Digital strategy roadmaps have helped us significantly with our sales pitch and our ability to go beyond writing a proposal for a project. From our point of view, it's fantastic because recurring revenue. From a client's point of view, we don't have to continuously negotiate scope. What is this? How much would this cost? What do you think about building this? Create the strategy once. Let's put the destination into the GPS and then let's just go.

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're joined by the one and only Simon Kelly, who is a director of SGD Seriously Good Design. They are a digital marketing and web design agency. They serve predominantly service-based businesses and they help those businesses generate leads and grow. In this episode, we explore digital roadmaps and the difference between tactics, results, and strategies, when you shouldn't be using AI as part of your client's digital strategy, and how to make your boat go faster and much more. If you want to use strategy and growth plans to grow your recurring revenue, then this episode is for you. I'm Troy Dean. Stay with us. Great to see you. We must be light on guests if they've got you back on again. Again. But back again.

Have I been on the Adam? I don't know if I've been on the agency hour. I think before though. I think that's a thing. Maybe that's why you're like, yeah, really? Again? You? Again. Again.

I mean, I thought we'd picked your, I thought we we'd extracted everything from your brain that was in there. Yeah. But here you are again.

I'm just recycling old stuff because I figured that like maybe your memory is fading a bit. So just come back to just say the same thing. We'll do that every couple of years. Excellent.

I need the reminders. It's funny, I was I was I heard someone the other day said we don't need to uh we don't need to yeah, a lot of the times we don't need to learn anything. We just need to be reminded of the stuff that we already know because it's very easy to get distracted by the new shiny thing, right? And just to forget to do the basics that we know that we're supposed to do. But that's not what we're talking about today, is it? No, it's not. But no, it could be. That's fine. We can feed that in. Fundamentals are key. Before we dive in, we should tell people who the hell you are and what you're doing here. Who is who is Simon Kelly?

Have you had your existential crisis yet? Uh there's been a few. There's been quite a few. Um, yeah, so I'm Sam Kelly, I'm one of the directors of uh SGD, which stands for Seriously Good Design. We're a custom web design SEO and Google Ads agency based in Collingwood in Melbourne. Uh yeah, we help uh in particular service-based uh businesses that have marketing managers to grow and turn their website into an elite generating machine. Uh and yeah, we're we're growing our team. Our team is across uh six different time zones. We've got 20 people on the team, and uh yeah, it's uh it's an awesome thing that we're building at the moment.

That's great. And way back when Simon was a coach at one point with Agency Mavericks, and we co-hosted a funny little show for a while called Silence is Golden, which was super fun. You can YouTube that and watch us being complete goofs. Uh and uh Simon started out actually as a customer of WP Elevation way back when you were running an agency called Renegade Empire, and then partnered up with James Fulton, who I think was the very first ever platinum coaching client I ever had, um, and partnered up with him with Seriously Good Design. Uh how so 20 staff, what's your role in Seriously Good Design now?

Yeah, so I'm the head of sales, but the official role in my signature is a digital strategist. But sales in internally, like that, that's my main thing. Growth, sales, marketing. Cool.

And then you and so then uh you sign a client and then hand the client over to the who manages the client then and who manages the team.

Yeah, so we've got two who take the reins from there after I've done the initial sales work and the digital strategy, typically with the client will be the first thing that I'll do as part of digital strategy roadmaps, which we've learned from you, which has been an absolute massive game changer for us over the last two years. Uh, so then I will brief in Ray Milladoni, who was the marketing manager of agency Mavericks or WP Elevation way back when. So he's on the team now as um customer success manager, and also Ismay, who's in Sydney, who's our project manager, who leads the web, uh the website of things. So they will take it from there and work with the team to execute.

Great, excellent. I hear Max is looking for a job too, so maybe he can come and uh join Seriously. Join the ship. Yeah, right. Um kidding. No, it's great. We're at Mavcon recently, and it was awesome to see Ray. Uh it was great, it was so good to catch up with Ray because Ray worked with us for a while. And uh, like most people that um work with me, I ended up cooking him, and uh he then ran uh screaming from the building and said, get away from me, pretty much the way you did as well. Uh and uh, group over here, actually.

That's what we're filming. It's not really it's the I used to work with Trolley.

Now I'm now I'm in this, now I've come to work in seriously good design for some to rebuild my self-esteem. Um and uh was great to see you guys partnering up and doing some awesome tough. Hey, so what happened? Talk to me about a digital strategy roadmap. What the hell is that? What what when did when do you use it? What does it do? Uh you know, how does it work?

