SPEAKER_01 0:00

If you can make your workplace or your business or your offering more appealing than where they are, they'll move, right? And but they've just got to know about it. So you, I think right now is where recruitment has become a game of marketing, right? So you've got to learn how to market your business, market yourself and your offering. And then when it comes to keeping them, it is once again remembering that money, whilst it might be in the top 10 or top five for some people, it's not number one.

SPEAKER_03 0:26

If you have a vision for the agency you want to build, then we want to help you build it. Welcome to the Agency Hour Podcast, brought to you by Agency Mavericks.

SPEAKER_04 0:35

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the Agency Hour Live here in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group, and we are streaming this morning from our brand new studio in Melbourne. If you're listening to this as a podcast, I strongly, strongly recommend you get on over to the Digital Mavericks Facebook group so you can have a look at the video. Of course, this is a video live stream into the Facebook group that we then just extract the audio for the podcast. We've built the live streaming studio. It's literally hung together with some gaffer tape and coat hangers at the moment, just to get it up in time so that we can bring you this episode of the Agent's Gower. We're very excited about it. And we'd love to hear your feedback, your thoughts, your comments. If there's something that's broken or something that's not working, or something you think we can improve, please let us know. I also have a couple of massive screens in front of me, which is great. So uh which means I can see the comments. Martin uh Satul says New Studio looks good. Uh and of course, please uh give StreamYard permission to know who you are. So if you do leave a comment, we can bring your name and your face up on the live stream like we just have there with Martin. Awesome. So very exciting. Uh also very excited to have a special guest here with me today on the agency hour. He is one of our Mavericks Club members, and he is a gentleman who started a digital agency with no intention of working in that agency apart from doing sales and building relationships. And I thought it would be a really interesting conversation to have because I know that a lot of us who start agencies actually start because we have some kind of creative or technical skill. Maybe we're a designer or a web developer, or we know how to do SEO or social media management or run ads, and we end up in an agency by accident, and then we find it very hard to get off the tools, and we find it very hard to delegate those roles to other people. Well, the gentleman that we're talking to this morning didn't have that problem because he doesn't know how to do any of those things. Well, maybe he does know how to do a little bit of it, but that was never his intention. His intention was to start an agency and then have his team do all the things and then he would just uh build the relationships and uh and make the sales. So without further ado, I'd love to welcome from DigiTLC in New South Wales, Australia, Ben Futrell. Ben, welcome to the agency hour.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

G'day, Troy, and thanks for having me, mate. It's a pleasure.

SPEAKER_04 2:53

Oh, thank you for joining us. I really appreciate your time and welcome. This is the the you're the first guest on the agency hour in our new studio.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

I feel honoured. It looks fantastic, mate. Well done, and congratulations on an awesome looking studio.

SPEAKER_04 3:04

Thank you. We were just chatting, uh we were just chatting in the green room before the show. I said to Ben, uh literally I could run this business from my car and the phone, but it wouldn't be as much fun. I have a habit of overcomplicating things. What is it when you end up when you're starting to go down a rabbit hole and you can feel yourself going down the rabbit hole and then you can't pull out?

SPEAKER_01 3:21

I think I think you're a bit like me. You like your toys, and so the studio is a bit of a playroom for you. So good on you, mate, for making that happen.

SPEAKER_04 3:28

It's been a lot of fun. And huge shout out to Max, our producer and videographer. I couldn't have done this without him. He has spent hours and hours crawling around on the floor, gaffer taping things together and making sure this all works uh for for today. So uh big shout out to Max, and it's only going to get better from here. Now, for those that don't know who you are and what you do, just give us the the elevator pitch. Who is Ben Futrel? Where are you and what do you do?

SPEAKER_01 3:50

So uh I've been um lucky enough to be in business for a long time, and so this this business, but funnily enough, this business was an accident, Digi TLC. Uh my other business is a business coaching and training business, and I had to start using digital marketing nearly maybe 15 years ago to grow that business. And as that business grew and I was sort of using agencies, I was discovering that there was a lot of them that misunderstood what I was trying to do. So I decided just to build my own internal team. And then clients wanted me to help them, and that's you know, naturally over the you know, maybe six, seven years, that it that business started to grow to a point where I went, you know what? Geez, I need to separate this out as a different business. And so that's what I did. So uh it was only about maybe just over 12 months ago that we created the separate brand and the separate business. And and today here we are, um, you know, a team of sort of 12 people, and I have been in the office twice this year. I just I don't go, I don't even live near the office. Um, where I am is two and a half hours north of Sydney in a place called Port Stevens. I was one of those uh human beings that made that part of that mass exodus when the the pandemic was on to go and live somewhere more uh appealing when you're in lockdown and have never looked back. And so yeah, so this business was wasn't meant to be, um, but I can see the opportunity. And I guess the one thing I say to most people, if you're if you're not doing digital marketing, if you're not looking after your digital assets in your business, then you know, long term you're gonna fail because that's where everybody turns now. I mean, when I I started my first business 20 something years, 30 years ago now, actually, um Yellow Pages was the place to be. Well, Yellow Pages doesn't really even exist anymore. So that's probably the quick the quick story. Um, having bought sold uh sorry, bought, built and sold many businesses, coached hundreds of businesses, and now today I still have a couple of businesses that pretty much run without my day-to-day involvement.

SPEAKER_04 5:34

So this business, the digital agency, came as a direct result of your coaching clients saying, hey, Ben, you know, you're coaching us through this staff, you're making all these suggestions, we're going and hiring agencies, they're they don't really understand what we're trying to do, they're letting us down, they're not following the methodology. Can you just do it for us? And at that point, you're not a web designer or a web builder, you don't run ads, you don't do SEO. So, I mean, you could have gone down that rabbit hole and learnt how to do that. Why make the decision to not learn how to do it yourself and actually grow a team to do it?

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Well, um, ironically, I actually did learn. So back in the beginning, I had I'd spent about $90,000 across two agencies on Facebook advertising and Google Ads. Um, I never learned the Google Ads platform, but Facebook I saw always saw as an opportunity because when I the way I built my business was through seminars. And the way I built those was I do joint venture partnerships with newspapers, and I'd go to a newspaper, usually the local ones, and I and I'd say, hey, um, you know, you want your advertisers to spend more money. They don't understand how to write good ads. So they're putting ads in, not getting results, and they're pulling out of their contracts, not continuing. Why don't we run some events for them on how to write ads that sell? Um, but then what you've got to do is you've got to give me free marketing to fill my seminars up. And so that's how I sort of filled my seminars up. So they'd they'd give me full page ads, whatever I wanted. They'd give me whatever I wanted. And we'd get maybe, you know, back then in those days, there was a phone number, 1300 something, people would ring up and they'd talk to a human being and they'd say, I'd like to get a ticket for this event. And we'd send out tickets in the mail. You know, that was this is the old days. And um, you know, we'd get maybe a hundred people asked for tickets and we'd have 150 people turn up. It was just the way it worked. And slowly what would happen was we'd end up with, you know, getting a hundred tickets, a hundred registrations, and we'd only have 30 people turn up or 20 people turn up. And I had this realization that maybe that that methodology wasn't working anymore. And then slowly the registrations was were just dropping right off with the papers. Um, and so that's when I started with the agencies. I thought, well, I've got to continue to find these people somehow. And everything was pointing towards Facebook. So that's when I started. And when they weren't getting me the results, I went, you know what, I'll just learn how to do it. And so I did. And um, you know, really the only difference that I made to it was I uh I know how to write marketing, so I know how to write good copy. And that meant that my ads worked a lot better because I got people's attention. And, you know, um, I wouldn't say I'm a master at the technical side, I'm not good with detail at all. I you know, the the technical side of stuff really does my head in um trying to discover even how to you know share a Facebook um business manager with somebody else. I just it's not my gig gig at all. So I had to hire someone to do that. And that's the first guy that I hired, his name was Pat. Um, and I believe he's still working somewhere in the digital market agents, but the guy was brilliant. He just, whatever he touched, he just turned to gold when when we created campaigns. And I'd write the copy, I'd give it to him, and he would just make it work. And we started filling up seminars again.

