If the how-to was the problem, then the internet would have solved everyone's issues. A single book would solve all your issues. But if you're not focused and you're not consistent and you're not applying things with leverage, then you're just gonna keep consuming. Consuming another course, another course. I need no no, it must be a different kangaroo drawing video that I need to watch.

Hey, welcome to the Agency Our Podcast, where we help digital agency owners build real abundance for themselves, their teams, and their communities. And that is not something that ChatGPT told me to say, by the way. This week we're taking an honest look at your team and asking some tough questions. Are you unknowingly teaching your team to lose? Ooh, that's a big question. I'm joined by Simon Kelly, CEO and head of growth at Seriously Good Design, for a conversation that cuts through the fluff and gets to the heart of what makes a team thrive. We'll explore why most job ads fall flat, how to use AI without overprompting it to build your ideal team member profile, and what really drives autonomy and connection inside high performing agency. We also dive deep into my shifting views on ChatGPT, how to stand out in a crowded service space, and why shared beliefs, not just shared goals, are the real glue that holds great teams together. I'm Troy Dean. Stay with us. I'm just going to start mid-sentence again, like I usually do, right? I had uh dinner. Do you remember Nick, who has spoken at a bunch of Dave Jennings's events? Thickeral? Nick Sikhalal. Yeah. Nickesh Thickalal. Nick, we call him Mr. X. He's like one of the smartest dudes I know. And we were having dinner on Tuesday night in Sydney. I was up there talking at the Go High Level Sasspreneur event. I've got a lanyard around my neck to prove it. And um, I went out for dinner with him on Monday night, and we had the most amazing Thai food in Sydney, but I ate way too much of it and I haven't eaten since. Uh and anyway, we'll talk about AI. And I've played with Claude a bit in the past. I'm kind of all in on Chat GPT and having custom GPTs and open AI and stuff. He's like, oh dude, you gotta try Claude again. So I've been trying Claude the last 24 hours. My God, it is incredible. So this morning I had to do a presentation around ideal client profile. And so I had two prompts, man. Two prompts into Claude. The first one was uh, and I'm not gonna go deep on this because we're gonna talk about team, but I'm gonna this is my thinking on this, right? People are like way over prompting AI. Two prompts. First one, help me develop an ideal client profile for my business. And then Claude asked me a bunch of questions. Just ask me a bunch of questions. You know, we were talking a couple of weeks ago, and you were like the fucking framework where you're like context and act as if you are, and he'd give me one question. Just like one prompt. All that bullshit, man. Help me develop an ideal client profile for my business. We know what ChatGP would Chat GPT would do. It'd just start being trying to be super helpful. Yeah. There you go. Well, your ideal client. Claude was like, well, I'll help you create a comprehensive ideal client profile. Let me start by understanding your business better. Could you tell me what type of business do you run? What's your main offering? Do you here's the killer question. Do you have existing clients you particularly enjoy working with or who bring you the most success?

This is the kind of questions that we would ask people in coaching conversations.

Correct. While you're thinking about this, here's the framework we'll use to build your ideal client profile. Then it goes through demographics and firmographics, word I was not familiar with. Then it goes through psychographics and behavior, pain points and goals, qualifying characteristics. Anyway, turns out the thing ends up designing. I it it it writes this incredible ideal client profile. Then I said, so I answered the questions. Prompt two, this is perfect. Can you design this into an ICP card I can share with my team and include a picture of Strategic Sarah, which it came up with? So then HTML and CSS, it designs me this card that I took a screenshot of and shared with the team. And I'm like, holy hell, like who needs a designer? Do you know what I mean?

How would you rate the accuracy? Are you like two prompts and 150%?

