The relationship will sustain you through the bad times as well. Sometimes clients will only stay with you when the results aren't what you want. They'll stay with you if the relationship is strong, or they'll stay with you for a bit longer. If you don't have a relationship with them that's strong, they'll leave and go elsewhere. They might get terrible results elsewhere, which is what we've seen a number of times, but they felt more cared for and so they moved.

Welcome to the Agency Our Podcast, where we help web design and digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their teams, their families, and their communities. Today we're joined by one of our clients, Josh Moore, from Duo Plus in New Zealand. They're essentially an ad and SEO agency. They've been around for about 11 or 12 years. Josh has been with us for about three years now. And today we are talking primarily about his journey, starting the agency as a freelancer with a couple of contractors doing some dev work for him offshore to now being the CEO of an agency with a team of 14 people and what he's had to learn about leadership along the way to get him out of the weeds and get him working on the business instead of in the business. This episode of the Agency Hour Podcast is proudly brought to you by E2M Solutions and WP Remote. They are our two partners that we recommend all of our clients use. E2M are a white label web development and content and SEO agency. So if you have any web development, WordPress, Shopify, high-level work that you need done for you or your clients, or you have any AI that you want to roll out in your agency or for your clients, or you have any copy or content or SEO work you want done for yourself or your clients, please go and have a chat with Kushboo, Minish, and the team at E2M Solutions. We'll leave a link near this episode. Uh with our link, you can go and check them out and get a discount off your first month. We don't get paid enough Fiat Commission to recommend them. They are partners of ours and they sponsor the podcast. So we have plenty of clients using E2M. Uh they're the only uh white label development agency that we recommend because they do a fantastic job. And our other partner, of course, is WP Remote. If you are managing multiple WordPress websites for yourself or clients, then just go and plug WP Remote into those websites so that you can manage all of your WordPress websites from one dashboard. It also comes with a backup solution blog vault. It also comes with Malcare to keep your website secure from any malware, and it also comes with Airlift, which is their WordPress performance plugin. So go and check out WP Remote. Again, they're great partners of ours, and they're the only solution that we recommend. Alright, without further ado, let's dive into this week's episode of the Agency Hour. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the Agency Hour Podcast, Josh Moore from Duo Plus in New Zealand. Hey Josh, how are you doing? I'm doing good, Troy. Thank you so much for joining us here on the Agency Hour Podcast. Now, full transparency, you are a client of ours and have been for how long now?

Oh, just over three years, I think it is.

Wow, there we go. Um, and you're in our top tier program, you're in Mavericks Club, we've hung out at live events, you've been to the Gold Coast, you've been to where else, San Diego?

Yeah, I went to San Diego, Gold Coast a couple of times and Bali this year.

That's right, Bali, yeah. That was amazing, wasn't it? Um now, so before we dive into uh, I just want to give people a bit of context. Why where were you when you went in the agency when you joined us and what were you looking for? And this is by the way, just for people listening, this is not going to be an ad for what we do here at Mavericks Club. This is, I just want to give people a bit of context as to why the challenges that Josh had in the agency before you reached out for help.

Nice. So I think I had either six or seven staff on the team. And we I'd already had business coaching, but I'd been coached by a generalist business coach, and that was fantastic. It was it was one-on-one. I had meetings with him every every week, and then later on we changed it to every Fortnite. They were able to drill into a whole lot of the things going on in the business as we grew and just help help me grow as a business owner and learn a lot of things, and also really developing that mindset of what is what does it take for the business to work without me? And so that was a huge journey. I I grew a lot, um, but really I came to the end of what I felt was the what the value I was getting from that coaching program. And so I'd finished up with my business coach. I said, hey, I love the I think we did about three, just under three years with him. I said, I love what I got out of it, but I'm really not feeling like I'm getting that value anymore. And so I went looking for something more specialist. And because so I knew the value of business coaching, but I wanted something that was a bit more agency specialist because he coached a lot of different companies. And when it there was just that limitation of applying it to agencies. So that's what I was looking for when your one of your Facebook ads popped up on my feed. And I I had been to an event years before where you had spoken. And so I think I had occasionally followed WP Elevation here and there. Oh yeah. But uh but then was that the entourage event in the world? That was it.

Yeah, there you go. Wow.