SPEAKER_04 8:20

Wow. And then uh so then at some point your your clients are saying, uh, can you start doing this for us? Well, you this is not your wheelhouse at this point. You're a coach, right? You're a coaching company. Did you how did you did you at some point were you nervous about being able to deliver results for your clients? Were you like, well, do we bite this off if you know if it's more than we can chew, this is not really our wheelhouse? How did you get the confidence in the service offering to then be able to offer it to clients and know that you could get them results? Because I imagine that you know there's a double barrel here. If you if you couldn't get your clients the result from the digital marketing, it could also impact the relationship that you had with them as a business coach, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:57

100%, yeah. Yeah, and that has happened, unfortunately, because I'm I'm I'm like a lot of entrepreneurs, I'm very overly optimistic about what I can do. Um, and you know, whilst I had managed to get it working for me, I probably underestimated what it took to get running for different businesses. In particular, I remember one failure I had with an organization that was an e-commerce store, and of course I had nothing to do, I had no experience with e-commerce whatsoever. Um, so you know, when they said, Can you do our marketing? And I said yes, and we it was a it was a train smash. In fact, they they you know, we ended up in a big court battle and uh having to give them a lot of money back. So, you know, by very virtue that, but but once again, uh I look at those things not as a failure, but an opportunity to learn. Um, now fortunately, that person wasn't also a coaching client, so it didn't cost me that relationship. Um but of course we had a negative review, we had a very negative experience, and I don't want anyone to have a bad experience. I I really genuinely want to help somebody uh get results, you know, like most of us do. We don't ever really plan on upsetting somebody. Uh, but that was a real um eye-opener for me to go, hang on a minute, we need to either choose our customers more carefully and only do the things that we know that we can do, uh, or we need to upskill our team to get to be able to do those things. And I'm more about seizing the opportunity than walking away from it. So at that point, I went, you know what, I've just got to find the right people to help me do this. And so I've done that now. Um, I've got some amazing people, and and the the guy that I have running our ads is just incredible. Um, uh Kevin is is is my main guy. He runs the the PPC parts of all the campaigns. And when you've got someone who just lives and breathes it and understands it and is passionate about it, they you know, they will spend their nights rather than watching Netflix, you know, watching tutorials or being on you know webinars and reading books and trying new things, and um, and that's what this guy's like. So I know that that we don't have that issue now, but back then it definitely was an issue.

SPEAKER_04 10:47

How did you find Kevin? I'm I'm curious. What you what's your process for for putting base out and getting the right fish to pop their head up?

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Yeah, so I've used uh the Upwork platform a fair bit for recruiting, and um you know, I probably should say this quietly because I don't like you taking people off of their platform and and hiring them directly. But I quite often give little jobs to people on there, and then when I find someone who's really good, I'll start building a relationship with them outside of the platform. Now, I've actually um it took us a while, I think, for us to convince him to come off of the platform because he didn't want to upset them, and I think he had a fair bit of work with them until we could sort of give him the guarantee that we would we'd be give him the work that he needed and pay him the way that he wanted to be paid, and the work working conditions is more important than money anyway, you know. So um the way our team works, he's actually remote. So he was in Sydney during the lockdown. He said, I can't do this anymore, I need to get out of Sydney, I'm gonna go travelling. Is that okay? And he's he has not returned back to Australia yet. I think he's in France at the moment. So yeah, so we've got a team member that and it and the clients don't know that, they've got no idea where he is. Um and he just does his work when he when he's awake and and just it just gets done. It works really well. So yeah, so Upwork is where I found him. Typically, I wouldn't do it do it that way. Um, that's not my typical recruitment method, that's how I found Kevin.

SPEAKER_04 12:01

So right. What what is the typical recruitment method?

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Uh so what I've done in in in traditionally is like a lot of people, I've used Seek, LinkedIn, you know, just to have different advertising. But that you know, I think when you look at recruitment as a whole, only five percent of the population is actually actively looking for a job. So, and I know it's fine. The people that are actively looking out of that, there's a high percentage of those people that have lost their job not because they've left, but because they've underperformed. Yeah, so I'm a big believer that you've got to go hunting, and so there's 75% of people that aren't looking but are actively interested. So, you know, I'll ask people in my network. Um, Facebook ads actually worked really well for us. You know, I've hired quite a few people through running Facebook ads uh and putting that in front of uh what I think is the right target market. Um, and quite often people will share that with people that they think might be ideal for the role. So that's worked well. Um, the other thing is I have used a uh a service called Bean Sorted, uh, which was really quite effective as well. It's uh a guy that I know quite well, James Michael. He runs this, it's it's not a recruitment agency as such, it's a recruitment system uh that just leverages your time. I'm a great believer in not working very hard. When people say, What do you do? My my default answer is not very much or as little as possible. Uh, because I believe if you work in the business or you spend too much time trading your time for money, it's very limited. So I look for anything I can that's leveraged. And so James had this really leveraged system where he would put he would write the ads, place the ads, you know, filter the applicants and just give me the top three to ten people to talk to. So that works really well. That was probably the default system. I mean, I've tried many different things. Um most recent hire has come through you guys, which has been brilliant. So we did that through the the uh team uh accelerator uh system, and your your guys did a great job at uh at finding me somebody as a sales assistant because I'm starting to leverage myself out of the you know the sales role in this business. So there's you know, I really think there's just no one answer to recruitment, unfortunately. I wish there was, because I know we're not looking for that silver bullet, but uh I think you just need a good solid onboarding process when you do find a candidate.

SPEAKER_04 13:56

Yeah, I'll come back to that in a second. One of the things uh about LinkedIn that I learned a long time ago was the uh one of the just a little tactical thing here to um kind of see if people are interested or looking for a new opportunity on LinkedIn is you find someone who fits the profile, you find someone who who on paper they look like the perfect candidate. And instead of asking them point blank if they're looking for a new opportunity, uh uh I think it was Dale Bowman, actually. I I might have learned this through one of his uh programs, is that um you you you reach out to them and ask them if they have any colleagues that are looking for a new opportunity because this is what you've got to offer, in the hope that they put their hand up and say, actually, what didn't you why haven't you thought about me? Um and that's worked really well uh in in a lot of cases for us. Um but I think you you're right, you do have to play the numbers game, and I think people who are, you know, the the best people to hire are the people who who are really good but a little bit bored or not getting a lot of meaning out of their current role and looking for a new challenge. Not the people who are unemployed, they're not the best per they're not the best people to look for because as you said, there's probably a reason they're unemployed.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Agreed, agreed. Yeah. And I think um you you've hit the nail on the head. There are a lot of people out there that are great at what they're doing, but what happens, you know what they say, that's saying um what is uh familiarity breeds contempt. Contempt, yeah. And I think that can be two-way, whether it's the employee or the employer. Yeah, and it's easy just to uh, you know, for a business owner or even a manager to maybe not even uh I won't say the word not care, but no longer nurture that relationship with their employees. And that's uh I think it's important as a leader to continue to nurture those relationships. So there's a lot of people out there that are feeling a bit despondent because they're not getting that nurturing, they might not be feeling um as as as uh uh valued in the organization because newer people are always naturally needing more you know work and more attention than existing people, and and it tends I think they do tend to just end up in the background and not being appreciated as much. And so there's an opportunity if you're an employer that has great working conditions, I think, to put that out there and show people you know that you've got that and people will want to work for you. And it's not it's never about the money. I saw a list yesterday, funnily enough, I was uh on another podcast I run for the collision repair industry, I was talking to a guy that had just done a series of breakfast seminars on recruiting in that industry, and he'd done the stats in that industry on why people uh leave a job, and money was number seven. Number one was working conditions.

