Biz Bites for Thought Leaders

Business systems for growth. How to build a high performance business that runs without you. Welcome to Biz Bites for Thought Leaders, the podcast where we deliver actionable insights to help you grow your business. We discover little bits of brilliance from guests, including today’s Barry Kre, who specializes in helping business owners implement systems that create high performance businesses.

Now lots of questions that you’ve got to answer. Lots of questions that you wanna ask that I’m going to get answered. I can guarantee for you. ’cause we are gonna learn all about businesses that struggle and how to make them perform at a high performance level. We are going to match that up with ideas around athlete.

Some things that you can understand, and the fact of the matter is there are some really great insights coming out of this episode that are going to make you understand how you can perform at a high level more consistently, and how you can implement systems that can ensure that you do that and find that work life balance.

Yes, that controversial subject work-life balance. We’re gonna discuss all that whole more. Let’s get into this episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Welcome everyone to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders and we’re traveling all around the world. This time round we’re going across to Ireland and welcome Barry crying to the program. Thank you so much for being a part of it.

Thanks a million. I just need GR here.

Now we are gonna cover a lot of territory today because I’ve got some insights into what sort of things you do and what you cover, and there’s a lot for people to listen into.

But let’s just start off by allowing you to introduce yourself to everybody.

Yeah. So look at Anthony. I’m gonna high performance positivity coach for small business owners. Generally what I’m doing is put systems and structures in place for them so they can get the bulk outta themselves and therefore get the most outta their

business.

And there’s a lot to unpack when it comes to that sort of area. And I’m gonna start at the very beginning of that ’cause you talk about high performance. And we mostly refer to high performance, in terms of athletes or machinery is high performance achievable in business in the first place and what actually defines high performance?

Yeah. Look, ab absolutely. First of all, absolutely it is. It’s we can operate at different levels. It could be in sport, it could be, in a personal life, it could be in business as well. And high performance really is, it’s maximum life and what you can do with your potential, so some people are operating at a 2.0, some days they might be operating at a 8.0.

Other days high performance really is getting as close to that bar as, as close to that 10.0 version of yourself. As you can, and that, that’s where my goal is. Again, I talked about systems there and structures of without those you can never really consistently achieve your maximum.

And that’s the same in our personal lives or the athlete that’s trainer for the Olympics. They have to follow a process. They have to follow a system because when you do, you get predictable outcomes. And that’s literally what we’re, what we talk about is if you’re predictable, possible, predictable systems, you wanna get predictable outcomes.

And ultimately, if you can get the most out of yourself, then you’re gonna get the most out of whatever it is you’re doing, be it, sport or be it business as well. Co it’s absolutely 100% achievable without systems and structures. It’s up to the lap of the guards really, whether you get there or whether you, how much you get out of yourself.

When your system is in place. Correct those predictable outcomes and ultimately get as close to that 10.0 version of yourself as possible.

Before we delve into systems and perhaps some of your background to getting there, let me just ask you this question because you’ve, drawn the parallel to athletes, for example, training for the Olympics, if you are running the a hundred meters or a marathon or whatever sport it is that you are doing.

If you are not hitting that ideal, you know your best of time every single time you go out there, that just isn’t really possible. And that, in football teams as well. Commonly you’re building up to the end of season to a grand final series. That’s, it’s a matter of building up to that point.

So when you talk about high performance and the expectations of business, you can’t be going in, I imagine and expecting that you’re gonna be able to perform at that 10, 10 out of 10 level on an everyday basis because you’re going to have some buildup and some fluctuations. Yes. So

it’s like the way you look at it is it’s number one what’s, what are you going after?

So if there’s Olympics, it’s a certain time or maybe a certain place in life or in business, it’s certain goals. So what we do is we start with the end of mind and look, okay what is your goal here? What are we aiming for? And then it’s reversal engineer, it’s reversal engineering back from that point then to say, okay, what is that I need to do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis to get there?

And then it’s, yes, it is, it’s that 10.0 of where you’re at. So where you’re at now versus where you’re gonna be at six months or six years is gonna be completely different. So operating at that optimal level of where you’re at right now, so you can ultimately get there for a quicker. And you’re building in that consistency because if you have, again, if you think about it you head out the road and you don’t have an end destination in mind.

You’re gonna end up anywhere. So it’s half that end point and reverse engineering back from that to say okay, what do you think need to look like on a daily, weekly, monthly basis in order for me to achieve that end outcome? And it’s then it’s built on structures around yourself in order for you to be at that.

Best version of yourself as consistently as possible. And yes, that’s gonna change over time. That, that, that think he always listening to him and he was talking about, somebody asked him, who’s your hero in in 10 years time? And he said look at, I’ll come back to you on, I said, he met the guy a couple of months later anyways.

And he said, look at who’s your hero on 10 years time? He said, my hero on 10 years time, but it’s me. And he said I am my hero. On 10 years I’ve that future word for me. Okay. And that’s what it is. It’s like the person that you meet in five or 10 years time, that version of you is gonna be different because you’re gonna evolve.

But it’s been, that best version of ourselves from now means we’re gonna be a far better version of ourselves in 10 years time. So we’re being the 10.0 version of where we are now, and again, that’s gonna change in a year, five years. 10, 10 years. But it’s consistently being that version of our status.

Of what we’re possible, of what’s possible and what’s what we’re capable of. Right now.

Now just, I’m just gonna break for just a second there. We’re getting a little, I’m getting a little bit of dropouts there, but I’ll keep pushing on, just so you know that if I pause for a moment or two, it’s just, there seems to be a little bit of, I have to press that internet lag, but we’ll be good to press that.

Why don’t you talk to me a little bit about your background as well, because I think before we can understand how you can add the value here in this is, let’s understand where you’ve come from to get you to that point where you can actually give people this advice. So tell me where it all began for you, what was the career journey that you’ve been on?

