Today on the revenue acceleration podcast, my guest is Diggs Simons. Diggs is the cofounder and CEO of a company called Mida, which is launching on May 15. Diggs, please introduce yourself and your company and tell us a little bit about what you guys do.
Digs:Cool. Thank Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. And so, yeah, I'm Diggs. I'm the cofounder, CEO of Mida.
Digs:Mida essentially is a digital solution that streamlines agency ops in two ways. We have ready to use systems and also on demand fractional project managers. We take a modular approach when it comes to smoothing out workflow, helping teams deliver results, and essentially building a stronger engaged community.
Anthony:That sounds really interesting. So the one thing that stood out to me when we first had our initial chat was that you've got on demand project managers, which I think every business can benefit from. So how do they work? How how can they help? And what kind of costs are people looking at to be able to employ a on demand project manager?
Digs:So we we tend to split our products into named sections. So when it comes to the project managers, that falls under Mida Pro, that banner. The way that that works is done on kind of a forty hours forty hours a month basis. So the average is out to about two hours a day. What that means is that you get somebody to come in.
Digs:They can take control over the workflow. They can be there to essentially manage the team, show face so it doesn't feel like a very third party solution that's just been plugged in and and left there to rot. The way that they work best is they kind of come in with our system. So the prebuilt system that we call Mida Stack, that that comes with the product, and that's essentially a ClickUp system that's split into three separate areas covering general workflow, growth, and kind of client health and management, and then also team and accountability. The pro is trained on that specific system, that cadence, and also how we like to integrate that within different agencies, essentially.
Digs:When it comes to a a cost level, it's a flat fee. It's £1,500 a month over here, which actually works out a lot cheaper than you would find, obviously. I mean, a a full time hire over here for a PM, you'd probably be looking at the best part of 35 to 40 thousands in salary. By us having having something that's a little bit more modular enables you to kind of get what you need and not pay for the stuff that you don't.
Anthony:So there's obviously an option to have the project manager or not have the project manager. So I think you said project manager is Mitre Pro. So what's the step down from that? That's just using the basic project management software. So you've used ClickUp and built your your systems and everything on top of that.
Anthony:Is that correct?
Digs:Yeah. We've used all of the other ones. I think Asana, Trello, Monday, there's quite a few of them out there. I think the thing about ClickUp that makes it great is it kind of does a better job at taking things like documents. It has a lot better views when it comes to workloads, so you can actually see capacity in a better way.
Digs:And it's overall just a cleaner system, and I I find the integrations to be a lot better. But, yeah, that's our kind of core offering when it comes to the workflow side of things. There's additional products inside of Mida Suite, which is where those products live that are spread across other platforms like Airtable and Pitch, the kind of modern day PowerPoint, if you will.
Anthony:You mentioned at the start that you're mainly looking at agencies as your ideal client, but what other types of businesses could you see being able to use these systems in Mida?
Digs:It's fairly malleable. That's the thing. When it comes to because you're you're really tracking workflow growth and and team. So I think the agency sort of niche was very much where we focused on first because it was what we knew, and it was why the why we decided to come up with it. But, essentially, any kind of teams that work on a project basis or have repeat workflow that needs to be tracked and capacity that needs to be tracked, the system will adapt to them.
Digs:So development teams are another good one if they're working in sprints typically, and they wanna stay agile and deliver things, then it's great for that as well. The same with lead generation or any kind of sales flow, thanks to the Mida Grow section, they're able to see deal flow in a pipeline, pricing, and also just general client help. So it's essentially, it centralizes a lot of things.
Anthony:So backtracking a little bit, how did you guys get to to building this? What experiences have you had in the past that kinda led you to the development of Mida?
Digs:Sure. Yeah. I can talk on that for a minute. So I think myself and Rory, one of one of my cofounders, we'd spent the best part of sort of a decade collectively working either in or around agencies. And after a while, you kind of keep noticing the same patterns or issues in each one of them, regardless of size or kind of how long they've been running.
Digs:Issues that we were seeing were things like the system's super outdated. There's often not a lot of real process in things that they're doing. And, I guess, kind of more alarming level, you had teams that were either burnt out or approaching burnout. And what that would translate to is then clients becoming frustrated and eventually churning. So growth was fairly stagnant around a certain MRR.
