Jo Smedley is one of the UKs foremost female assassins – at least, that’s how she usually introduces herself. But when you meet her yourself you’ll find out she’s a not-so-serious-serial-killer, as her victims are always fictional. A mother of two, she began her company while on maternity leave from the NHS and never returned. Her firm Red Herring Games now has customers all over the globe and provides more deaths to order as export than it does to the UK year on year.
Red Herring Games became something of a household name during the pandemic when more people than ever experienced the fun of murder mysteries via zoom with friends, and it continues to expand providing events in the corporate and private entertainment sector, as well as traditional role play games, escape games and a subscription service for armchair sleuths under the brand name “Cosykiller”.
A little introduction please....
If you’re ever in the creative writing sector, the one thing people tell you day in day out is that “writing doesn’t pay”. I’ve been a writer ever since I was old enough to hold a pen, and that love of creative writing has continued throughout my life. But knowing writing didn’t pay, I started out in life as an occupational therapist in the NHS and relegated my writing to hobby status.
I loved my work, but when I left the NHS to start a family, staying at home with the family became more of a priority for me and I looked around for something I could do to help the household income while being at home. I’d already been writing mystery games for friends and someone suggested I try selling them, so I found a company open to writers and started selling through them.
However after a few years I realised I was being stilted by the platform parameters, and that my games were not providing the experience for players I wanted them to provide. Fortunately, I had friends who were website designers and they encouraged me to create my own formats and helped me set up my own firm back in 2007. That first year we turned over around £7000, which is not much, but enough to see the potential. Word got around, and thanks to word of mouth recommendations, as well as the usual SEO and advertising the business grew.
We’ve had ups and downs as all businesses do. Winning Theo Paphitis SBS, Jaqueline Gold’s WOW, Small Business Saturday, Small Awards and recognition at numerous other awards across the UK. We have big brand names on our order books, and continue to work with some major players in the retail and finance sector to support staff entertainment and product launches.
Since 2007 I’ve used bootstrap investing to grow the company year on year. We came close during the pandemic years to hitting a million in turnover – which is a figure I could never have dreamed of when I launched the company. Demand was incredible in 2020/2021, and the entire team put in some very long hours to support people across the globe. After two years of crazy, we’re back to a more traditional growth curve now until I can secure equity investment to jump start the next expansion.
What do you believe are the most important qualities or attributes that a successful business leader should possess, and how do you embody them in your leadership style?
I think having an understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses is probably one of the most important qualities as a leader you can possess. You need to know where and when you need help and when to delegate. It’s important to understand you aren’t good at everything. Being able to delegate your weak areas to someone who can do them better than you is critical to growth. I’ve got a weak point in accounts and numbers. From day one I hired an accountant and book keeper. I hate book keeping. I still do. I can waste hours procrastinating to avoid doing jobs I don’t want to do. Once those are delegated out – I can focus my time on the things I’m good at and enjoy – and I’ll be much more productive. The same is true of your team. They each have areas they are good at, and areas they avoid. If you can work those out – you can ensure everyone is working to their strengths which makes everyone more productive and ensures everyone is happier at work too.
Can you describe a significant challenge or setback you've encountered in your career, and how did you overcome it to achieve your goals?
I was really delighted to secure an agent back in the early 2000s. For writers – an agent is the holy grail. Everyone is looking for one. With an agent you can secure a major publishing contract and also your writing feels validated. For writers – an agent is often the goal. And I was no different, after 2 box files of rejection letters, I was overjoyed to secure one! And for 5 years I wrote novels, screen plays, scripts and submitted them to the agency in the hope one of them might “land”. However out of the blue I was contacted by the devon police who informed me that my agent was bogus, and that he was being prosecuted for fraud. Apparently he had conned a lot of writers out of significant sums of money. Fortunately, I wasn’t one of them. I had lost a little, but not into thousands like some people. But it meant my dreams of being a validated writer were dashed overnight.
However – the thing about the whole experience is that without that bogus agent for 5 years encouraging me to write more, I wouldn’t be where I am now. Sometimes all you need is a bit of confidence to keep going, and while bogus, they gave me that confidence in myself and my work.
I still don’t have an agent, but I did secure a publishing deal for my first crime novel a few years ago. I still reached my dream of being a published crime writer, just not in the timescale or way I was expecting.
In a rapidly changing business landscape, how do you stay informed about industry trends and adapt your strategies to remain competitive?
I keep an ear on the news, do a lot of internet reading and attend courses in business on new initiatives as they crop up. I’m also a tinkerer – which helps. I’ll play around with something to see how it works and how we can use it. AI has been the biggest step change in our industry in years, and keeping up to date with that has become a priority for me. Its important to explore new technology, and we’re all using midjourney and Chat GPT currently to assist at work. If you don’t keep up, your competitors will do, and if you can’t get ahead of the competition, you should at least try to keep up, or you’ll find yourself obsolete.
We were able to capitalise on the parties during the pandemic by learning how Zoom worked quickly enough to help others learn how to use it. We explored how we could adapt our product to the virtual landscape and then went about doing just that. Being in front of our customers in that way benefitted our growth enormously. Our competition were nearly 12 months behind us with virtual event options, which meant we were the first everyone turned to for corporate entertainment online. Some of our competitors never made it into the virtual landscape, and others were a good year behind us. No one remembers the runners up in a race, only the winners, so it’s important to get in front as early as you can, with any new changes in the business landscape.
What is your approach to building and leading high-performing teams, and how do you motivate your team members to achieve their best potential?