So basically my own background basically I was a safety engineer. I worked across the pharmaceutical industry here in Ireland as a safety engineer at, that’s literally. My own background and never, like always just focused and blinkered on my own career and what I was doing. And things changed for me.

I remember I just woke up one morning. I felt like almost absolutely like symptoms, aches and pains spiraled into worsening type symptoms. Brain fog, short term memory loss, real chronic fatigue. Over a period of weeks and months, it just started getting worse and worse.

And I couldn’t really find any answers what was happening. To me I couldn’t find, any solutions because doctors couldn’t find out what was wrong with me. And I was not performing out at all. I was struggling to get ideas work done. I used to have to, lock myself in a room for maybe.

15, 20 minutes trying to rest my eyes so I could recharge myself to go again for the next maybe 90 minutes or two hours. That’s the only way I could actually get through my day as I go home that evening, fall into bed, rinse and repeat. The next day I was probably getting about one day’s work done really in every five.

So I was, really not performing for them. I was like I like number one, I can’t, I’m not doing my job effectively. Number two, I, going to struggle, struggling to find answers and solutions here to what’s actually wrong with me. And actually went on for over two and a half years, and I was like, I have to find a better way to get more outta myself, with my reduced capacity.

So I was looking out and I was like, okay, who out there is doing, what I want to do with, at a much higher level? And it was like, I looked out in industry and looked at the likes that Richard Brads and the likes of these guys, the house, Branson is over 500 companies and.

Like how does he operate in aesthetic that allows them to do that and get so much more outta the time that he’s putting in? So that’s where I went, start going down the whole rabbit hole of performs productivity. And to get an understanding of I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. What are people doing?

That, that may help me. So I started belt battle test on some of their strategy, going down the whole Robin Hole at workshops from book and seminars and YouTube and literally taking strategies, testing it, implemented it, scared what didn’t work, take what did work. And eventually I started to see some commonalities between how the best in business do live.

I started applying then to my days and eventually I got to a point where I was getting so much more outta the time that I was putting in. I was actually getting about five days work done in every one at the end and not while I was still as, while I was still sick and looking for answers and solutions.

So I was at a completely different level of performance first with where I was and I didn’t think anything I was, I just. Went about my own work. I was still knocking on doors looking for ads for solutions. Anyways, two and a half years went by and eventually I got to the point where I was like, really, I was seriously worried because it was getting worse and worse.

So I had no short term memory whatsoever. I came across a local newspaper here and there was a woman on the paper talking about how she had never touched symptoms to myself. Just through a kind of series of coincidences, I got in contact with her. She was actually getting treated for this autoimmune condition that she had at the time.

She got me in there with her consultant. I got tested and sure enough I turned out that I had the same autoimmune condition as her. So I ended up, because the, that there isn’t much specialist knowledge in Ireland. All it, I ended up at the Czech Republic for a month, basically in a room by myself, and it gave me a lot of time to pause and think about my life, and I was at that point then where I was like I have tools and systems here and I looked around thinking about the office back at home and I was like this person is operating off sticky notes and this person, has a bit of a list and this person has no system whatsoever.

And I was like, but there is a better way. Maybe people don’t realize there’s a better way. I didn’t until I had to no choice but to count that go down this rabbit hole. So I started documenting things a bit more formally over there. Started helping out a few people when I came back, just rined, stuff like that.

And then that kind evolve then over COVID, whereas I started like seeing them get results and I was like, okay, maybe I should get this stuff out to a wider audience. Start putting out free stuff on online, doing free master classes. And that evolved over time then into the business coaching program.

That I have now. So it was just never started out at all, was created for my own need. I just evolved from that end into something that now I know how to people and that’s what I do.

It’s a fascinating journey and it’s one that I think that’s the interesting thing about someone such as yourself is that when you’ve experienced it. And you’ve ridden through that and delivering that. It’s so different to what is traditionally the method of coaches, which is, look, I’ve learned how to be a coach and I’m going to tell you stuff.

And there’s a lot of coaches out there that perhaps fall into that category. And so when I think when you’ve lived and breathed it, it’s a different beast.

Or not 100%. Yeah, 100%. I’ve, like if one person that came to before and they were like, yo, show me your, your coaching certificate and all this sort of stuff.

And like you can have certificate coming out the, co coming out the door work, but it’s really, it’s what you do, does it work? And there are people getting results from it. That’s the core thing. And often case with it’s created from your own need. That you’re damn sure that works because you have that, that practical hands-on experience of it.

Actually you need this. You implement it yourself and seeing it work as opposed to here’s theory, go now and try it for yourself.

Tell me how much is adapting and changing? ’cause there’s one thing when you build something around what suits you and everyone is, has their own individual quirks and backgrounds and feelings and all the rest of it That makes us human. And so with all the best of intentions, what works for you may not work for me.

So how do you find that balance and how much do you have? You had to tweak things over a period of time.

So I suppose first of all it’s like where I started and evolved and came from. I had really great opportunities to actually learn what helped other people. Then because of the free stuff I was putting out.

I would be able to adapt and change and tweak things. It’s based on feedback, based on how I see people implemented, based on see where I could actually improve on this and make things better. But at the it’s all based around one core framework. I call it my FEST productivity format and the framework, it’s the same framework for everybody, but it’s the inputs into that framework that gets the framework to work.

Okay. The first thing we do is, okay, it’s what I call our time officially accelerator, which is where we have to see, okay, exactly where you’re at. Okay. What’s baseline looking and what? What’s happening in the business right now? What’s happening in your days? What’s the ROI from the time that you’re putting in?

Where is your energy going? Where’s your time going? What are the outputs? As in where do you ultimately want to be? What’s the vision for the business? What’s the vision for your life? What are your goals? What are the kind of things that. You want to achieve? What are the milestones? And basically reverse the engineer all that back.

