So I think that where a lot of businesses go wrong, as well as thinking that like creating content and producing content will get eyeballs and then that will just lead to some kind of business growth. But they don't have that asset on the back end to convert, to generate revenue. That's like almost the last thing that they think of.

Welcome to the Agency Our Podcast, where we help web design and digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their teams, and their communities. This week we are joined by the ridiculously handsome Simon Kelly, CEO and head of growth at Seriously Good Design. And in this episode, we're exploring what content really is and why the message is just the beginning, how to identify and leverage content assets that actually drive revenue, the powerful concept of selling your sawdust, and how your agency is likely already sitting on a mountain of high-value assets that are just waiting to be turned into something valuable and turned into revenue. All that and a whole lot more. I'm Troy Dean. Stay with us. How are you? Excellent. You just ran a marathon recently, didn't you? I did, yeah. What the actual what what is going on? How what are you? You're like late 30s now, is that right? 39, man. Just on the weekend. And you're running marathons. Oh, happy birthday. Oh, cheers. And uh 39. And you're running marathons. Wow.

Wow.

That's fantastic. How are the knees holding up?

It's super rough, actually. Quads. Yeah, actually, joints are not too bad.

It's um TBs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A bit tense.

Yeah. Yeah. It was having trouble putting the seatbelt on in the car.

No, that's like walking. Just walking, approaching stairs, um, create a bit of fear. But yeah, that's right. Excellent. Felt like I was walking here with peg legs.

Yeah, yeah. And and interesting while you were now a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, we were talking about zero beer, right? And I said marathon runners drink this at the end. It's a recovery drink, it tastes like pale ale. It's bloody fantastic. While you were there, you sent me a photo with you and Barry, the beer baron, who's the guy that founded Zero Beer. What the hell's going on?

We talked about him on the podcast, and he was like, What podcast? And wrote it down. So, Barry, if you're listening, it's great to meet you, mate. Cheers for the beer. That was fantastic.

I've got some in the fridge. It's good beer, isn't it? Yeah, it's really good. It's it's not beer. Yeah, yeah.

They got um a lager, a pale ale, and like an XPA or something like that. It's good stuff.

Oh, it's fantastic. That's great. Good stuff. Uh Barry looked pretty chipper too. He looked pretty happy with himself, like sponsoring these. He's up and about, he's on a mission, isn't he? It's clear like that brand is clearly, there's a there's a I'd love to know the personal story behind it, but there is clearly a cause and a mission that those guys are on. You know, uh, it's it's hopper's another one that I've been drinking recently, which is uh just hop, it's just soda water, flavoured soda water with real hops. So you kind of get that bitter, kind of beery aftertaste with no calories, no sugar, no alcohol. It's it's an absolute no-brainer. It was kind of started by some yogi in Byron Bay who blogs about his life, and it's really interesting, dude. And you can't buy it anywhere. It's sold out at the moment, it's ridiculous. Like he's just grown insanely fast over the last 12 months because it's the kind of like the go-to thing if you're not drinking alcohol, but you want to feel like you're having a beer. Hopper is Hopper and Zero Beer are my two kind of go-to. So anyway, there you go. Fascinating stuff. Um, now today we're talking about content assets for your agency, but also something you can apply for your clients. What the hell is a content asset? Is this something that we just made up to have a conversation about? Or which is what we usually do.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, the a lot of the internet, a lot of the world revolves around content through communication in some way. Uh, the thing that can be a bit frustrating is saying the same thing over and over again and not being able to leverage it to get some kind of result. So posting on social media, you can get a bit of a blip, and then you've got to get back on the hamster wheel of content. So most businesses work way too hard to produce content that isn't working for them. They get these little blips, but then they're not leveraging leveraging those pieces of content again. So can we can we before we dive into this, can we just can we just pull out the glossary?

Can we just define like what is content? Can we just take I mean I know this is a big I know some I have some thoughts on this, obviously, but otherwise wouldn't ask. Can we like what what do you like what is content exactly? Like define content for me. I'll just by the way, I'm just gonna Google this while while I've got some thoughts via uh the internet.

Yes, what is content? I would define content as a message. Interesting. What have you got for us, Google? Do people still Google? Does that happen?