Yeah. And so so I'd followed you a little bit off and on since then, but when when the ad popped up on Facebook, it was what I was looking for. It it was just like it was agency specific. And there was, as I worked through the process, I could see that there was a big list of things that were really agency focused around what could be improved. And that's is that's what I was missing before that. So that's why I jumped on in.

Yeah. I think there's a lot of merit in having like the generalist business coach because I think you can learn a lot from what other people are doing in other industries. You can, as much as we are very much 100% focused on helping digital agencies, but I think sometimes even our clients, I would encourage them to look at what other industries are doing because otherwise you can kind of get stuck in a bit of an echo chamber, right? Where it's hard to see if someone from a completely different industry comes in and says, Well, why the hell are you doing that? Like we would never do that in our industry, right? So it's good to get that perspective. I also do think there is some merit in having a community of other agency owners that have very similar problems and and very similar challenges. So you're probably the ideal fit for us because you'd already had coaching, so we didn't have to kind of educate you through that process. Uh, so that's good. And also you'd already you're already at six or seven staff before you joined us. So you'd solved a lot of problems that uh that people don't. I'm curious when you when you first started hiring, did you start as a solopreneur and then hire someone, or did you start the agency with a team?

No, I started solo. So I was in corporate marketing roles before that. I was the national marketing manager of a large education firm. And before that, I'd been a national marketing manager of a of a smaller real estate firm and and then other other marketing roles. So when I when I left that job, I wanted to be in business for myself, and I just I just loved everything digital. So in the corporate roles I did, we did all marketing except for really billboards and TV. Yeah, so we did we did radio, brochures, news hub advertising was still happening back then. Uh, and then and of course web and Facebook ads were still had the right hand fee. They didn't have any mobile ads back on Facebook way back in the day. And and so I could see even back then, so Google Ads was going well, but digital advertising was more measurable and more cost-effective than anything else out there. So when I launched my own agency, I wanted to just be exclusively digital advertising, and I launched with me. So I found a couple of subcontractors because I'm not a web developer, I'm a marketer, and so I needed somebody else to actually do the coding. And so I initially outsourced overseas, and that came with good cost efficiencies, but a lot of time in terms of monitoring quality management, looking at it, going back to them again and again, saying, please fix this, please fix this. And so after doing that, I think that might have been the first eight to ten months, and then I was just frustrated with that, needed to have efficiencies and wanted to build a team that would actually do it the way I wanted with proper processes. And so that's when I started hiring a team.

Wow. Um, and okay, so I think you may have answered the question that you weren't a developer, so you needed someone to do certain things that you couldn't do. Was there any was there any was there ever any uh was it was there sort of a moment for you where you're like, you know, grow growing a team and hiring staff? I mean, let's be honest, right? It's a headache, it's a pain in the ass, right? Like, was there a moment then, or are there moments now, and I hope your team aren't watching this, are there moments now where you're like, oh, it would just be so much easier if I was a freelancer?

No. Um I'm sure there's there's that maybe at times, but we have focused on building a really, really strong culture. I have had times like that in the past, and we've we've shifted our culture. And now I love my team now. It's it's brilliant. There are certain people though, I find like I meet business owners, and we want to work with business owners that want to grow. And I meet some business owners that say, no, I don't want any staff. I've done that. I I picked this business because it's just me. And we often don't work with those guys unless we can get leverage in some way. Uh, because we want to work with growth-oriented businesses. So yeah, I do get it. I meet a number of people who are like that, but uh I've learned over the years, I guess, and we've we've worked really hard on building a culture that I I love the team with how we're functioning now. So yeah, we've got 14 on the team now, and we're a bit unusual. We are all onshore. So we're all local, 13 of us in the office and one one remote just in a different city. Wow.

That's fantastic. And you've just expanded the office and taken over the building next door. Is that is that right?

Yeah, that's right. We just doubled uh because there's multiple tenancies in this one building that we're in, and we've just we've just doubled our office space. So we've got 260 square meters now, plus kitchen toilets, shared area. So yeah, it's that's great. That's great. And also just hired our first sales and marketing manager who was just in charge of sales and marketing of our own agency. So that's a huge step as well.

So so what's your role look like in the agency these days and how has that changed over the last three or four years?