Let me tell a couple of key insights that I got, right? One is uh it talked about so the pain points of our ideal client, feast and famine, which we know, it calls it the revenue roller coaster, which we know, right? Project-based income dependency, which we know. I didn't prompt it, I didn't tell it. All I said is that we work with, you know, it said, what you know, what kind of business do you have and what do you do, right? And so I said, we run, I run a coaching and mentoring business for digital agency owners. Our main offer is a four-month one-on-one coaching program where we help digital agency owners grow their recurring revenue by teaching them how to sell and deliver paid discovery workshops, also known as digital roadmaps, and then upgrade those clients into growth plans, also known as retainers. Our best clients have a very positive and abundant mindset, take massive imperfect action, are coachable, have at least one team member who can help them implement, and are already consistently generating 20K a month in revenue, and they're probably called Simon. Okay, maybe I didn't say that bit about Simon. Uh anyway, it's determined that Strategic Sarah is our ideal client, and that the pain points are revenue roller coaster, feast and famine, project-based income dependency, clients see them as order takers, scope creep, and boundary issues. Anyone ever get an email after hours and the client expects you to email back? Or you expect yourself to email back as well. That's right. Right. There you go. That's right. Can't scale beyond personal capacity. Right? Now, here's also how about this? Red flags, scarcity mindset or blame mentality. Solo operator with no team, revenue consistently below 15 grand a month, price shopping behavior resistant to change.

I mean, this is even for the sales team to be like, well, qualify based on this. This is sold. 100%. Wow. 100%.

And so, so this is not trained. Not trained on any of your data. Not trained, not trained on any of my our data. Not trained at all. Custom GPT, blow it out your ass. Nothing. No knowledge base here, no training, zero zip. I've never used Claude before to talk about my business. I've only ever used it before to give me interesting chord progressions for my jazz funk guitar playing. Right? Never told her about my business before at all, except this morning. And then it designed this thing, which is just gorgeous. And uh, you know, uh, and uh it also I think gives me insights like a few key insights from your description that I've expanded on. The coachable factor is crucial. I've emphasized mindset and attitude indicators that signal someone who will be receptive to coaching, right? And then it named it Strategic Sarah. And uh so, you know, and then I said, Can I have this as a PDF? Now you know what ChatGPT would have. ChatGPT, so here's the reason I'm using Claude. I've been getting pushback and and massive hallucinations from ChatGPT recently, right? If I'd said to ChatGPT, can you make me a PDF? It'd give me a link. So, oh sure, here's your PDF, and it'll give me a link, and I'd click on it, it would go to a 404, right? I'm sorry, that page doesn't exist. I've asked ChatGPT several times recently, you can't create Canva templates, can you? No, I can't. But I was trying to be helpful. But here's how I would do it if I could. But it gives you a Canva link that's a 404 or a Google Doc link that goes nowhere. Here's the link if there was one. Right, correct. So chat what I've learned about ChatGPT in this interesting phase where Chat GPT is is sacrificing honesty in order to be seen as helpful. Now, it also know, I think ChatGPT knows that it's only moments away from it being able to create a Google Doc or a Canva template. So it's it's anticipating that, right? Well, here we go. I know you want to Google Doc. So here's a Google Doc, even though it's a 404. Claude said, I can't directly generate a PDF file, but I can give you a couple of easy ways to convert the ICP card to a PDF. You can print it to a PDF using your, you know, if you're on a Mac, go save as PDF. It then says if you're on a non-Mac, I'm sorry, your life is so horrible, and you should move to a Mac. Okay, it doesn't say that. Method two is browser save. Most modern browsers also have a save as PDF option. Method three, use a screenshot tool and take a screenshot of the card that I've already designed for you. Right? It's just spoon fitting everything. It's just good to go. Absolutely blown away.

So you learned this on Tuesday. You applied it on Thursday live in a workshop, reducing the time of everyone on the workshop that will take to put together their ICP and improving your existing one.

