Exceptional leadership and having difficult conversations, with Nadine Powrie

Transcript:
Jenny:
So today on the show, I'm really excited about chatting to Sarah Deakin and Ruby Beagan. They're both from Thursday, which is a creative agency. And they're both account directors. And the reason I invited them on is because they're very impressive account directors, I believe that they do a lot of account directorship really, really well. Some of those things that I've seen and watch them do is being really consultative with their clients. I think they show up and they ask the right questions in meetings, they also bring their clients fresh ideas, new thinking, insights and trends. And generally, they're adding value to every interaction. And they're very commercially astute. Apart from all of that they're also very energetic and engaging. And they're part of my sort of inner circle of account directors that I want to be around, because I learn a lot from them. And what I've also observed from both of these girls, is the fact that they're always open to new ideas, they're humble enough to know they don't know everything, they approach challenges with a real sort of resilience and a thirst for knowledge. So, I love being around them. And that's one of the reasons I wanted them to come on. Because I'm sure there's a lot of either account managers looking to step up to account director or account directors that are looking for other ideas from other agencies. So I see this interview as a bit of an exchange of information. So I'm gonna pass over to maybe I could start with Sarah, and just tell us a bit about you, Sarah, your role at Thursday, how you got into account management, and kind of what you do on a day to day basis.
Sarah:
So I'm an account director at Thursday. So we're about the 20 strong inside lead design studio in Winchester, I was previously, my previous role was with an agency called Skyline, which was a slightly smaller agency. And we were sort of specialised in really short lead times, we were very reactive agency worked incredibly closely with our clients, you know, they pick up the phone to us, and we try and turn things around super quickly. So very relationship focused role at Skyline. And then, about a year and a half ago, perhaps two years ago, Thursday acquired Skyline and Thursday are much more kind of insight led and strategic in their culture. So the merge with Thursday brought about a company which was an agency, which was much more kind of sort of full service agency. And that's where we are now.
Jenny:
Amazing. Thanks, Sarah. What about you, Ruby?
Ruby:
Hello, thank you. I'm Ruby Beagan. And I am one of the, alongside Sarah, one of the account directors at Thursday, which is a design studio based in Winchester. At Thursday, we use design to explore our client's problems. And we have a real focus on clarity. And it was only this morning, actually, that I had a client say to me, oh, it now makes sense. And it's those sorts of moments that we were really after. So that's kind of what gets us up in the morning. I started my account management journey five years ago, and I think, probably with quite a lot of people within Client Services, I fell into it. It's not really the kind of career that you get told about school, it's not really kind of on your radar from a young age. You know, it's usually a vets, or, in my case, I think I wanted to be a midwife, but my biology teacher told me to take a different route. So that ended that dream. But yeah, so I kind of left uni, panicked, got a call centre job, because it was kind of like, oh, I'm out of education, straight into job, didn't wanna sort of take that gap year, did it for six months, hated it, and then looked into kind of pursuing a career in Client Services.
Jenny:
Wow. But Client Services in agencies or client services, it could be anywhere because presumably, in the call centre, you've got quite a lot, you got used to speaking to people all the time, which is part of our role, isn't it?
Ruby:
Yeah. So from the call centre, I went to a letting agents, so kind of did all that customer service side of things and management of properties. And then from that, that was a leap into agency.
Jenny:
Amazing. Well, thank you both so much. Sarah, can I ask you a question? We recently there's been a lot of debate about what value the role of an account manager or account director actually brings. So would you mind just sharing your view on what you believe account management actually brings to the party to both agencies and clients?
Sarah:
Yeah, well, I think we, from a client's point of view, we're acting as that liaison between themselves and the agency. So we've got this really good view of both worlds. So we put ourselves in the world of the client, we learn about what they do, what the industry is doing. And then we you know, we know like the back of our hand what, you know, how the agency runs and the strategic side of, you know, what value we can deliver. So it'...