Yeah, my over the last three or four years, my aim is to extract myself from the from as much of the day-to-day, like the deliverables as as I can. So my role is leading the team. Uh, it's also I'm still highly involved in strategy and sales for the clients, but we're slowly exiting me out of that as well. So uh we've just had a couple of clients come on in the last month who I still haven't met and are already up and going. And that's a that's a pretty pretty good feeling. That's right. That's very cool. My focus is the team, managing, managing the managers, helping them, supporting them, holding them accountable, and and helping us on the sales and marketing side. That's where I'm putting most of my energy. Then plus the the consulting aspect. There's still I'm still involved in that for now.

So how have you, how have you, um, what what have you done? Because I know there's a lot of people listening to this who are just terrified of building a team or growing the current team they've got. There's a lot of people listening to this that would be thinking, I would just love to fire my whole team and go back to being a freelancer, but we know that that's a trap, right? Because then you're just trading time for money. What have you done from a tactical point of view that has allowed you to bring on team members, get them on board, and get them performing to the level that you're happy with?

One of my focuses as uh for myself is to grow in leadership. So I studied leadership in tertiary level. Uh, I did that for two years. And then, but it's more than just study, it's applying it. So my most of my growth, most of my personal development growth is all around leading teams. How how can I how can I get better? What are the things I can do to lead my team better? And and that's crucial. Like if you are a great technician, that's a world of difference from being a great manager and a great leader. And so focusing in on how to learn to become a better leader has been a real key part of it. I think on a practical sense, what we've done is some of the lessons along the way is to build a culture of accountability. And so some people I find delegate, or some of the lessons I've learned along the way, if you delegate something, that's that's the aim, you want to delegate something. But if you don't have accountability wrapped up with that, delegation without accountability leads to failure. Um and I've done that in the past. I've delegated something to a staff member and then haven't checked up on them. And three months later I find out it's not happening, the the client isn't happy, this never got done. And so I've built in a culture of both delegation and accountability. And what that looks like for like for each of my managers is that they have a meeting with me every week. So I have one hour with each of my key, my head of ads, my head of SEO, my sales and marketing manager, and my project manager. So I have individual meetings with each of them each week, and we're going through what they're currently responsible for. They're reporting back to me on that, whether things are on track or not, what the results are. And so that's been really key. But we started that well before I had managers in place. So at first I was managing everything. And so we would do we have a Google ads or Facebook ads as well. So just an ads review. It goes for an hour and a half every Monday morning. And it is uh the team have to present what their results are for the past week. And we have some really good reports now that make that nice and quick to collate. But they have to present in front of their peers, they're presenting what's happened, what's not going what's going well, what's not going well, what they're going to do to adjust. And then there's also team brainstorming as well. So we have like a troublesome clients list, which clients are we struggling to get the best results that we think we can get. And then the team all chip in together, the ads team, around brainstorming, assessing the landing pages, assessing the campaign together. And so there's this culture of accountability, but also being results focused as a team. And so we do that for the ads team. The SEO team also has their own meeting the same way. And I used to run that as well. Whereas now the SEO, uh the head of SEO runs the SEO meeting, the head of ads runs the ads meeting. Uh, but it's it's building in that uh that focus on results the whole way through and accountability. If somebody's slapping off, they have to present their numbers that next week for what's happened with their client. And we have all sorts of measurements. It's not just about the leads, but it's about the leads, it's about the uh percentage of optimization score within Google Ads, for example, that's all checked. Um, the ad scores, there's a whole range of things that are checked within that meeting to make sure that we are giving the best we can for our clients.

Do you find that if if it was just you or if it was just like an ad campaign manager checking in with the head of ads versus them presenting in front of their peers, that's uh that's like joining book club and then like not reading the book, right? You don't want to turn up to book club and go, Well, I've got I haven't read the book, sorry guys. I mean, you're wasting everyone's time, right? So so that kind of publicly sharing your results, that's radical accountability.