Yes, well, Google's now rolling out Google in Australia is now rolling out the AI shit at the top to kind of summarize all the results. Didn't get that for content, by the way, but uh the subject or ideas contained in something written, said, created, or represented. This is according to the Cambridge Dictionary, right? Uh it's so you know, for example, it's easy to update the content of the website, right? Uh content is also the things represented or suggested in something written or created as art or the ideas it communicates. Wow. Right. So the content of, you know, the um so Oscar's deep in the Pokemon world at the moment, right? He just got a box set of 20 Pokemon books. Now the so that so the content of that box set is all about the characters within the Pokemon world. It's about this one Pokemon trainer who's training all these Pokemons. It's a fascinating world, by the way, if you haven't been out of Pokemon Rabbit Hole, it's super interesting. It's really, there's so much thought and so many levels. Anyway, so the content of that is for me, content is is like a and I come from the advertising world, right? So I I grew up watching TV, listening to commercial radio, then ended up doing voiceovers for years on commercial television radio. And there's the kind of the joke is that in particular in commercial radio and commercial TV land, and it's not that much of a joke, but the joke is well, we need some content to put between the ads, and that's why we make TV shows, because it's it's to go between the ads, right? Now obviously streaming services like Netflix have kind of upended that. Um but if you if you think about like so say if for example an episode of Seinfeld or Friends, that is content to put between the ads, and it's a piece of content that lasts 22 minutes, and it's it has a similar theme, right? So we it's you know, one episode of Friends where there's S6 people, they live in New York, and you know, this is what they're getting up to in their 20s as they're kind of finding themselves and going through life's journeys, and then there's ads, right? And the ads is what pays for the broadcaster to be able to broadcast this content, and so they need some content to put between the ads. And so content for me has always been kind of a a collection of messages, but around a particular theme or a particular topic, right? So the table of contents in a book is well, here's what's in the book, and the book is about this topic. So content for me is is, you know, and if you think about a like a piece of art or a song or some visual art or an exhibition at the gallery, what's the content of this exhibition? Well, this is a David Powie exhibition around about the history of Ziggy Stardust and the spiders from Mars, right? So it's kind of themed messaging around a particular topic, right? And interesting advertising, the whole uh concept now of native advertising, where advertising shouldn't be an interruption to content, but it should kind of look and feel like part of the content. So it's not disruptive to the consumer of the content, but it's clearly sponsored, right? This this is these people are sponsoring this content to make it possible for us to bring it to you, but it's not a disruption. It's not like, well, so now here's an ad from our sponsor, Barry, it's zero beer, right? I mean, if I mean, maybe that could work, but it that wouldn't be native content here, right? Native content here would be me talking about E2M or one of our hosting partners or WP Remote because it's around the topic, it's around the theme of what we're talking about.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense to group it in a theme. Like it's uh uh a lot, it's a logical collection of messages in that way. Yeah.

Yeah. And so the reason I wanted to just kind of define this is because if you think about an episode of Friends, right? An episode of Friends is a piece of content, it's broadcast. Tomorrow morning you get up, you talk about it at the water call, or you talk about it at school, and then you forget about it. By the end of the next day, it's gone. Similar to, you know, like a post on Facebook that you might have a shelf life of 72 hours, LinkedIn, you might be lucky to get a week out of a post, Twitter, you might get, you know, a couple of hours out of a tweet, depending on, you know, whether or not it goes viral or whether it's about Trump or whatever. Uh so content is kind of transient, it's consumed and then forgotten. Um the great example for me uh about content versus content asset is if you think about soccer players, right? Who play a game of soccer, you watch that game of soccer, it's that's a piece of content, it goes between the ads, and then tomorrow you're cheering or celebrating or licking your wounds, and then a couple of days later you've forgotten about it. However, where's all the money in soccer? In in more what they call football on the other side of the world. Where's all the money in football? Why do these guys get paid $100 million to play soccer? Do you know? Do you know the answer to this? Not ticket sales, that's for sure. It's not ticket sales. It's not ticket sales.

There's a few brands around the outside of the stadium and on the TV commercials and all of the money that gets funded from the the content captures attention, and where there's attention, there will always be advertising.

Correct. And what's the asset? How do they monetize that those eyeballs? What's the what's the asset tied to that content? I'll give you I'll give you a a clue. When George Lucas made Star Wars, which is a great, you know, one of the great films of all time, and it was so innovative at at it at that stage, right? I'm slowly introducing Oscar to the world of Star Wars, and before I'm letting him watch it, I'm kind of you know telling him that this was before computers were able to do what they do at Pixar, right? This is not like you've got to understand this isn't Toy Story or Cars or Monsters Inc., this is long before we had the technology to do that. So I'm kind of setting his expectations before I let him watch the film. Because the film is unbelievably epic at scale for the time that it was made. All the money. George Lucas made all of his money out of the uh action figures and the merchandise of Star Wars, which is what allowed him to fund the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Of course, we know that he wrote nine films at once. He wrote nine stories in one hit. He made chapter four first, which was Star Wars. The merch from chapter four funded the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and then you know, he sold the rights to someone, Disney, I think it was, and they went on and they made those other stupid films that nobody's ever seen and no one cares about. Um, you know, episode four, five, and six is where it starts and stops for me. So soccer players, all the money is in the soccer Guernsey, the soccer jersey that they sell, the shirt with the number and the name on the back. That's where that's why these guys get paid $100 million to play soccer, because the soccer club knows they're gonna make half a million dollars just out of soccer jumpers. That's right. That's the asset that's tied to the content. Yeah, and the thing is not ticket sales.

Yeah, exactly. So I think that where a lot of businesses go wrong, as well as thinking that like creating content and producing content will get eyeballs, and then that will just lead to some kind of business growth. But they don't have that asset on the back end to convert, to generate revenue. That's like almost the last thing that they think of. Cool, we've got a business here. All right, now let's go to the opposite end and get attention and we'll get awareness. That's a typical thing. A lot of businesses say we'll get awareness, we'll get eyeballs, and then that will lead somehow to sales. We don't really know how, but apparently that's how it works. We need to get our brand out there. Yeah.

I can see out there. I love that. Out where I'm gonna get my name in here, into the computer, into the internet, like out where, out on the street where there's no one looking.

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Into the eye, like into the hands of buyers would be fantastic. That's kind of what they mean. We want to get buyers to see us and to be attracted to us and then convert. That's really what they're trying to say here. So rather than just casting the what's the net super wide, how about we try to talk specifically to those people and have a way to convert them? That would be a lot more effective.