So uh I think in order to uh I'll give you the quick answer for that, because you'll be across this as well. But for for those who aren't quite across this, uh there's a big difference between take doing activity and actually achieving a result. So tactics are typically activity, like doing things, like posting on social media, email marketing, uh, creating a blog post, building your website, they're all they're all things to do. That's all activity. But you don't know which one of those is going to get you the result. You start with the result and work your way backwards. And what you don't do, that's a strategic decision. So strategy is a lot about what and when. So social media may not be a now thing because it may not get the result that you're actually working towards. So it may be something later, but it's not a now thing for a lot of businesses because they typically want leads and they want more customers. Whereas they think maybe posting on social and getting their name out there is gonna help them. So strategy is about what you're not doing and the order of things that you would be doing. Typically, building assets is a key part of marketing strategy. So a website is an asset, your unique value proposition is an asset, growing your email list is an asset. Those things are one-time projects that build value over time, like compound interest, as opposed to I'm just gonna keep coming back to posting on social, but opposed to activity like posting on social, which is a one-time thing that doesn't give you much return over time. It's a when thing because some for some businesses and some companies, posting on social is absolutely fantastic. It's a thing that can work, but there's the when part is really important.

This is I love this because you know, for the first uh I don't know how long, but the first kind of batch of years of my entrepreneurial journey, I didn't understand strategy right at all. I'd fucking no idea what that word meant. It scared me. I was like, I don't even understand what it means. That's like you go and work at McKinsey's if you want to do strategy. No idea what and I just thought strategists were overpaid wankers, really. And uh had no idea what it meant. And what happened is I you and you what you were there, you witnessed this, right? Is that I would just spin my wheels, just doing activity, right? And then going, well, you know, and never giving anything enough time to actually produce results, right? Like by lunchtime, I would have changed my mind and I'd be doing something else. And now strategy has helped me, and I do have an attention span problem, I will admit, and I want to do everything all at the same time, all at once. And strategy has helped me go, no, we're not doing that right now because we don't have the resources to do it properly. And we've decided in advance that we're actually going to focus on. So for us, for example, it's Facebook ads and YouTube, really, and the podcast. That's what we're focusing on. I've got people pinging me all the time that want to take over our Instagram account and you know, reckon they can make us another hundred grand a month in Instagram. I'm like, that's great, but I'm just not doing that right now because it's not not just the financial resources, but it's the team. I don't have the I don't have the bandwidth to manage another person running something else, right? And so the strategy has helped me calm down and say no, it's really allowed me to manage my FOMO, I think is the big thing, right? And if you think about I always think about battle, right? If you go, well, our job is to take the fort of the opposition. We get off the boats on the beach and we have to get to the fort of the opponent, the strategy is how we're gonna get there without getting killed, right? And a big part of that is what not to do. So don't come in and then fire the fog horn of the boat and let everyone know we're here. Don't do that because we want to do this in stealth mode. And so under I think and I think the problem with strategy, the the problem with understanding strategy is that it's invisible, right? Strategy is the invisible layer that drives the tactics that you see. And a lot of people see what they're uh what their competition are doing online and they go, well, we need that pop up on our website, we need to do that on social media, we need to start a YouTube channel, because they can see the tactics, but they don't understand what's going on at the strategic level, and it's the strategic level that will uh that will help you succeed, not the tactical stuff, right?

Yeah, exactly. That hidden layer, but it's it's very that shiny object is the is the thing that gets your attention and it's like oh we need to be doing this. How do you know it's getting a result? You have no idea what's going on behind the scenes. That could be a horrible investment for them. And you're like, I'm you're chasing after something that could be working horribly, and their marketing manager just got fired because of that move. You're like, we need to do pop-ups, and you're like, sweet, like you're just not seeing those things. So it's interesting that you mentioned boats, actually, because there was there was something I wanted to bring up today. There's a book called uh Will This Make the Boat Go Faster? Have you heard of that one? No, it's no it's the British rowing team's journey to the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Oh yes, their journey to achieving gold in the Sydney 2000 Olympics. And they they came up like through the story, they came up in their training with that particular phrase to help them filter all their decisions. Will this help the boat go faster? That's great, isn't it? So, like when you're trying to so that that's what I mean about like this is this is starting with the end in mind and working backwards as opposed to like which tactic do I do moving forwards? It's where am I trying to get to, and then I've got to work backwards and delete all the things that will not make the boat go faster. So thinking about what to eat, I'm gonna gorge on ice cream or I'm gonna eat something a bit more healthy? Like which one will make the boat go faster? Which one will move us towards goal? So all the tactics, all the strategies don't make sense unless it's in the context of what you're trying to achieve. Digital marketers, this one's for you.

