people and you don't try and overdo it, because they're going to be people who will be chatting to and a few months time for another event. So it's trying to pick and choose your battles. If I asked that person to sponsor this event, I can't ask him in six months time, but that one really. So it's nonstop. And you can't really do a lot of that in 95. So that's a challenge because some people are more instantly, they respond to me a lot quicker on a LinkedIn message or WhatsApp message. And I can do that whilst watching football on a Tuesday night on my sofa. So that is a challenge rather than event. It's not just a sign up an hour to a week to focus on and it's very ad hoc. And it's very spontaneous when people ask questions and willing to chase people. The other bit is Yeah, enjoying the pandemic. A good example of a big challenge was we just launched a new campaign to try and get up to 77,000 pounds by the end of was it 2021 I was on 50,000 pounds and we just launched it in March 2020. And three days later the pandemic was announced. We put all this effort into our design work our websites, our PR Are everything all the paintings were lined up for out for deposits. And then, you know, quite rightly so the plug was just old. And it wasn't just after all the charities, you know, they had their events cancelled, they had their funding kind of pulled as well by the government. And it was huge, massive, massive challenge. But we ever came in, we went online for most of our events. For the rest of that year, we did an online quiz, it been two and a half weeks end of March, we did a quiz on Zoom. And we raised over 1400 pound, we had 200 people on Zoom doing a quiz, we just adapted really quickly. And for me, that was a massive reminder of why we do what we do. And he could have been, again, the free piece, we need to focus on profit, we've just lost half our team, we've lost half of our business 60% of our revenue, let's focus on that. That like is this is part of our business, and the charities need us now more than ever. So even though it was a challenge, it's also an opportunity to really test our commitment and our purpose. And we came out targets really, because we just we hit our target, we did the campaign, we did lots of new events, rather two year periods. And it really kind of cemented our various line not just for me, but in the community, but for the team. And I think I'll always look back at that. Now, I think that could have been a time when we fought and it's just save a few pennies, it's a lot of money to just put on an event, a lot of money, we kind of, you know, April as well. But we wanted to do it. And it was a huge challenge for me kind of overcame that. And I thought I'd share that one with you.

Yiuwin Tsang  

Nice. That one's like major, obviously, just throw that in there. And all of the messages I kind of brought along with it. But it does, as you say, it does underline the importance of like, knowing what you stand for, and knowing where you want to make an impact and knowing, again, back to that balance. Because if you were like purely focused on profit during that period, you to just, you know, cut everything right down to the bone. Yeah, if it was just people then obviously gone down that direction, and you would have ended up staying still if not going backwards, whereas maintaining the balance meant you were still able to push things forward in much different ways, or you thought you were going to.

Gavin Willis  

 Yeah, there's also realisation of not just what our charity purpose was, but also that we needed to improve on the people side. And I'm not gonna make out that for 13 years, we've been amazing on the people culture, we were we were okay, we're kind of average, but we wasn't like, amazing. And I wanted that people culture to match our charity force. And that was a real wake up call. Because some people in the team, there's a bit of instability in the business, obviously, we lost a lot of revenue. At that point, if you have a really strong, really strong people, culture, people will be there together and you get through it together. And at the time, there's much bigger companies and agencies are much more well off and financially stable. They came knocking and people went because that culture was not as strong as it is now. So that was a massive wake up call for being completely honest. But we had to put a lot of effort and investment into that. And luckily, the team have worked so hard in the last few years in making that a real part of who we are. It's not just We're searching when we give money to charity, no, it's the people it's the purpose. Hopefully, if you get those two things right, then that's when you can be successful as well. But you know, if you can take the three boxes off, and then we'll justice.

Yiuwin Tsang  

Of course I want to ask you about some of the highlights of the 50 charities that you've helped with search them over the years, but just very, very quickly, what's been the just concentrate on the other P the profit side of things, how do you feel having such strength and purpose and how to strengthen people has benefited the profit side of things? How would you kind of interpret that?

Gavin Willis  

It can be hard to measure? I mean, for me, I look at our financial success over the last few years. And it's been good, you know, has been good there's been a lot of investment in the team we did go from eight down to four at the end of 2020. And then at one point we went up to 15 and now we're at 14 and we've had some periods where it's been brilliant profit margins and somewhere has been you know, okay, but overall it's been strong you know, it's been good we've had a bit of a rocky border six months you know, literally the end of 2023 was picked a lot of agency owners are gonna share Yeah, that we're still getting loads of leads through you know, we've got about 10 to 15 leads a month.

Yiuwin Tsang  

There must be like a really good kind of Halo like effect from doing the impact work from doing charity from you know, the other part as well like when you mentioned there about members of your team being choose the charities that they contribute to it really does says a lot about what they care about what they're passionate about, you know when they want to put their time and that in itself is almost like an open window to you know, if you believe in these sorts of things what if that's really important to you or if you feel passionate about this area as well be it you know, children, young people or if it's a underrepresented part society, whatever it might be, it almost kind of elevates that recommendation referral or whatever might be beyond take this in the nicest possible way there are countless PPC search agencies that are out there are there yeah loads of them out there. So what is it that makes each one individually different is gonna be done at the people it's gonna be done, the passions will be done, the beliefs and the values, and if you go majorly in on And this is what we stand for, then it must have that impact.