Yeah, there's a great leadership saying that I love, which says people respect what you inspect. And so people will respond to basically if if well, here's a real practical example. How many agencies struggle to get timesheets done? It's like, oh, you know, they're constantly chasing people to get their timesheets done. Or something we do in our what we call our hit list, which is basically our stand-up in the morning. It's just a 10-minute meeting. We pull up the list of timesheets for the day, uh the the the day before. Hey, has everybody done their timesheet for the day before? It takes 30 seconds, and we just name the people that haven't put all their time in for the day. It's like, um, hey Andrew, you need to do your time, and hey John, you need to do your time. Oh, yeah, yeah. And in general, there's this, there's this thing of, oh, I need to get my timesheet in before the meeting, uh, which is good. So it takes 30 seconds, but it's just the yeah, people respect what you inspect. So same when it comes to that, the ads reports, what uh what we uh inspect, the the data that we're looking at, that's that's one of the key things that people know they they don't want to be on the list of like so our percentage internally for Google Ads, for example, we don't want any campaign to be less than 90% of the optimization score. And that's really annoying because Google are constantly suggesting things to improve, and a lot of their suggestions are rubbish. Um so you have to either go and dismiss them or apply them. Some of the suggestions are good. Uh, but every week in the ads review, we just bring up a filtered list of any campaign that's below 90%. The ads managers, they don't want to be on that list. And so uh so it's just one of those things, just an easy check that keeps people focused in on results.

So this is interesting because the the idea of having a team that when you say and I'm glad you mentioned that, because it sounds like the idea of having 10 or 12 or 15 staff that have KPIs that I, as their manager, have to go and check in on every week. That sounds like I'm a kindergarten teacher, right? And that sounds like a nightmare. But having a filtered list of campaigns that are below 90%, you go, well, that's we just save that filter once in Google Ads and we can just pull it up every week. It takes five seconds. Here it is. Oh, guess what, Andrew? You've got five campaigns on the list that are below 90. Are you napping? What's going on, right? So building something there which allows you to get visibility over the team's performance without you chasing people for reports, yeah?

Yeah, that's it. One of our other reports that we we have uh what we affectionately call our over-engineered sheet, which is a Google, a Google sheet that we've uh added on and added on and added on. Um but we pull we pull data, live data in there from Google Ads, and then I've built a reasonably complex report, but at a glance, we can see every every campaign we're running, we can see the conversions and the cost per conversion and the ad spend for last week, the previous week, the previous six weeks, uh, the previous six months on average, and then a comparison to this time last year. And so we all see that at a glance per client. It's an automated report, and it means that that's one of the things the team review in the ads review every time when they're presenting the numbers. So we so our team haven't spent hours chasing numbers. I'm not a fan of that. I'm a big fan of automated reporting, but intelligent conversations around it. That's where I think the human value comes in. And so yeah, then they stand up and they present their numbers, and at a glance, we can see if we're doing better than we were for the average of the last um six months or not. Or was it six months? Was that better than what we're currently doing? Hey, what what's going on? And so that level of reporting at a glance enables us to really hold the team accountable for what we we say is getting things done right or delivering really being results driven.

And and and and how do you help your managers, your head of SEO, head of ads, how do you help them become better leaders? Because, you know, ultimately you want to be able to step away, take a vacation, and know that your your lieutenants are driving the ship, so to speak, and they're doing it in a way that is congruent with how you would do it if you weren't in the building. So what do what are you doing in order to sort of impart your leadership training and leadership skills into that layer of management?

Yeah. We have on a training level, I have leadership conferences that I go to that that I take them to as well. So they come to those with me. On a weekly level, when I meet with them, we're looking at, hey, how are they doing and how are they, uh, what are they wanting to take through into their team? What what are they what are they wanting to develop in their team? And I have conversations with them because as you've alluded to, staff, the bigger the staff numbers, the the challenges that uh naturally come with that. And so we talk about, hey, how do we bring this up with this team member? And rather than me jumping in and rescuing, it's I will guide them through how to do that. I'm a big fan of talking really quickly to issues rather than um letting them escalate. And so just addressing things quickly and I will talk to them, I'll show them how, and then I'll check in with them to make sure that they have actually done that. So yeah, there's lots of things like that that um I'm still growing as a leader to, but I want to impart what I have learned into them so that they can that that they that they can grow into that. And I guess the other thing is that I back them even if they do it a little bit different than what I do. Or if they made a mistake, they know that's okay. Um we're not precious about being perfect. I would rather that they take action and give it their best go rather than feeling like they have to check in with me on every little thing. So empowering them to make those decisions.

Yeah, 100%. Otherwise you become the conduit through which every decision needs to be made, and then you're the bottleneck, right?