Okay. And we build it into a complete performance blueprint that we can actually build that framework around that system around. So the framework is the same for everybody else because you have to have a framework in order for you to get predictable results. But if the inputs into that framework that gets it to work, the inputs, which are different for all of us that gets it to work and then it’s after that, it’s I often think of us like that.

The toddler is trying to get the square peg in the square hole. It will go in there, but it’s dexterity isn’t informed and it’s like we have to tweak and adjust until look at that square peg goes in there and then that’s where people start to really see the benefits. For them it will fit, but as we’re all human.

We need to tweak and adapt it slightly to the individual. Then, ah, even after that point,

I wanna get into the whole idea of creating those. Systems and the tweaking of things as they do it. But I think there’s a, there’s an important aspect to talk about as well as you building towards this, and it’s something that I know you, you have front and center even on your website, which is the reference to work-life balance.

And this is, this has been a bit of a hot topic that I’ve had over the years with people because it’s a terminology within itself that is sometimes controversial, let’s just say. Yeah. I’ve posted in the past and said, work life balance and I’ve been, wrapped over the knuckles saying there’s no such thing.

What’s your take on that whole idea of work-life balance? Is it just an easy term that really means some, doesn’t really mean balance. Or what, how do you see it? So

In terms of work life balance I think there, there are seasons in our life as well. So you have this big thing that you want to achieve in the next week or the next month.

You sometimes it is, it’s working harder. It’s working longer. It, as long as it’s a season, as long as it feeds into the bigger picture, doesn’t mean you have to pin it at, 5:00 PM every single day. There’s days where social can go off track. There’s where you need to pivot or adjust. So it’s looking at the bigger picture of your life vision and ultimately what do you want to achieve and what do you want things to look like?

And it’s really building in place processes that, that allows you to achieve those outcomes where it’s not gonna impact on your health or your energy or your family or any of those other things in your life. So it’s about taking holistic look at everything and then designing that future vision of what that would look like.

Reverse engineering back from that point then. And then that’s it’s are you working? How are you working? Smart. Okay. It’s if you’re, if you have to put in, seven to 80 hours a week every week, and you’ve been doing that for, the last six months or the last five years, or the last 10 years, there there’s something wrong somewhere.

There’s something missing somewhere. So definitely it’s it has to be a, a holistic look at everything. In order for you to achieve, what you want to achieve without burning the candle or, sacrificing your personal time or your family time. And then I was saying maybe a time there is a fees in the way you need to put the extra hours or extra time that has to feed into the bigger picture.

So it’s it’s all about the bigger picture and where that actually fits into it.

Yeah, that’s it. It is true what you say in terms of seasonal, different stages of life, right? It’s can make a big difference when you’re on your own. It’s much easier to put more time into work potentially. When you’ve, as you maybe get married or certainly have children, once children come into the picture, it completely changes your perspective on things because you do want to spend more time with with your child, which means, invariably when they’re particularly young, it means you actually have to be home or available at least at certain times of the day.

’cause there’s no good coming home at eight o’clock at night and the child’s in bed at seven o’clock. It’s, there are lots of those things that come into the picture. So part of it is adapting. I imagine as well to, to where you’re at in your life and where your business wants and needs to be.

Yeah, it is, of course. It’s, yeah, there, there’s like that, for example, if you’re a startup business, then absolutely it’s gonna take more time. It’s gonna take more energy versus the business that’s established. So it just depends where you’re at. But the core part of it is it has to be. You have to be working as smartly as possible within the relevance of, what you want to achieve.

I’ve had people come to me and they could absolutely kill it for, a solid 12 hour day and focus Absolutely maximize their output, and then they’re flat as a pancake for five days after. It has to be sustainable as well. What you’re doing, you have to be smarter. And it’s a bit like we talked about athletes earlier.

Yes, we need to sprint, but we need that recovery time as well. So there has to be a delta into the picture. If we’re not getting recovery time, guess what? We’re not gonna be as effective tomorrow. And then we try to outwork that by working landlord tomorrow, and then we, therefore we get less recovery time and then we get into this vicious loop.

So that’s what that has to be considered as that.

I, I hear what you’re saying and I think that the trick, which is the next part of the conversation is getting your systems in place, right? It’s actually how do you actually make this possible so your business can function? Because the ultimate dream, of course, for most solo business O operators is how do you get it to a point where the business can operate without you, so that you can take that, holiday or.

Or it might just be taking some time off during the week so you don’t have to work five days a week, whatever it looks like for you. That’s the dream certainly at an initial point. So how important is it to find those systems? How easy is it to find those systems so they, is that something you can coach at a high level or is that getting into the nitty gritty?

Yeah look, it’s like a game. That’s what is it you want to achieve in your life? And everything revolves around systems, like everything, because systems must be reduced. The amount of micro decisions we’re making, systems take away a reliance of willpower or discipline or motivation or all these things that are really fleet things that come and go over time at the ent, they explode.

So what is it you want to achieve? For me, say in my personal life, I try to avoid sweets and sugar. Stuff like that, Monday to Friday. And if I didn’t have a system in place for that, I’d always be making my decisions. Will I have it now? Will I have it later? Will I, how much of it will I have? And then I’ll clear it in because sheer decision fatigue.

So instead, my system is, I don’t have it in the house Monday to Friday. My only decision is when I buy, when I go to the shop, the weekend. So that’s reduced hundreds of micro decisions across my week, down to one decision. Okay? That’s a system. So it really is what are you looking to achieve? Again, start with the interwind and reverse engineer back from that, okay?

To see, okay, in order for me to achieve this, what systems do I need to actually build around me to it to enable, let me to do the thing that I need to do. Yes, thought it could be personal review systems, it could be, systems for business. But everything comes down to systems. If you want to achieve a predictable outcome, then you have to create a system around you that enables you to do that.

Yeah, I, it’s. It’s easy to talk about. It’s difficult to implement, isn’t it? Those little things that can make a difference, like you said trying to identify those things that derail you. I know I’ve just been doing that myself in the last couple of days and came to this, realization I knew was always there that I was being dictated to by my phone and that I needed to turn the notifications off on my phone like permanently.