Gave them two prompts. And here's here's here's now I know we're gonna talk about team, but I do want to do a deep dive on this later on another episode. But what on where this is how I think you can use this for team, right? Is what I've learned in this very short exercise this morning is our messaging is still too generic, right? Oh, we help digital agency owners grow their recurring revenue. So does everybody. Do you know what I mean? Because you know what an agency owner really wants? They want to join a one-on-one mentoring program and they want to watch their recurring revenue tank. Right? Nobody wants that. Nobody wants to join a program and watch their recurring revenue dive. Of course, we're gonna help you grow your recurring revenue. So is everybody else on every street corner? So we need to get way more specific about who we do our best work with. And if you think you know everything, then we are not the droids you're looking for. Right? And so being coachable, being a massive action taker, having humility. I remember like Simon Major joined our program. He's already at 1.2 million a year in revenue, and he's like, I'm putty in your hands. Tell me what to do next. Right? What a great mindset. He knows that he's he's at his above his pay scale. He's like, I have fucking no idea how we got this far. It's a miracle we're this far. Like I, you know, I've been weighing it. Now I need someone to give me some structure. Most people, if they get anywhere, if they get anywhere above 100 grand in revenue, they think their shit don't stink and they think that they figured it all out, right? So being coachable is a massive piece of our ideal client. And if you think about your ideal team member, so the question I love that Claude asked is uh do you have existing clients you particularly enjoy working with or who bring you the most success? And that's why I said they're coachable, they take massive imperfect action, right? It it also says what what also say here it says something about like they turn up on time to coaching calls, right? Like the the the initial description that I got before I before it turned it into a pretty card, the initial description that it gave me was um that uh oh here we go. The the leadership style of our ideal client is someone who delegates effectively and trusts their team, thinks strategically about business growth, not just day-to-day operations, right? Um their uh their personal uh qualifying characteristics, right? Um, time to participate fully in a coaching program, existing client base that could potentially be upgraded, these are the perfect clients for us, willing to follow proven systems rather than reinventing the wheel, right? Responsive and punctual for scheduled calls, prepared and engaged during coaching sessions, right? So I think you should answer this question about your ideal team member. If you if there was there's always if you've got any more than three staff, there's one team member, apart from yourself, you got you got you plus three, there's one out of those three that you just want to replicate. Right? So who is so who is it? Who is it, and what are the characteristics about that person that you want to replicate? And if you run it through an exercise like this and you come up with an ideal team member profile, your job ads just wrote themselves. Right? Because now what you're gonna do is say, if this is you, and you also give Claude or whatever tool you're using, but I would just suggest Claude any information about your business, and it will uh position your business as somewhere good to come and work, as a great opportunity for the right candidate. But then so then your job ad is just if this is you and you're looking for this type of place to work, we're we're a great fit. Because most job ads suck for the same reason that most marketing messages suck. And that is because most marketing messages start out with look at me, here's what I've got, and here's how good my vacuum cleaner sucks. Right? And at that point, I don't give a shit about your vacuum cleaner because there's nothing in it for me, right? Your message should start off with do you have kids with allergies and your lounge and couch and carpet is full of dust that you can't even see, and it's causing your kids damage and it's invisible. Yes, great. Now I've got your attention. And so the same with a job ad, a job ad should talk to your ideal candidate about them and their journey, not about how great you and your company are.

Yeah, big time. It's yeah, like the the problem, it sounded like you're like describing what the actual issue is in their terms, like so they're going yes, yes, and they're leaning in, as opposed to like, cool, another description about another company that I've no idea about. I don't want you to tell me more because I'm already bored.

And I and my mate, I can tell you, I've I've been in the line, and I've been in the queue waiting for a takeaway coffee at enough cafes and overheard enough conversations with people in their, you know, age 27 to 40 talking about how disenfranchised they are in their current career. And not one of those conversations is about money. Every single one of those conversations that I've overheard is usually about the lack of growth in the role or the company that that person is currently working at. Right? They just feel like there's no opportunity for me to develop and grow as a person, and that's why they're looking for another opportunity. Oh, I've applied for this job, and blah, blah. I've never heard someone saying, Oh, I've applied for another job because I want more money. Money is like the probably the least, I mean, it's a factor, but it's the least influential factor, right? That I think we've spoken about this. The most influential factor is a cause that they believe in, a leader they respect, and then money. And if you think about the cause, a cause can very your team and the culture can very quickly become the cause that they care about. That sense of belonging to a professional family environment, right?

Yep. There's um there was something I was reading in the book Indistractable, and it was talking about building indistractable teams or something like that. And it was saying um uh autonomy is really important, like a sense of ownership over your own work, a sense of connection, like connection to the team, to the cause, to to each other, as um, and and the leader their respects. I think there were the three things as like it's essential for for a team that wants to work together and individuals that thrive. It's not just the um, not just the paycheck. So, so where is that in the job description? That's not about the company. That's not like here's what we do and who we are and what we say we our values are.