Yeah, and it's a really interesting thing. When I said about my growing in my own leadership, I was listening to about you know delegation and and delegating the authority to make decisions. And so I remember with my former head of head of ads when we were just growing him into that, and there was something, I think it might have just been a landing page thing or something to do with a campaign. And and it was one of those decisions that I'm like, oh, we could do either way on this one. And so I was just giving myself some practice and I was like, well, what do you think? You make the decision, and then and then he said what he thought, and I was like, nah, I don't like that. I'm like, nah, I think we do the other way. And then I kicked myself straight afterwards. I'm like, I just shot myself in the foot. I was trying to let him make a decision, and he didn't make the decision I wanted. So then I corrected it. Um and that's just part of growing as a leader, I guess. Whereas now I make sure if I if I'm like, hey, well, why don't you make the decision? Then I have to back whatever they just decided. And so that was a growing thing for me, especially because I mean I I'm a bit of a perfectionist, I love getting things done right. So letting someone make a decision that is different than what you would have made, that's a challenge, but it's really important as a leader because as you say, otherwise everything keeps coming back to me making the decisions.

That's right. You have to let them make decisions. Sometimes their decisions will be better than the decisions that you make. Sometimes they will make a decision that's not the best decision in the moment, but they'll learn. They'll get feedback from the marketplace, from the client, the campaign, other staff, whatever, and they'll not fail, but they'll learn and they'll make a different decision next time. But you need to let them make those decisions. It's kind of like parenting, right? You need to let your kids fall over. That's how they learn. Oh, that hurts. I'm not going to do that again. Um, two books I want to mention here. I don't know whether you've read them, but there are two books that I think are absolutely required reading when it comes to leadership. One is Good Authority by Jonathan Raymond. I think it's the book on leadership. And the other one, particularly around team, is help them grow or watch them go. And I cannot remember the name of that author, but we will put a link, someone will put a link in the show notes to those books because I think they're required reading when it comes to uh leadership. The other one I think is worth mentioning is Radical Candor by again, the name of the author escapes me, but she was she worked at Google, I think, at one point, um, under Cheryl Sandberg. And uh, yeah, fabulous books on uh radical candor is really all about how to have really straight-up conversations with team members and not beat around the bush and just be, you know, radically transparent and honest. Um, good authority is just the blueprint on leadership. It's a fantastic book, Jonathan Raymond, definitely worth checking out. Um, couple of things I want to mention. What's been the biggest shift over the last couple of years that you've seen in the agency space as you've grown your team, as you've kind of elevated to a different role in the business? What are you seeing happening at Crib? Because now hopefully you're kind of hovering at a higher level where you can see what's happening rather than being stuck in the trenches so much. What are you seeing happening that we need to be aware of as agency owners?

I I think the huge obvious one is is AI, which is which has affected so many things. For agency owners, I think our challenge is to not spend too much time getting sucked into chasing every little thing. So to still choose to focus on what you're really good at and yet at the same time don't get left behind. And I think it's this challenge. I've seen some people chase after everything that they're and they just seem to change their focus or their their mind every every month or every couple of months, they're trying to do something else. And I think if you do that, you really lose the core of why your customers are coming to you and the referrals that you're getting. So that's that's one risk. But then on the other side, if you don't embrace it, then you're ending up doing things far slower than what other agencies are doing. And then you end up uh if you're still charging the same or wanting to increase your prices, but you're delivering less than what the guys down the road are because they've really enhanced a lot of things and the speed of things with AI. I think that that's a real challenge. And so it's this development of you know, working the that old adage of working in your business versus working on your business. And I think a lot of the systems and the changes and that, having that dedicated time to work on your business to improve and to embrace these things, that's a it's a it's a consistent challenge. But in the world of AI, it just feels like things are running so much faster than they ever were before.