And it’s actually takes a little bit of getting used to when you’re making some of those sorts of changes because I had this feeling when I did go and check my messages and go, oh my goodness, I had all these text messages and this message on what’s happened. I didn’t respond to it straight away.

And then I realized if. No, I actually had some quiet time during the day to get a few things done because I wasn’t doing that, and it’s very, so those little things, like you say, knowing that you get a sugar rush and you shouldn’t have the sugar during the week, so you wait till the weekend like.

There’s two components to this. Really. There’s the recognizing it in the first place, or probably three, recognizing it, wanting to do something about it, and then doing something that is actually gonna meaningfully make those changes to improve those systems, because that third part is hard.

Yeah, of course.

And I it’s we have to almost. The ourselves from ourselves, we have to almost eliminate the profitability for not doing the thing. It’s in manufacture plants, they have called the cheeks or the fixtures to create, a duplicate inter interchangeable parts that you know at scale.

So they don’t have to cut up or cut or cast a new parts every single time. So that massively reduces the amount of areas where things could go wrong here. And it’s the same with herself. Like I had a woman recently and she was a devil. Her. Hopping on Instagram in bed at 11 o’clock at night, and she, they’ll scroll it through videos at two, three o’clock in the morning.

So instead of trying to motivate her or tell her to have more discipline around that, like we set, we just set up a system that would eliminate the possibility for that. So does set the phone, that would time her out basically, after 15 minutes she could do it. She could do it for 15 minutes. That’s her little reward at the end of the day.

Then she got timed out and then she can’t go back on it again till the next day. So again, it’s eliminating the possibility for it not happening, if there’s little friction points to it. It’s reducing those friction points to make it easier for it to happen. And it’s it’s, again, having a process that means either completely unlikely or to for not to happen or it’s, you’ve eliminated the possibility for that happening.

How easy is it for people to recognize. What it is that they need to be tweaking, if that’s the right terminology, to be able to improve their performance. How? How easy. It’s like I had the realization, but probably prompted by someone else. Yeah. With regards to the phone. How do you identify what other things, the phone is an obvious starting point ’cause it does, I’m sure it does impact a lot of people, but there are less obvious things and so how do you find that within people and help them recognize it, as that first step?

Yeah, that’s a great question that it really comes down to, measuring and managing you can’t manage what you can’t measure. So what we do is we literally look at everything that’s happening in their daily weeks, okay? I have an AI tool that I built to actually track what they do, where the time goes, where their energy goes, where their focus goes.

That actually is able to measure that. So we can actually see what is happening in their days? Where is their time going? What’s the ROI from the kind of things they’re working on? What are the kind of things that pulling ’em off track or distracting them or interrupting them, could, we can build out a full picture at the very start and when we use that picture in front of them and we sit down without me even there anything.

They can up with pinpoint and get that aha moment to say, actually, I didn’t even realize I was doing as much of that, or didn’t even realize I wasn’t doing enough of that. It’s really getting the data at the very start to the, okay, this is actually what’s happening in real terms. It’s not based on what I think it’s in or looking back at the weekend and kind of wonder, Jesus, what did I do?

Or where did I go off track? It’s in real time actually, man, measuring this stuff so that over a period of time we can build up a full picture. And then when we have that level of data then it’s clear then this is, these are the systems we need to build around you and nobody in order to enable you to achieve the end outcome you’re after.

Yeah. Those systems are so important. Does that scare people? Being able to systemize it. How easy is it? There’s so many tools out there now in terms of automations and various things like that can help with systems. What is the right place to start when building it?

And what does systems in real terms look like?

Like I person come to me recently and she was like, I’ve, I have this, I’m going to do the AI tour, and I was going to train me how to do all the. I used the utilize these 30 AI tools, it’s gonna be great. You know what you think should I do it?

And I was like what’s the outcome you’re after? And she was like I’ll get to use all these 30 AI tools, but I know what’s the outcome you’re after ultimately when you use these tools? And she didn’t know. So it was like you start with the end of the mind and you reverse back from that point to say, actually what do I need?

Okay, do I need all these 30 AI tools or do I need just one or two tools? To make my life easier. Okay, do I need all these things or do I need just a couple of things? So it’s like, what’s the outcome you’re after? And reverse the engineer backing that. Okay. For example, if you want to, cook back on working hours and your are just, from an efficiency point of view, then it’s okay, that’s one of the, that’s the end point.

You’re working at this level baseline, okay, this is what you want to get down to. Then we reverse engineer back from that point. For example, somebody wants to increase turnover in their business by agile. Let’s say, 20%, okay, we start with the end of mind. We’re first engineer back from that.

What do we need to do? We have to bring in new client, 12 new clients. Okay. Step back again. What do we need to do? We probably need to bring in a one new client, say every month. Okay, back again. Step back. What do we need to do? We need to probably bring in about four new leads a week.

Okay. In order for you to bring in four new leads a week, what do you need to do that? I have to spend about two hours on market then. Okay. In order for you to spend two hours on marketing on what you need to do you know what’s the best thing to do here? That’s where the fifth clubs come in.

Then do we need a VA that we can delegate that will actually do our LinkedIn outreach or social media post? Do we need to carve out in your schedule a two hour block for you? Go through a certain criteria to actually, to bring in those four new leads so it all gets. Which starts with the end in mind, we reverse back from that, and then from that then it’s very, becomes a lot clearer what you need to build around you system wise, in order to enable you to achieve the pain.

Then at the end of the day.

Yeah, that’s a it’s a great advice, great piece of advice to start at where, what you want to achieve because you can get trapped in systems and building systems for systems sake. And then micro managing those systems. I know I even experienced it recently where I had someone who had tried to build a system for part of the business and.