That's right. That's right. Because the reality is, in in a like, listen, in a service-based business, I don't give a shit how many fucking books you've read on the hundred million dollar offer and all that crap. In a service-based business, at the end of the day, we are all doing the same shit, right? You are building websites, you are reconciling people's books, you are lodging their tax returns, you're putting together a financial plan, you're helping them get divorced and get the maximum settlement and maintain their integrity, you are helping them navigate, you know, their career trajectory, you're doing SEO, whatever the services you're providing, it's the same. There is no difference, really, I believe. There's very little difference between an agency here in Melbourne that does S S that does that does SEO, that does SEO for Allied Health Professionals versus any other agency on the planet that does SEO for allied health professionals. If they're good at what they do, then they're all the fucking same, right? The only thing that's different, like I I am, if if there are other agency mentoring companies and other agency coaching companies on the planet that actually deliver results for their clients, then we are all the same. The only thing that changes is the frameworks we use and the energy and the and the personalities that make up the company. Now, so I know that some people think I'm a goofball and they don't like me. I've seen the comments about my various haircuts over the years. I've got an Australian accent, they think I'm a game show host, that I think I'm old. That's fine. I don't care. Go and play with someone younger with better hair, whatever, and a different accent. I don't give a shit, right? The point I'm trying to make is that it's very difficult to differentiate yourself as a service provider apart from the culture and how much your team actually cares about your clients. That I think is the true differentiator, right? And so I think you should lead with that when you start attracting talent to come and work. It's like, you know, sure, we've got our own frameworks and we've got our own tech and we've got our own way of doing things, but at the end of the day, we're a digital marketing agency. Right? And why are we different? Well, we might not be different, but if you were happy with your current digital marketing agency, you wouldn't be on our website. So maybe we should just have a chat.

Yeah, it's still a commodity, it's still the same stuff everywhere. Like it's not like, oh, ooh, what's this? SEO, what's this website thing? Like, I've no idea what that is. It's the same thing. So it's like the four things being equal. It's it's the team working together, it's the culture, it's how much they actually give two shits.

Russell Brunson called them funnels because uh, you know, he was in a mastermind with Dan Kennedy, who was teaching him how to do direct response copy. And one of Dan Kennedy's things is that you've got to like the best way to win the best way to own a category is to invent it. And at the time, this is how fucking ridiculous things are, right? Now it's worked very well for Russell, don't get me wrong, he's made a lot of money, but this is how ridiculous it is, and this is how people how people fall for it so quickly, is at the time the competitor was lead pages or unbounds. And I remember being frustrated with lead pages and unbounds because I couldn't keep my pages organized. They didn't even have folders. So Russell comes along and says, let's put them in folders, but let's not call them folders, let's call them funnels, right? And then the only place you can get a funnel, and we all knew that funnels worked, we just weren't calling them funnels. There was just a series of pages, an opt-in page, a thank you page, an upsell page, whatever, right? And he put them in a folder and called it a funnel and gangbusters, right? Scaled to $8 million a month in recurring revenue. Then high level started to kick his ass, and you could import funnels directly into high level from ClickFunnels URL. And so he changed them the name and called them directional websites and tried to trademark directional websites and tried to sue high level. Now, I don't know how that played out, but this is how fucking ridiculous the the uh you know the unique mechanism is, right? The unique mechanism. It's a directional website. A direction, what the fuck is a directional website? It's not a good idea. But if you're gonna try and trademark a directional website, you have to sue everyone that's ever made a contact form page ever, because they've always they've used a contact page with the thank you page. That's a directional website, right? Like this is how ridiculous the unique mechanism bullshit thing has become, right? And it's because people are trying to trademark intellectual property where there is no intellectual property.

Yeah.