SPEAKER_04 16:28

Wow. So I I don't know whether I can't remember whether it was Stephen Covey or or who it was, but I read this book like I don't know, a long time ago 20 years ago, and it it was uh it was about what motivates human behaviour. And the top three things that motivate employees, in order, were a a cause that they believe in. So think about people who volunteer for a charity. They're they're not getting paid at all, right? But they do it because they believe in the cause. A leader they respect, and money was the third thing that motivates people to either switch jobs or or hang around. You mentioned your onboarding process, and I want to come back to kind of working conditions in a minute, but you mentioned your onboarding process. What happens when someone is on board at a DGTLC? How do you make sure that they hit the ground running and that they're set up for success from day one?

SPEAKER_01 17:13

So I think the the the short answer is we systemise the role before we hire somebody. Um, because there's too many people, and and I learned the hard way. You hire somebody that you're not really ready for, your business is not ready for, and it's going to consume a lot of my time trying to get them up to speed. So uh, for example, this new sales assistant we just started before her first day, you know, she had a login with video training to do and video training that I've done uh, you know, some time ago, but it's the same training. It's instead of how to talk to a client, what questions to ask, how to overcome objections, all the standard things that we need to have. Um there's an it was an introduction to the entire team through our, you know, we use Teams. So there was an introduction so they know who everybody is. So there's like an induction process. Um, some of the team then are responsible for helping the new person understand, you know, where to find things, you know, what to do if you're sick or if you're on a day off, or how to, you know, how to access things, what what happens if I can't log into my my CRM? So I'm because I don't want those questions, right? So um all that stuff is systemized and then making it just really clear. So what are the the KPIs for the position? And I know you guys have the job scorecard, which I've now adopted in my businesses because we didn't have it that clear. Um, and I love the way that you lay that out. So it's really simple for them to know, you know, how are they measured? And and that when you look at one of the, I think that's Stephen Covey, I think it isn't that Stephen Cave book. Um, he talks about one of the reasons that people are dissatisfied in their role is they don't know whether they've done a good job or not. Yes, and so that scorecard makes it really clear whether or not you you're on target or not. And uh and and it's not about the person then, it's about the targets, it's about the the role responsibility rather than the person. So it takes the emotion out of it. Um and so we we use that as well when we're onboarding. So the onboarding series uh process takes I mean anywhere between uh one week and four weeks, depending on the role um that we have. You know, when we've onboarded a coach into our coaching business, it's a four-week induction process, you know. So it just depends on, and that's that includes things like sitting in on sessions with other people, and you know, and I think so. I think I think that onboarding process is more important than the recruitment process, to be honest with you.

SPEAKER_04 19:20

Oh, definitely. What what happens in the first, you know, let's say we're 21 days in and you just know that this person is not gonna work out? What how long do you give yourself and them to actually say, okay, this is gonna work, or it's it's a go or a no-go? And then if it's a no-go, what how do you handle that situation? I'm making an assumption that there are times where it's a no-go, so I'm making all sorts of assumptions. If you do figure out in three weeks, oh, this is I mean, this is terrible, I've have to get rid of this person. What what what's the timeline on how do you handle that?

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Well, I've been in business for 31 years. I can guarantee you I have made that mistake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and and you know what, in the early days, I made the mistake of holding on to the wrong person for way too long.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

And I and I wouldn't be the first person to do that, I can guarantee you.

SPEAKER_04 20:09

No, you're not.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Um, and so these days I'm a big believer of you're hire slow, you fire fast. And so if if something's not going well, you need to be open and honest and communicate very clearly that they're not achieving what they're what they're supposed to achieve. Um, on the same token, though, if somebody does achieve something, make sure you let them know. Um, and there's a book by Ken Blenchard called uh Well Wail Done. Um and that's about catching people doing something right. And I don't think enough people do that because sometimes when they they might be doing more wrong than right in the beginning, but if you pat them on the back as well as you know, give them the odd you know, kick up the butt when they do something wrong, you'll find that that could help them and encourage them to do more of what's right because we're all um trained, like we're trained animals, really. We're mammals, we're we're we've got this thing called operant conditioning. And so if you if you don't condition people properly, if you don't treat people properly and treat them like and I'm talking about treat them with a treat, like whether it's a compliment or it's a bonus or something when they do something good, then they're less likely to want to do that again. So I'm a great believer in that. Having said that, if they're just not getting it and they're not going to get it, and you know that within a few weeks, you just need to cut your losses and move on and find somebody else pretty quickly. Um, but I'm a big fan of the deselection process. So I will say something like, uh, okay, so your goal is to do X, like let's say it's a salesperson. I might say, Look, your goal was to book 10 sales appointments a week, you're booking two sales appointments a week. If I was, if you were me and and and I was you, what would you be saying to me right now? And then I let them tell me what they think I should be saying to them. And they'd be saying something like, Well, it's not very good unless you lift your game up, you're not going to keep your job. Okay, well, that's probably what I'm gonna say. So what are you gonna do in the next week? Or, you know, how long do we how long do we keep this going before, you know, if you were me and I was you, how long would you give me to achieve these goals? And then like a week or two. So, okay, great, let's give it away. It 14 days, and in 14 days, if you don't do it, then let's call it quits.

SPEAKER_04 22:04

Yeah, wow, that's great. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

They've deselected themselves.

SPEAKER_04 22:07

Yeah, I'm totally stealing that. Um, it's like it's not me, it's you, but I need you to know that. I need you to say it's not me, it's you. Yeah, it's great. Um, Alan.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

I don't know if you've listened. Did you ever listen to that thing that Alan Pease did many, many years ago? It was called Questions Are the Answers.

SPEAKER_04 22:23

No.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Brilliant audio. It goes for about 30 minutes. You'll find it on YouTube if you Google it. Alan Pease. Um, he I I think he did a bit of work with network marketing groups, and he did this presentation called Questions Are the Answers, where it was about recruiting people in network marketing. But one of the things that he said he says in that is if they say it, it's true. And so I've always taken that with me in any conversation where I've got to negotiate, whether it's a sale or an employee, or if they say it it's true, if I say something, you can argue with me. If I say you're not performing, they go, hang on a minute, I am. If they say I'm not performing, then for them it's it's now true, right? So that's I've just adopted that.

SPEAKER_04 22:57

Yeah, I love it. It's great. Uh Keenan Gap Selling, one of my favourite sales book of all time, he talks a lot about that as well. He's like the the art to good sales is to ask lots of questions and actually get them to decide that you are the best solution for their problem. Um, was it Whale? What was the book by Ken Blanchard? Whale Done. Whale Done.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

As in a whale, like you know, like that up there on my shelf. A whale.

SPEAKER_04 23:21

Whale done. Whale done. All right, we'll we'll put a link to that somewhere here at Whale Done by Ken Blanchard and Alan P's questions are the answers. Yeah. Great. We'll make sure we link to both those resources. Now, you've onboarded someone, they're they're they've hit the ground running, it's all looking good. How do you keep them from because at the moment we had this conversation yesterday on the Velocity Call with our Mavericks Club members, is that hiring staff is bloody hard at the moment because the labour market is so tight because there's less than 4% unemployment. People aren't sitting around looking for a job. And those that do want a job, particularly here in Australia, and I know I might offend some people here, but I don't care. We're we're cost of living is very high. It's the we have the most unaffordable property in the world. Everybody wants to buy their own house because of COVID. They want their little patch of dirt and they want to stay away from everyone and they want to, you know, have that security and the safety. We're an entitled bunch. We're pretty bloody lazy Australians in terms of our work ethic. I mean, Ben has admitted here when people say, What do you do? he says as little as possible, right? Um We're a nation of convicts that have become a nation of quarrymen. We love digging up the dirt and flogging it internationally because it's easier than thinking. And frankly, it's very bloody hard to hire Australians because our expectations and what we want to get paid and how hard we want to work are just completely ridiculous. So once you find what once you find someone, and I'm sorry if I've offended any Australians out there, but Steve Shit, that's the truth. Uh, once you've hired someone, how do you keep them and how do you stop another agency coming in and offering them another 30 or 40 grand a year and stealing them?