There was actually I realized that after it was implemented going, there’s more effort in trying to. Fill in the steps of the system, then there is in actually doing it. And so the system got too, we just went too minute in detail. And so you ended up going I have to tick this, and this. And I thought I, no, I don’t like, just lump some things together and do that.

And I think that’s an important part of this in getting the system right as you say, it’s focused on the end outcome. So the best way to achieve that without necessarily always having to go into the minutia of detail.

Yeah,

it

is. It is a course and it doesn’t have to be complicated.

Ful is better. Like the example I gave you with sweet and straw wasn’t this big complicated thing. It’s just they’re not in the house. Okay. I don’t have them in the house. That’s the rule. And then it’s much easier to get one division right, and have one rule that have, get a hundred decisions.

Simple. Simple is much better, comes off a hundred percent.

Let me put you on the spot a little bit. Give me a couple of, you, you pick the number. Give us a few tips for people who are looking to build systems for themselves in the business. What are some things that they need to how to identify what systems they should be putting in place and what they need to do?

Look at it’s the, again, going back to it, okay, what is it you want to, what is it you want to achieve? How would you like your days to run? How, ’cause I get people out there yeah, but this is the way it is right now. What about if, if I do, if this happens or that happens, or what about if I don’t hit this target and I don’t worry about the way it is right now?

Yep. I just lost you there for a minute. Yeah, I just lost you there for a minute with your internet picture is now saying it’s good. So do you mind just taking that back and answering that question again about just from the top about some of those tips. Yeah, a hundred percent. So a again,

it’s what, how would you like things to be?

How would you like things to run in your day? Like at a person that was talking to me recently and we were talking about this, her certain goals and targets and obvious saying, look it, they’re not specific enough. You don’t have figures, you don’t have dates, you don’t have any of that kinda stuff.

And if you just want to make more money, that’s. What does that mean? That could mean an extra five bucks in your pocket could mean an extra million at end of the year. What is it you actually want? And she would say, yeah, but what if I lose a client and I’m not hitting it and that you won’t motivate me?

I’m like, don’t worry about all the things that could go wrong. Think about the way you want it to be. Okay. Think what you want to achieve. Okay. And then it’s what do I need to do in order for me to get there? Okay I can see this is the ideal outcome. This is what’s happening right now on my days.

How do I get there faster? Okay, so I’m working on hours, I’m spending too long doing okay. We use the marketing example there. I’m spending three hours per week doing marketing and okay, it’s fine. Let’s, one system we could do is, one thing I do is. Is build playbook. So very simply, you have a loop video.

You take the lymph video from you doing the task, it’s not actually taking you extra time. And then you upload that loop video to chat GPT. You ask chat GPT to act. Yeah, as a, as an ai delegation expert. And you get chat gt to actually build you out on step by step playbook. Based on this video, based on success criteria, how success looks like economistic to avoid and a full step by step.

Then we take these playbooks, we hand them over to vas@maxfiver.com or Upwork, and then we can delegate the thing that you need to do in order for you to achieve the outcome. So you can spend even worth time per in something that has a bigger ROI for you to actually achieve the end outcome you’re after.

It’s all about getting people down into their zone of genius, because if they get the people down into that zone of genius things only they can do as leaders, as business people, then ultimately that they’re going to achieve those goals much faster. Okay, so what else could, like either another guy that kept using the business owner just left as an engineer company in Dublin and he had this big triage process for QA and documents.

Okay. So his team would have to QA the document to make sure there’s no, and everything is just right. And then it would come to him for a second triage. Why he would spend them like probably the guts of a day every week, just triage documents as a business, order, an admin type task. So what we’ve done is we’ve built out a custom cheap pt.

Okay? So we built a custom AI tool that will actually do the triaging for him. Okay. That enabled him to get the guts of a did per week back to get on the business. Now again, in his sort of genius progression towards the goals. So it’s like, what is it you want? How would you like things to run? Okay.

How would you like things to be? And then it’s what are the things we need to do in order for me to get there? Okay. And it’s thinking really outside the box as well. Okay. It’s if you had to. Okay take this task off your plate. How could you do it? Sometimes we think we have to do X and we have to do Y, but there’s often a much better way for it.

Another guy I was working with there later, he’s a four hour invoice process to do every single week, and I was like okay. That’s again, not value add for him, as in this is somebody else could do. Or what we done was we completely automated the task in about 15 minutes. So we’ve mapped out of current workflow, we’ve mapped out the future ideal workflow.

Usually ai, build a playbook, hand that over again to somebody on five.com or rock worker or one of these outsource websites. And then when in three days yet that process completely or when I say completely, was about 95% to the automated. So again, we’re getting him further down to that zone agen so he can spend his time on things only he needs to do as part of the best.

The challenge with all of that for small business particularly, is spending money. That’s the hard part, isn’t it? It’s like it’s easy to say, great, we should have a VA that comes in and do X, Y, Z or we should have another person that does this. Yeah. And sometimes that money is easy and makes sense and I’ve often used this example and say, look, the first hire I had in business was a bookkeeper.

I loathe doing invoicing. I loathe doing the books. I take too long to do it and dreaded it every month when I was doing it. The best money I ever spend and, every month with my bookkeeper and shout out to Anna who I know listens regularly lifesaver. But the but it is a lot harder when you are, you’ve got someone who wants to begin regularly to do those things because it is about how do you equate.

Spending the money versus saving time versus being able to bring in more clients, do more work, so that you can pay those bills.

Yeah.

It has to

be ROI led. So again if it’s ROI led, it’s you go to a bank machine and yes, you have to put, a dollar into the bank machine.

But if your back machine is gonna give you back $2, $5 or $10 back, then you put that dollar in. I’ll do that, wouldn’t you? But unless you stay way in business, it has to be ROI led and when you can get down to the initial grad say, is this actually ROI led? Is there an ROI here? Then it, then it makes in to do the things.