Gavin Willis  

I'm kind of playing it down a bit, because I don't need to sound like we've done all this to try and be successful because we did it. Like I said, from day one. Yeah, didn't know what CSR was let alone the core of all that kind of stuff. It's just something that we're passionate about. And I must admit, the last few years, there's been studies about it and Deloitte published something and 2020 thing about brands, when they're looking at who to work with, they're looking at how they treat their environment and how they're treated, and people are going to have a treat their community. And I'm thinking, okay, that's, that's the stuff we've been doing for like 13 years. So that's not bad. And we always do mention on our business decks and our website about this is what we can do for you. First and foremost, this is what we can do for you. This is our services. These are our insights is our recommended approach. There are the health checks and things SEO, PPC, and bang, the client wants to know that, you know, but they also know a bit about you are like, who are you as an agency? What would you stand for? Go here, by the way, we've done this, this what we call search, seven, these are some events, we've done this, how much money we've raised this impact that money's had. And I do agree, and we've actually got evidence and there's like surveys asking the clients, when they say like, how does the CSR on the charity side of the business for us is a big part of why you work with so Shiva and I think nine out of 10 Say yes, so it could have been down to the wire that already sees that may have had some really good ideas and their SEO and PPC as well. Yeah, but they've seen that bit, and they've heard from us talk about what we search seven and what we stand for, and therefore you know, what, we want to be aligned to the agency. It does help with attraction and our clients, it helps with attraction of team, and it helps retention of clients and team as well. So not going to hide that fact. Yeah, but I always say that, but we're not an agency that's brand new, we've just we've seen the stats, and that's why we're doing it, we just we've always done it for the right reasons. And now where people are saying, well, there's that halo effect, and I'm fine. Yes. I'm not gonna say there's no benefit.

Yiuwin Tsang  

There's got to be the ball kind of swings both ways as well really, if you know, helping young people or whatever the charity kind of causes, it's important to your client, then that you're going to be people that you want to work with. Yeah, well, if that's important to them, so it's a kind of, there's a real lovely, virtuous circle that goes on. If as you say, you kind of like weigh heart on your sleeve and, and you do put your passion, your purpose, you know, front and centre of what you do. Yeah, so sorry. Last question was what's been the highlights what's really kind of made you just go with the charities that you help us.

Gavin Willis  

I've got a couple. I'll be quick. So the first community event we did was in 2014, there was a football match Shan football club down near Brighton. The first time we actually done something that brought everyone together. And I had my son Ted, who was actually the chairman baby unit. And that's the reason why rockinghorse are our flagship charity. He was one of the mascots on a day, we got a yellow T shirts made out of such seven organisations that are all branding yellow, like charcoal grey, and we have 30 prizes in the raffle, we had about 150 people coming on to support a beautiful sunny day and it's just like a real moment of wow, you know what I think we can do all of these kinds of events. This is pretty cool. And we've done 24 events now a community events like that since and then we did one in 2018 that I mentioned where we did like three big campaigns and seven years anniversary. And we find that the AMEX stage in Brighton Brighton play. Oh, wow. We like all more Brighton kids that again, tabled out as a mascot. I had this. We had all the big screens and we had 250 people in one of the big private lounges with a mirror bright there. We did it with motor sponsorship opportunities for that one, which we didn't do in the first one. So I'm learning all the time. Man, the match sponsors or player the match reveal I play a patch sponsors, people I had a crate with their logo on it. We've just loopers aim Balaam was crazy. And we have loads of muscles can have a hard time doing a penalty shootout which all the dads pay for and staff and local purple teams. It was brilliant. So that was like the first really big event we kind of went up another level. And then a personal one. For me it was up I mean, that was brilliant is walking out with Ted as my mascot to the Champions League music. I was like, I'm never going to forget that. That was brilliant. And then another big one for me is when me and my wife and she was my fiancee at the time we went to Uganda. And so we've been sponsoring a school in Uganda for the last, I'd say eight or nine years now. I think that was 2018. We went to Uganda. And we did a two week tour. And then we went to the school for a couple of days. And when we turned up the whole school was really quiet. We went the whole village was tiny village and it was up in the windy forest in Uganda, on the border of Rwanda. And all of a sudden we heard some noise and next minute we got our to sit down on the seats. And the whole school the whole village started coming together started singing and dancing. And we were like, oh my god, what is happening? We just did it in a water tank to the village which obviously a massive, massive for them. A lot of the kids when they go to secondary school, they're walking like two three hours a day there and back. And we met Adam you respond to he's been on the main channel response for another time and we've also to kind of raise money for them in different ways. And yes, I've got a video of me like jumping around and dancing with the kids. It's a really patchy video. But whenever I watch that, I'm so happy. I'm so proud. And when you think back about, wow, I've helped to make that happen. That memory was just brilliant, so brilliant. And the year after we did another campaign, we raised some money for the village. And there's a lady called Gina Pina, and she had an eye tumour, and her it was, you know, it wasn't looking good. The money that we donated went straight for her operation to kind of, you know, to help, so actually saved her life. And when you find out, okay, what are these charities and what we've raised, it's not until you get told where the money is actually going and the impact it's having. You think on my thoughts that's actually led to that. And that's how these people and that's put someone on the phone line for a year to then be there for people in need. I've got problems and will speak to someone. It really kind of hits home, you know where that man has gone and what you've helped to achieve. So yeah, there's three highlights for me. 

Yiuwin Tsang  

Thank you so much to Gav Willis from Search Seven for being a fabulous guest. And a big thank you, to you, our listeners for tuning into the Beautiful Business Podcast. Beautiful business is powered by The Wow Company who believe that business can be beautiful that doing the right thing gets results. While believes that having a clear purpose and standing up for what you believe in is the secret to building a beautiful sustainable business. Something to be really proud of. To all our listeners, just to let you know we're taking a short hiatus on the Beautiful Business Podcast to rest, recharge and come back bigger and better. We'll return in a couple of months and if you need anything from us in the meantime, please contact beautifulbusiness@thewowcompany.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon.