If you focus solely on helping people rather than your business goals, you’ll be more successful and much faster too.
Philip Storey is the Founder and CEO at Enchant Agency. Philip is an email marketing and CRM specialist in London, UK. He has enabled over 500 brands in all sectors, to create huge impact with the effectiveness of their email marketing, CRM and paid social media marketing programmes.
Over the past few years, Philip has specialized in working with large retailers, to truly understand and improve their customer life cycle marketing. He is helping marketers to create consistent, connected experiences across all channels, in every space where a prospect or customer meets the brand, every single time.
More recently, Philip has been furthering his experience and work in coaching, therapies and meditation, and is now a 2nd degree reiki healer. Philip is now coaching and mentoring high-worth individuals, CEO’s, founders and marketing directors to be more effective and more successful. He works closely with his coaching clients on a one-to-one basis, to help them to realise and achieve their true potential. This always results in his clients feeling very differently about their personal and professional life. No matter what their goals are, they leap ahead into a new, prosperous future.
Where did the idea for Enchant Agency come from?
After 12 years in the industry, I was disillusioned with traditional marketing, where the goal is always to generate the most money in the quickest time possible. I decided that I was through with that approach, and instead of being in the business of helping marketers to make more money, one day I realized that I was actually in the business of helping people to get what they want and deserve from the companies they care about. The next day I resigned and started Enchant.
What does your typical day look like and how do you make it productive?
I have a set format that I have created and follow every day. I always wake up at the same time, one hour earlier than I need to. I spend that hour on myself, just doing things that give to me. It can be yoga, journalling, meditation or even just getting some foods batch cooked for the week (I’m vegan, so it always takes a little planning to get meals right). Then I spend 15 minutes planning the day. I only ever have five things on my task list on any day, and where possible I try to keep it to three. This way, I achieve what I set out to. If you have more than five tasks on your to do list, you’ll fail.
How do you bring ideas to life?
I’ve recently studied the altMBA with Seth Godin and he is ruthless about shipping work. His philosophy is that most ideas just remain as ideas. He has developed a culture of “just ship it!” which has helped me to kick-start two new businesses this year that would otherwise remained simply as ideas. And that would have been a great shame…
What’s one trend that excites you?
AI. It’s both exciting for the good it can bring to the world and everything that we do, but as Elon Musk says, it must be regulated, just like anything else. If it’s not regulated, it terrifies me more than excites me.
What is one habit of yours that makes you more productive as an entrepreneur?
The structure I have in my day. If I slip out of that routine, everything suffers for it. That habit is everything to me.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Seek first to understand. Always listen – never dismiss feedback. There’s a great book on this called Thanks For The Feedback – if only I had discovered this ten years ago!
Tell us something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on?
That in marketing, if you focus solely on helping people rather than your business goals, you’ll be more successful and much faster too.
As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?
A pre-mortem. Not many people do this and it’s a great tool. Basically, when you complete a strategic project, you attack it in a group to think of every which way that it could fail. This means that the real truth comes out before something actually fails. I do this with every single project.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business? Please explain how.
Reinvestment. Never look at profit as pure profit – always ringfence a chunk of profit to amplify your success. At Enchant, this has lead to us creating our own marketing department and enabled us to buy some of the best tools in the business to help us grow.
What is one failure you had as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?
Starting out without a lawyer. I always thought “we’ll get one when the business can afford it”. Bad move and meant that one or two of our early clients had a grip on us. Always get a lawyer straight out of the gate to help you with contracts and advice. It pays for itself over and over.
What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
There’s a massive demand for vegan and ethical clothing, jewellery and accessories. I’ve been interested in this market for a while and I feel it’s about to boom – there are opportunities in this space that I wish I had the time to explore…
What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?
Hands down it has to be the $100 I spent on seeing a naturopath. She’s helped me figure out a couple of health issues that were niggling at me. Now they’re completely gone and they’ve been remedied naturally.
What is one piece of software or a web service that helps you be productive? How do you use it?
“Hubspot”. It’s a CRM, marketing automation and sales platform that runs everything my agency does. It’s a very powerful tool and without doubt, the best on the market.
What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?
“Tribal Leadership” by Dave Logan. It’s a great read for anyone who manages teams and explains the nature of teams in any form, whether it’s a sports team, military, project team, sales team – any team! Even if you don’t manage people, this book will enable you to understand the DNA of your team a little better and give you some great skills and inspiration to manage up.
What is your favorite quote?
“When the wind of change blows, some build a shelter. Others build windmills” (ancient Chinese proverb). It summarises so well, just how a force can be identified as negative (wind) and a defensive strategy is employed (build a shelter). But when you look at the same situation differently, others build windmills and positively adapt to change.
Key learnings:
Always give to yourself first thing in the morning, before giving yourself to your day.
Take 15 minutes to plan your day each morning and never have more than five things to do on your task list. More than five things on that list means you’ll fail the day.
Remember that we are all, always students. Ruthlessly develop your skills and keep learning every single day. Your work as a student is never complete.
Always ship your ideas – never sit on them, because someone else will find the courage to ship.
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Mario Schulzke is the Founder of ideamensch, which he started a decade ago to learn from entrepreneurs and give them a platform for their ideas.