So again, it’s not. A lot of people trouble mud against the wall and hope something sticks. It’s specific and pinpoint it. All of our oil lead, and by the way, hiring is not the first step. I always make AI express higher. Okay. Can we automate it? Can we delegate it? Can we can we divide that for that?

Again it’s one and done so you don’t have to hire somebody and now they’re doing the repeatable thing. That potentially could have been automation in the first place. Can we actually automate this process or. Must be reduced, the friction in the process. Okay. So we can streamline it. So we make AI our first hire.

Then we think, do we need somebody? And again, I wouldn’t typically recommend hiring somebody straight off the back. It’s okay, let’s bring somebody in. As and outsource this task to I’d say yeah, where it’s like maybe hourly, paid hourly or based on a block of time as opposed to now we, someone working full time on us with pressure on us to, to pay them.

Don’t know. Keep working in front though. What you can do is incrementally increase that. Then over time it’s like, what I always do is generate wins. Generate wins. You can see okay, the light bulbs go off and say, okay, if they can do this, Wallace, it’s could they do, that’s a thing with ai. Generate wins around all that so you can see the return on your investment of time.

’cause that gets people to buy in. And it’s if you could deal that, what else could be If we if our VA can do that now and it’s just working really well for us, what else could they do? And then the light bulb start goes off and then they don’t mind, but it’s r why lead? And it’s getting those quick wins at the start so that people really buy in to do the next thing or the next thing or the next thing.

There’s so many things that we could talk about here and there’s just not much time left, and I just wanted to get in a couple of things before we finish up. It’d be remiss me not to mention the book you participated as part of rise Above. Tell me a little bit about that and what people can expect from it.

And of course, preface it by saying we will make sure we include some details in the show notes so people will be able to access it. Tell us a little bit about Rise Above.

Yeah,

it’s,

so look I was lucky enough to, to quarter with Les Brown, myself and Nine Underwriters. We all have own individual chapter in the book and it’s really a series of inspiring stories of people’s journeys.

The, like myself had faced, really challenging and difficult situations. And how we overcame it in order to achieve the kind of things that we went on to do in our lives and our journey almost to, to this point. So it’s really, I often describe it, it’s a bit like, it’s basically the concept of if you ever read him stick for the Soul.

It’s basically not concept where our whole goal was just to inspire people that maybe come through a tough time, a difficult time, and knowing that, look at there is a light movement forward. And the times where I felt like, look, this isn’t working out. I didn’t know where to turn or where to go because I couldn’t find answers and solutions, but.

I I always seen then and liked that if you just stay consistent long enough, you’ll get there. And that’s was my message in the book. I know the other quarters were the same. If you just stay consistent long enough you’ll get there. Okay? Yeah. Les Brown has done great catch first, have done it.

He is the first chapter in the book and he says, look if you can look up, you can get up. And it seems difficult, but you can’t get up and you can move path, whatever those challenges are now. And when you do that, you just keep taking the steps forward. No matter how small those get, you’re going to get there.

You’re going get whatever it is that you want to achieve. There’ll be humps and there’ll be bump and be ups and downs. And especially in business, there’s that’s prior to the course, but if you stay consistent, whatever it is you want, you will get there. That’s really what the book is about.

Fantastic. Said we will make details of it available in the show notes so people can get a hold of that. And just before we wrap up, the question I always like to ask my guests is, what’s the aha moment that people have when they come to work with you that you wish more people knew they were going to have?

Yeah, I think it’s, yeah, I got it. We can normalize the way things are right now and we can think that this is almost just the way it is like this. It’s like I often think, the weather in Ireland, like when it’s day after day after rain, we almost feel like, geez, there’s never gonna be a sunny day.

And then when the good weather come, then it’s day after. So you feel this is going to go on forever and it can be the theme in our life and our business as well. But the big thing is to get people at quick wins at a nearly stage that they can say actually. It doesn’t have to be like this. I don’t have to put in 80 hours a week.

I don’t have to, I don’t have to feel stressed all the time during my days is to get people a quick win so they can almost say actually, there, there is a better way. For example, there was one woman who worked out recently and just one very simple thing. We bookended our day.

We either like a little 15 minute shutdown routine at the end of our day where it was like, this is your finished time. This is the time you, ’cause in business, obviously we’re not on a nine to five. It’s like you can work all the hours, you can work none of the hours. That one thing pulled her easement and her weekends back for her because work expects to fill the time available.

Okay? And when she seen that, it was like light bulb moment. Okay, what else can I do? Then she was all in. Okay. So it’s like, what is the one thing you can do that can make the biggest difference? Getting people, that one went straight away. They can say, actually, you know what, there is a better way.

And it doesn’t have to be like that because I can say it and you can hear other stage. But when you get those wins at an early stage, then that’s the moment where they’re all in.

Fantastic. I love so much of the information that you’ve given today. It’s such a not only a unique perspective in so many great stories, and I think there’s so much for people to learn from it. So I really thank you for being a part of the program and it’s lovely to speak to someone on the other side of the world.

Fantastic accent. We love it over here. Thank you so much for being part of the of the Biz Buys for Thought Leaders podcast. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

And to everyone listen in. Don’t forget, of course, to hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode. We look forward to your company next time on Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bites. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Biz Bites is proudly brought to you by podcast done for you, the service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance. To the world. Contact us today for more information, details in the show notes.

We look forward to your company next time on biz.

Business Growth Secrets, how to scale your business with Proven Sale Systems. Welcome to Biz Bites for Thought Leaders, the podcast where we deliver actionable insights to help you grow your business. I’m your host, Anthony Perl, from Podcasts Done for You. In today’s episode, I’m joined by Doug C Brown, who is the host of the CEO Sales Strategies Podcast, and he’s a business growth expert who specializes in helping business owners.