SPEAKER_01 24:54

That's a great question. First first of all, I'll address one things like there's no there's not a skills shortage, right? There's there's the same amount of people. There's just less uh, I think like you said, there's less people moving from role to role. So I think from that point of view, if you can make if you can make your workplace or your business or your offering more appealing than where they are, they'll move, right? And but they've just got to know about it. So you I think right now is where recruitment has become a game of marketing, right? So you've got to learn how to market your business, market yourself and your offering. Um, and then when it comes to keeping them, it is once again remembering that money, whilst it might be in the top 10 or top five for some people, it's not number one. And so I really believe that working conditions is so important and it's about the relationship that you have with each of your team members. And my team know that, yeah, I might be the owner and I might call myself the ship captain or whatever it might be, but I'm still one of the team, I'm still part of the team, and I never um I don't treat people like employees, I treat them like team members, like human beings. I tell them to put their family first before my business because that's what I would do. Um, and and their health first, that's more important than my business. I've got to just be honest with myself and go, like, whilst my business might be one of the most important things to me, it can't be to them. Um, sure, that they need to have a job. But what I'd rather do is make sure that that role is something that fits in with them, with their lifestyle. And this is probably a new way of thinking because if you think about the old way of thinking, we we were taught that you you sort of and I think it might have been in the industrial age, right? They said there's 24 hours in the day. Um, you're working people way too hard, so we're gonna limit working hours to eight hours, eight hours for fun and play, eight hours for sleep. And that's how they break the 24 hours up. You know, these days it's not about how many hours you work. I don't care what time you come to work, I don't care how long you take for lunch. What I care is what is your throughput. Did you achieve the results that we set in our 90-day plan? Because that's really what it's about. And then are you contributing to the overall vision or journey of this business? Because that's when when I bring people on, I talk about that with them and say, I don't want someone just to come in and do the job. What I want is somebody who's gonna actually contribute to the higher cause because we're trying to build something much greater. I mean, we're not actually, I don't call ourselves an agency, we're a we're a strategic marketing partner because I don't want to be branded as an agency. Because a lot of people have a preconception as what an agency does, including myself. I've been down that road. So when I hire people, I say, Well, you're you're part of a bigger cause. We're trying to change the face of what people uh or people's perception of how they work with a company like ours that is then engaged to do digital marketing because there's a perception in the marketplace by a lot of small businesses because they've been burnt by people just like me who started out and did the wrong thing. Um, and and now we need to make that right. And so people get excited about being a part of that, being a part of something bigger, knowing that they can actually contribute, that they're heard. Um, you know, a classic example, I was talking to you about it the other day on our uh group call was one of my team members created a product that is going to be a million-dollar a year product. It's already, you know, taking off like that. Um, it's already very successful, it's very leveraged. Um, and you know, without her having the ability or the freedom to come up with these ideas, maybe that would never have happened. How good do you think now that that person feels that they've contributed to the overall goal of the company by creating something that we've then gone with two hands and grabbed it and said, let's get let's give it a go. Um, you know, that's that to me, that's more valuable than what you can pay somebody. And totally um, you know, sure, from a uh uh a money point of view, we'll be rewarded for the results that we get from that because I think that's important. But I think the what's more important is being uh, you know, rewarded or being being uh recognized for the contribution to the bigger picture, you know, and I think that's what people want. So to me it's that um the abundance days that you you do with your team, I've now adopted with my team, you know, because I believe that it is about that the ability for them to be able to do what they need to do in their life to enjoy living because you know, work is not, you know, who wants to work 40 hours a week, really? No one really does. Whether you're in Australia or not, I don't I mean I know some cultures are more hardworking, but really if they could not work and still live comfortably because they had enough income, would they? Probably not.

SPEAKER_04 29:18

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Unless, unless, unless they're having a lot of fun and they're getting a lot of meaning out of it, right?

unknown 29:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:25

Like I know some people who I I mean, I had this conversation with Emily yesterday, actually, our ops manager, and she was saying, you know, if if if they won $100 million in Lotto, she'd still work because she probably she might not just work 40 hours a week, she might work three days a week, right? Because she loves it and she gets a lot of uh she gets a lot of self-worth out of it, and a lot of uh she feels in she feels valued and she feels like she's making a meaningful contribution, right? A couple of things I want to unpack here. One is there was a gr uh there was a great um podcast I heard, and I can't remember who the guest was, uh they were talking about meaningful work. And uh the story the the example was if you take someone who's only ever earned $50,000 a year and you offer them $80,000 a year, but you tell them their job is to take this stack of bricks in a car park and to build a brick wall, and that should take them two weeks. And then once the brick wall is built, they need to knock it down, move all the bricks to the other side of the car park and build the brick wall on the other side of the car park, and that should take them two weeks, and then knock that down and build it to the other side of the and so on and so forth, they'll quit after three or four weeks, they'll be gone. Doesn't matter how much money you pay them, because it's meaningless and it's mind-numbing, right? And the other thing I've learnt about parenting, which I'm just kinda I'm just gonna I'm I'm gonna weep. If we're not careful, I'm gonna weep. The thing I've learned about parenting, which is by far and away the hardest bloody thing I've ever done in my life, is I'm doing this course at the moment with this uh this woman named Amy, whose last name I can't remember, and it's all about positive parenting. And I'm reading her book and I'm doing her course, I'm down that rabbit hole because I want to be a better parent, because your kids drive you bloody nuts, right? And and you know, Max is gonna be a dad in September, and he and I have conversations all the time. I'm like, dude, like you know, you you you just it they test your patience and you just you you have to find a way to stay calm, right? Which is not my default setting, ladies and gentlemen, right? I'm not the calmest person on the planet. Like, what does what does uh Bill Burr say? His wife says he goes from zero to a hundred and he says he idles at 80. Well that I I idle at 80, right? I'm never at zero. My wife is super calm under like she'll she'll be in all sorts of trouble with the kids and it'll be absolute chaos, and she's super calm, and I'm like, I'm having a meltdown. She says sometimes it's like she's living with three kids. Uh and I understand what she means. But the thing, what I've learned in this course is there are two buckets that kids need filled every day. One is belonging, and the other is significance. And the story that you told then about the team member who's built this product, that is so first of all, making people feel like they belong to the team, but also then giving them a role where they actually feel like they're making a meaningful contribution and that they are significant, I think is super important. And as you've said, that will trump how much you pay them any day of the week. If they if they don't feel like they belong and they don't feel valued, it doesn't matter how much you pay them, they're probably going to move on and look for another opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

And that's a good example because you know you use that building the brick wall example, but really, like if you've got someone who's managing social media, it's a bit like that, isn't it? Uh once the month's over, they're scheduling all the social media for the clients for the next month and then for the next month, and then for the next month. So they do they do need more than that. And you and you you'd mentioned uh volunteer work as well. Um, you know, I've done volunteer work. My wife just left, she's off to the koala sanctuary up here to go and clean up koala poor in the you know in the koala sanctuary for free. Uh, but because it's meaningful, because she knows she's making a contribution to the koalas. I think you're right. I think that is a big part of it, and that's that is about building a great team, is giving them some sort of sense of belonging. And I mean, children are are children, and raising kids is definitely a great learning experience for then leading a team because as people, I don't think our needs change that much from when we're three to when we're 33, to be honest with you.

