Future Moves with Jordan Richards, Founder + CEO of &above
Well, after months of uncertainty, we now have a new government in the UK. Whatever your personal political leanings, it’s safe to say that I think we’re all hoping for a more stable economic landscape after a fairly turbulent 2024 so far.
In other big news, Mac+Moore turned 8 this month! Hard to believe we’re now heading towards a whole decade of working together and building our business. Something we’ve always done is close M+M HQ for one week every year. That week is upon us next week and we’re looking forward to a much-needed break. However, we wanted to squeeze in one more Future Moves before we go.
For anyone new to the party, Future Moves is here to ask business leaders and experts all the big questions on brand-building for tomorrow's world. Brought to you by us, Jess + Nat, award-winning founders of brand consultancy, Mac+Moore.
Let’s dive in…
Jordan Richards, Founder and CEO of &above
💫 What can working at Google teach you about running a business?
💫 Does entrepreneurship come from nature or nurture, or both?
💫 How can being underestimated actually propel you forward?
We’ve known Jordan and the team at the freshly renamed &above as both client AND partner over the past few years and what’s always intrigued us about the way the business is run is how they balance a roster of huge clients with an approach that makes you feel like you have their full attention.
They are all genuinely lovely people that you’d want to go for a beer with (and we have) and their work for clients like Revolut, Google and PureGym is packed with thoughtful creativity and robust tech. That’s a hard mix to find.
So what exactly is under the surface of founder Jordan’s entrepreneurial spirit? And what does someone building the tech of the future think about the way the world is heading? We sat down for a Future Moves chat with him to find out…
Nat: You started your career at Google. What initially drew you towards such a big tech company?
Jordan: Firstly, I actually never thought I wanted a job. I always wanted to have my own business but I think that's kind of why I ended up at Google. I started at college doing design and halfway through I realised education was not for me. I got good grades, but I just hated how slow it was and I love applying thinking and learning on the go rather than studying. So halfway through college, I started looking at apprenticeships to just get started in the industry and that’s when I found one at Google.
Nat: What was the apprenticeship application process like?
Jordan: It's one of those things where I thought, “I'll apply but I won't hear anything back”. Literally the next day I got a video interview and then it just spiralled from there. In the end, I think there were about 60 of us there and they cut half of them halfway through the day and then by the end of it, they picked 16 to get the first apprenticeship. I saw it as an opportunity to learn from some of the best in the industry and at the time Google was definitely up there in terms of one of the leading brands. My long-term goal was always to have my own business but my short-term goals changed along the way in terms of ‘how do I get there in the best way’?
Nat: What was the most memorable part of the apprenticeship?
Jordan: For one of the tasks we were given hard spaghetti, tape and paper and had to build the tallest tower. I made this really tall tower out of tubes and spaghetti in the middle with tape round it which was by far the highest. Like at least double the height of everyone else’s and so there was a bit of a joke that I got in because of my spaghetti tower rather than my digital marketing strategy.
Once I got in there obviously my mindset pivoted to how do I get a job here? Because the first thing they said was ‘you won't get a job here, it's impossible, you don't have a degree’. But anytime anyone tells me I can’t do something I’ll throw everything I have at it to prove them wrong.
Nat: So hold on a second, Google opened up their doors, said ‘come in, do an apprenticeship’ and then told you you’ll never get a paid job there because you don’t have a degree?
Jordan: Yeah. So they set it up by telling you how competitive and unlikely it is that you’ll get a job afterwards, but that became my full focus. Then as it went on I realised the opportunity of how big a network you could build there. And whilst yes, it's a huge corporate beast like any other corporate machine, there are some amazing people there who've gone on to create brilliant businesses and since become friends and clients and colleagues.
So I think my perspective of Google and why I joined changed every year from initially being a cool company to then realising who I could connect with moving forward.
Nat: Given that you always had your long-term eye on starting your own business, what would you say were the biggest learnings you took from Google into your entrepreneurial journey?
Jordan: I learned a lot about navigating people. A lot of it is politics. That's actually one of the reasons why I left as well because you're such a small cog in a big machine. It is really hard to change anything and make any significant impact.
But what I learned from the whole experience is you need to be really clear in how you communicate and you always need to tell people what's in it for them. A lot of it is about selling why people should care and how to get their attention. Essentially doing internal marketing campaigns to get everyone's buy-in.
Nat: You’ve said you have always been entrepreneurial, was there anything in your upbringing that influenced you to set up your own business?
Jordan: My dad owns a heating company. So I've grown up around an entrepreneurial role model. Although, he always told me not to join the family business and to go and do my own thing. That was the best thing he could have done for me because he inspired me with how hard-working he was but he also empowered me to build my own business based on what I’m passionate about.
