Prodigi's 'Happy Teams' Podcast Deep-Dives Into Agency Journeys

It’s safe to say that being a bit nosy is human nature – and Prodigi’s new podcast series aims to satisfy agency leaders curiosity about what other people are doing.

Titled ‘Happy Teams’, podcast creators and Prodigi co-founders, David Wain-Heapy and Bachir Smahi want to teach business owners all about how to grow a thriving and positive workplace culture that ‘boosts efficiency, helps retain your brightest and best talent and improves productivity across the field.’

Every week they will be talking to some of the best digital and tech agency founders in the industry to deep dive into how they are creating a ‘happy’ culture. They will be having candid discussions about success and failure, individual and unique ways to motivate and why it is important to make sure agency talent feels at home working with them.

David had a chat with Agency Hackers News about the inspiration behind Happy Teams. He said: “I was a bit skeptical, of even doing one because there’s millions of podcasts out there – everyone seems to have a podcast these days. I love podcasts, I listen to one every day, so we wanted to do one for Prodigi because we thought it would be a useful tool.

The Happy Team Podcast is now live — The Happy Teams Podcast is now live

“But we wanted to do something that added value, and was actually useful to people that might want to listen to it, as opposed to saying the same old stuff.”

After some research into gaps in the industry market, the pair settled on the subject of happy teams and what you can do as an agency to create a happy environment, the sort of environment that people want to stay working in and start working in.

“There didn’t seem to be anything that already exists that was actually covering what we wanted to focus on. There are there there are podcasts around about job satisfaction and happiness and all of that, but there’s nothing specifically in our industry,” David said, “Initially it wasn’t even going to be a podcast, it was just going to be some video interviews. But we reached out to some people, and we got a good response – more than what we imagined.”

And as they started to actually have these recorded chats with people, they realised that they had more content than they thought they would.

“Everybody that we’ve spoken to has the same kind of centre point of what they’re doing as an agency – it’s that they recognise that in order to be successful, you have to put the people first. And if you put the people first, then everything else is going to follow, you will have a nice sustainable, profitable, scalable business.”

David has found that during this first series of podcasts, a lot of the founders they interviewed were B Corp agencies. This was a complete happy coincidence for them, that really led to them all being connected in some way. He added: “Most of them are already doing nice, positive things for their team and for the external world, whether it’s working with charities and thinking about their impact on the environment and all of that.”

Despite talking to a number of B Corp accredited teams, David and Bachir found that they all have their own unique different way of ‘doing good’: “One of the guys we interviewed, Sammy from Agency UK, he’s, among other things, involved in this business called the Knights Beekeepers. And they’re focused on creating this bee gateway across the whole of the UK, which is obviously, massively important to our environment.

“And then there’s another one that we spoke to Alex from Climbing Trees – he is focusing on their carbon impact. He’s got a goal that for every search that happens in Google related to their advertising, they want to essentially neutralise the carbon that’s involved in that. So they want to essentially be a net zero agency.”

They’re all just lovely people with a really good business – and you can see why they’re doing well, because they’re leading it with the right intentions.
David Wain-Heapy

However, despite the unique ways of going about it, every leader is connected by the same desire to create a happy team. “There’s a consistency in the fact that they’re really focused on making sure that they’re creating a fun, vibrant, happy workplace with people that they want to join,” David added, “But they also have this little one thing that’s unique, whether this like repopulating the UK with bees, or doing the net zero thing for all the searches, and that’s really fascinating to me.”

Discussing why he thinks the new podcast will resonate with the agency world, he said: “I think the interest to the people that might want to listen to it is that sometimes when you’re running your own agency, you’re there and you might chat to other people, but you don’t really know what’s going on everywhere else.

“And you’re really curious, it’s a way to satisfy that curiosity to hear ‘oh, well, this sounds really interesting.’ And it might either be ‘great, this is just affirming that it seems like we already do the good stuff’, or are actually ‘here’s some really cool ideas that maybe we can adopt in our agency.’

“And a lot of it is common sense – the best ideas often are common sense. But sometimes just getting that little bit of an input can help.

“That’s what I loved about these conversations, everybody just comes across really well. They’re not boasting, they’re just talking about their journey and the challenges that they’ve had along the way as well.

“They all have their own unique story in their own way. And having met a few of them face to face afterwards, they’re all just genuinely lovely people with a really good business – and you can see why they’re doing well, because they’re leading it with the right intentions.”

The first episode of the Happy Teams Podcast is now live, featuring David and Bachir’s conversation with Jaye Cowle. You can find it on Apple, Spotify and Amazon.

Brand new episodes go live every Tuesday on all three platforms.

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