Implement proven sales systems that drive exceptional growth. In this episode, you are going to discover the crucial mistakes that prevent business growth, how to build scalable sales systems that work practical strategies to increase your revenue without. Burning out an important thing there. There’s a lot we’re gonna unpack and some great stories with Doug who has bought and sold, I believe 37 businesses in his time.

He’s clicked over a billion dollars in sales. He’s someone you want to listen to. So let’s get into this episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders and continuing our tradition of going all over the world. We’re hitting over to New Hampshire and I welcome Doug C Brown to the program. Welcome, Doug.

Hey, Anthony, thanks so much for having me here. I’m very grateful to be here.

Ah, it’s an absolute pleasure to have you here and I’m gonna get you to introduce yourself and we are just having a little bit of a laugh off air, weren’t we, about the fact that Doug Brown is is not an uncommon name. So we’ve got you as Doug c so that way we make sure you stand out. Tell us a little bit about you and your story.

I I started actually working at the age of three from my dad. In his business. Wow. Yeah. All my brothers did the same thing. We all slept not slept. We swept floors and didn’t sleep

on them, just swept them.

I’m sure maybe when I got tired I probably did. I did. I don’t remember. But.

Yeah, I was sweeping floors at age three. By the time we were six, they actually started helping us learn how to sell. They were putting us in front of clients and people were helping us out, with the orders and things like that. I can only imagine, back then I wish I had an in a sample of what my order sheets looked like back then, but.

We were and we worked with my dad for the most part. I worked with him until I was about 19 years old until I went into the military. And then I always had side businesses all the way through his businesses and through the military and through college or university, as some people call it, in the different parts of the world.

Over my life, I’ve actually built we’re on our 37th business at this point. Wow. So not all have succeeded. Some have some have broken even some have made some money and some have made a lot of money and we’ve lost a lot of money at times at, too. Got a fair amount of experience in doing that type of process.

But that’s my, kinda my business life. And, married, I have two kids and and it was interesting, lots of Doug Browns. We talk about Doug Brown, who’s a famous hockey player. I love hockey and music and a few other things. Funny today, ha, I thought I was talking to a, he was a drummer in a band.

And a kind of a. Famous band here in the United States and we were talking about me and he goes, are you Doug Brown that lives in Gloucester? And I’m like, no, that’s the other Doug Brown musician. So that’s why I have the C in there. It differentiates me.

Does the C actually stand for something or you just liked it?

Oh, I always say it’s charming, ’cause people get a little laugh out of it. But actually it’s Charles, it’s my middle industry, Charles. My mother was gonna name me Charlie Brown, not my father wanted to name me Charles Douglas Brown ’cause he thought it was distinguished. But my mother said, I’m not having a son named Charlie Brown.

There’s enough, challenges in the world. And I thank her for the best. Yes.

That would’ve been a hard one to have lived up to. Yeah. It’s interesting isn’t it, because there are of course, plenty of actors who famously put an initial there for similar reasons to you have that there’s already someone with a similar name and they put it in there, and that doesn’t actually stand for something.

I, I, if I’m not mistaken, Michael J. Fox, I don’t believe the J actually stands for anything. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn’t know that. The sound of it. Yeah. So there you go. A little bit of trivia to start us off.

Hey you know what? We might go on jeopardy someday and the show here and make some money.

Let’s hope so. Let’s hope so. Make some money is good. Speaking of making some money and as you said you’ve had a lot of businesses, which in of itself is interesting. We might come back to that, but tell me about the current business, because your focus is really, and the reason we are talking today is largely around giving CEO strategies to succeed and to grow.

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean in that, so I have over a, I think we’re over a billion dollars now in, in sales. We just added our next four, 4 million, I think that kicked us over the billion, which is nice. Yeah. Congratulations. That’s huge. Oh yeah, thanks. Yeah, it’s and I haven’t, I have another company that we started just recently.

It’s actually the insurance business. Life insurance and health insurance, which is. Super crazy here in the United States. And I love it. It’s I feel like I’ve come home ’cause of the, all the accumulation of everything I’ve done over the years. I still have the software business that’s called The Bit No, which is a automated, proactive follow-up system and and I still occasionally am helping mostly.

Consultants and some companies in the revenue growth aspect of it too. But I use a lot of that now going into the new business. Because we’re building agents and agencies and things like that within the company.

It’s, it’s a huge thing these days to, you talk about, automations, you talk about getting in and out of businesses, like that sort of stuff.

It’s almost taken for granted that people are gonna do that, but it’s not so easy to do that. And you’ve clearly had lots of experience in doing that, that in of itself is a huge thing.

Yeah. And it, the, you can get experience from reading and listening to others and, listening to podcasts like we’re doing and those type of things.

And I still do a lot of that and I know, I have people that I hang out with that are. They literally have billions of dollars, in the bank type people, they’re constantly learning. But I think the, nothing really, it, I shouldn’t say it this way, learning a hard lesson and learning it from YouTube versus learning it from your own bank account, being drained out.

It’s a lot, it’s a nicer play, sometimes those hard lessons that we learn are really not. They’re not failures, they’re just hard lessons. And that’s where we as human beings, we go, oh no. Anytime I have a GI get into one of those places. Andrew, I always remember Ted Turner, I had a a network over here called TNT Turner network television.

Yes. And at one time, he was losing $20 million a day. Wow. And I was like, first time I heard that I was like, all right, I don’t have problems. We just lost a, half million or whatever. And I’m like crying over it. He’s losing $20 million a day. And the thing about business is very fair, but it’s also very very clear about its rules.

It’s money out. Money in equals loss, break even profit. Really that’s business when it comes down to it.

It, yeah it’s simple, but it’s complicated of course, isn’t it? That’s the thing is that and I’m fascinated by the fact that you’ve had so many different businesses because the one thing that it does teach you is you have to be attuned to what the audience wants.

Yeah. I think that’s where a lot of businesses fall over because they go in with an idea and they go. I’m going to do this, but they haven’t actually engaged with an audience to find out if that’s what they want and they’re not adapting necessarily as they go along the way to what changes may happen and if that’s gonna be a lesson that you would’ve learn many times over.

