It is a challenge to build both value and also grow as an enterprise. How can an enterprise work on both in tandem?
1. Can you tell us more about yourself? How did you get into entrepreneurship?
I’m Jordan Richards, founder and CEO of RCCO. I am also the founder of WILD and RAMP, two other agencies in the RCCO group.
My entrepreneurship journey began when I was around 11 years old. Instead of picking out sweets or a toy at the local pound shop, I chose to buy an invoice book so I could create invoices for friends and family for the jobs I would do for them.
At 13, I then started designing and selling phone cases at school before moving on to run a small design team throughout college, doing branding and websites for local businesses. A few years later and I am now the founder of a 7-figure agency.
2. Can you give us a brief of your career before RCCO?
Before RCCO, I worked for Google as an in-house designer for three years. I started at Google at 18, becoming one of their youngest apprentices and worked my way up to become a full-time creative lead. My background is in design with a passion in business, so getting to combine these through my roles at Google and now with RCCO is brilliant.
3. Could you tell us more about RCCO and how has the company evolved over the last couple of years?
RCCO is a small creative agency for tech pioneers, based in London. We support SaaS and tech companies with brand, web, and video that allows them to launch products, raise investments and increase revenue.
Over the last couple of years, our team has grown to work with over 50 tech brands, perfecting our understanding of each business’s needs depending on their goal. We have been lucky to have hired experts in digital with experience from brands like Tesla, Accenture Digital, and Google and now offer bolt-on monthly partnerships as well as project-based services.
4. What’s your favorite part about working in this industry?
I love that my job involves combining creativity with problem-solving. When we are presented with new scenarios and challenges, I love working to come up with a solution with my kick-ass team of designers and creatives. It’s a challenging but rewarding process! I think there is so much potential with SaaS products, and sometimes when you work on the tech it’s hard to communicate that true value. We are amplifying our client’s potential through creativity!
5. What makes RCCO unique? Why should enterprises choose RCCO?
At RCCO, we have the ability to understand and use our creativity to simplify complex products that allow us to support businesses through their toughest stages of growth.
We are able to bring deep tech experience having worked for global tech giants such as Google and enabled start-ups like Ad-Lib.io to sell for over $100M.
To create a more successful and efficient end result for our clients, we work on a partnership model that involves discovery and strategy sessions where the client can co-create their future. Using us as a bolt-on creative hub can help us scale your brand faster, or if you’d like to test us you can work on a project basis.
6. What are the products and solutions that RCCO offers?
At RCCO our three core pillars are brand, web and video. Within this, we support a business’s sales and marketing teams with everything from identity and design, to building websites, launching marketing campaigns with stand-out video and animation, and supporting pitches and investment rounds with presentation design. We aim to help businesses better communicate what they do and revolutionise the strategy of their brand.
7. Do payment gateways have major role to play in customer checkout experiences on ecommerce websites?
Every step in the journey is important for ecommerce, but I see it as definitely a funnel. The deeper you go in the funnel, the more people drop off, but the more commitment and desire people have. Therefore, with the payment being one of the later steps, people would have more patience at this stage in the purchase journey, than say the loading time of their first visit to the site. Nevertheless, customers have a lot of choice and are fickle, so improving every step of the journey is important to move your bottom line.
8. What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced when trying to grow your business?
During periods of rapid growth, hiring can take up a lot of time and feel like a race to keep up with the demands of the business. It can be a challenge to continue delivering excellent service whilst ensuring we spend enough time finding the right people that will help to move the businesses forward and reach new targets.
Talent is just one side though. The balance of new business with being busy versus not having enough work is always a challenge. We love having a full pipeline but also want to ensure we are producing quality output. As we progress we are looking to deepen our relationships with key clients and not take on quantity but instead quality partnerships.
9. Can you give us a sneak peek into RCCO’s development plans?
Our goal for the future is to leverage our in-house skills and experience with building apps to create a small team that is dedicated to incubating app ideas. We would like to offer our skills and knowledge to people, at no cost, to joint venture with us and turn their ideas into a global success.
As our knowledge grows and we continue to expand our broad range of offerings, I hope to co-found further sister companies, alongside our two existing brands, WILD and RAMP. I want to create a group of companies that all work together to provide a bespoke and specialist experience for our clients.
10. What is the biggest piece of advice you would want to give to company leaders?
Think about where you want your business to be in 2-5 years’ time and put the processes and systems in place that will allow you to scale to where you want to be. Find ways to reduce your manual tasks and create something that will benefit the future of the business – don’t just build for the short term.
When making decisions, don’t rush and carefully assess whether they will benefit or harm the future brand and business because growing is about improving quality while scaling.
11. How do you stay motivated? What are your key learnings from your career so far?
It’s important, in my opinion, to not rely solely on one area of your life to give you a sense of purpose. Your job most likely won’t fulfil all of your needs so you should find things outside of this that bring you satisfaction and happiness, this could be a sport, art or cooking for example.
Finding something that you’re passionate about, outside of work, will not only give you a sense of satisfaction but will boost your health and well-being.
One of the key learnings I have taken from my career so far is to make sure I take breaks. And scheduling activities outside of work in my diary makes sure that I’m putting time into other things that give me a sense of purpose.
12. What movie/book has inspired you recently?
There are two books that have inspired me recently:
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle – Discusses how we could all be more present – were you truly listening or were you thinking about something else?
My Morning Routine by Benjamin Spall and Michael Xander – Insightful interviews discussing the morning and evening routines with successful people.
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