It’s a GREAT time to be alive!

We live in a day and age where are people literally building some of the biggest businesses from their kitchen table, garages and co-working spaces.

Today the little fish are taking massive bites out of the bigger ones & winning in a big way!

Overport have joined us here @CreativeCubes.Co and on todays vlog we discussed how small business (or even just an idea) with the right tools, mission & vision can execute and out perform some of the biggest businesses in the world.

They would know, they’re doing exactly that not only with their own business but also for their own clients.

Keep up with Overport Agency on Instagram + while you’re at it check out Charlie Screen

Enjoy the Vlog 🙂

Transcript

Tobi Skovron: Does size really matter? I think in business today it’s all about agility, speed and execution, and that’s why I love this next vlog with the Overport team. Check it out.

Tobi Skovron: So have you got an elevator pitch on Overport?

Leah: So Overport, we’re now two years into business, so Chanel and I actually were uni buddies. So 10 years ago we did our business commerce degrees together-

Chanel: A little bit more than that.

Leah: Just over. And we each went our separate ways in our career, and then … button has popped, excuse that. And then yeah we both had our corporate careers, Chanel was in the digital media side and fashion communications. I was more the brand, FMCG product side of things. And both separately came to the conclusion that, yeah we were ready to do something different, to do something on our own, to make some waves. And joined forces, and then Overport was created.

Leah: So it’s really evolved in the last two years but we have three sort of core pillars for our business. Brand, words, and social. So brand strategy, copywriting in all the shapes and forms, and social media in every …

Chanel: More from a content comms point of view.

Tobi Skovron: So are you guys actually preparing content communication and deploying it or giving it to your clients to then deploy it?

Chanel: Depends on individual needs, but both.

Tobi Skovron: Yeah.

Chanel: So you have a lot of ongoing sort of retainer clients where we do it sort of end-to-end. But then other clients we might do their foundational suite or sort of on a project basis, but-

Leah: We found that every single client, every single brand, every single business is different. So we don’t have a one size fits all, so we sort of craft how we work to that individual.

Chanel: And everyone’s different in terms of resources.

Leah: Yeah.

Chanel: So as well, or just different interests some people just don’t want anything to do with it, some people love marketing. And I think the part of what we sort of noticed after both working in corporate and you work with big agencies, and there’s just so many layers and you have to go through so many approval processes.

And what we really realised is that the landscape is changing so much, so especially with digital, you have to be really quick and agile and make changes quick and when you work …

Chanel: When we used to work with big agencies it was so annoying and not only would they make a change quick, it cost you a fortune. So I think that’s where we sort of decided, “Hey, we really can carve our own place here.” And having a decade of sort of that corporate experience, brand side, and then being able to apply that to a digital sort of … you can really understand the bigger business.

Tobi Skovron: Have you noticed the pace has picked up. So when you talk about you need an approval, and a this, and a that, do you think the train’s already left? Like that opportunity’s already missed in today’s world?

Chanel: Totally.

Leah: Absolutely.

Tobi Skovron: Yeah.

Leah: We thought of that … we worked from startups to really some established brands in the market. And we have seen like the true key things that makes a successful brand a business or an unsuccessful, is like one, how quickly they make decisions, and two how determined they are.

Leah: Determination trumps talent every day of the week, so yeah, those two things, making decisions quickly is so critical for success.

Chanel: And it’s quite funny because with the brands that we work with that are specifically online and they started online, leveraging obviously social media to get them where they are, they’re really successful. And what we find is now a lot of the bigger sort of companies that had less of an online presence and used to be with a big agency, are like shit. We’ve got all these sort of like startups that are completely taking out sales-

Leah: Yeah.

Tobi Skovron: So are you seeing a lot of your bigger clients come down-

Leah: Yeah.

Tobi Skovron: And play in that area or are these smaller guys trumping these big guys?

Chanel: A bit of both, but I think what we’re seeing because we’re obviously an agency, we’re getting quite big people. We’re a big agency and we’re actually, if anything, what they’re doing is they’re going, “Shit, okay, we can’t work with our massive agency anymore. Who’s the agencies working with on these small online e-Commerce brands?”

Chanel: So they know that they have to make decisions quicker and they’re like, “Okay, how do we do that?”

Leah: Yeah.