Digs:So they'd kind of hit this plateau and then wouldn't really be able to go any further without looking inward and then sort of going, okay. We need to make some changes here. Ops for agencies, I think, often felt a lot more reactive than strategic in terms of the way that they were. They were approaching it. And, also, comms, super messy.
Digs:I'm painting, like, a a very, very bleak picture here. It wasn't it just wasn't always clear who was responsible for what. And, essentially, the work the work they were doing wasn't the problem. It was just the way they were working.
Anthony:I see. So how would the the growth stack in Mida help agencies push through that plateau you were talking about with their their MRR?
Digs:Yeah. Of course. So I think at its core, Mida really is about creating clarity. When it comes to if we're focusing on growth specifically for a second, I think we've we've built a structure that attracts a number of sales related metrics, deal flow and health, pricing margins, even down to sort of commercial workflow. And what that does is it allows sales teams to have a central point of reference without needing, you know, 84 tools.
Digs:So they have something they can just quickly glance at and everybody else can see it on the same team, the people become a lot more aligned. I also don't think growth is always just about commercial either. I mean, one good thing that we did in a previous company, which I'll I'll touch on a little bit later, is restructuring your team. And I'm not just talk I'm not talking about just fire everyone, but I think the way they work and even communicate can save so much time. And that time is then time you've got back that they can spend working on new projects or clients, which then equates to a higher revenue, and that's with no additional staffing.
Digs:So it means by just shifting around the way things are done internally, your margins can become a lot healthier.
Anthony:So one thing I've seen with previous experiences in other people's businesses and even my own is that sometimes, particularly when you're growing and either you're offering a new product or a service or just working with a new client that may be in a different niche, things change slightly depending on that client or that service that you're offering. And you don't necessarily have any pre built workflows or systems there. So if, you know, say, for example, a new agency signed on with you guys, what kind of help do they have there with Mida to be able to go, okay. This is what we do. Can you help us put it into a system?
Anthony:Is there support for that kind of stuff?
Digs:Yeah. I would I would say things like that. If it's something that falls quite widely outside what the norm is for us in terms of, I mean, ICP or kind of the typical client we would work with, then, of course, we're we're we're available to help. And, also, if it's something we can help with, then we will. I think we would just need to treat it on more of a case by case basis because the system comes as it does, but that doesn't mean it's not customizable.
Digs:So there's a lot of things that can be quite easily changed. Obviously, if if someone's trying to reinvent the wheel, it might need a little bit more thinking behind it. But, yeah, it's something that we would tend to work with them on a a more one to one basis and actually be involved throughout the process to build what it is that they need.
Anthony:With your your target market agencies, what kind of processes can they plug straight into that you already know that they have in their business? Is it more marketing templates, everything from marketing to sales to at the end of the pipeline, or is it focused in a particular area?
Digs:It's a good question. I think in regard to that, the different sections are relevant to different things. So for the workflow side of things, I think you can look at, okay, There's integrations with Slack, for example, that you could plug in. So directly being able to create and automate tasks within Slack, which I would say, if companies aren't using Slack as their main main internal comm system, probably should be. Small quality of life upgrades that come with that, but also being able to track capacity is huge.
Digs:You could then integrate that when it comes to reporting. So generating capacity reports, profitability reporting, how can you see how can you track the time against certain clients if you feel that those clients either need to increase retainer or that time needs to be allocated somewhere else. I think when it comes to the growth side of things, obviously, a sales pipeline and deal flow, you would typically be using something like Pipedrive or HubSpot. So there's ways that you can integrate that then with Calendly for meeting booking all the way through to whatever contracting system you're using. So you're able to actually then take those, and that can then shuffle the pipeline along automatically, which is kind of your bread and butter, a little bit more AI focused.
Digs:And on a team level, you're also then able to schedule team one to ones, track OKRs, goals, those sorts of things. So whatever HR system you're using, you can then link those two together. So when you know that a one to one is approaching with somebody or a quarterly review, you can then very quickly see how how well they've progressed with the things you've given them the previous quarter.