SPEAKER_04 33:25

Yep. Yeah, yeah, I agree. You said you use Microsoft Teams. I'm curious about some of the mechanics in how you actually uh because you're you you were all in the office pre-pandemic, right? And now you're all working from home and you've kind of stayed that way. Is that right? Do you still have a team in the office or are they all working remotely now?

SPEAKER_01 33:43

So so a couple of people have gone back into the office, uh, but most of our team are not in the office. In fact, we've got a team member that lives within, I think, maybe 15 minutes drive of the office who started on the very first day where they announced that team members had to work from home. And um, so she had half a day training in the office and then went home. And this is the one that's just created this product. And I said to her, her name's Charlene, and I said, Charlene, you know, when when the sort of pandemic settled down, I said, You can go back in the office now. She said, I don't want to. I said, That's fine. Um, and that was my realization. And but the next thing was at that same time I was trying to recruit, I had somebody that that was uh applying for a role and always sort of you know dig around to see where they're leaving, where they're leaving. And I said, What you know, what's going on with your current role? Why aren't you happy there? And they said, Well, they're trying to make me go back into the office. And the role that I advertise was work from home or office. Um, because if you looked I on that stage when I was looking for the I can't remember what I was, I was looking for that, so I was looking for a new um client success manager. Yeah, and yeah, and and I looked on the ads on Seek, and there was more ads of people to be able to work from home than there was for coming to the office. So I think a lot of companies had got under the the benefit of that. And and so to answer your question, yeah, we've got two people in a big office down in Sydney. Some days we have more in that because clients still go there and have meetings with me, you know, because we've got at both businesses in there, but yeah, most of them are just working from home now. Or you know, from you said before you can work out.

SPEAKER_04 35:10

How do you foster that culture of giving people praise and giving people kudos and and you know, patting people on the back, and not only from you, but from team members giving each other praise and kudos. How do you do that in a remote setting? I'm curious about the tactical way. Like, first of all, how do you encourage team members to do that? And then what are the mechanics? How do you actually do that if if you're all working remotely?

SPEAKER_01 35:34

It hasn't been easy because it's it's a natural thing to do when you're all face to face and people overhear things and that you know they'll they'll be high-fiving going, I'm on a sale happens or something. So, what we've had to do is we've got a few different communication groups set up inside teams where there's more than one team member in there, depending on who it is, there's one for the entire team, and then there's different sectional ones. Um, we actually bring our two businesses together uh as one team in a whole for something. So, you know, just to get them all together so they feel like they're part of something bigger. Um, you know, when I do go down to Sydney, uh, we go to go to a lunch. Um, and in that in that team channel, when somebody does something well, quite often we'll make it a public thing. So where we'll say, congratulations to this person, you know, give them a big, you know, um, you know, high five, virtual high five, and they'll share funny gifts and things, you know, that like uh you know, that tiger that goes great or whatever, you know. And same thing when somebody does something well, I do the same thing in Teams, you know, I'll send them a message and say just want to let you know that, you know, for example, I had one with the new sales assistant yesterday, she booked a really good meeting for me. I sent her a message in Teams and said, you know, this is um, you know, this was a great meeting, thank you. And I sent a funny gift with it, you know. So it just brings a bit of fun to the whole thing. And she was really, you know, really stoked that I took that time out to do that. Um, so you've got to remember to do that. The other thing I did at the beginning of the pandemic, I started a Friday afternoon drinks on Teams. You know, and and it worked really well. And when I first started, this is gonna be a flop, you know. And I said, it's not mandatory, you don't have to come, but if you want to turn up with your favourite drink, and we'll just, you know, there's no agenda, we're just gonna hang out for an hour. Hang out. Yeah and so Friday afternoons, three o'clock, I would just jump onto Teams. I'd have a different, I love my craft beer, so I'd have a different craft beer and we'd just hang out. That worked really well. So sometimes I think you've got to think outside the stuff.

SPEAKER_04 37:20

Yeah, yeah, talking about not work-related stuff. Um again, so you just remind me of another another podcast I was listening to recently where they uh talking about the daily huddle, which is something that we do here, but she was saying one week, one day a week on the daily huddle, they're not allowed to talk about work. They just talk about whatever's going on. And she said it's just a that brings the team together and it actually makes them care more about each other as human beings. And the more you care about each other as team members, the harder you'll work for each other. Right? And it's been a really we I I noticed that when we went to the Philippines and met our team, and then we all went to Thailand in 2018 for a team retreat. Well, after that team retreat, it was it was a game changer because we all came back and you actually know you you've actually hung out, you've you know, you've been hung over together, you've laughed together, you've done Thai cooking classes together, you've had those experiences, and you actually just care about each other more as a human being. And I think that's so we use a thing called Daily Bot that integrates into Slack and we do a similar thing uh where we uh one of the things in DailyBot is that you can give each other kudos. So, you know, Max could give Dioza kudos for doing something great, uh, and and by the way, no one ever gives me kudos. I haven't not received kudos once in Daily Bot, ladies and gentlemen. Okay? Just putting it out there. No one has ever given me kudos in Daily Bot.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Thanks so much for each uh not being I need a hug.

SPEAKER_04 38:48

I give kudos to people all the time, and they give each other kudos. No one's ever given me kudos, but that's okay, it's fine. Um and that's actually not uncommon. I was listening to uh the um the uh that was another podcast I was listening to with a guy uh who runs a large, might have even been Atlassian or one of those, like a really large organization. And he said when they introduced, they introduced a gift card thing where you could actually give each other a five-dollar Amazon gift card for doing something great in the business. And he said they'd given away like, I don't know, twenty thousand dollars in in Amazon gift cards in the last 12 months, and the CEO hadn't got one from anyone. Damn. That backfired. Um so I think but I think the it it's this stuff doesn't happen by accident, does it? I think it's you have to be intentional about building this kind of culture because if you don't have that this culture and a larger agency, and we've seen this happen all the time, when a larger agency comes along and offers one of your team members another 15 or 20 grand a year, they'll go because even though we've said money's not important, if they don't have meaning, they don't have great work conditions, they're just they feel a bit invisible, they don't feel valued, the extra money is sometimes what will make them go to a large and larger agencies have been doing that for the last 18 months here in Australia, just going around and trying to snap everyone up, and it's become really hard to get staff. Um how do you know who to hire next in in the agency?