And so let's just okay, so so uh what's an asset? An asset is something that you own that you can either uh use or reuse for purpose. So, for example, you know, your car, which generally depreciates in value the longer you own it, but it serves a purpose, and it you get a return out of your car because you're not having to pay a driver or public transport. If you're smart like me, you drive an electric car, so you don't have to pay for petrol, um, and it's a great form of transport. You've also got independence, you can come and go as you please, you can ferry the kids around on the weekends to their sporting events and dance classes and birthdays and whatever you need to do. Uh, you can go on road trips, it's an asset that you can use, right? A house is an asset that you can either live in and it appreciates in value, or you can buy another one and rent it out to tenants and then it you get a return on that. So an asset is something that typically increases your net worth. And so what I'm, you know, how do we how do we think about how do you think about a content asset? How do you take a piece of content and either turn that into an asset or attach an asset to it? If the if the content is designed to get eyeballs, what is the asset that then converts those eyeballs into something worthwhile for the business?

Exactly. I'll I'll actually use an example from your business from many, many years ago. In your business, you had the proposal template. So where it's not an asset would be you talking one-to-one to me, teaching me how to create a proposal. That's great. That's fantastic for me. You're able to teach, maybe you get paid for that one-off consulting session. But as soon as that transient transaction is done, it's over. Like that's the end. But knowing that you've got a solution to a problem that you could potentially solve at scale, you can turn that coaching, that idea into a template, into a reusable asset, and use that to attract a much bigger audience. So on the audience growth side of things, that's a fantastic asset to produce that fits your business of coaching agencies. Right? So that's how you can turn something that generates value on a one-time basis into something that generates significant value and increases in value over time. You get the effect of compounding interest by turning it into an asset, reuse again and again and again. You can share it on social again and again. Could be in your emails, you can leverage this piece of content. Create once, generate value over time.

Being downloaded over a hundred thousand times, that thing, and generated multiple seven figures in business. Absolutely. From a zip file with a PDF and a couple of word docs in it.

And you can iterate on that as well. You create that asset and you can be like, hmm, we could this is working really well. Let's make this landing page a bit better. Let's make the email sequence on the back of this a bit better. Right? And you can improve that. You can iterate to get even more value from that asset. Whereas you can't do that with a transient post on social media. If you go back and edit that, no one will even know. Like it doesn't even do anything.

That's right.

However, you can still leverage social media. This isn't to like, you know, downplay social media. No, no, no, no. It has a purpose.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. This is, I mean, if you think about, you know, well, I'm sort of deep in the low-ticket funnel world at the moment because um, yeah, I mean, things have changed, right? Just getting people to opt in for a free thing and then get on a call and convert them into a you know $15,000, $30,000, $40,000 engagement is, you know, freaking hard work. And so the low-ticket offer is a is a world that I'm deep in at the moment. And what I really like about it is that you're building a list of customers, not a list of tie kickers, right? So let's not talk about the assets here for a second. Because the asset, so an asset you can give away for free, like the proposal template that we did. And but then everything that you just spoke about, then like the landing page, the email sequence that goes behind it, they're all individual assets as well, right? And so if you and and I think you and I sort of think about this in a similar way that, you know, we get quite meta about this, right? So so let's put together a landing page to get more people to sign up for the free asset, which is the proposal template. Now, everything we learn about that landing page to make a high converting landing page, if we then look at that landing page, take out our branding, take out our specific content and replace it with placeholder content. So, for example, on that landing page, I might say, attention digital agencies. Um, if you're writing proposals and struggling to convert it, you know, 40% or higher, then download this free template and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, if that landing page is converting, I then just take my content out and say, attention target audience, if you're struggling with this problem, download this free thing and get benefit immediately. Now all of a sudden I have a template for a landing page, which I can use in any business because I know it converts, I just have to replace the placeholder content. So that template now becomes an asset in its in its own right that I can roll out across all my client, I can sell that as a service to my clients, right? And I think what a lot of bus a lot of agencies fail to realize is how many assets they're sitting on in their agency that they've developed over time, they're just not thinking about them as assets. They're just thinking, oh, this is just what we do.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. There's this guy, Jack Butcher from Visualize Value. Have you heard of him before? No, he's got this concept called selling your sawdust. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is kind of what you're talking about here. So, in the work that you're doing, sure you might be producing a website for a client, but you'll need to put together a site map. Your process for putting together sitemap and the site map itself is an asset. Then you put together wireframes. Like what does a high converting page, as you mentioned then, what does a high converting landing page consist of? As a wireframe, sans client content, just with example content or instructional content. That is also an asset that can be used in various different ways. You can sell that asset, you can use it as an audience building asset, you can use that to train your team to build high converting landing pages. So when we're building websites for clients, we have homepage already pre-made with best practices. Like that already exists. We use that to teach clients. I use that as part of the sales process, and we use that to train our team. So that is like that is super high leverage for us. There's also a page on our website um that goes through our process. So we start with a digital strategy roadmap. Thank you, Troy. We go into sitemap, wireframe, design, and all of the steps are listed uh so that it's very transparent for clients because they they don't want to, you know, be something hidden. We want to make sure we're uh being transparent and showing trust uh ahead of the engagement with the client. So I use that as part of sales. Isme on our project manager, she uses that when she's onboarding. Ray uses that to make sure the client knows what comes after the website and that you need to you need to grow that. But it also helps to attract people to us because it's a live web page. So fantastic leverage within that one piece of content. And we keep that up to date so that it's solving problems and creating more value over time. So that's an example of a content asset that we use in various stages of the of the funnel. I love it.