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Yeah, it depends on how like confident or playful I'm feeling at the time. It I might just spell out, okay, so you're like it's okay for this to be it's gonna be fifteen thousand dollars, uh, it doesn't really need to get a return on investment, doesn't really matter who sees it. Uh you don't you're not trying to get any leads, it's just gonna sit there and not really be an asset for the business. That that's the plan with this. And like they might say yes if they're feeling cheeky as well, but they typically won't, and they're like, oh no, we definitely want blah, and they'll come forth with some kind of KPR objective or something that's actually important to them, and and then we can we'll start talking a little bit more about strategy from there.

Yeah, it's um and you you only need to ask one or two questions that I call these circuit breakers that you know everyone in the room knows that they should know the answer to this question, but everyone also knows that they don't know the answer. And so like one of the great questions I like to ask is, well, what what's the what's the top three pages on your website that get the most traffic? They haven't got a fucking clue. And the mo pardon my French. And the moment you ask that question and they don't know the answer, it automatically elevates you as someone who knows what you're talking about because you're asking the right questions. And if you ask the right questions, what happens is they automatically credit you with being able to answer those questions and provide them with a solution. And if they're not asking those questions themselves and they don't know the answers to those questions, I actually learned this on Shark Tank. You watch Shark Tank, and these guys go out there with you know, these contestants go out there with all these great ideas, and they go, What's it costing you to acquire a customer? What's a lifetime value? And what's it and they're like, they don't know. And usually one or two of the sharks are like, I'm out, you don't know your numbers, you know, I'm out.

And they're pretty consistent questions. Like the numbers, it's between different episodes and but like understanding those fundamental things about a business. Like if it's um inflatable shark pools or it's little bowls made out of coconuts, like the same questions will apply. Like, how much does it cost to make the thing? How much does it cost to acquire a customer? Like, what else do you what's a customer lifetime value? Yep. That's across like all businesses. So how does what you're building, the website, the Facebook ad campaign, whatever it is, your Instagram growth strategy, whatever that is, how does that contribute to to where we're trying to get to given these numbers?

How does it make the boat go faster? What what happens what happens if you come across a client that they don't know what they're what they don't know what they're trying to do, they don't know what they're trying to achieve. They don't have a gold medal in mind.

Yeah, yeah, perfect. Well, um, like I'll either give them some that I've heard from others, and that's also a positioning thing. So as we worked with blah, blah, blah, they wanted to achieve this. Like, we work with this large cybersecurity company doing some name dropping and showing some of the results we've achieved. So we work with this large cybersecurity company. They really wanted to achieve 1,200 um sales qualified leads in 12 months. So that was what we're trying to achieve, and we work backwards from there. And that just gets their brain thinking about, oh, yeah, like this could be something. And I'm I'm just poking for something that aligns with them that's a bit of a match. Because like it's kind of writer's block. It's like goal block or something like that. You'd a blank page of like, what are your goals? And they're like, uh, no idea. Like, well, is it um it's like a the budget question as well. Like, is the budget $100,000? Like, no way. Like, well, is it 10 cents? Like, no, it's more than that. Like, well, you do have a budget. It's a similar thing with the goals, like, all right, so we want to be getting 100 leads per month from the website, and you're getting zero now. And like, no, no, no, nothing crazy like that. Okay, well, what are we looking at? We're kind of like five, like, what would be in in 12 months' time? It's like the Dan Sullivan question in um in 90 days, what would need to happen? What would need to be there for you to be really happy with the results? Yeah.

How how, how, what percentage of clients that come in the door for you guys? What what percentage of prospects? I want to ask this for new prospects and existing clients. What percentage of your new prospects have all the answers to these questions and they come in and they're like, we know exactly what we want. We just want you to do this and you quote it out and you do it, versus how many come in where you where you say, No, no, we have to go through this pro this kind of digital strategy roadmap first.