SPEAKER_01 40:13

So that's um to me, that's a a relatively simple um thing to solve in any business. And the way that I do that is when when you set up a business, I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is when they when they start a business, it's because they're good at something or they're passionate about something, and so they'll do the work, they'll work in the business in that role, and then they'll get busy, and then they'll go, I need to hire someone to do something to help me because I'm so busy. Instead, if you if you start at the beginning and you actually engineer what it's going to look like when it's finished, you can actually have all the roles mapped out. And so when I started the business, I did that. I said, Well, what are all the different divisions of the business? And I've got this uh real simple way of looking at a business of four key areas lead generation, sales, client fulfillment, or delivery, and then the business and admin side of things. So there's those four areas, and you start off probably being the manager of all four, but at some point you've got to say, Well, what am I where where am I valuable to the organization? And I'm I love being in the marketing and sales side more than the delivery side. So I go, okay, well, for me, I've got to start leveraging some of those roles off. And in in particular, I don't know how to run Google Ads or I don't know how to run uh or do web development. I'm not a designer, so I I've got to go and find those people. Um, and so you know, I start looking at the roles and go, what can I not do whatsoever? What where's where where is where am I least valuable? Let me go and find people to do those things. And then what do what do I enjoy doing the most? And I've got this chart that I that is easy, it's like a nine grid. So if you get it square and you draw two lines vertically, two lines horizontally, and you end up with nine squares equally, write skill on the left and fun on the bottom, and up the top is high skill or low skill down the bottom, low fun and high fun, and start putting all your different tasks in that little chart. And anything that's low skill, low fun, get someone else to do that first. Yeah, because you're not going to enjoy doing it. Um anything that's high skill, high fun, of course, if you enjoy doing it and it's and it requires your skill, then keep doing it. Um don't my my thinking is you don't want to do anything that's not fun. And and I'm the same for my team. I say if you're if there's something in your role you're not enjoying doing, let me know. Because if you have to continually bang your head against the wall on a daily basis or weekly basis, it is gonna grind you down. So, you know, I'm a big believer in finding the things that I'm least valuable doing that I can systemize easily and I can hire somebody else to do and pay, you know, an hourly rate that is is not worth me doing. So, you know, whether it's like bookkeeping is a classic example. I see so many people doing their own books. I suck at bookkeeping. I'm I failed maths. There's no it's no value in me doing the bookkeeping, especially when I can pay somebody $50 or $60 an hour to do it. I think I pay $75 an hour. Yeah, they they're always gonna do it faster than me because they enjoy it. So maybe they'll do it three times quicker. So what would take me an hour, sorry, would take them an hour would take me three hours to do. So I'm saving three hours. What can I do with that three hours? Can I go and build a system, recruit someone else, go and you know, I've just you know, it looks like I've just scored a big uh contract with a company to to look after 80 of their their uh outlets, you know, across Australia with their digital marketing. So, you know, that that took the time that took a bit of time, but I wouldn't have had that time if I was busy doing my books, you know. So leverage yourself out of those things that you can pay other people to do.

SPEAKER_04 43:31

And also I would argue that you wouldn't have had the headspace, right? Because one of the things I've learned, uh my friend Nick Thickel, who runs Leeds Hook in Sydney, uh, he said to me, when I was about to hire my first ops manager, I I was I was like, Well, what do I do? If I hire an ops manager, what do I do? I remember we're in clearly, I remember we were in San Diego, actually, we're in Carlsbad at this house having this kind of mastermind retreat where we were out there for a Michael Gerber event, which was horrible, by the way. That's a whole other conversation. But anyway, we kind of all ended up. Up just back at the house masterminding on each other's businesses. And Nick looked at me across the dining room and he said, think. I said, What do you mean? He said, Your job is to think. And I didn't understand it at the time. It took me about two years for the penny to drop. And I was like, all right. So yes, I get it now. And I would argue that if you were doing the books, you wouldn't have not only would you have not had the time to build that relationship to land that big client, but you wouldn't have even had the headspace to think about how to talk to that client and what to put in front of them and how to build that relationship because you're you're you're in the you're in the trenches, right? And there's a different part of the brain that you need to engage if you're in the trenches than if you're in the control tower. And I like being in the control tower because you can see the whole playing field and you can see all the different parts. Whereas when you're in the trenches, you're just focused on dodging the bullet that's in front of you. And it that's a that requires a completely different part of the brain. So how do you know financially that you can that you're ready to hire the next person, particularly when they are they might not be a revenue generating role? Like if they're a project manager or they're, you know, if they're not direct labor, if they're a you know management role or they're indirect labor, how do you know that the business is ready to take that on?

SPEAKER_01 45:08

So I think um that's a good question as well. I think you've definitely got to have your head uh uh uh around the numbers of your business, right? So you know you need a budget, you need a cash flow forecast. And I always say when you can afford half of somebody's wage, hire them because you'll find the other half. And a good question to ask yourself, and anyone listening to this podcast or watching this should ask themselves this if if I spent 40 hours a week or however many hours you currently work in the business, if you spent that same time working on the business, how much better off would your business be? And I can guarantee you that it would be much better off, wouldn't matter who who asked themselves that question. And and you know, most people uh need to get out of their own way. So it's as hard as it is, I think the biggest challenge, Troy, is that what when you're working in the business and you're not hiring someone else to do that work, you're trading your time for money, you're getting paid instantly, and there's that instant gratification. When you're working on the business, you're not getting paid today, you might get paid in three months' time, and that's a challenge. So you do need to be able to cash flow that. Um, so hiring people is uh is is a bit of a juggling act, and sometimes you just gotta take that leap of faith and hire someone when you when you feel like maybe you can't afford it, because even though their role might not be uh revenue generating, you just hit the nail on the head. You've got to have that time to think, and sometimes having that time to think can make the difference between whether you you know you stay doing, I don't know, twenty thousand dollars a month to going to two hundred thousand dollars a month, you know, and so um to me that's I I think the first million in any business is the hardest because it is hard to make those decisions without the emotion because you feel like it's all your money, you know, when it's the first million. You hire someone and go, I'm gonna have to give 80 grand of my money to somebody else to do a job that I can do. Um you've got to value your time more than your money, people. That's probably the answer.

SPEAKER_04 46:52

Yes, yes. Now, and also it helps when and I am I right in suggesting uh though I remember this correctly, that your business is largely built on recurring revenue. 100%, yes. Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

Yeah. I'm very big. If it's not recurring, I'm really not interested in having it.

SPEAKER_04 47:08

Yeah, right, exactly. What's the point? It's transactional. And so it makes it easier to hire people when you're on recurring revenue because at least you know with some level of certainty that in three months' time this is going to be the cash flow position. Whereas if you don't have recurring revenue and you're just billing projects, that makes it very difficult because as we know, project revenue is lumpy and you might not have the cash in three months' time to pay for that staff member.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

Yeah. And it might rely on the performance of one individual as well. So, for example, you know, I'd never own a swimming pool company, for example. Like, you know, because once you sell somebody a swimming pool, what else are they going to buy from you?

SPEAKER_02 47:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:44

Um, you know, it's a it's a very project-based business. And so that's why I did have a web development company many years ago. I gave it away because it was painful. Because if if somebody wasn't on their game, and whether that was your development team getting things done in a timely fashion or your salesperson not getting sales, you just it was it, you could have droughts for months at a time where you didn't make any money. And that was frustrating as we're at least with the reoccurring revenue model, even the months like across, like here in Australia, as you know, you know, you you mentioned before how lazy we are. You know, from December, beginning of December to the end of January, everyone just takes a holiday mentally, right? It might still be at work, but they go, Oh, it's three weeks till Christmas Eve, I'm not doing anything. So, and then January, it takes us, you know, till at least the middle of the month to start doing anything. Yeah, um, recurring revenue at least starts bringing revenue in. So you can have that confidence of knowing. Um, I would highly recommend any business that doesn't have recurring revenue to try and work out how to. You know, um, I mean, I've worked with I've worked with all sorts of businesses that didn't have recurring revenue. I had a hairdressing salon, would you believe? I can't cut hair unless you're bald. Um but but we brought in a subscription model, um, which had never been done before, right? So I said, let's create a subscription model where everyone just has a pay-by-the-month subscription. Back then we used a thing called Easy Pay, which debited from a bank account, and uh and people knew that they could just come in for their their their hair treatment once every four to six weeks and I'd have to pay for it.

SPEAKER_04 49:10

That's great.

SPEAKER_01 49:11

Um but it worked well because people didn't come in. Um I worked with a you know a cafe once. We got we were pre-selling 10 coffees at a time, and and you got 12. So instead of having the loyalty card that you where you had to pay each time, you would pay your $40 up front and get 12 coffees. This was you know 10 years ago. I was one down in Wollamaloo. Um and he said to me, Ben, sometimes I sell a 40 to 40 cup of coffee, they never come back. Not not ideal, but he said it's incredible.