I think it’s important to hire the right people, not just people you like. I’ve grown the business slowly. I’ve not always made the best strategic hires, which is something I’ve learned the hard way. I want a good office environment – but having a family atmosphere doesn’t always lead to a productive business.
These days when recruiting – I look for the best person for a specific role. I think that’s something you can only do when you get big enough to need role differentiation. At that point, getting a balance of chiefs and Indians is also important. Too many chiefs and there’s a lot of arguing at the top and no one wants to do the boring work. Too many Indians and there’s no strategic thinking and no growth. Getting the right people in the right places is critical. Some people enjoy the monotonous work. If you find someone who does – then they can be a godsend!
How do you balance short-term financial goals with long-term strategic planning for the growth and sustainability of your business?
There is no quick answer with this – it’s a balancing act all the time. Often because one part of your business needs investment of either resources or time, another part suffers. The trick is working out where your quickest wins will be and focussing on those to bring in the money to expand the other areas.
I haven’t got it right yet myself. But the business has continued to grow and expand throughout my tenure as managing director. I’m looking towards a future sale now, which means I need to plan for rapid growth in the next 5-10 years in order to maximise on the business sale when I’m ready to step down. This means a lot more strategic planning – which means more time with the accountant to work out what areas of the business are bringing in the most money and which are costing the most so I can plan marketing and advertising accordingly.
Can you share an example of a major decision you had to make that had a significant impact on your organisation? What was the outcome, and what did you learn from the experience?
Running your own business has a lot in common with gambling. You have to take risks in order to grow. You try to qualify the risks as much as possible, but sometimes those risky steps still need to be taken.
There have been two periods during my business growth where risky growth decisions I have made have backfired and cost the business more than they made. Our first move into wholesale was a disaster. Our products just weren’t ready for the retail market. No amount of PR was going to fix that. Our Covid recovery I claim less responsibility for – as no one had ANY idea how that was going to go. But in both cases I have had to take tough decisions on staffing, which is generally our biggest operating cost.
When sales aren’t coming in, staffing has to reduce. As a small business the redundancy process is incredibly tough on all involved. I hate it. Staff become family in a small business. But sometimes you need to stand back with a “business head” on and look at things objectively. Both times I’ve waited far too long to start the redundancy process off, and as a result we have struggled far longer to recover the business. I know this is largely because I haven’t had a strong financial director in post to qualify the figures with me to justify the decision earlier. This is why I’m looking to recruit into the financial director role as soon as funds allow. Someone with a more logical analytical brain who can map trends in numbers will establish far earlier when cuts have to be made and will prevent lengthy recovery time.
What role does innovation play in your business strategy, and how do you foster a culture of innovation within your organisation?
Being a creative business in a largely creative industry, innovation is central to everything that we do. We don’t buy in anything “pre-made” all our scripts, all our games are designed in-house and turned into sellable products by our team. This means we are all innovators. We have lots of “water cooler” moments throughout the day and are constantly asking “what if” and often develop new ideas to meet customer demand.
Cosykiller was the direct result of working with Crime Con two years in a row to design a game that would run in parallel to the conference, but could be played independently by those attending. All the innovations we made to create their games, led to the creative process that made Cosykiller possible.
Our latest development – puzzle boxes came out of our virtual weekend events created for Lockdown life. During the weekend we wanted to offer people a puzzle challenge online as part of the weekend package. We all enjoyed escape games, and initially we worked with other firms to run escape games as part of our digital weekend experiences – but we couldn’t find anything of the right theme or quality to match what we were doing, so we started designing our own. From that – we moved into physical puzzles as well, and Joseph in our office developed on the work done to date and came up with a brand new puzzle box concept which is now rolling out into a range which we hope will appeal to retailers too. It is super exciting.
How do you handle ethical dilemmas and make difficult decisions when they arise in your role as a business leader?
Everyone’s ethics is different. As a result every ethical dilemma is going to be different for every business. The nice thing about running your own business is that you make the final decision on who you work with. I have turned down clients who don’t fit with our ethical model. I am always polite, but there are other people out there who WILL service them and I don’t need to compromise my ethics if I don’t want to.
In the main we’re quite easy going at the office. I’ve written all sorts of fairly non-politically correct things to order, and while customers redact information occasionally to avoid offending us, we’re very rarely offended. We aren’t working with stem cell research, dealing with bio-hazards or weapons of war – the business we are in is purely entertainment, and as a result the issue of ethics rarely arises as a major issue.
Looking to the future, what are your top priorities and goals for your business, and what strategies do you plan to implement to achieve them?
Our top priorities are to create a sustainable growth model and to shift focus onto the subscription and the events side of the business which both bring in more money per sale but are under supported. These two areas were abandoned somewhat during the pandemic, but have grown anyway. They now just need a little more focus and targeted marketing. We’re working with Boston University at the moment and I’m about to get the results of their student’s deep dive into our marketing strategies to see if they can suggest how to target new customers for our Cosykiller brand. My primary goal in 2024 is to secure an equity partner who can help us put some key strategic features in place to permit rapid scale up. If we are unsuccessful in that, then it’s bootstrapping again, but we need to ensure we put the right people in the right places to accelerate our growth. This means a financial director, and a director of Cosykiller.
https://www.red-herring-games.com
https://virtual-escape-room.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/redherringgames
https://www.twitter.com/redherringgames
https://www.instagram.com/Red_Herring_Games
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannesmedley/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/red-herring-games/