So I'd say 10% actually are like, Yep, we really, we really know what we want. And then out of that 10%, half of those actually have a clue and uh have a good strategy, and we're like, sweet, let's just make sure we're aligned and we'll do the strategy roadmap anyway, and they're 100% on board, and the other half just have absolutely they're they've really been burnt, they don't have an idea, and they're being very protective. Like, no, no, we're trying to control costs. They don't say this, but they're typically they've been burnt by another agency, they've lost a lot of money, and the the new plane is micromanagement. That's their new strategy in order to um not get burnt again.

So yeah, which unfortunately so so so 95% really don't have a well-dialed-in strategy and don't really know uh how to achieve what they want to achieve. Yeah, definitely. And I know you've had a lot of success with digital roadmaps. Once you go through a digital roadmap, what are you then? This is the question I get, what are you selling off the back of that? Are you then selling a project or are you selling a retainer or what what are you pitching to the client after a digital roadmap workshop?

So the digital roadmap itself will be a 12-month plan of what to do when, like in what particular order to achieve the goals that we've collaborated and and decided on, which is typically around more traffic and more leads or sales from their website. Their website being something that is an asset that helps their business grow. Um, and there's just the various levels of specificity from there. So there'll be a if their website is crap, there'll be a like your website needs to get redone, but that's not gonna get the the win in 30 days. We want to look at like what's gonna get you a win in 30 days that's uh either a signal that we're doing a great job or a signal that like their revenue's growing. Like we want to see that. We don't want to be like, and even if it is the case, SEO takes time, website design, it'll take time. Like, I I'm sick and I'm very, very sick of saying that to clients. Like that's that's not good enough. Like, let's get how can we get return now? Because there are other ways to do that. Google Business is a fantastic, uh underutilized opportunity. Getting reviews, making sure your Google Business profile is up to sp is looking fantastic against your competitors. That's a quick win for a ton of local businesses. That can be something that uh can be introduced first, gets results in less than 30 days. They're feeling fantastic. They're like, this is this is great. We made the right choice. So we give them a 12-month plan that'll have a series of of digital marketing tactics uh in a in an order so they know when to do certain things. Uh from there, it'll be a mix of like what we're good at, but also things that we recommend that we don't offer. Like we don't do professional photography, we don't do uh like high definition videos of their team or their office. Uh, we don't do anything related to social media other than other than posting. Like we don't focus specifically on helping them generate leads from social, but we help their profile look good. So any we will still recommend things even if we don't do them. Because that's the strategy. That's a consultant, that's someone who actually is a partner to someone's business saying these things are broken with where you are, considering where you want to go. You need to work on these. We can do these, we can deliver these for you, which would be um in a new website, SEO, Google ads, some social posting, Google business. We'll put those in the particular order that will help them get results. They need great photos, they probably need some video, they'll probably need some kind of email marketing to talk to their prospects and their customers. So that's required. But even if we don't deliver that for them, it's gonna be on the plan.

This is actually, I'm just making some notes here because you're inspiring me, brother. Uh, this is one of the questions I get as well is well, you know, I can't talk to my clients about email marketing because I don't do email marketing. And if I talk to my clients about email marketing, they're gonna go and find another agency and then I'm gonna lose them. What do I what do you have to say about that?

Yeah, what do you have to say about that? Yeah, yeah. I I think there's there's two parts. One, like I really think it's important to be a T-shaped, skilled marketer or web designer, or whatever it is, and T-shaped being wide, a breadth of knowledge, but then very deep in some particular specialty. So specialty. Um, very deep in some particular way. So T-shaped, I think maybe Ryan Dice said something like that. So like we being in this industry for quite some time, I think we've got uh and our team, we've got quite breadth of knowledge, but like we are awesome at websites and conversions and SEO. Like that would be like our depth of knowledge. So we can talk on email marketing, but we don't have the inclination or the uh infrastructure to do done for you email marketing for our clients. It might be something in the future, but that's a strategic decision for our business. So we can talk on that, we'll talk about principles, we'll talk about best practices. We've got some referral partners we can guide to, but also we could say, look, do you think that nurturing your prospects and your customers would be a good idea to stay in touch without spending more money on ads through email? Yes, that'd that that'd really help our business. Yeah, awesome. So it seems like you need an email strategy. It's not something we do, but here are some key principles, and then off you go. Like that's it. There's that's and then you can buy you can obviously refer to another.

Agency that you know who can do email marketing for them. Yeah. Um because a lot of a lot of a lot of agencies are scared of losing the relationship with that client and then thinking, well, what what if that agency that they go to that does email marketing also does everything that we do and they're a full service agency and they end up stealing the client?