SPEAKER_04 49:36

Well, it's the it's the gym business model, isn't it? You pay your gym membership and then never go. That's how they make their profit.

SPEAKER_01 49:42

Yeah, because I don't like accounts receivable either. You know, who wants to have that uncomfortable conversation?

SPEAKER_04 49:46

Yeah, it's all yeah, yeah, yeah. We're the same. We're pretty much a recurring subscription-based business model as well. We don't have and I read all I read a lot of books around business, and one of the things I talk about a lot is the the value you have in your accounts receivable. And for us, that's largely a non-issue. Do you still build websites? If a client comes to you and you're gonna do some marketing for them and their websites on Wix and you need to put it on work, or they don't have a website, do you still do that? Is that how do you how do you price that if you're a recurring business, if you're if you're a subscription-based recurring model, how do you price in those kind of projects?

SPEAKER_01 50:18

So we we do have a one-off project fee for that, or they can go onto the monthly subscription, because our monthly subscription works on a points value system.

SPEAKER_04 50:26

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_01 50:27

And so they they they'll have to come in at a level where there's enough points for us to allocate to the team to be able to carry out the work. So we might say to them, look, you need a new website first, so your website needs revamping. So for the first 90 days, that's all we're gonna do. And so they might be paying us, you know, two and a half thousand dollars a month for three months, but in that time we'll build their website. So that the design and development team will get that done. Um, alternatively, they might say, Look, I just want to pay one off for it, and then but I we tell people we don't just build websites. If we're building your website, you're committing then to going on to a monthly retainer after that for us then to do your SEO, to do your digital marketing, to do your content creation strategy, all of those other things. So we don't ever just build a website. Um because I don't want if they just want a website, I've got a friend I can refer them to. You you build websites, you go for it, you know? So the answer is yes. Um, because quite often, as you know, you you have to fix something.

SPEAKER_04 51:17

Yeah, yeah. Because a website, because a web, I mean, we've been saying this for a hundred years, but a website I I used to I used to not be able to sleep at night because I knew I was about to launch a website for a client and they had no plan. It's like, great, we're gonna launch this website. You're gonna call me in three weeks' time and go, where are all the customers? And I'm gonna say this is not the field of dreams. If you build it, they won't come. Like, this is not how it works. And so I eventually, out of out of protecting myself, started uh this is where the whole go-wide, my whole go-wide, go deep methodology came from. Because I remember a guy came to me once and said, We need a new website, and I just said, Well, hang on a second, why? And I I was trying to convince the guy, this is when I was first starting out, and I needed the money, but I knew that if I launched the website, if I took the six grand or whatever it was gonna, I was gonna charge and build a website, and I built the website, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night because I knew that he'd just wasted his money because he had no plan. Turns out he was actually looking to sell the business, so he had a very good plan, and he had a bit of a post-launch plan to just get mac massive visibility across search engines. He didn't care if customers came in the door or not, he just wanted massive visibility because he wanted the new buyer to see the visibility on search to increase the value of his business. Sold that website to him for eleven and a half grand. I would have sold it to him for three and a half or four had I not asked the question as to why he needed the website. But the reason I started asking why is because I didn't want to launch a website that got no traffic. Because I I that I would feel guilty about taking his money, right? So uh I started saying, well, why do you need a website? You sure you don't need a website, just go and you know, do some Facebook marketing or you know, uh at the time, you know, get on Twitter or whatever, like you don't need a website. And that's where eventually I realized that so for me it became websites, SEO and care plans. I wasn't in the business of running ads because I don't like gambling with other people's money and I was very bad at it and I didn't want to do that. But it was websites, SEO, and care plans was my sweet spot, became my sweet spot because I knew that without the care plan and without the SEO, the website was just a vanity exercise and wasn't actually going to produce any outcome for the business. The point system I'm curious about, like, isn't that that I don't like details either? I fall asleep when someone starts talking about the details. That sounds like a very detail-oriented business model that sounds like a pain in the ass that managed from an admin point of view. How do you structure the point system?

SPEAKER_01 53:33

So I'm extremely fortunate that my business partner loves detail. And so uh we've been in business since 2005. A lot and a lot of people don't even know I have a business partner because he sort of just uh you know work builds the systems in the background. So I say, here's my my ideal, this is what I want. He goes away and builds it, and he's a master with uh Excel and spreadsheets and stuff. So we actually have a full system now that is is we're also talking to a software development company about building it, making it available to other agencies, is the ability to be able to put together a strategic plan. Our team, uh, we we we're all built about uh our our business is built about uh around rocketry. So the logo is three rocket engines, and our success model that we use with our clients is is traffic leads and customers, which is the three engines. And um, and so when the our our digital pilot, we call them, our digital pilot does the strategy, they just select from a list in Excel and it allocates the points, tells them how many points they've used. Uh any points that are unused get carried over. The benefit to a customer is they're paying a set monthly fee. And if we take longer to do something, then that's on us. But if we can do something faster, then that's our benefit. So, for example, we might say we're gonna do content creation for you, and we're gonna write SEO articles for your website. It's two points per article, and um, you know, this is the length of the article or whatever, and how we're gonna do it. They'll pay that those two points will then get allocated. Now, if we get that done in an hour and a half, a point is roughly equates to an hour. Um, if we could have done an hour and a half, well, that's half an hour in the bag for us. But let's say we send it to the client and they go, We're not happy with that at all, you need to do some edits. It might take us two and a half hours, or we have to wear that. Um, and this this comes from um the fact that I had times where there was one client in particular where we had their e-commerce site, my team were trying to get their catalogue up onto Facebook, uh, which might be gobbledygook to some people, it is to me, but that's you know, that the there's some some um mechanism for putting people's e-commerce products on Facebook to be able to show the relevant products to uh through retargeting. Took it took eight hours or nine hours, and we tried to charge the customer for it. Um, and in the end they didn't want to pay for it. And, you know, to me that was a bit of a wake-up call to go, hang on a minute, it took us that long. Why? Why did it take that long? And it was because of difficulty with their catalog, the system they were running and Facebook not liking it and all these issues. But the reality it just soured the relationship. So I said, how can I uh prevent that from happening again? And the biggest challenge I have right now is some people go, Well, how many points is it for things? And I go, and I say we don't tell you until we do your strategy because it can change. So for example, let's say that something that used to take us two hours, all of a sudden somebody like Facebook changes something in their system that means it takes us twice as long to do, we can then amend the points in our back end. So next quarter when we do the strategy, more points get allocated to that task. Um what it means is that my team are always profitable because we have a we have a m a model which is a third, a third, a third, a third to run the business, a third to get the work done, and a third for me and my business partner. And so our business is built around that, and so that's how we we run the point system. So every point, every time we look at how a job is done, uh so at the end of the month we do like a uh a reconciliation of all the points, all the work that was done, and we work out, you know, did that task take that long? Was it longer? Was it shorter? Can we reduce some points on some things, increase on some? And that means that each month we're totally we're we're going and adjusting. Well, I'm not somebody with a lot more details doing it, like my business partner, but it's getting adjusted all the time. Um and I've got a business manager as well, Kirsten, who is also very detail-oriented, and she she dives into that stuff as well. But that just works really well, makes it easy. Um, it's easy for a customer as well because we can say to them, well, if you don't want us to do that, you can do it. So we this is where we sort of use our coaching DNA because we say to people, we don't have to do everything. And in fact, if you want to do your content creation, we'll coach you through how to do it. We'll give you the keywords, we'll give you the topics, and we'll we'll give you some instructions on how to do it. We'll put it on the strategy and make you responsible for that. So they get their their 90-day flight plan and it's broken down into monthly ones, and we say, There's the strategy. Um, you now just need to go through and you know get those things done. And if you've got any questions, ask your digital pilot and they'll coach you through how to do it, or they'll give you the cheat sheets, the checklist, or whatever to make it happen. Um, so they also can say, Well, I don't want to use those points on that, I'll do that job because I think I can do that. And then quite often they give it back to us because they work out it's harder than they thought. But yeah, that's right. Yeah, it works really well.

