Jo Pope has over 12 years of experience working across marketing and digital agencies.
She joined Enjoy, a Leeds-based digital experience and performance agency, around eight years ago as an account manager. She has since risen through the ranks through a number of promotions and was appointed head of client services in 2020, moving up to senior head of client services earlier this year.
Enjoy recently marked its 15th year in business and was recognised as Prolific North’s Large Digital Agency of the Year at the Prolific North Champion Awards 2023.
Here, Pope shares a recent week in her life.
Monday
A sunny morning and a walk to the train station for my short commute into Leeds. I’m lucky that it’s under 30 minutes door to door (including grabbing a coffee).
My Mondays begin how I’m sure is the same for many others, with some weekend chat, followed by a series of key meetings lining everything up for the week ahead. We kickstart the week with our all agency meeting; a chance to bring the full team together, share knowledge and learnings across departments, discover what’s going on in the agency that week, and celebrate the wins from the previous one. Following that, I lead our commercial meeting where we look at the business commercials, client happiness and discuss the key priorities that lie ahead.
Then I meet with the rest of the leadership team and we discuss how we’re tracking towards our quarterly agency goals and any immediate cross agency priorities, for example recruitment plans. It’s an exciting part of the week as we focus on moving the wider business forwards.
One of the best outcomes from this week’s meeting was the introduction of our new ‘maternity and family friendly’ policy, which encourages a balance between professional aspirations and family responsibilities. We now offer a range of brilliant benefits for parents as part of our agency package, such as extended parental leave.
Next up (after a brief bite to eat, obviously), a team meeting with my department, the Client Services team. We recently introduced a new structure for this meeting using one of our digital collaboration platforms, to ensure the session remains inclusive when people are working from home. In advance, we all submit and prioritise key points that we want to discuss. These vary from priorities we need to support each other on, to client updates and proactive ideas around how we can work smarter to achieve our team and client goals.
With these meetings done and dusted for the week, I use the remainder of the working day to collate and prioritise the various actions captured throughout the day, which then feed into the rest of my week.
Tuesday
Tuesday mornings are dedicated to a little me time. I start the day with a 7am PT session. I must admit it’s my least favourite alarm clock during the week but overall my favourite morning. Most mornings I like to start work around 8, but on Tuesdays I like to take some time to myself after PT, and log in at 9:30am.
The majority of Tuesday typically consists of actioning and cascading all of the items discussed throughout Monday and checking in ad-hoc with a few clients. This week I hosted a client video call, where we discussed an exciting new product launch set for 2024. Typically, Tuesdays are full-on but very productive. That’s why that little bit of time to myself in the morning works so well for my weekly schedule; I feel refreshed, energised and ready to embrace the day.
Wednesday
This Wednesday was particularly fun as the client services team had an away day. As a team we’re accountable for establishing and evolving our client partnerships. We used this quarter’s session to focus on growth planning, ensuring we’re anchoring account growth back to value; what can we do to add even more value to our existing partnerships?
This involved a mix of experts across the agency, in addition to the full Client Services team, giving us the chance to bring fresh eyes to each client account in focus. We looked at their business challenges, partnership goals, obstacles and importantly, generated lots of great ideas, before aligning on how best to move these forwards.
As part of this, we also discussed what we individually want to achieve and what good work we want to deliver as a team. It’s important we’re all able to share and do work that makes us feel happy and fulfilled.
This session spanned the full day, so naturally we topped it off with dinner and drinks at the end – a great opportunity for some team bonding. We’re a pretty social team and do a team night out every couple of months. This time we went for an Indian and a few beers – much less embarrassing than our last one where my competitive nature came out in full force at Shuffleboard….only for me to come last!
Thursday
Thursday was another exciting day as we travelled down to London for a new business pitch. The start was early for this one but a Flat White from Laynes did the trick on the train!
We had a 45 minute slot to present an executive summary of the proposal we had previously submitted. In these situations, 45 minutes often flies by and it can be challenging to get across everything you want to say, but we had a great game plan, and strong pitch team chemistry. We all felt really positive post-pitch, and debriefed over lunch. My family live down south so I headed over to see them for the evening – might as well make the most of the work trips!
Friday
Friday is my time to wrap up after a typically busy week. I had a few one to ones with the team, to clarify how the week went. This helped me prepare for the upcoming week and ensure that responsibilities are evenly distributed, so my team feels supported. I also spent some time following up on this weeks’ meetings and preparing for next weeks’, so that I’m ready to do it all again come Monday!
I can’t lie, I love an early finish on Friday – who doesn’t? Some of my closest friends are people I’ve met along the way over my 8 years at Enjoy, and we like to let our hair down together on Fridays! This week, a few of us and our other halves have booked a table at a new restaurant in town. I’m a bit of a foodie so this, combined with a great glass of wine, is my perfect way to switch off for a wholesome weekend ahead. We’re off to the North Yorkshire moors for a little getaway!