Um uh so you know, Celia Sawdust is a similar concept to the guys from um Basecamp, David Jason Fryden David uh David, oh I can't remember his last name. David, whatever his name is, they they wrote this book called Rework. And one of the things that they talk about in Rework is look around the off look at look at what you've got lying around the office and and see what you can sell, right? Or see what assets you've got. And David Hannah, oh David Hannah, Hannah. Anyway, I can't remember his last name. Um he had basically built this programming framework called Ruby on Rails to as they were building Basecamp. So Ruby was a uh programming language, he built this kind of framework called Ruby on Rails, which was a from what I understand, kind of a bunch of Ruby functions that allowed you to do things very quickly. So, for example, if I need to add like a reset password function to a website, of course nowadays we know WordPress just does that out of the box, most platforms just do that out of the box, but that's a function that you have to write. And so he would kind of write it once and then go package that up as a Ruby or whatever he calls it and says, Well, that's now and they basically gave Ruby on Rails to the community and said, This is now available. If you're developing in Ruby, you can just use all of these kind of pre written functions that we've got. And that was, and and Ruby on Rails became this massive thing that really helped them put Basecamp, it it garnered a lot of attention for them, which wasn't their core business. Their core business was Basecamp, but everyone would find David and Jason through Ruby on Rails and go, who are these guys? Oh, they've got this project management software called Basecamp. And people, you know, then obviously software developers and web designers and developers were signing up for Basecamp from a project management point of view, and it really helped them put it on the map. So Sally saw does a similar kind of thing. Um, the other thing I want to talk about is uh when do you know whether an asset is so valuable that you should charge for it or whether it's just something that you should keep giving away for free?

That's um, yeah, that's an interesting question because almost any asset can be you want it to be so valuable you could charge for it. Yeah. Yet you might be giving it away for free. So I think this is a holistic strategic kind of um way of thinking in that you want to uh be making sure you've got a content asset for each part of your funnel. So thinking like attract, convert, retain. And if you're super top heavy on your attract side of things, you have great audience, but no one's giving the credit card, no one's paying, and but lots of people are applauding. Like, woo, like lots of eyeballs, great. Vanity metrics going on there. So if you don't have a conversion asset or sales asset, make sure you're plugging in all of the different um parts of the funnel uh would be my recommendation there. So any piece of asset should be able to fit in there logically, uh rather than think like, oh, we need a paid asset here. Uh we your free assets should be so good that people would be willing to pay for them. The crazy thing is, and I try to say this to clients quite a lot, is that no one knows how good your service is or what you do in your business until they start doing business with you. So all they know is how good your marketing is. So it's got to be so valuable, the experience needs to be so good that they're like, I it makes perfect sense to do business with you because my experience so far has been awesome.

That's interesting. No one knows how good your product is, but they know how good your marketing is until they start using your product. This is another reason that I'm hell bent on this low-ticket funnel idea, because I've been on the I've been a consumer of low-ticket funnels where I'm basically buying someone's asset, right? It's a piece of content that they've turned into an asset. I'm buying it for, you know, less than 50 bucks. That's a no-brainer. But I get so much value out of it, I instantly, like within 10 minutes, I'm like, what's the next thing that I've got? How can I just accelerate this? Where is the platinum door? Like I want to get this result. So if you think about the soccer club, go back to the soccer club for a second, right? So uh if a kid is, you know, living out in the suburbs and and you know, like can't go to a soccer game because it's too expensive, you know, parents are working eight jobs to keep the roof on the house and uh it's too far away, and I can't get there. But I get a soccer guernsey for my birthday, right? And I'm like, oh my god, it's like whatever it is, 40 or 50 bucks or whatever, 100 pounds, whatever, for a soccer guernsey. And the kid's overwhelmed with joy and he's watching every game, but then he wants more, so he starts collecting the cards, which are still a low-ticket product. As he gets a bit older and he gets some of his own money, he might go to his first game. Eventually he joins the club and becomes a member, right? And then over time he might become a VIP member. He gets to sit in the VIP box or behind the coaching box at the game, maybe gets invited into the club rooms to meet the players, whatever, right? So that one customer, you know, there's the the the classic the saying that there's three ways to grow your revenue, and that is to one, get more customers, two, get those customers to spend more money, and three, get those customers to come back and buy again, right? While every piece of content that you've got in your business, if you can turn that into an asset to sell people along the way as a low-ticket thing, and then if it's valuable enough, it's if it's if it's more valuable than what they've paid for it, they will instantly attribute your high-ticket, done for you or most expensive thing as being more valuable than it's than it's worth on paper, right? I'm gonna get more value out of this because I got more value out of the low-ticket thing, right? And so I think the low-ticket asset, if we if you're selling those low-ticket things, which I'll talk about, I'll give an example for an agency in a minute. If you're selling those low-ticket things, make them more valuable than you're charging, because then people understand that not only is your marketing good, but your product delivery is good and that your systems are good and that your value is good. And so they automatically attribute the trust with the brand is so good that they automatically say, well, your $10,000 thing must be worth, you know, $20,000, right? How many times does how many times have companies launched a dud and the the fan base is just forgiving? It's like, yeah, you know, that was an experiment that went wrong. That was a pile of shit, but it's okay because we still love Apple and we know the next thing is gonna be great, right? Anyone remember Google Wave? Right?

That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're kind of Facebook attempt or something like that. Like I'm waving at you, you wave back, and there was like the problem with that is there was no one in there, so there was no one to wave like the telephone. It's great if there's two of you, but if there's one person with a telephone, the whole thing doesn't work. Uh, but we forgave them, didn't we? We forgave Google for that, you know. Uh, and we said, well, what's next? Because they've already built up enough trust in the brand that we will forgive them.

Yeah, lots of goodwill at that time in the marketplace. It's like, oh yeah, okay. You can't hit a home run every time. That's all good. Tons of assets, tons of value. What else do you got? Google Maps. All right, cool. There's a home run right there, far out. Gmail. Yeah, Gmail.