Right. If you or website, you know, or you know, CRO. I mean, it's all the same shit. The thing that is different is the energy and the culture of the people. It's like football, man. Like, why do some teams win? And then you look at the Melbourne Football Club that my wife's a fan of and have been a member of her whole life, and I'm pretty much a Melbourne supporter these days, even though I'm from Adelaide and I'm a Crows supporter. But Melbourne Football Club, we're fined for tanking. Right? Because just think about this for a second. The way that the AFL draft works is that if if if you you know, if you uh finish bottom, you get the first draft pick the following year, because the AFL says, well, you need better players, so you get the first pick of the best next year, right? So when Melbourne realised, under, under, I think it was um Dean, can't remember his last name, uh, who was their coach, when they realized that um they couldn't win, they tanked. They deliberately lost games. Now they will deny, but they were fined for deliberately losing games by a big margin to finish bottom so they could get the first draft pick the following year, right? Absolutely disgraceful behavior. But you can understand it, right? It makes sense why they would do that. They went from that to winning a grand final in less than 10 years. Now, 10 years sounds like a long time, but to go from the cult, they didn't know how to win. They were taught how to lose. The whole culture of the Melbourne Football Club was how to lose games by the biggest possible margin without it being obvious.

I mean, if that's in your DNA as a team, that's uh that'd be hard to shake.

Right. So now a lot of those players went on to win the grand final, right? Now, so what's the difference? At the end of the day, they're playing the same sport. They're kicking a ball around and trying to get it through two big sticks, and they're playing the same teams that they were playing ten years ago, right? What changed?

What changed? It's what they want. It's the team. It's not the team individuals, but it's what they actually give a shit about.

It's their it's their shared beliefs, right? It's they they Paul Ruse was the guy who taught them that they could win. He changed their belief. And then Simon Goodwin came in and, you know, stole the glory. And good on him, and he's a great coach. But Paul Ruse did an enormous amount of work turning that team around from a team that were taught how to lose to a team that won a grand final. They kicked 16 of the last 17 goals in that grand final against the Bulldogs. It was an absolute master. I remember watching it just in absolute shock. It was an absolute masterclass in how to turn a game around from a team that were taught how to lose. The only thing that changed, sure, they had a few extra players, but the only thing that changed wasn't the sport, it wasn't the commodity, it wasn't the rules. The only thing that changed was their belief. That's the only thing that changed. Right. And if as a marketer, and if you're hiring staff, you are marketing your business to talent. And as a marketer, your job, our job, is to change the beliefs of our audience so that they are in alignment with our beliefs. Right. And that's why people buy from us, because they because they trust us and they believe the same things that we believe. That's why every agency is the same. What's different is what we believe, and attracting clients who have the same beliefs, and attracting talent and staff have the same beliefs.

So there's a couple of people in our team who are like our ideal, which is good. That makes sense. Then we've got people who we think are like, yep, we want to clone these guys. And our our Google Ads guy, Nico, he's I was talking to him the other day because he he was I was doing a bit of coaching with him. And he was talking about like his work because he works with other clients too. He was talking about how important it is for him to be as if he's world class at what he does. He's like, I might, you know, I don't have a big agency, I don't have, you know, thousands of clients or anything. But he's like, if I'm going to work on a campaign, he's like, I just want to be like the best, one of the best. I just want to be world class at this. And I was like, that, like he's doing the same thing. He's still we've worked with lots of LinkedIn ads companies, lots of, lots of um freelancers, Google Ads people, but at the exact same time we had someone else who was running some ads who definitely did not think that. Not at all. And and the results showed. It was like the same thing that they're doing, but the results showed the way that the energy that they brought to things, how they would speak to clients. And you could try, oh my God, and we did try in some way to coach those little bits. Oh, why do they do that? Oh, that thing's really cool. But it wasn't, it wasn't the bits. It was the overarching, it was the overarching belief. I want to be world class at this. And then everything else, all the decisions, all the actions, everything else filters down. And we're like, oh, I like how he sets up his Google documents, the share of clients, whatever it might be. I like how he communicates. I'm not gonna try and clone that. It'll take forever. But what about that belief?