Anthony:Wow. Feels like a powerful system. At the moment, you're in startup phase. You're launching on the May 15. How are you guys going about getting new new business?
Anthony:What is your main channels that you're focusing on to to generate inquiries and new clients?
Digs:Yeah. Of course. And so I think for us, we kind of look at it in in two ways. We have Mida Pro, which is something that we have our own process of validating agencies or clients before we work with them. That outreach method is primarily done on LinkedIn.
Digs:So we find it's best to actually have a conversation with founders. And then if they want to go ahead with something, we'll then invite them to a a discovery call and an application where we can find out more about what their challenges are. Because we wanna make sure that we can actually help at the same time. It's I don't just wanna work with people and and sort of just take the money and run. We wanna actually do something where both sides can feel like they've added value, and that for us is really important.
Digs:So LinkedIn primary one for Mida Pro, I would say with Mida Suite, which is the the product side of the business, that one takes a little bit more of a a traditional route, which is things like funnels or paid ads being the primary sort of lead magnet. When it's because they're a a one time purchase product and also it's a lower acquisition cost. So for us, you're really trying to focus on more of a mass a mass market there. Whereas with pro, you're trying to focus really on the businesses that need it and are actually gonna gonna see value from it. So tend to split them into two is the best approach for us.
Anthony:Right. Okay. Cool. And I know you guys still haven't launched yet, but you did say that you've had some beta clients go through already. Do you have any success stories with guys you've worked with already that you you're willing to share with us today?
Digs:Yeah. Of course. We actually worked with a client for quite a number of months actually, which is almost where we we sort of test around the system. So
Anthony:Mhmm.
Digs:It was quite nice because having a real agencies that had, obviously, real people, real real clients, that enabled us to sort of almost adapt things as of when because you're able to see, okay. In practice, this makes a lot of sense, but sometimes things don't always work out as you planned. So, yeah, we managed to take a one of our one of our old clients was on Monday originally, migrate them over to ClickUp, and then we built out essentially the what's now become the Mida stack for them. So previously, we're unable to see anything relating to capacity, anything relating to kind of pricing or servicing, and just in general, not being able to see who was doing what and when. And I think one of the first things we did was take if you have, let's say, four different service lines within an agency.
Digs:So let's say you have paid media, you have CRM, organic, and ecommerce. It was separating out those service lines into lists that would then have the person responsible for them attached to those. So that person doesn't need to see everything that's going on in in a client's workflow. They need to focus on their part and almost their silo, deliver on that, and then the account manager or the PM can then take more of a macro view in terms of the workflow for that account. So that was something that made a a really significant change almost immediately.
Digs:And I think the hardest part was getting people to track time. I don't know if you've ever had to track your time on something before. It feels a little bit weird.
Anthony:No. I haven't actually.
Digs:It's like starting a it's essentially like pressing pressing start on your phone and then doing something and then remembering to press stop. So, yeah, it can be a little bit strange. But, yeah, we had we had good success with that in terms of getting people to use it, and it took a while for us to get there. But when we did, we were then able to really start making changes when it came to, okay, this client is an issue. They're soaking up, you know, 60% of this person's time, which is worth x, and they're only paying us y.
Digs:So helped us see a lot of areas of improvement. And then I think for the founder who was the primary sort of sales driver, it was really handy for him having all of their pricing centralized and delivery methods because I don't I don't know if you would do this, but in terms of when they're selling to somebody, sometimes to get the sale, it's very easy to go, yeah. I can take a a grand off here or I can kind of adjust it. But what that ends up doing is it skews your sort of average retainer value. You end up with a disparity between the amount of clients you have, your operating costs, and then also your MRR.
Digs:So actually just putting it down in one place makes makes an amazing difference when it comes to stuff like that.
Anthony:I've never really thought about tracking time spent with client from myself and the team before, but I could see how very quickly that could identify some pretty big areas where you could save. So being able to do that sounds amazing.
Digs:Thank you. Yeah. That is super handy, and it's it's one of those things sort of after you have it, you don't really know how you live without it.
Anthony:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Cool. Well, talking about time saving is a good segue to to jump into talking about AI.