I mean, you know, Gmail and Google Maps both came out of Australia, by the way. Both of those things were kind of the pioneered by Australian Google employees.

Bang. And I'm I'm not sure, maybe you can confirm this, but I think it's with that, what do they call it, the 10% time or something as well? They're like side projects, or they're even part of your job.

Half a day a week.

They get Google Maps.

Like in your spare time. Half a day a week to come up with ideas. So here's if you're an agency and you're a smart agency like Simon Kelly and SGD and the agencies that we mentor, and you're selling paid discovery, right? Here's for me, here's the no-brainer low-ticket asset that you can deploy straight away to start building a list of customers that will turn into actual high-ticket paying clients. You're running paid discovery, you've obviously got your script down, you've got your workbooks, you've got your slide deck, you've probably already done a couple of them on Zoom, right? So, what I would do is I would just record doing it on Zoom, but do it as if you are teaching one of your staff members how to run paid discovery. Right? So here's the slide deck, here's the workbook, here are the questions. We ask these questions, we need the client to fill in these answers, and this is what we're looking for in the end. And then when we get all that data, we go back, we put together a strategy, we map it out in a Kanban board. I would give that away as a training with everything included and say to clients, if you before you build a website, before you hire an agency, go do this. It's gonna cost you $27. Go through our training, keep it as short as you can, and give them enough insight where they could basically do their own paid discovery workshop and get 80% of the way there. Right? Because through that process, a couple of things are gonna happen. They're gonna get really excited about the process and they're gonna get a lot of clarity. We know that because we've seen agencies run paid discovery enough now that we know what happens. But two, they're gonna be a little bit confused. They're gonna have questions. And that's the purpose of content, as far as I'm concerned, is every piece of content should be helpful and be super valuable, regardless whether it's free or you're charging a small amount of money, but it should also raise more questions, which leads to the next piece and the next piece and the next piece, and that's where the ascension model works. If your ascension model's broken, it's because you're solving all of the problems in one step. And there's no that they don't have any that it's like you know, you know when you get to the horizon, like you're climbing up a mountain and you get to the horizon and you kind of stop and you take a breath, the your brain goes, Where's the next hill? Oh, okay, I'm just gonna have a rest here for a minute. Then we're gonna climb up there because the view up there is gonna be even better. Right? Whereas once you get to the top of the mountain, it's like, well, now there's no there's nowhere else to go. So you don't want to get your clients to the top of the mountain with the first piece of the first content asset. Just get them to the next step.

Yeah, nice. So getting solving a problem, getting to the next step, but keeping some loops open. So there's still the like, ooh, like I've I've got this solved. That was super valuable, but like what's next? Where where do I go next? I'll um I want to get this result. So what else do you have? How can I keep ascending?

That's right. And also people generally will pay high ticket, not for information, but for insights. So you can give me, you know, you know, the like the classic example is you can give me, you know, the perfect webinar blueprint and teach me, you know, for $27 how to put together a perfect webinar and show me all the social proof under the sun that this webinar is going to convert, you know, $10 million, right? And I go away and I put my slides together and I practice the webinar and I run it and I make five grand. And I'm like, fuck, I need to make 100 grand out of this webinar. The the next question is, who could I hire and pay them 10 grand to come in and just build this webinar for me and teach me how to deliver it? Right. Because I need the insight into how to apply this knowledge that I have to my specific business and my specific audience and my specific circumstances. So I can learn, I can do guitar lessons online. I've got, you know, subscriptions to hundreds of guitar courses online, and I sit there and practice all the time, but I know that I will get better if I'm sitting one-on-one with a teacher because they'll be looking at my technique, going, do this, try this, do this. There's nuance, and that's what your clients will pay high ticket for that one-on-one insight and application of the information to their specific situation.

Yep. That's exactly right. Yeah, it's like accelerating the results. So insight, implementation. I want this result. How can I get this faster? That template was great, but like I want to, I want this for me. I want to accelerate this. Can I get some personalization going on here? And people will pay a premium for that. Yeah. There's um, there's a a bit of a mistake that I see a little bit when it comes to like creating these kind of ascension funnels in some way. It's almost like um a lot of businesses that that we talk to think that someone has to start at the very beginning. It's like, well, they have to start with the free thing and then they'll go to the the email list, and then they'll buy the small thing, and then they'll buy the big thing. It's not it's not about that at all. Like, that's fantastic when that when that works. And it's just like, you know, dominoes, you hit one and then the big domino goes over. But allowing someone to choose their own adventure as well. So you may have lots of free content, fantastic. And then you've got some of these smaller ticket um pieces, excellent, with lots of value, awesome. And you've got your high ticket showing them these assets and making sure that they know what the options are for them to choose their own adventure based on where they are in the customer journey. If they're hot, good to go, problem aware, solution aware, ready to buy. You don't want to be like, watch, look at this blog post and then buy my $27 thing. If they're like, I will I have $100,000 right now and I'm ready to buy, I want this solved. Please give me the shortcut, have that available. That's where I see agencies, business owners going a bit wrong. It's like, well, we've got to do a funnel where they walk through this door and then this door. It's like, no, no, no, no. Have all the bits available, but make sure each one leads to another and they can pick where they are. They can ascend at any time.

Yeah, totally. Um, I mean, the you know, the choose your own adventure books were a massive hit when they first came out in whatever it was, the 80s or whenever I was growing up, because you feel as a reader, you feel like you have some uh some agency into the story. Like you get to choose what happens next, and you feel like you've got some more control, and so they're far more engaging than just broadcasting a message at you regardless of where you're at. Like if I want this to happen, there's no need for me to go through those other steps. I'm I'm ready to to go faster. Um, I also think that the mistake a lot of businesses make with online is the they miss out on momentum, right? If someone you were you're actually an example of this. You bought a $1 product from us. What a tight ass. Fire out.