That's right. This is this is why when agencies come to us and they're like, oh, I all I want is I just want a library of SOPs to run my agency. Right? Okay, great. You want to fucking slow down for three months and just get bogged down in admin for three months and get nothing done? Here's my library of SOPs. Because that's what it's gonna do. My SOPs aren't gonna work for you. His SOPs aren't gonna work for you. Her SOPs, as beautiful and as color-coded as they are in Airtable, are not gonna work for you. Because her SOPs come from her set of beliefs and her team and the way they do business. Right? And you're gonna have to reverse engineer every one of those SOPs to make them fit your team and your culture and your clients and your beliefs. Don't do it. Just get your team to document the SOPs. And if you're micromanaging the way people do things, oh, well, you know, usually what I do is I do the thing first and then I edit it and then I proofread it and then I publish it. And you've just published that and it's got some spelling errors in it. So let me have a look at your process. You're having the wrong conversation. Right? The conversation should be how do you feel about what you just published? Are you proud of what you just published?

Is this your best work? Is this your best work? Not in the like, is this your best work, mate? But not like that. But like, honestly, yeah. Before I even look at it, like, is this your best work doing this? Is this your best work?

It is. Because if I find a fucking spell mistake in it, yeah, right. Yeah. Right? There's no excuse for spelling mistakes. There's no excuse for, you know, it's not your best work. Now, chant now, you could be overwhelmed.

I wouldn't even get into that detail. If there was, I'd have no idea.

Right. So you know, because the but and we've spoken about this for so many years. Like the belief informs the behavior, right? What was that stupid acronym we came up with? Lieutenant Barr, right? Language behavior, actions, results. Beliefs, action, results.

Yeah, yeah.

Belief, actions, results, beliefs.

They influence each other because your actions, so just as you were saying that, like your beliefs influence your behavior. We're just staying with B and B. Um, your behavior also influences your beliefs. In in the case of in the case of building evidence to support that belief.

Correct.

So I am world class at this. If you don't do anything about that, then it's very hard to see the evidence that you are actually world fucking class at this. So go and be as if, like take the actions to show, and then it reinforces. Yeah, fucking oath. Look what I just did there. Yeah. World class. If you're like, I'm shit at this, and then you will go out to prove that you are indeed. That's right.

Well, this is what happens. And 99% of the time, that's what people do instead of the opposite, right? 99% of the time, people think they're shit at something. So they do something, they sabotage it subconsciously. In fact, I don't even think it's that subconsciously. I think consciously they sabotage it to prove to themselves they're shit at it, which either gets them off the hook, I don't have to do that, I can't do that anymore, I'm shit at it, right? I had this conversation with someone the other day. They're asking me to do something. And I said, Yeah, because I'm the only fucking person that can figure this out, right? Like I clearly, I'm the only person who has the mental capacity to learn a new skill. Go and learn how to do it. Learn. Just learn how to do it. Don't half ass it and then go, I told you I was no good at that. Oh, yay, for you. Best off just to go to bed and wrap yourself up in a fucking blanket and turn the light off for the rest of your life, right? Yeah. Good on you. There's zero personal growth where you're at. Just learn. Like, how is that gonna help you? It's not. Learn. Go and figure it out. Get on Google, fuck it up, make a mistake, try it again. Watch a YouTube video. Ask ChatGPT. Actually, ask Claude. Ring Simon Kelly. Ask him. Ring a friend. Phone a friend. Flip a coin. Try something. Just do shit. Right? Stop overthinking it and stop thinking that you're crap at it before you start. Right? The example I always give is you're it's it's almost impossible to behave incongruently with your beliefs. Yeah. Which is why my challenge for anyone listening to this, by the way, don't get yourself arrested because it's not my fault if you do. But my challenge is to walk into a very busy intersection in the middle of the CBD and wet your pants in public. Right? Now just think about that for a second. What how many psychological barriers would you have to overcome to walk into the middle of Times Square or walk into the middle of Fed Square here in Melbourne, or walk in the middle of Hyde Park in Sydney and just wet your pants, right? One of two things is gonna happen. One, most people are probably gonna think you're a homeless person, and I don't say that with any disrespect, but that's probably what most people are gonna think, right? And I'll probably ignore you. Or some people might even look at you and be disgusted. And that is gonna reinforce your belief that we don't do that. Your belief is that we don't urinate in our pants in public because if we did, we would be ostracized from the tribe. And so the the actions and the results that you will receive as a result of that behavior will reinforce the belief. Yeah, you're right. I shouldn't have done that. I feel bad about myself, I've embarrassed myself. People looked at me with sympathy and disgust. And that was a wasn't a good choice, right? So the behavior will reinforce the belief. So here's an idea. Why don't we try something that reinforces a belief that we know to be true, but we just haven't got any behavioral evidence to prove it? Like I'm fucking awesome. I am world class at this. Go and do something to prove to yourself and the rest of the world that you are world class at it. Why not?