Chanel: And it’s actually benefited us because we’ve had people reach out that we would probably have not approached ourselves or thought, “Okay,” like we’re sort of playing this slightly different space. Come and say, “No, we want to deal with an agency that’s used to working with these types of startups, because we’re losing market share a lot.”

Chanel: And obviously with the retail landscape changing-

Leah: Yeah, it’s really interesting this, as Chanel and I experience, there’s actually very few agencies that have worked brand side. So Overport’s in a really unique situation in that we’ve worked for market leading brands, both in Australia and globally, but able to work in … being a small business, that we’re able to be agile and apply that big company thinking to businesses of all shapes and sizes and do it in a really agile, fast way.

Chanel: I think it’s more you understand that you have an appreciation for the processes and so you can-

Tobi Skovron: You can work with it.

Leah: Yeah.

Chanel: You can work with it. It’s like an emotional intelligence type of thing. You know what they’re up against. You know, okay, if the marketing manager comes to you, you know the situations she’s in and what she needs to achieve and what she’s up against. You can almost adapt your way and you’d be like, “We’ll make it happen.”

Leah: “We’ll sell it in,” yeah.

Chanel: “We’ll sell it in, don’t worry.” And then once you’ve sold that in we’ll work together and we’ll move in really quick. We’ll get you what you need to be successful.

Tobi Skovron: So have you guys got a lot of bandwidth at the moment or are you’re trying to keep up with the demands coming in the door?

Chanel: No, we’re probably … now we want to grow obviously. We’d like to probably hire maybe one or two more people and then probably stay in a particular size.

Leah: What you probably don’t actually know about us yes, is that we actually have a side hustle. So Overport’s the main key but we actually have a side hustle, who’s also a client of Overport.

Tobi Skovron: Yeah?

Leah: So Charlie Screen is our little hustle, it’s a men’s skin care brand.

Tobi Skovron: Cool.

Chanel: And that’s sort of the idea as well. If we see brands that we really believe in or support at a really exciting stage, then we sort of want to get that agency to a point where we can invest our time. And so, Yeah.

Tobi Skovron: It’s a very interesting play, I like it, and I like it because my history, I was living in Los Angeles for eight and a half years and I tried to find CTOs. And CTOs, Chief Technology Officers, they’re writing their own cheques at the moment, because they sit in these big companies, an idea is sparked, they say, “Fuck it, I can do it myself.” And then they go and build Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, all these types of big businesses.

Tobi Skovron: And so I really like the side hustle, using your knowledge and advice which you’re consulting, and then you’re actually using that same knowledge and advice to deploy for your own products or brands [crosstalk 00:07:38]

Leah: With Charlie Screen we can test things out on our own brand, so there’s no risk to our clients. If there’s a new technology or a new [crosstalk 00:07:45] idea, so that’s what we often do.

Chanel: Because there is so many programs and things that popup every day, but to obviously apply that to a client is risky. And we also need to then justify that obviously to them. So yeah, it’s been really, really good to have it.

Tobi Skovron: Is Charlie Screen alive online?

Chanel: Yeah.

Tobi Skovron: Okay.

Chanel: Completely, so.

Tobi Skovron: We’ll link charliescreen.com-

Leah: We’ll link you up too

Tobi Skovron: Oh, yes please.

Chanel: Yeah.

Leah: Yeah. Get moisturizser.

Chanel: Clean up your act.

Leah: Clean up your act.

Tobi Skovron: I know.

Chanel: Yeah.

Tobi Skovron: You’ve been speaking to my wife, haven’t you?

Tobi Skovron: Guys, I will link Overports’ details, I’ll link Charlie Screens’ details, I’ll link Instagram, Twitters’, all of the details so you can get in touch.

Tobi Skovron: Thank you so much.

Chanel: You’re very welcome.

Leah:  Pleasure.

Tobi Skovron: I’d love to swivel back in a few months, talk about some customer success, talk about some of the new things that are happening in the digital sphere, and your opinions, and your thoughts around it. But for now we both have to go and pay the bills.

Chanel: Absolutely.

Leah: That’s it.

Tobi Skovron: So back to the hustle.

Tobi Skovron: That was a pretty good vlog, right? Well, if you go creativecubes.co/vlog you’re going to see hundreds if not thousands more.