Yeah.

Well, you I think you opted in for a free thing and then bought a $1 30-day trial or something, right? And then upgraded to $97 a month, and then bought the $2,000 thing, and then you're in my office making videos with me, and you were stalking me and wouldn't go away, and then you became a coach, and you know what I mean?

All started with that dollar transaction. Just something to get across the line, just something to be like, oh cool, yeah, let's go. Whatever.

Yeah you got me at the right time. And there was a and that and that's an opportunity to build trust and over-deliver. And it's funny what happens because a lot of people think, well, if I sell something for $7 and massively over-deliver, what happens when they pay me $10,000? It doesn't quite, you know, you know, if you if you deliver $100 worth of value for $7, you don't have to deliver $100,000 worth of value for $10,000. It doesn't work like that. As I said before, if you over-deliver in the first, it's like being married, right? Everyone's on their best behavior during the honeymoon period. Whereas now I've been married for, you know, however long, 11, 12 years or whatever. Like, I mean, I'm just at my worst all the time, and Amy's fine with that because the honeymoon period's like, I don't need to prove myself anymore. Do you know what I mean?

I'm kidding.

I'm half kidding.

So that's your $10,000 product, is it? That's right. That's exactly right.

That's a lot of answer two. That's right. So that but if you if you massively over-deliver in that first engagement with the client, then they will automatically attribute what you do next as being valuable, right? Now, obviously, everything you deliver should be more valuable than you're charging, but it doesn't have to be exponentially more. I mean, it can't be, right? We can't sell Lamborghinis for $5,000 as much as Alex Hormosy would like us to. We can't do that. So, but you can sell, you know, a $100 keep cup. That would be an expensive keep cup. You send you can sell a hundred dollar thing for ten dollars, right? And you can you can 10x the value there, but it's very difficult to sell $100,000 worth of shit for $10,000 because you'll go broke pretty quickly. But the point is you don't need to.

Like looping back to something you mentioned before around um around insight, and you kind of touched on personalization a bit. Like there's so much value just in personalization. So you're talking about the landing page example. So if you uh took out all the personalized content, sold the landing page template that's high converting, it's like white label in some way, someone else can change it to suit, and that's $27. Great. You sell a bit of a video course on the back of that, that's a couple of hundred bucks, great. For you to come in and personalize that based on my agency, based on someone else's agency, someone else's business, like that's a that's a $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 job right there. But you're not you're not exponentially increasing your time commitment, but you are exponentially increasing the value you're bringing to me because you're personalizing your experience, your insight specifically to my business. So it's not about extra time or cost or anything like that, but just that level of personalization, massively valuable to the right, to the right audience as well. Yeah.

Also, I think you know, it's worth remembering that people don't trust themselves. So uh people will pay high ticket, they'll pay a premium for speed, automation, or implementation. So here's this thing, you can go like, you know, here's a video on how to service your car, and I'm gonna get the spanner out and start taking the spark plugs out. That car's never gonna drive again. I'm gonna have to call a tow truck and it's gonna have to tow it to the mechanic so the mechanic can put it back together. I don't care how much you teach me that, I'm always taking it to a mechanic to get it serviced because I don't know what I'm doing and I don't trust myself. And I don't have the time to become an expert at it because I'm busy doing what I do best, right? And so your clients are busy doing what they do best. So if you if you sell them something super cheap to uh help them do the thing themselves, chances are they're gonna come to you and go, well, fuck it, can you just do this for me? Because I don't have time to do this, even if you teach me, I just want someone to do it for me who knows what they're doing. And you clearly know what you're doing because you're teaching other people how to do it.

Bang. Exactly. You're using those content assets in order to build that trust and put people along the funnel. Exactly. So what are some what are some examples?

Just quickly, what are some examples of content assets?

Well, then we're headed, so that's perfect. Yeah, so so some of the ones that that we use and we work with our clients um to build. So we I was talking before about uh the funnel, attract, converse, retain. So making sure that there's assets in in that um in that realm, so that they're along along that path. We call that the money path. So that is the path to the money. Because if if you've got blog posts and you've got social and it's not contributing revenue in some way, it doesn't matter how big you build your audience, you're you're not able to leverage that. So you've got to make sure you've got assets along the money path. So one of the ones that uh uh is is that we build for our clients first, not super sexy, but brand messaging guidelines to stop them saying this over here and that over here and all of these various things. It keeps all of their marketing team aligned around what message helps to convert their UVP, so they can take snippets of that and create content from that initial content asset. So brand messaging guidelines. Love it. The next one is your ideal customer persona, like and so what do you what is so what what does that look like?

Brand asset guidelines, like what is that? Is it a PDF? Is it a is it a series of templates in Canva? Like what is it exactly?

Yeah, so at its core, it's a PDF. So a PDF that has logo specifications, great. But also how the company, how they speak, like what tone of voice is being used. So anyone on the marketing team can produce content and they've got some rules and guidelines to refer to, not just like, I think that this would work better. And someone else who's producing content goes, I think this would work better, and there's no unification, there's no consistency, which ruins trust in the customer's mind. So consistency builds trust, and this brand asset guideline is a is a core asset to be able to um brand messaging guideline to uh keep things consistent.

I I like what you've done here as well, is you've also kind of articulated why it's important. Consistency builds trust. So that's why you need to have this asset, right?