Anthony:So have you guys implemented AI either in the actual software that you you're you've built in Mitre or the systems you built in MITRE, or did you use you did you use a lot of it in the process of building out MITRE?
Digs:Yeah. So this AI one's an interesting an interesting topic. Think I'll start with kind of at the moment, I think, us is we've there is AI inside of the product in certain ways. I think things that I touched on earlier when it comes to specifically in sort of the deal flow side of things, you know, Calendly mixed in with contract systems and kind of the automatic updates when it comes to the status of that of that deal. Yep.
Digs:In terms of other ways, think, yeah, the capturing of meeting notes from tools like Fireflies, but then also having those added in automatically to that relevant to that relevant deal flow is another one which is really good. The building of MITRE with AI was a lot of Zapier. It's a tool that we use a lot of. I think it's great. I, again, don't know if I could live without Zapier.
Anthony:Yeah. Being able to
Digs:kind of make different things talk to each other is very handy. We also built our own chatbot, which its kind of purpose is either to sit on our website and act as sort of a support agent for people if they if they need help. But also for us internally, we use the bot to help us when it comes to things like writing, which saves us a ton of time. Yeah. So You don't obviously just take the writing verbatim and stick it in.
Digs:But, I mean, when you're trying to come up with copy for, you know, eight plus web pages or 10 plus decks, it becomes it becomes a bit of a Mount Everest to do manually. So, yeah, I think It
Anthony:gets you in the ballpark, doesn't it? Like, we use AI a lot for that kind of stuff as well. It just feeds a little bit of what you want, and then it can get you closer into the ballpark, and then you can refine it from there. And, you know, something that would take eight hours can take an hour or even less sometimes.
Digs:Exactly. And I mean, it's it's always funny when you see the the ones that have just been a copy and paste job because especially if it's in England, they're using they're using zed's instead of s's. So Yeah. Right. That's normally the telltale sign.
Digs:But, yeah, I think using it as a almost a inspiration or a foot in the door, that's the best way when it comes to the writing side of things. There's a lot of stuff that we're kind of working on background with integrating more kind of less off the shelf AI into the product. I think it's something we wanna lean very heavily into because in terms of what it is that we're providing, I don't think I don't think that is something that's currently being filled at the moment with a certain level of AI. So, yeah, it's something that is something that we're is very much on our radar and is is kind of a conversation we're having at the moment.
Anthony:Yeah. Sure. One of the things that keeps popping up all the time is people talking about how AI is taking jobs. What's your view on that? And what would you say to someone if in your team, if you were like, okay.
Anthony:We're gonna get AI to do this now. What would the conversation be there, and how would you kinda navigate those orders?
Digs:Yes. Difficult question. I feel like it's it's the same as sort of asking what's someone what's the meaning of life. It's very on the very on the spot. No.
Digs:We can talk on it. I think, at the moment, I think a lot of people are using AI in a very lighthearted way. So what I mean by that is they're using it to do the fun stuff while still manually doing the boring stuff. It's almost I don't know if you've seen these sort of they almost look like toys toy packaged things across LinkedIn where people are using a chat gbt prompt to churn out these these images. And that's kind of a Yeah.
Digs:Yeah. Like, it's like your own action figure that has your kind of add ons that come with it.
Anthony:Right?
Digs:But I think that's that's sort of a more fun use of it, but they're then still going and doing the boring parts of their job themselves. So the switch that needs to happen really is use the AI to do the stuff you don't wanna do, and then you get to do the things that you do wanna do or that you find more enjoyable. So I think when it's used properly, it should take care of admin, grunt work, and just kind of anything that is really, really bottom of your list. And then people can then focus on the strategy, the problem solving, and also building human relationships.
Anthony:Yeah. For sure. That's well said. And it's exactly what what my view on it is too is that AI can take where a lot of the manual labour away from people to focus on higher level strategy and even retrain themselves into positions they thought they may never be doing. Businesses can take advantage of the human resources by letting AI take care of all of these mundane tasks that their employees were doing and then retrain them or lift them up into higher level positions where they can then manage from more of a top down view and really leverage the business into some faster growth.
Digs:Yeah, of course. I agree with that. I agree with that.
