Spaghetti Agency: Our Story

Spaghetti Agency: Our Story

The Jo’s Correctional Facility Years: Where the Madness Started

Once upon a typo, there was Jo.  

Back in the day, she was working at an advertising agency and running her solo gig – Jo’s Correctional Facility (yep, she actually named it that). She was the grammar police, the CV whisperer, the queen of job applications. If your apostrophes were dodgy, she’d hunt you down. No mercy. She used to get drunk and add missing apostrophes to pub menus. It was a different time. 

Meanwhile, Todd was out in a van flogging wine and making friends with strangers on Twitter. Classic Todd. Turns out, he had a knack for storytelling and dragging people into whatever he was up to. Before long, he was basically the self-appointed mayor of Warwick’s social media scene. And where did his misspelled tweeting of the word ‘you’re/your’ lead? To Jo, obviously.  

We finally met in real life in 2012 thanks to the Warwick Tweetups. Cute. We then helped out the local Warwick Rocks campaign to try and drive traffic to the town centre and grow the local community. Jo’s grandad came to Warwick as a prisoner of War, and Todd loves the town, too. 

By 2013, everything changed. Jo swapped clients, Todd swapped postcodes, and we both ditched the day jobs to build something completely ridiculous. We had no cash, a brand we threw together on a laptop, and not a single clue what was coming next. But we jumped in anyway – and Spaghetti Agency was born out of that glorious chaos. 

Finding Our Voice: Less Corporate, More Chaos

In 2014, we started finding our rhythm. Todd rocked up to a 4Networking meeting, not for the “business opportunities” but because it was in the evening and served wine. A few months later, he was running the place. His big energy and even bigger mouth turned a forgettable meet-up into the UK’s top-performing 4N group. Not bad for someone who just fancied a glass of red (or three). 

While Todd was out charming the room, Jo was back at base, building the structure that kept everything ticking. No fluff, just smart systems and solid marketing foundations. We were very different, but together we made a cracking team. And Todd even learnt how to spell ‘you’re’. 

Training quickly took over the show. Training Workshops became our bread and butter, bringing in most of the business and giving people the kick up the arse they needed to finally sort their marketing out.  

Those early years were all about showing up, standing out, and helping people figure out what the hell they were doing online. And we loved it. 

The Big Rebrand: Goodbye Boring, Hello Spaghetti 

By 2015, it hit us – our DIY website and “that’ll do” branding just weren’t cutting it. It was all a bit… amateur.  

So, we did what any self-respecting pair of misfits would do: we scrapped the lot and went full Wild West. And just like that, Spaghetti Agency was born. Unplanned. Unfiltered. Unmistakably bold. 

The name? Ridiculous. The theme? Wild. But it worked. Our new identity shouted louder than a cowboy in a networking room, and people started to notice. We weren’t just “those two doing social media” anymore. We were Spaghetti Agency. And clients started lining up. 

The wonderful Laura S was our first hire and original sidekick. She helped us wrangle the growing workload as things started to get properly serious. We didn’t just talk social anymore; we rolled out SEO, Google Ads, Facebook Ads – the full digital rodeo. Bigger clients, bigger campaigns, same no-BS attitude.  

Learning, Adapting, and Thriving (aka: Getting Our Shit Together) 

Over the next few years, behind every leap we took, there was someone giving us a nudge (or a kick). Coach Rob Cameron told Todd to ditch the day job – thankfully.  

Our next coach Tom Dillon pushed us to host our own events, and our next coach Claire McTernan taught us how to charge properly for using our brains, not just our hands.  

Each one helped shape how we grew, and we’re eternally grateful for their input and guidance. 

Eventually, the home office got too small (and we got sick of working next to the fridge). So we moved into a proper workspace in Leamington – with matching chairs and everything. (The bars on the windows were very Wild West.) 

The team grew, the plans got bigger, and the business started looking a bit more like an actual agency – not just two slightly feral humans winging it. We used an outsourced model and brought in local talent to support with graphics, social media, IT, and SEO.  

In 2017 Jo gave birth to a mini cowgirl who didn’t sleep for nearly four years. She was back networking within 7 weeks, but she can’t remember much about that time.  

By 2019, we decided we were done building other people’s communities. It was time to create our own. So, we grew the Spaghetti Besties Facebook group – part community, part therapy session, part marketing madness. We started running our own meetups too, and before long, we’d built a tribe that actually gave a toss about what we were doing. 

Adapting in a Crisis: The COVID Curveball 

When the world shut down in 2020, everyone panicked. But instead of freaking out, we did what we always do – we made noise and got creative.  

Enter The Virtual Pub. A totally online boozer on the internet that kept our community sane during lockdown. No beers on tap, but plenty of banter, support and much-needed human contact on a Friday afternoon/evening. 

Not to bring back those awful times too much, but we were told those sessions kept people OK and gave them something to look forward to on a Friday afternoon after a lot of tough weeks of isolation. Lots of business owners had a really shit time back then, while their friends were sitting in the garden drinking gin and being paid to be furloughed. 

As well as the Virtual Pub, we also gifted some phone calls with people who needed moral support and marketing ideas. Todd held call after call with business owners who had been caught on the back foot and needed to… (I’m sorry)… pivot.  

We weren’t doing it alone either. With Kevin Riley (our business coach and all-round legend – not that we’d ever tell him) in our corner, we figured out our next move. We shifted from freelancers to an employed team in 2020. It was scary at the time, but it laid the foundations for proper, long-term growth. 

During Covid businesses realised they needed to be visible online – properly. And that’s where we came in. We helped clients make sense of the chaos, get their marketing sorted and actually show up in a digital world that suddenly became everything.

Post Covid – the building years 

Since Covid we’ve grown in so many ways. We hired and fired, and learnt a shit tonne of lessons along the way about leadership. We got a lot of things wrong. But we learnt a lot and made sure we minimised repeated mistakes. We became obsessed with systems and processes. Todd and Jo told each other to stay in their lanes a lot. Todd got sober and hit the gym. He went viral on TikTok without doing any dancing or pouting.  

We carried on improving every day and sharing our learning with bespoke consultancy, training, and mentoring.  

Where we are now: building for the future 

Right now, Spaghetti Agency is buzzing.  

We’ve built something bold, fun, and bloody effective. The team’s bigger, the ideas are sharper, and we’ve got serious momentum. 

We’ve embraced systems and automation – no more juggling chaos with sticky notes. We streamlined everything and became a Zoho case study because apparently we’re now poster children for doing things properly. Who knew? 🤣

How Spaghetti Agency boosts efficiency and customer engagement  

Workshops and networking are still our jam, but now they come with even more flair.  

We run in-person events that actually matter – stuff that inspires, educates, and gets people talking (and not just about themselves). 

And when it comes to sales, thanks to Tom Mallens, we’ve binned the hard-sell nonsense. We listen, we get what people actually need, and we offer solutions that work. No pressure, no faff – just smart marketing with real results.  

Vision for the Future 

Our future is clear. We’re focusing on working with exciting, local businesses that actually give a damn – the kind of clients who share our values and want to grow with us. 

The goal? Build a kickass team of 20 and partner with businesses that don’t just want marketing, they want momentum. No fluff, no faffing, just real results with people we enjoy working with. 

We’ve got the foundations, we’ve got the team, and we’ve got a bold vision. We’ve nailed the balance between creativity and consistency, and we’re only just getting started.  

The next chapter is ours to write – and it’s going to be a wild one. 

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