Yeah, not a great partner, not a great business partner. I mean, uh like referral partner to have if they just uh your competition and do it better than you. That's not amazing. Um, ideally, it's a good match with someone that you have a good relationship with who has complementary services. So, and there's an agreement where the relationship stays with the person who received the lead and manage that sale. But I I want to be in a position, and and we are thankfully, that if I was to refer one of our clients to someone that does social media, let's say a restaurant or a venue or something like that, we're doing their website, they're doing their social that I it doesn't need to be white labeled. It's not like, oh my god, we need to put you on an sgd.com.au email address. It's like, yep, talk to talk to Sean. He's amazing with social, he works for this company, it's gonna be great. We're just gonna stick in our lane and crush it with what we're doing, and it's gonna be even better with Sean on board.

Okay. So then once the client has and and do you uh at after the digital strategy roadmap and you go back and you present what you're doing, is there like a contract in it? They have to sign up for 12 months or three months, or how does it or is it just month to month? How does that work?

Yeah, yeah, I've I um made mine as uh risk free as I as I think I could. So uh I'd do the do the workshop, put together the the roadmap, so 12-month plan, and I'd I'd present that uh in a call with the client, I'd I'd say what it is, do the does this all sound like a good plan? Would you like our help implementing this? Great. So the two-step closer I learned from my good friend Troy Dean. So do that part of it, and then I will wait a little bit of time and just see how that lands. I'll say if after 30 days, so we try this for 30 days, if at that point you're like, look, this is just this relationship doesn't work, it's just wasn't what we expected, then it's just that one payment and you can you can leave. We can stop it there. There's no 12-month commitment at that point. Um, and then at three months we'll have another check-in. We'll we'll keep delivering. At that point, we should definitely have some results. We should uh be well and truly getting a return on investment at that point. But still, if you're like this is not the the working relationship isn't particularly good, we're not getting the results we expected. Again, at that point, you can say, like, we're just gonna leave this. But uh after three months, there is then the commitment for 12 months. We don't put that in a like, just to be completely honest, we don't put that in a legally binding contract that you have to commit to the 12 months. But we have had clients that uh have been with us for for over two years and they they continue because of the results that they were able to achieve together.

So a 30-day love it or leave it, essentially, a a three months kind of ripcord, which it really also at three months you might be firing a client because they might just be a dickhead who just doesn't approve things and doesn't give you content and just drags their feet and it's just a bad fit, right? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, because it it is it is a partnership. Like you if you're work I don't know, if you were I've never been a personal trainer, but I can imagine some clients, if you're a personal trainer, it would be very painful to work with. So there's like you you can't run on the treadmill for them, right? You can't lift the weights for them. You can be there, you can be screaming, you can be doing all the things, and if they're not getting results, it's just it's just not a good fit, and it's not gonna make you look good. So, like, what's the relationship with your client where it's gonna make you both look good? Like, let just make your life easier by working with people because there are many out there, many great businesses, many fantastic marketing managers um to to work with that you'll be a great team. You don't have to drag them kicking and screaming.

I want to talk about AI in a minute, but before we get there, how well dialed in is your ideal client profile? Like, if a client turns up on an issue on an on an initial call, are you in a position to say, look, we're just not right for you, and here's why? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, uh how dialed in, I mean, I feel like it's about a five out of a ten dialed in, but I can pick it very easily on the sales goals. Uh clear with goals. Uh, they're typically a service-based business in Australia, and that they have they have growth goals. Like they want to grow. They're not just looking for like a pretty website or something like that, or someone told them they need one. They are actively investing in growth and they're looking for someone to partner with to help them grow. Uh, they've usually got uh a couple of staff, like they've got a marketing manager, but they've got more of a team. It doesn't matter how big their marketing team is, but they've typically got a marketing manager, a bit of a team. It's rarely a one-person operation. We just don't with the team that we've got, it would just uh typically cost too much to be able to get a return with what they have to work with for someone who's um just starting or quite small or doesn't have funding.

And when you say service-based, is it professional services, B2B, is it B2C?

What are we talking like dog washing services or accountants or financial planners or uh a lot of like technology services like MSPs, cybersecurity, uh there's some manufacturing, 3D printing and prototyping, engineering. Uh, those are some industries that yeah, we do a really good job with, typically because they're not amazing with design or communication, great with good words, great with technical specifications. Yes, like they would use like the you know, like the hex color picker to pick a blue, and then it's like blue and yellow and green, and it looks awful. And they're like, Oh, we did our own website. What do you think?