Anthony:What about the the rest of 2025? What do you see developing? I know you're kind of more in servicing the agency space. So in the agency space, what are the trends you're seeing there? And how do you think MITRE's getting in front of that and being able to take advantage of those trends?
Digs:Sure. Primarily, I would say it's about being adaptable. I'll give an example of something, which I think is kind of the way that I've I've seen it for the last especially the last year, really, has been looking at a platform like Fiverr, you know, the kind of talent marketplace. They experienced what I think a lot of agencies are currently experiencing, which is really a rush to the bottom. So quality of the work between five different agencies is probably not gonna be too different.
Digs:I think it's gonna be at a good level, but what the client's looking for now seems to just be about price. So they're less bothered about reputation or essentially prestige. I think clients are becoming a lot smarter when it comes to, okay. We need this done. We need it done quickly, we need it done cheaply.
Digs:So flipping that into a SaaS perspective, I think they need to focus on being dynamic. And that means their pricing and also the way they deliver the service. So for us specifically, that was the decision behind leveraging fractional talent and offering fractional talent because it doesn't come with the same overheads or obligations that full time hires do, which allows us as a company to stay leaner, but also for the client by providing them something cheaper that does what they need. It also enables them to save money. So I think you have to understand you have to understand what it is that the market's doing, and that's why I think being focused on your industry or your niche is huge as well.
Digs:So building tools or solutions that benefit single sector for us, again, digital agencies over mass market, that can really help you to build community, but also repeat customers. That makes sense in some kind of weird weird backwards way.
Anthony:No. No. That makes perfect sense. And on that subject, you're in the prelaunch phase of MITRE. Is there any major lessons that you've learned over the last few months or weeks leading up to this launch that you're like, if I could have known this a few months ago, it would've helped me a lot.
Anthony:Is there anything you'd be able to give as a major piece of advice for any other SaaS founders that are going through the process of start up at the moment?
Digs:You're coming with all of the big questions today. Best thing I've learned in the last, guess, the last few months, I would say building a team of people around you that are all aligned on the same thing, but they also need to be people that are all very good at what they do. And I think for me, roles only mean certain things, and I think they mean something on paper. But the one thing that we try and do is it doesn't matter what somebody's role is. There's three of us in the company.
Digs:You have myself as the CEO, Rory as the COO, and then you have Do who heads up as the CCO in terms of creative. But every decision that we make as a company is a collective decision. And I think what that does is it means that nobody at any point feels left out of the decision making process. But it's also funny because when we come to have the conversation around, okay, what are we gonna do? There's normally no disagreement anyway because I think that's that's what I mean by being on the same page.
Digs:Letting people get on with letting people get on with what it is that they're best at doing. And you always wanna work with people that are better than you in the ways that you're or in the things that you can't necessarily do. That's the goal. I think working with people that aren't on the same level of ability when it comes to doing certain things, That to me doesn't make a lot of sense when you're trying to bridge that in. But I think having great creatives, great minds when it comes to logic or problem solving, having great marketing, those are all things that you should look and find that person, build trust with them, and bring them in and have them bought into the vision.
Digs:That's what makes businesses grow, in my opinion.
Anthony:That's great advice. So I know there's no way for people to really go and sign up with you guys at the moment, but if they did wanna get in contact with you early before May 15, is there a way or an email address that they might be able to ping you at? And and then on May 15, what's the best way to to take a look at Mida and what what you guys do?
Digs:Of course. If you'd like to get in touch with us or with me, you can reach us via email, which is hello@midahub.com. So m I d a h u b dot com. If not, if you wanna talk to me personally, please reach out on LinkedIn, Digs Simons, and you can you can find me, and we can have a conversation. I'm always happy to do that.
Digs:And on on May 15, finally, it will be MyderHub.com, as I just said, and I cannot wait for it to actually go live because I've been asked that question about a hundred times. So, yeah, very excited.
Anthony:Fantastic. That's great. MidaHub.com. Thank you so much for joining us today, mate. Your insights in building a business going to launch were great, and we wish you all the best in success with Mida.
Anthony:And we can't wait to see where you are in a few months, let alone a couple of years' time. So thanks again for joining us.
Digs:Hey. Thank you very much for having me. And, yeah, keep in touch.