One of my first businesses was selling phone cases at school. So I used to buy clear plastic phone cases then do a custom design for the person on Photoshop, print it out, cut it with a scalpel, stick it in and sell it for a fiver. Even before that, I had a carbon copy invoice book from the pound shop where I'd write out car wash invoices to my parents and charge them to mow the lawn for 50p and do a VAT-free weekend. I was obsessed with business from such an early age.
My co-founder Josh and I went to the same school so from 15 we set up a business designing and building websites for local businesses. I would design them and Josh would build them. I remember going to the cash point and getting out his share of what we’d made and handing it over like ‘Wow, we’ve done that’. I can’t imagine what people thought though, seeing our professional website and then these little lads turning up with our briefcases and suit jackets.
Nat: Do you think people underestimated you?
Jordan: Definitely. I always had to almost double-prove myself from such a young age to win people over and the best way to do that is by doing really great work. I’ve tried to take that thinking with me when it comes to hiring for our own business. It's really exciting to now be in a position where we can hire talent that maybe other people would overlook, especially the likes of Google. And actually, we hired an apprentice from Google which felt like a really nice full-circle moment.
Nat: What are some of the big industry shifts you’ve noticed over the past few years?
Jordan: In tech, specifically, we call it Vaporware. So basically, people are selling a vision of a product, but they don't actually have the product itself. A lot of the time, the businesses we start working with are actually managed services, fronting as a tech business, right, and we turn them into an actual tech business. To raise investment, to get their very first 100 customers, they need to show the vision of where they want to get to, but actually, it's a load of outsourced teams doing the tech. And what's really exciting is we then turn their businesses into real tech companies by giving them a true product and helping them evolve their brand.
A lot of these businesses are founded by engineers or academics so, at least in the early days, they’re very complex and we help them become more commercial by building a brand and a story and giving people something to actually buy from. It’s really hard for technical people to simplify their products, the granular detail might be exciting for a CTO but for a CMO or the end customer, it’s just not going to work.
Nat: How do you see this shifting as we move towards the future?
Jordan: What I've started to see is that people are now coming to us with a half-decent thing already. The tools out there are enabling people to get the first 60% done pretty well. They’re coding using ChatGPT, building their own websites using WYSIWYG Builders, putting pitch decks together on Canva, using AI templates that look half-decent.
But it's getting to the next level where all of it ties together. They need a consistent brand to build awareness and equity. Rather than just adding and adding and creating a Frankenstein mess, they need to think about the future roadmap thoughtfully and craft a really clear strategy. If they’ve raised a bit of capital and want to now reach an enterprise audience they need that extra level of thinking and expertise to get to the next level.
For us, that’s quite exciting because rather than working with people to get it off the ground from scratch, which can be quite expensive, people can now start it themselves, prove the concept, get their first sales and raise some funds and then we can help them get to Series A or B and get that next layer of growth with some really smart, strategic work.
Nat: You’re a very positive person. How do you deal with the f*** it moments?
Jordan: Well firstly, and we were only talking about this on our offsite the other week, sometimes it doesn’t pay to be positive. I’m learning that sometimes hard conversations lose their impact if I always try to put a positive spin on them. But when we face those difficult client moments we’re trying to implement something called ‘extreme ownership’. This sounds very SAS-Marines-intense but really it’s about trying to think about what we can learn from or do differently from each difficult situation. I guess that’s me being positive again! But I do see every f*** it moment as quite exciting.
Nat: How do you support your own mental resilience? Are you one of those CEOs who goes to the gym at 4am?
Jordan: I had a business coach once who told me to ‘think like an athlete’ and that’s always stuck with me. So what would Lewis Hamilton or Michael Jordan do? They’d look after their health, their mind, what they put in their bodies in order to help them do their job better. Don’t try and do a marathon every day. Build time in for different types of tasks, and rest... Also there’s a really interesting idea that you basically fill the time you have. So it’s about setting good boundaries as well. If you allow work to creep into any boundary of your life, then you're just spreading out what you need to get done. You can get it done in less time. I tend to block out time for myself in the morning, so it doesn’t encroach on the rest of my day, it’s important for me to try and respect that time to myself as much as I can.
How We Move Forward
A book, podcast or cultural movement that's made you think differently?
Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed. The aeronautical industry learns from every mistake and has evolved from crashing almost every launch to thankfully it now being a rare occasion. Yet industries like healthcare have a culture of covering up mistakes and not learning from them. I loved this read as it puts an interesting perspective on how you can create a culture of sharing mistakes and learnings so that your company can grow faster. We've implemented our own take on this called "Washups" which we host with clients and internal teams to learn from good and bad projects.
Your hope for creativity in the future?
Creativity is fundamental for problem-solving. We are heading to a future where it might not be so hands-on for design and crafts related to output, but our creative skill goes way beyond the final execution. I hope creativity holds its position in understanding, challenging, and thinking beyond what exists today.
One word to describe your hope for the future
Harmony. That we ensure AI is our friend so we can live in harmony with still a glimpse of human interaction and not end up with a sci-fi tragic ending!
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