I I'm not sure it's a good thing. I mean, I I think there's a a desire amongst a certain group of maybe I'm just old, but I think there is a desire amongst a certain cohort of entrepreneurs that we just want to slow down, you know. There's this great story about Ariana Huffington. She will only take a meeting if you are prepared to go for a walk with her. She will not sit down in her office or a boardroom and have a meeting. She won't have a meeting with Ariana Huffington to get her out for a walk, right? Wow. And yeah, and and I think um so there's a couple of things here. I think uh I what I'm observing is that AI is allowing us to move faster, but I think any time that is freed up, I'm seeing a lot of people just use that free time to go down more AI rabbit holes and explore what they can, you know. It's like what's it sounds like a confession toy, right? Oh no, no, no. I've got I've got quite a bit of spare time in my hands that I have lots of guitars that need playing, Josh. So uh but I I I do see um we are in a bit of an AI rabbit hole, I think. And I think that there there will be an inflection point where something will happen, and it we we may be a couple of years away from this where we realise what AI is supposed to actually be doing for us. Because at the moment, it's like, you know, AI is mopping the floor, and so now all we're doing is opening the cupboards and trying to spring clean the cupboards and then trying to find AI to clean the cupboards, and it's like we're not actually spending any more time with our kids. Do you know what I mean? Like we're just filling up the extra time with finding more shit for AI to do, right? I think the I think the opportunity, and I see a lot of agency owners who are using AI dropping their price to try and be competitive because now we're using AI. I think that's a mistake. It's a race to the bottom. I think the opportunity is to use AI to add more value for your current at your current price point. So, hey, did you know we can also now do this for you because we're using AI to speed up processes? But I think the real opportunity is to use AI to add more value and increase your pricing, right? Using AI and your to augment your team so that your team can identify what needs to happen for your client next, become more valuable and build, you know, build that kind of brick wall around the relationship with the client and and eventually, you know, become a premium partner because your clients don't have time. I think the big myt is that agencies think that they're gonna be put out of a job because the client's gonna figure out how to use AI, right? To replace us. So, you know, well, sure, Google ads are gonna roll out AI and Facebook ads have said by the end of 2026 you'll be able to use AI to run all your ad campaigns, but your clients still aren't aren't haven't got time to figure that out, right? They're still gonna need you to figure it out. So how are you using AI? And you don't have to give away a secret source, but how are you using AI in the agency and and where are you not where are you deciding not to use it?

We are using AI heavily in SEO content generation. So we've and we've been using it since um since before it was um Chat GPT when it was just the open AI um playgrounds, and that was mind-blowing. But yeah, so we're using it a lot, a lot in that space. And that certainly helped us increase the amount of content, but then also needing to make sure everything is human read as well and edited. We don't just trust the bot to do its thing. Uh, but that's certainly increased the volume there. We're starting to use it. We're just on the uh we're on the beginning phases of really improving our sales process in terms of client interviews, um, paid discovery sessions, using transcripts, turning those into our roadmap presentations for clients as to what the strategies are. Uh, I've got some friends who are also in Mavericks who are doing a really good job in that space. We're a little bit behind in that space. So we're doing uh some of our presentations are taking five to eight hours to prepare. And we are looking, we've got a project internally at the moment, wanting to get that down to two hours and then down to 30 minutes is that is our aim. Um but so so we see that as really being useful for speeding up that. So that's that's really our focus at the moment. There's a whole lot of uh we're also using it in in regards to processing things like social media uh comments. So for some of our clients, we have um we're uh we've got high-level connected in to their social media, we're pulling in the comments, processing it with AI, either posting back a comment automatically or using AI to assess it and then alert our client when they need to personally respond. So we have built some automation around that as well. Very interesting.

Um I know this is a tricky question, but I'm gonna ask it again. Where are you choosing not to use AI and why? By the way, I haven't I haven't prepped Josh for this. And this is a this is a tricky question. It is an interesting question. But I'm just curious, like if I said, hey, you could use AI to do this, what would this need to be for you to go, no, we we're not gonna use AI to do that.

I think I've I've seen some demos at the moment of like outbound AI calling. Um I I think it's just so phone calls. I just don't think it's there yet. I I think the customer experience is still really important. Um I don't think people like interacting with AI yet. It's it's not quite fluent enough yet.

I mean it's it kind of feels like interactive voice menus, isn't it? It's like, hey, uh, you know, I welcome to the national bank and you feel like you're talking to a person, like I press one for the second, oh here we go. Can I just talk to a human, right? And then you just go, and AI feels like it's closer to that than actually talking to a human.

Yeah, except it's pretending to be a human and then you realize and then you feel frustrated with it. You feel duped, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it might get there. It probably will get there. There's a whole lot of those low-level jobs that AI will be replacing in the next while, but but it's not it's not there yet. Um I think the other thing that we're uh we were not using AI as much as we would like, or we're relying on Google's AI. Certainly in in Google ads and that type of thing in terms of optimization or large data analytics. Um it's not that I'm choosing not to do it. We just haven't prioritised that yet in order to really dive in and find ways of optimizing with AI. So yeah.