Because otherwise, what are you left with? You're left with the default. And the default, unfortunately, with our psychology, is not amazing. It's like horrible. What is it? Avoid pain, seek pleasure, maintain status quo, the motivational triad. Yeah. So we're just gonna like just regress into not nothingness and not push ourselves. Avoid pain, cool, just sit inside, do the work I'm comfortable with, turn off the lights, chuck on some porn, and we're good.

Step up. Right. And mate, I'm telling you, the older you get, when you're 16 years old, you believe you can change the world. Right? There is this, you just have, I mean, I did anyway. When I was 16, I'm like, I'm gonna take on the world, man. The world is mine, right? And then you kind of get to your mid to late 20s and you realize that you've been sold a lie. I remember watching Fight Club in my mid-20s, and there's one line in Fight Club that just it hit me like I couldn't breathe. When Tyler Durden says, and I don't mean to genderize it, but when Tyler Durden says, we're a generation of boys raised by women, and we've we were told that we could be anything, and we've just figured out it's a lie. We actually, we're not all film stars, we're not all rock stars. We're gonna fucking pay the bills, we're gonna man up, we're gonna take responsibility, right? And no one ever told us that we had to do that, and we're fucking pissed off about it. And I remember, I remember going, oh the the it j I couldn't speak, it was such had such a profound impact on me. Wow because that was the moment I realized that just believing you could change the world doesn't mean you're gonna change the world, that you are not a unique and beautiful snowflake, that you're just a piece of bacteria floating around on the planet and for a very short period of time and you'll die, and the sun will swallow the earth, and nothing really fucking matters anyway, right? But the older you get, the harder it is to maintain that energy that I can change the world. It gets harder, right? I was thinking about this this morning. It's like I would love to be 16 again just for a a day, just to have that self-belief that you can do anything. Because as you get older, you realize you life knocks you around, right? You get your arm is kinked and you get injured, and you psychologically and emotionally and physically you start to break down, right? And you realize it just takes more energy. You have to be more conscious and more intentional about what it is you want to achieve. And the alternative is what you said is you just coast. You coast into fucking oblivion.

Because that is unfortunately coasting regresses to me. Yeah, unfortunately, like gravity wants you, it's gonna take you. It just goes down and down.

I mean, you're on a skateboard. What do you do on a skateboard? Like, you know, like roll boys, that's what I do. Kick, kick, kick, push, coast, right? Yeah, but eventually you've got to kick again, don't you? Because if you just coast, you just stop. The skateboard stops because momentum stops. You've got to kick again, right? You've got to kick anyway. I don't know if any of this is helpful to anyone listening, but you know, I think, you know, it's I just think people are um it's a very, it's a very uh anxious world that we're living in at the moment for a whole bunch of reasons, but there's a lot of anxiety around at the moment. There's a lot of fear. People are you know, very I was just at this high-level event, you know, and you could just feel it in the room. There's just 150 entrepreneurs there, and a lot of people are very but the interesting stat, about 150 people in the room. And I said, Who's doing seven figures a year in revenue selling high level as a SAS with no additional services and not talking to any customers? And two people put their hand up. Two out of 150. Right? So, and then I said, Who wants that? And everyone put their hand up. I said, guys, did you go to the Bible? How did you you're living in a fucking dream? Like there's two here out of 150, right? That's 1.5%. You have a 1.5% chance even if you go and do exactly what these two people have done, you have a 1.5% chance of success. They are fucking horrible odds. But you're still all chasing it, aren't you? What are you doing? It's like self-torture. Did you get a chance to talk to those two?