SPEAKER_04 57:53

Interesting. Do you have clients that have uh do your clients who engage with DigiTLC and the coaching company, are they separate engagements or are they just paying you one bill a month and they get everything?

SPEAKER_01 58:01

No, it's separate engagements. So it's two different companies and two completely separate engagements. So uh, and I've done that quite deliberately. Even when we were doing it all under the one brand, it was two different billing cycles, two different amounts, because if they're not happy with one, and I've just had this happen where a customer has decided to bring their own marketing in-house and they've got they've hired their own uh team to do a lot of the work we were doing, but they're also a coaching client. So it was, you know, instead of going, we're stopping, we're just stopping that. Got it. Um, so as an owner of both businesses, I don't lose out on everything, you know, and that's that's so important, isn't it? You know, when you build a business, it's to build in some redundancy. So you're not, you know, you don't want all your eggs in one basket.

SPEAKER_04 58:42

Uh final question uh before I let you go. And uh again, it's super appreciative of your time and your generosity in talking about this. It's really interesting and uh and very insightful. I know a lot of people are gonna get a lot out of this. How do you report in the marketing agency? How do you report to your clients so that they know you're doing a good job? This is one of the conversations I had with the Maverick yesterday. It's like, you know, would clients leave after four or five months because they can't see what we know that what we're doing is working, but they can't see it. How do you report to your marketing agency clients so that they know, oh well, this I'm I'm sticking around, I'm not, I'm not cutting this off because it's working.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

That was that was actually a difficult one because it that a lot of what you do is intangible, unfortunately. And it's a bit like like SEO is a classic example. I mean, everyone watching this probably knows enough about SEO to know that what you do today is not going to make a difference for a few months at least, right? So you've got to also have some. I use the job scorecards in starting a client up, a similar type of methodology. So we say to the client at the beginning, okay, in the next 90 days, what would be a good result when we get to the next 90 days? What would have you ringing the bell of success? You know, is is it number of leads? Is it website traffic? Is it just a better presence? Is it Facebook followers? You tell me what's important to you. Let's set the job scorecard up now. And each month that's what we'll measure ourselves against. Now we'll help you set that. If we go, we don't think that's realistic. So for example, I had a mortgage broker talk to me the other day about generating leads on Facebook, and he said, Oh, I've I've just sacked two agencies and and I said to him, okay, mate, tell me about why that is because I'm seeing a consistent factor here, and it's it's not the agencies, right? That's right. Um, and and he said, Oh, well, they're just not generating me leads for the right amount of money. And I go, okay, so tell me what you think is reasonable for a for a sale on off a Facebook lend. He goes, $30. I said, okay. I said, tell me how much do you get what's your average value of a client? And he said, Well, a mortgage is about $800,000 now, and blah, blah, blah and it's $4,000 and the trailing of all this money. I said, So you want to make all this thousands of dollars for $30. I said, mate, if I could do that, like I would have people queuing up to buy from me. I said, I can't I said, no one can do that. I said, you're being unrealistic. So I said, I'm not going to take you on as a client. So I think part of it is choosing the right client because you don't want to take someone who's got unrealistic expectations, as desperate as you might be, because you want the money. That's right. Um, and then just managing people's expectations. So the the answer is you've got to report back to them the things that are important to them. I remember one of the these one of these agencies giving me this big eight-page report that they, I think they printed out a SEMrush or something of all these numbers that meant absolutely nothing to me as a consumer. Nothing. That's true. And I used to look at it and go, what the top 100 keywords. What does this mean to me? What does it mean? What does it mean? It means nothing to me. Nothing. It's not important to me. But so that's right. It's about measuring the right things, you know. Are you getting the leads or the sales you wanted or the followers or the yeah?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:32

I had a conversation yesterday with uh someone who said their pro it was taking their project manager 11 hours a month to get all the reporting ready for the clients. And I said, okay, first of all, that's not a project manager's job, that's just that's your kind of account manager's job. But also the question is how many of your clients are actually reading those reports? Right? And I guarantee I've just freed up 11 hours a month of your project manager because you don't need to organise those reports. You don't need to organize those because no one's gonna read them. And if they do read them, it's just gonna confuse them. You just need to give them the three bullet points. This is what we did, this is what's working, this is what we're gonna do now, and this is what we need from you, right? That's it. Like if they want the detail, you can show them. Well, what are the top 10 keywords we're ranking for? Ask nobody ever. But if they did, then you can show, well, we actually do have the data to back this up, but what I'm telling you is just what you need to know and what we're gonna do next.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:25

Yeah. But the point system is also good for that because we we say to people, you're not just hiring us for results, you're hiring us for leverage. Yeah. So you could you're you're not doing your content creation on a regular basis. So instead, let us do it, and that say it frees you up to go and do something else. So we might not be getting the results, but you should be, because we're freeing your time up. So it's about it's just about having that conversation with people, making them clear as because expect just setting expectations, I think. I mean, we use that um we use Data Box, which is uh an online software, and we just create very simple dashboards of the goals that are important to them, and that's it. Yep. Very simple one-page dashboards.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:01

Sheila Heard says we tried sending Loom videos along with the reports once. Not a single client watched the videos. It doesn't surprise me, Sheila. I love it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh hey, Ben Futrell, this has been fantastic. Honor, thank you so much for joining uh the agency hour. And thank you for helping us, Chris, in the studio, too. This has been a lot of fun. Um and I feel honored. You know, this that one of the big the big takeaways for me here is that you have looked at this business from the get-go as an asset that is serving you as a shareholder, not a job that's going to allow you to flex your freelance skills. And I think that's just a really big mindset shift for a lot of people who get stuck on the tools. Um the recurring revenue uh is another big takeaway that recurring revenue just makes it easier to hire people. And I love the nine square grid of the skills and the fun. By the way, it's no accident that what is most fun is usually what you're best at. Yeah. Who wants to do stuff they're not good at? It's frustrating as hell, isn't it? Yeah. Uh super interesting. Thank you so much. Uh, appreciate you and appreciate everything you're doing, and uh look forward to uh keeping the conversation going. Thanks, Ben. Thank you, mate. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that is an episode of the Agency Hour live here in the Digital Mavericks Facebook group and live from our new studio. Uh, thank you so much for being a part of it. Give us some feedback, let us know what's working. I noticed James Murgatroyd said 10 out of 10 for continuity because this just looks like the old studio that we used to have. There is one small difference. The wall is blue, uh not white. Uh uh I'm loving it here. It's uh a fantastic space. We're just getting started. We are going to be producing more video, more audio, more content, more training for you guys. So let us know what would be most helpful, give us some feedback uh and let us know how we can best serve you. Of course, you can get this podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe, leave us a comment, leave us a review, give us some feedback, share it with people who you might think uh find will find it helpful, and let us know who you would like to see on the podcast. Uh, suggest some guests and we'll do our best to reach out to them. Alright, look forward to speaking with you again next week on the Agency Hour. I think I think we're here next week. I'm not sure. I think I might be going away. Anyway, if we're not here next week, we'll be here the week after. Until then, have a great day, everyone. My name's Troy Dean. Bye for now.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:16

Thanks for listening to the Agency Hour Podcast. Subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcast, Audible, and wherever you like to listen. You can catch all of the Agency Hour episodes on our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash agencymaverks. Or you can get involved. Check out our free Digital Mavericks Facebook group, where we broadcast these episodes live for our community every week, along with a ton of free training. We'll see you there.