You know, there's a book, uh Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I read a long time ago and didn't really understand because I was young. I'd like to read it again now. Actually, I think it would make a lot more sense. But he talks about um the he talks about creating something with love, right? Creating something, taking the time to put energy and craft and care and love into a thing. And I think the problem with AI is that you and I think this is this is what people can tell. When when somebody reads something that's written by ChatGPT, you just know that it's written by ChatGPT or AI, right? When you're on a phone with an AI agent, you just know. And I think that's what it is. I think it's the care, the the listening, the empathy, which they're all man, they're all manifestations of love, right? It's that that's missing. And so if you read an article that's written by AI, you just know that I can't, I'm quite opinionated when I communicate. And I can be very sarcastic and I can be, you know, very opinionated, and I can be, I can play sort of multiple characters, or I can do the grumpy old agency coach who's been around too long. And, you know, I I can't get AI to be as opinionated as me. I can't get AI to to. I've tried. I cannot get it to, it it just plays it safe all the time, right? And I know that I can be grumpy with someone or I can I can dish out tough love, but it's still coming from a place of genuinely caring about them, right? I think AI is gonna struggle to do that because it's subtext, right? And and I think I'm not sure that AI's ever gonna get there.

Well, if I think of Mavericks, for example, coaching, like why do I pay to be a part of Mavericks? The content's great, but the community is strong. And for me personally, the the coaching structure where I am held accountable in order to hit my goals, that's what I get huge value out of. If I was just turning up to an AI avatar to have my accountability session, it wouldn't mean anything. The fact that it's someone on the other end is a real person, that is a world of difference.

This is interesting. I had a therapy session this morning with my psychologist, and we were talking a little bit about this about embarrassment and you know, I I I feel like if you turned, if you went to book club and but book club was just on Zoom and there was five AI avatars and you well, I haven't read the book. Who what are you gonna do, robot? Who cares? You know what I mean?

There's no disconnect in the relationship.

Correct. Whereas if you turn up and you meet with me or Jane or or or Emmy or whoever you're meeting with every couple of weeks and you haven't done your homework, you're a bit embarrassed, aren't you? You feel like you've let them down, right? Well, you don't feel like you're letting a robot down because the robot doesn't have feelings. So we can't offend the robot. I've tried to offend AI. I mean, I you know, I try to offend Siri, and she just says, I can't help you with that, and then she goes away, right? So I feel like that it's that layer of emotion that's intangible that it AI is never going to replace. And I actually think if you were to ask me what's the one thing that we would not let AI do in this business, it would be have one-on-one time with clients. I'm building some AI, I'm building a lot of AI infrastructure at the moment. I think I spoke about this on the call the other day, building a lot of AI infrastructure at the moment, which will allow Jane and Emmy and Yassi and whoever's in client success to get answers quickly based on what I would say if I was in that situation. Hey, if Josh asks me this question, here's how I would answer it. And that's training the brain on my IP and building a chat bot so that they've got instant access to it. But I won't replace those human interactions with I might get I might deploy an AI bot that you can get an answer from in between your sessions with your client success manager, right? But I'm not going to replace one-on-one client success management calls with AI.

Nice. That takes me back to pre-AI days, but with automatic reporting. So I'm a big fan of automatic reporting. But I got a call from uh a client one day and said, Hey Josh, we're moving. And I was surprised because we were getting them great results. Website was ranking well, ads were rolling in good, uh so the leads were coming in, it was it was working. And I said, Oh, really? He says, Josh, you haven't spoken to me in six months. And I was like, Yeah, you know what? You're right. This is back when I had a team of, I think I had four on the team. And it was, he says, I'm not feeling the love. And the results were fine, but the connection was lost. And so since then, we built in one of our core values is cultivating relationships, which is with our internal team, with our team, and with our clients. And that is a crucial value of ours because I learned the painful lesson of thinking automated reports with good results are not enough to help a client feel loved. And so now we add AI onto this, it was even before AI, but we add AI onto that. It's that connection again, it's that sense of feeling cared for. And I think that is for it's that personal connection with so account managers and agency owners connecting with your clients. That's what will sustain it through. And the lessons I've learned over the years is that the relationship will sustain you through the bad times as well. Sometimes clients will like they'll only stay with you when the results aren't what you want. You're thinking we're not quite hitting the mark. They'll stay with you if the relationship is strong or they'll stay with you for a bit longer. Um, whereas the results can be great. If you don't have a relationship with them that's strong, they'll leave and go elsewhere. They might get terrible results elsewhere, which is what we've seen a number of times, but they felt more cared for and so they moved. Correct.