Yeah, a hundred percent. So yeah, you'll notice that in your own business and other businesses that you engage with. Like, is this the same business? Like, what's going on here? There's something a bit a bit odd here. If they can't be consistent in their marketing, how are they going to be consistent in their service delivery? So holding back a bit with trust. So something else that we build is called ideal customer persona. So many businesses make the mistake of trying to appeal to everyone, but who specifically benefits the most from what you offer? So let's build that out. Let's get clear on who they are, let's understand their fears, frustrations, wants, aspirations. So we know exactly who we're talking to. One of my first ones that I actually came up with a workshop um that you ran, Troy, in Crayon Casino. Um, I was working with uh marketing managers of um uh of uh hotel chains, and there was one called Mark, and you were you recommended something like you know, come up with a an easy to remember name. And I was like, oh yeah, marketing Mark. That sounds good. So that was one of our first. So just something that's maybe a little bit fun, easy to remember, so you know who you're talking to when you're producing content and you're not just creating bland beige content that tries to appeal to everyone. Got it.

So and and and again, that is what we're like, what is that? Is it a like a PDF, a template, what would a training video? What is it? What is it? Like what are the what are the what are the different modalities that people can, you know, because people get hung up on this stuff. They're like, well, that's great. I put I made a Google Doc. What do I do? I mean, a Google Doc's an asset, can be a content asset, right?

Definitely. Yeah, as a as a PDF. This is something that we actually build with our clients as part of the workshop that you mentioned. So the digital strategy workshop. So getting these foundational things make everything else so much easier when producing content, when trying to attract, convert, retain uh clients and customers.

On the retain thing, what you know, a lot of also a lot of agencies forget is that you what you have to resell your existing clients on what it is you're doing and the value that so if you, for example, if you're like, you know, doing SEO or ads or any conversion rate optimization, and you're sending them like a weekly or a monthly PDF report that's automated, that's not valuable to them at all. They won't read it, and if they do, they don't understand it. But highlighting the insights from that report, right? This is, and again, this can be in this, like if you think about it, like here's my here's my monthly report on my traffic and my rankings and my CRO, but I don't know how to read it. So all you need to do is look at these three numbers, right? And these these three numbers tell you that we're doing our job. And by the way, this is now a little training and an asset that I can give to other c other prospects to go, hey, if you've got an agency running SEO or ads or CRO for you and they're sending you a monthly report and you don't know what it is, these are the three numbers that you just need to look at. And if these three numbers are going in the wrong direction, then the agency is not doing their job. And by the way, if you're not getting a report like this with insights every month, then your agency is not doing their job. So that's you know, you build something, you do something once, always. Be thinking, how can I make this in a way that it's generic enough that I can give it to the world to help them to be super helpful because that's what we know leads to market leadership, and market leadership is what leads to revenue. Is I'm just the most super helpful person on the planet for this particular target audience.

100%. It's the cost to keep a client, keep a customer is so much less than the cost of trying to attract, convert new customers. Do both, but help your business grow and be uh sustainable by keeping the clients you already have. Yep. So the the third major asset that we help our clients produce that contributes a lot to the business. So we've got the brand messaging guidelines, we've got the who we're targeting, and then it's the sales page. It's the the money pages on their website. So this helps marketing, this helps sales, it's also helps with retention and service delivery because there's a place to go to to talk about the scope of work, to have the value proposition, to be able to have an official place. It's not just a sales conversation, but we have an official place to go that shows we've done this before, we've done it with these people, we're answering all of these questions. Here's why it's valuable. It's a yeah, fantastic resource, your service sales page or product sales page, uh, to be able to build that. That's where the conversions happen. Uh, it's uh yeah, great leverage in that asset. Love it.

Um, and now you've actually got a page similar to this on your website, right? You've got the digital strategy workshop page, right? On which is an asset, which is kind of an entry point. This is like the the essentially a sales page for paid discovery, right? Um, it kind of talks about why a client should, you know, this is well done, by the way. Excellent learning and excellent implementation. Really, I mean it's fantastic. It talks about why, you know, before you boot a website or launch a new digital marketing campaign, you need a clear strategy so you don't waste time and money building the wrong thing. Great. That's why, right? Then you've just got the price, you've got a button, book your workshop, you've got five star, SGD is rated five stars from 30 plus Google Review. You've then got logos of some pretty good brands here in Melbourne, which is, you know, borrowed credibility, instant social proof. You've then got what's included, um, you've then got, you know, how to get started, what happens, uh, a little bit of uh urgency. It's normally this price, but we're doing it for this for a limited time, button, any FAQs, and then you know, signed off with your mugshot, uh, which is a nice personal touch, and then some you know, FAQs. Awesome, love it, absolutely love it. It's a great sales page. Um, and you know, your your any of your digital assets, by the way, that you're giving away for free or selling low ticket should lead to this page as like the next thing you should do is consider booking in for us to do this, or you can go do it yourself and we'll show you how we do it and give you everything you need to do yourself, or we can we're the experts, you can just hire us to do it for you. Uh and so a lot of agencies just don't have this on their website, and so clients are like, well, I'm not even really sure what you guys do or how how to start, right? And so this is a great sort of front door to your business, yeah?

Yeah, exactly. And the the the difference is if you're selling without an asset like this, it's just you and the prospect with without something official, without something that's public as well. Like you could have a little private PDF with your scope of work and sales page or anything like that. But there there is something that is transmitted when you share something like this. So I share this, I screen share it on sales calls. It's official, it's real. We've done this before. Like there is a level of trust and um and credibility that comes from this being not a new thing. I'm just saying to you at the time. I think it's gonna be about $1,500. And here's what's included, and you're gonna have to remember this. So much information. Whereas I can screen share this, uh, it helps with the sales process, it helps them, it helps get them over the line directly on the call. So, service-based businesses is fantastic as part of the sales process. Yeah. And you're using my favorite font, Inter.

