Beyond Perks and Profits: Building a Reputation-First Agency – An Interview with Matt Janaway, CEO of Marketing Labs

Who really is Matt?

I’m a lifelong tinkerer. I started with eCommerce in the 2000, I then went on to buy and build a collection of eCommerce brands – some of which were sold on as I exited. I discover that I’m happiest when I’m testing ideas, evolving them, and helping others succeed. Today, that means being the founder and CEO of Marketing Labs, a digital marketing agency and a co-founder of Quirq, a personal branding agency. But it also means being a dad with a camera permanently glued to my hand, a Nottinghamshire lad who still works locally, and someone who’ll happily talk SEO or photography until night.

You’ve built and sold eCommerce brands. What lessons from those experiences influence how you run an agency?

Running your profit-and-loss at 3 a.m. teaches brutal prioritisation. Cash flow always beats vanity. Traffic and popularity are nice, but margin is what pays wages. Everything in eCommerce is a test: landing pages, hiring strategies, even pricing. You ship it, measure it, and iterate rapidly. You quickly learn that customer lifetime value matters more than any particular marketing channel. When Marketing Labs advises clients today, we always think like operators first and consultants second.

You’ve grown a seven-figure agency with no sales team or pipeline. How on earth did that work?

We have a reputation-first model. We share everything we know openly through thousands of LinkedIn posts, our “Marketing Blabs” podcast, and a mountain of freely available, ungated content. This creates an inbound gravity, as people come to us already familiar with our methods and values. Our personal brands mean prospects start at a high level of trust rather than from scratch. Ultimately, client success is the primary metric we track: happy clients tell their friends faster and more effectively than any traditional sales team could. The power of compounding trust far outweighs that of compounding ad spend.

What’s the risk in the way most agencies are structured, and how does it impact staff and clients?

Traditional agencies are typically structured like pyramids, with many junior staff members billing hours at the bottom, a thin layer of overstretched managers in the middle, and partners at the top who sell more work than the system can comfortably service. This structure leads to rapid staff turnover; juniors burn out quickly, senior staff coast due to exhaustion, and middle management are stuck firefighting. Client relationships suffer because knowledge about who they are as a brand and what makes them tick continually leaves the organisation, resulting in a cycle of stagnating performance and constant relearning rather than deepening expertise. Add to that, the majority of the agency’s workforce is filled with salespeople, adding to their overheads (and the price their clients pay), which causes many issues all around. Instead, we have a flat structure that deals with many of these issues.

You talk about an “upside-down” or flat team structure. How does that shift accountability and performance?

We flipped that pyramid upside-down. Senior specialists now sit closest to the client and are actively supported by management rather than controlled by them. This gives everyone absolute autonomy; they fully own their projects from start to finish, without the need for endless layers of approval. We operate with radical transparency, openly sharing key metrics such as hours worked, profit, and client retention with the entire team. Performance becomes a shared responsibility rather than a guarded secret. As a leader, my role shifts dramatically. I remove blockers, fund experiments, and keep the overall mission clear: test, evolve, and be genuinely happy doing great work. Think of it more like a democracy, where everyone in the team has an equal say.

You created the Good Work Scheme to go beyond traditional benefits. What makes it different, and why was that important?

Perks shouldn’t be decorative; they should address real-life pain points. Our Good Work Scheme provides our team with meaningful support, including an extra day’s holiday for each year someone works with us, an annual £100 travel voucher to encourage exploration and downtime, birthdays off with no work interruptions, a paid charity volunteer day, and dedicated training budgets tailored to individual learning plans. 

But the Good Work Scheme isn’t just about perks, it’s fundamentally about embedding goodness into everything we do. We built it around three core pillars: being genuinely good people, doing good for one another, and delivering great work. That means prioritising kindness, gratitude, and meaningful support as essential, measurable parts of our day-to-day operations, not just as inspirational values stuck on a wall.

It’s essential because genuine goodness creates a foundation of trust and happiness, and that directly translates into stronger teams, better client results, and a sustainable business model. In other words, the Good Work Scheme makes sure we’re not just good at our jobs, but good at being human, too. A happy team means they deliver amazing work for our clients. 

How does kindness become part of day-to-day operations, not just a value on the wall?

We integrated kindness into our daily workflows through clear operational principles that are embedded directly into our processes. For instance, assuming positive intent is standard practice. We treat client budgets as if they’re our own money, and problems are approached as puzzles, not opportunities for blame. Transparency is the default, and we prioritise life over work whenever someone encounters significant personal challenges. Because these principles frequently appear in meetings, reviews, and task management, they naturally become an integral part of how we operate each day.

Why do most companies believe they have a great culture, yet often get it wrong?

Most companies mistake vibe for genuine values. It’s easy to offer free beer and beanbags, but those don’t represent culture – they’re perks. Authentic culture reveals itself during challenging, often uncomfortable moments, such as having honest conversations about workload or supporting their non-work challenges. Culture is really about what behaviour you tolerate at 4 p.m. on a tough Tuesday, not the celebrations you hold at a Christmas party.

You’ve said that perks are pointless unless they’re personal. Can you unpack that?

Generic perks don’t resonate because not everyone values the same things. A gym pass is only valuable if you enjoy the gym. Our approach is to survey the team regularly, eliminate perks that aren’t being used, and enhance or introduce perks based directly on their feedback. A cinema ticket that nobody will use isn’t too valid, but money towards a vacation is helpful in eveyone.

(Again) How does kindness stay operational?

Kindness becomes operational through structured processes combined with genuine empathy. Clear service-level agreements ensure prompt communication – we aim to acknowledge messages quickly and resolve issues swiftly. Inbox Zero helps keep stress low, and clear communication guidelines replace passive-aggressive apologies with genuine expressions of gratitude. By embedding empathy directly into standard operating procedures, kindness becomes scalable and sustainable, much like efficient, well-structured code.

Is AI improving marketing, or making it worse?

AI is a powerful tool for marketers. Used wisely, it eliminates repetitive tasks such as data cleaning or generating ad copy variations, freeing humans to spend more time on higher-level strategy and creative thinking. Misused, it simply produces vast quantities of mediocre, generic content. Specifically, in SEO, AI hasn’t replaced traditional techniques; it’s increased the importance of being the top result, as AI summaries often draw directly from the best-ranked content. Ultimately, marketers who remain curious, test constantly, and stay creatively engaged will thrive, while those who outsource their critical thinking to AI risk blending into mediocrity.