I'm like, Yeah, yeah, it's good. 1994, we come. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Are you open to putting that in the bin and starting again? Yeah, yeah. Love it now. Also, you you've you've been on the record and mentioned this publicly, so I'm not talking out of school here, but you've grown significantly over the last recent period of time. And based on and I'm not going to take credit for this because you guys have done the work, but you what the what I the message I'm trying to get across here is that pay discovery and growth plans have been a key factor in the growth of seriously good design, right? Yeah, big time.

Yeah, it and for our clients as well, thankfully. So it's been a massive for our growth, but we're also writing on on their growth because we uh aren't able to grow if we're not getting results for them. So the growth plans have really helped us. Well, the digital strategy roadmaps have helped us significantly with our sales pitch and our ability to uh go beyond writing a proposal for a project, but giving our clients like a meaningful, useful plan that will help them even if we don't implement it for them. But then, of course, it makes sense for us to implement it for them using growth plans, and that has been able to increase our recurring revenue. It's gone from instead of being project to project, from our point of view, it's fantastic because recurring revenue. From a client's point of view, we don't have to continuously negotiate scope. What is this? How much would this cost? What do you think about building this? Who's driving this? Let's create the strategy once. Let's put the destination into the GPS and then let's just go. Let's just do the directions and do the thing for 12 months. And let's just work on that. Come back to the plan. You've got a new idea, let's come back to the plan. Let's stay on track. Has something changed? Have the goals changed? Okay, cool, let's park that for later.

Yeah, new new destination in the GPS if the goal has changed, right?

And that's okay. We need to reroute. There's lots of changes that need to be made if that's a new destination. But yeah, usually won't be. So let's stick with the plan and keep executing on that. And just with that, it means decision has been made in advance.

Correct. Correct. It also makes it I learned this from Brendan Temple, one of our agency owners based in South Africa, is doing very well with paid discovery and growth plans. And he said it's actually made his team super happy because his team now know what they're supposed to be working on from one week to the next, and they're not just running around like headless chooks trying to manage expectations and keep clients happy who are screaming at them.

Yeah, big time.

Yeah. Is it easier for you guys to manage stuff internally now because the decisions are made in advance?

Yeah, well, I mean, I'd love to say yes. And if Ismay was listening to this, she'd be I'd be interested to know. Take she's uh very, uh, very forthcoming with like, oh, cool, we're we're shifting things around. Let's let's execute on this plan and um and being adaptable and resourceful. So, like, massive thanks to the team as we've been making some shifts. Uh, so it's helped to make that decision in advance so the team know what they're doing for the entire 12 months. Uh, it has been a change in a useful way because we've been very, very much web project and like custom web builds for for quite some time. The team are learning, uh, they're becoming more T-shaped. Where they've been specialists, now they're learning a lot more around SEO and conversion optimization. It's helping lift the game of the entire team. So um I wouldn't say it's been like completely smooth in making that happen, but it's uh it's just lifted the game and the results that we're able to do across the whole team.

Love it.

A little bit of yes, a little bit of no.

Love it. Um, for those listening, by the way, there are two programs that we have. One is called the paid discovery method, the other one is called the growth plan method. We will put links wherever this is uh you're listening to on our website, you can go and check it out and uh grab those trainings and implement exactly what Simon's been talking about here. Hey, let's talk about AI for a second. How are you using AI to, you know, develop strategies, implement things, answer questions, augment your process. How are you using AI and what do you see happening with AI over the coming months?

Yeah, so we've got kind of a filter for how we decide when and when not to use AI. And that's uh again coming back to that, like activity does not equal results. Like AI, kind of like automation, it'll just get the result that you're getting like faster and easier. So if you're writing content and it's getting a result for you, like if you're writing copy, you're writing emails, and you're getting sales, AI will help assist with that process of getting that result. But if you're writing content and you're posting on social and it's getting you no results, AI will help you get no results faster. It'll help you get nothing and you'll just be doing more stuff and like going deeper down the rabbit hole and getting no results. I don't think it's like the thing that you, oh, you introduce AI and you introduce a new channel for results. I think it's like an accelerant for what's already happening.

Yeah.