Oh, yeah. Love that big fan. Beautiful. I love it. It's the new it's the new proximanova. Yeah. As far as I'm concerned. Love it, love it, love it, love it, love it. Okay, so if someone's listening, if an agency is listening to this, like how do they what's the first thing they should do? Excuse me. Hello, Mickey. What's the first thing they should do to to uh what's the first di what's the first content asset that they should like, how do they t take something they've got and turn it into a content asset? What's the fastest way for them to do this?

Yeah. I highly recommend not starting with audience, but starting with the conversion. Like where does your business generate the the money? Like what is the step that generates money? The proposal template is the I would think the number one asset, even though this isn't public facing and we're talking a lot about that. It is the number one asset to have ready to go so you can quickly produce proposals and generate revenue. That is the process to get dialed to a fine art so you can have conversations, you can send proposals, and you can win deals. That would be the place to go first. The second place to go would be your service pages. So your sales pages, so you've got credibility, you've got trust, you've done this before, you outline your process, you've got your FAQs, that would be the next place to go.

Love it, love it. Um, I'm gonna put this link in the web in the chat here as well, the link to your uh workshop page, but also the link to your web design process page. Because what I want people to realize here, right, is on this page, our web design process, the very first point is digital strategy, and it talks about having a digital roadmap. And there's a picture there of the participant workbook that we give our agencies to use to run these workshops. This is an asset. My entire business is built on content assets, by the way, right? We have over 280 pages of agency playbooks that we have here that we give our agencies that we mentor to help them with their business. Uh, hiring, you know, sales and marketing, database reactivation campaigns, paid discovery workshops, job scorecards, future org charts, all the things, right? And these are digital assets, content assets. We talk about them. Some are free, some are behind a paywall, some are only available to our one-on-one clients like Simon and SGD and the other agencies that we mentor. Um, go and check this out so that you can like it for me, it's extremely rewarding to see these assets being used in the wild and being used, by the way, way more successfully than I ever did. Uh, and it's very rewarding to see your work being continued on and you know being uh having impact in in the world. So uh, dude, thanks for taking all the action that you guys take and doing the great work that you do, and uh thanks for coming on to the agency hour again to share some of your knowledge bombs with us.

Oh, pleasure. Yeah, it's always good to get your insights as well and see um what's working with other agencies and how we're applying things. And yeah, I think a lot can be leveraged from selling your sawdust, seeing what you're already doing, what you could leverage a lot more with. So many businesses and agencies have plenty of opportunity they're not taking advantage of.

Yeah. I just Googled Web Design Melbourne and you guys come up number three in the organic, and that's huge, man.

We were done. We were one recently, so that really yeah. We've worked 25 not that long ago, so we've um we've made some good adway there.

Well done, man. And you've got 55 star reviews on on uh on Google. Five star reviews, 50. That's fantastic. Well done. So uh keep on keep on punching, mate, keep up the good work. You I just love watching what you and James and Ray are doing. It's kind of very humbling and very rewarding to see you three guys working together. I feel like a proud older brother. And um and uh and a little bit envious. Um, and so if you've got any job openings, let me know and I'll I'll apply. Um good stuff. Hey, thanks for joining us on the Agency Our Podcast. Look forward to doing it again. Uh, what are some of the other topics we're gonna be talking about over the coming weeks? Do you know yet?

It's like, well, uh it is unknown. It is unknown. It's uh deep within the vault at the moment. Excellent. So we're pulling out what's working in my agency and other agencies that we're talking to within Maverick Club and RRA. So we'll be pulling out things that are that are that are hot off the press with what's currently working but that has worked over time. Awesome. Which isn't long for saying no idea.

Yeah, good. Uh I like to keep things pretty organic too because we can have this great plan, but then things happen very fast, and now all of a sudden we want to talk about AI or we want to talk about, you know, Etch, the new page builder and WordPress or whatever, right? So we it's good to sort of keep it pretty fluid so that we can keep topical with what's happening. And if you're listening to this and you're an agency and you want to learn how to grow your recurring revenue, build a team, make more profit, and you want some one-on-one accountability, you want us to hold your feet to the fire and make sure you get the right things done at the right time. There'll be a link near this episode where you can reach out to our team booking a conversation, see if we're a good fit to work with you. All right, thanks again for joining us on the agency hour. Simon Kelly, have a great week. And I'm I'm away next week for school holidays. I'm sure Max has got a plan, but I'll be back in a couple of weeks and we'll see you then. Awesome. Cheers, Troy. Thanks for listening to the Agency Hour podcast and a massive thanks to Simon for joining us. And hey, if you're enjoying these conversations and you want to go deeper, surround yourself with other successful agencies and build a business you actually enjoy while traveling the world. And come and hang with us in person at Mavcon in Bali, June 16 and 17, 2025. That's right, it's coming up very soon. We'll be at the Laguna, which is a luxury collection resort and spa, yes, it's as dreamy as it sounds. Working together in person to scale our agencies. And uh oh, did I mention it's a tax write-off? Spots are limited, very limited. I like seriously, there's a handful of spots available. So grab your seats and come and join us in Paradise this June. I'll leave a link in the description here. All right, folks, remember to subscribe and please share this with anyone you think may need to hear it. I'm Troy Dean, and remember, a snail can sleep for three years.