No. Might be distracting from the topic, but I I would the story from them, I would imagine, and I'll totally make this up because you didn't talk to them, so that makes it easy. Is that like it was it was fucking hard, and it is still hard. And so like the reality of it, I think the dream is much more always much more exciting than the reality. Like the one that got away that you're like, oh, like I love to imagine that. Well, it's better that you imagine, because if it was realized, it'd probably not be any good. So keep that in your imagination. Way better in your imagination.

Yeah, yeah. Your imagination is it's everything is better or worse, or scarier, or funnier in your imagination. Yeah. There was one.

Sorry, go on. No, nothing. There's something else from some book from Steve Chandler or something that I was reading. And there's a little chapter. It's just like little little chapters of little stories. And he's he's like, there's a um, there's the story of this uh this guy, he's insane, he's in an insane asylum, and he gets up every morning and he gets a blank sheet of paper and he draws a monster on it and then screams at it and then runs out the room. Like that would look crazy, but we do that in our minds all the time. Like, oh my god. Like, either which way. Sometimes we'll dream something amazing, like, wow, what if? Other times we're like, oh, that's horrible. But like, you you made it up. Like you made it up, and now you believe it. Yeah. And now you're being as if that's really hard. Like, what the hell is going on? You are crazy.

Powerful thing. Billy Jean, Billy Jim was there the day before me. I didn't see his talk. I tend not to go to these things unless I'm actually speaking. So I just kind of went into the room, did my talk, and then got out of there. I don't kind of hang around and do all the other stuff because I find it exhausting, frankly. Um, and I say that with all respect. And I think I've been at you know, hundreds of these conferences over the years, as you know, and I think they're all fantastic and very beneficial, but I just can't, I just can't do it anymore. Just my I just have the energy, it just completely saps me of energy, right? You just end up people, you know, you have a hundred people telling you their life story, and it's like, oh, for fuck's sake, I love you all, but just leave me alone. Give me some space. Anyway, Billy Jean, the day before, apparently did this exercise where he was like, I'm gonna show you how to do something, uh, and then you're gonna do it. And so he drew uh he put a he drew a kangaroo on uh a whiteboard, right? Where he put this video up about how to draw a kangaroo on the screen. That's right, he put a video up, so how to draw a kangaroo is right now. Everyone do it, everyone draw the kangaroo, right? And it's like, everyone's kangaroo was fucking horrible. Everyone's kangaroo was horrible. I think the point he was trying to make is like, it doesn't matter if people show you how to do things, when you do something for the first time, particularly if it's not something that you wanted to do, you're gonna suck at it. Right? So just like let yourself off the hook and also realize that just because this person is good at drawing kangaroos and shows you exactly how to draw the kangaroo, they've been doing this a long time. That's why they're teaching you how to do it. So you can't just go and replicate what someone else has done and expect to get results in three weeks, right? It's what what what I what I learned uh at the summit, and a big part of this was hanging out with Nick on Monday night is man focus and consistency is everything. I cannot stress that enough. Focus and consistency is everything. Like if you're not playing the long game, you may as well just quit now, right? And leverage, if you don't have leverage in your business model, you're on a hamster wheel. That's that they were the big takeaways from me from the and as I said, I didn't even attend any of the presentations, but just hearing what people were saying in the hallways, and that's uh that's the big takeaway. So anyway, Claude AI, come up with your ideal start, ideal team member profile, and then use that to write job ads, use that to put out content to attract the right talent to your organization, and also do the same for your ideal client profile and use that for your marketing messages.

Yeah, and the SOP for the kangaroo drawing from Troy Dean will be coming out shortly. Absolutely. All right, mate. Well, it's been a been a pleasure.

I feel like this is turning into a philosophical podcast. Getting deep, which frankly, man, I would be more than happy for this thing to pivot into talking about philosophy and less about the how-to, because you know, as as we were saying, like if you don't have the right beliefs and the right thinking and the right mindset, the how-to is irrelevant, completely irrelevant. Yeah, it doesn't matter.

The how-to is it's out there, it's already there. That's not the problem. If the how-to was the problem, then the internet would have solved everyone's issues. Correct. A single book would solve all your issues, but if you're not focused, as you're saying, you're not focused and you're not consistent and you're not applying things with leverage, then you're just gonna keep consuming. Consuming another course, another course. I need no, it must be a different kangaroo drawing video that I need to watch.