Like automation, right? Exactly, like automation. So from a marketing perspective, we've got like the message. So that's like the offer of the business. So there's there's some kind of message. And before the internet, there was a message that would leave someone's mouth and into someone's ears, and they would hear the offer. Like, what is that? So that would be like a one-to-one distribution. In-person, not very scalable, and the you know, the in like megaphones has introduced made that bigger.

Daughter salesmen selling encyclopedias and vacuum cleaners like one-to-one.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Radio, television, that makes that bigger. The internet makes that insanely huge, but it still has the message and the offer at the core of that. And if that sucks, then you're just distributing that crap message infinitely wide, and it's not going to work. So that's the thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like that's the thing to focus on the most. Not distribution of your crap offer, but a better offer, a better message, a message that works. Something that we have taught in many workshops together, uh, is this concept um called can like convert organically. Can you get someone on board with an idea and offer your message, your marketing in person on a call? Can you do that? If you can't, then like scaling that with ads, you're just gonna spend tons of money. It's not gonna help.

Yeah. So 100%.

That's the filter through which to look at AI. Again, it's results and then working backwards from there.

But you know, by the way, I ran a live stream in the Facebook group this morning. We normally get I don't know. We normally get a handful of people reaching out, go, yeah, can I have the details for this live stream? I put a post in the Facebook group yesterday, it's had over 300 comments. I said 100 comments on the live stream. I went and checked it, it's had over 300 comments. And it was because I was teaching how to use AI to build custom growth plans for clients. AI is the number one thing that you can use to start a conversation with prospects or existing clients. Go to them and talk to them about how they're using AI. And if they want to learn how to use AI, they will put their hand up, you will just have more conversations, you will book more calls, and as long as you can deliver on your promise, you'll sign more clients. It's just an it's a it's it's ridiculous, it's a crazy buzzword. It's not going away in a hurry. People are just frothing at the mouth for information on AI. And I actually think talking about growth plans, I actually think one of the smartest things you can do is actually help your clients put together an AI strategy, how you're using AI over the next 12 months, and maybe starting with a filter like, is this going to make the boat go faster? Or are we just amplifying something that's not working? People just aren't having these conversations. They're not thinking about AI this way. They're just using AI to try new tactics and see what works, and that's not a strategy. So, from a tactical point of view, like what are some of the AI tools that you're using? Come on, feed the lizard brain. What are some of the AI AI AI tools or things that you're doing to help your process?

Yeah, okay. So one of the uh I'm using AI every day, using it all the time. So uh just the lizard brain can just wait for one moment. But the thing to start with is like what is getting a result in your business and how can you do that faster, cheaper, better? So sticking with something like sales in the sales process. So thinking about the digital strategy growth plans, uh, before researching a client or getting on a call with a prospect, I will use AI to do some research about them before jumping on. Um and it'll be something like I don't have a very fancy way of doing this, but I've got a little bit of a prompt. And if I don't have it here, I will just make it up because it's very not fancy. Uh it's I typically use the be as if prompt prompt at the beginning. So be as if, exactly what I'm doing. Be as if you're a digital agency owner, you're about to get on a call with a sales call with a prospect, uh, and you want to do some research. So you're identifying their competitors, uh, what's important to their business, and a little bit about their target audience. So go look at this URL and come back with concise summary of um these details to prepare for the sales call. It'll go and do that and give me a concise summary. And I've done that tons of times. So I put it in the same thread in Chat GPT and it'll use everything I've already talked about as context. That's not particularly. So one thread for each client, or you know, you do that right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because it'll take that into context. And at some point it starts to um use there's a bit of a mix of messaging and you can start a new thread from there. But I like to keep it, keep it in one um so that that prompt and it just gets better at um retrieving those results. That information. So that's like a non-fancy, super easy way to use AI in something that works that gets a result. So that's a sales call. I've got to do that. That contributes massive value to the business, saves me time, I enjoy it. That's a good win. I also am using AI as I've talked a lot with the the Mavericks um community when I'm delivering the digital strategy roadmap as well. That's a key part of that process. And there's there's a lot of prompts that I've I've shared with the community, there's templates that we've got in there about how to really accelerate uh the research before the workshop as well as after the workshop, putting together that strategy in a clear, concise way. So there's beyond what we could talk about in this podcast, but there's tons of prompts. Um, and I've basically just spoon-fed my entire process um uh in there. So go check that out if you're um if you're in Mavericks. And if you're not, then hopefully Troy may give some free stuff, or maybe not, but join. What else are we talking about? AI? Yeah, love it.