Yeah, that was a hard, that is the number one thing really, when it comes down to when we’re starting a new business. Anybody listening, if you have not engaged your audience to find out, not if they like the idea, but actually if they’ll pay you ahead of time. For rolling out your idea. I think about four times more about actually rolling that business out until you can get them to pay for the actual idea.

And ’cause a lot of people will tell people, oh, that’s a great idea. And Andrew, Bob, Mary, Josh, whoever. Diane? That’s an amazing idea. I love that idea. And then we as entrepreneurs think, oh people are saying yes, but you and I both know Anthony, that if they don’t pay for it, it doesn’t mean that the business is gonna survive.

So that’s, it’s, I have made this mistake more times than I care to count, quite frankly, because we as entrepreneurs always go, oh, my idea is amazing. And. And I disagree with Steve Jobs. Just tell him what you’re gonna give him and the market we’ll buy. I think he got lucky, quite frankly, and had good timing.

You all you jobs people out there, please don’t send hate mail to myself or Anthony. But the, my experience in business is exactly what you’re saying. You wanna figure out whether you have an audience first and. ’cause there’s a lot of amazing products and services in the entrepreneurial graveyard because they just can’t sell ’em.

I had a a gentleman I talked to he was, came to me and his business was almost on the verge of going outta business. And Anthony, he invented a suit that if a paraplegic put it on, somebody who couldn’t walk hands, legs, didn’t move. They literally got up and could walk across the room and I was like, whoa, this is an amazing product.

But couldn’t sell it. He just was way ahead of his time. He just could not sell this product. I actually know there’s a company here in the United States. It’s worldwide now. It’s Starbucks. I actually know somebody who tried to do the exact model of Starbucks 11 years prior to Starbucks being founded and complete.

It was like, if you looked at the business, they were identical, but one of them tried to start it in the east coast of the United States, which failed and one of ’em started it in the west coast of the United States, which is today’s Starbucks. That’s a great point you bring up.

The second great point is. You gotta roll with the changes because if you don’t, your audience sometimes changes, the needs change, technology changes, inflation, recession, great economies, real estate up, down, all kinds of things happen. And if we don’t roll with that and understand and AI is a good example of that today.

And if you, if we’re not rolling with AI today. We are gonna have some challenges in, in almost every industry. I don’t know about ’em all, but certainly the many businesses are gonna be affected by ai. If you’re a, a solo entrepreneur and you’re a freelancer today, and you and AI can do what you’re doing, if you’re a graphics designer, you might survive it, but your clientele’s gonna change.

Yeah. And the way you operate is definitely going to change. You just, you were just talking about the innovation there and it made me recall a, an old gag from a comedian, Victor Borger, who you might have remembered from. Yeah. Long time back. And he has this little sketch where he talks about, my uncle invented the soft drink.

He tried something and he called it one up, didn’t work, tried two up, didn’t work. 3, 4, 5, 6, tried six up. Didn’t work, gave up. Little did he know how close he came

and someone else invented seven up and here we are. So it’s ex

Exactly. And I think, but that’s the truth is that you have to keep innovating in business.

And just because there are so many stories out there of businesses who had an idea and who. Failed or didn’t get the support. Famously that’s the Walt Disney story is that I think it was something like 34 banks or something of that nature that rejected rejected him before one said Yes.

And so there’s a, there is that’s the hard thing we, we talked about before, is that you have to be in touch with your audience and be, and, be as assured that’s, that what you’re gonna provide is something that they will want and need. Yeah. And then you have to be stubborn enough to keep pushing and going forward if you truly believe in it, because sometimes you’re going to get knocked back and it might happen several times.

You mentioned Walt Disney the ATM that we all, we don’t even think about. We put our card in the machine to get our money if we want to today, that took about, I think, 13 or 14 years for it to actually take hold because people thought it was gonna steal their money and eat it.

And there’s a lot. I remember I was born in 1962, feeling a little old when I say that, but I was born in 1962 and I remember when I was a kid, a child they were talking about electric cars, but people were. Vehemently opposed to even talking about it. So they used to say things like, I’m not driving a golf cart around.

I’m not doing that. Here we are in, 2025 and, government subsidies are being handed out for people who are buying, and driving. You got, Tesla is a pretty good sized company. You got others out there. The electric car is, becoming more of the mainstay at this point.

So certainly hybrid cars are so everything changes and you don’t wanna be caught, saying I learned how to repair that steam engine and I’ve got a job for life, because that doesn’t always happen and neither does your business. There are all kinds of just the nature of the a, the, the atom, is constantly changing.

And so we must, as you were saying, we’ve gotta be able to change with it. If we don’t, there, there are plenty of things. Some of you are probably old enough to remember the fax machine. I can tell you I have two daughters and they were like the heck is a fax machine, right? When there are kids who don’t remember a time without a cell phone tethered to their body.

And or learning. And if you look at today, you gotta use apps. You can, you can’t even do business some with some companies unless you have an app on your phone. And when I was growing up, the phone had a cord and.

Yeah. And it’s amazing how much it’s changed, just as you were speaking there, I was just thinking about, the fax machine. I remember when it came and I remember when it left, yeah. CDs were the same. There. There’s technology like that, and you’re right, the phone has changed so much. I, I used to not leave the house without a wallet.

I can’t remember the last time I had a wallet in my pocket.

Yes.

Why do I need it? I’ve got a phone. Yes. It’s things change and the, there is a generations that don’t remember what it was like before.

That’s one of the reasons that we started the insurance business, because insurance is not gonna go away.

It’s, it’s it might change form, but, we’ll roll with that and, it’s a great long-term business and. We all, we’ve all fall pre. There was a, when the automobile came in, they didn’t think it was gonna make it. People didn’t think, they didn’t think the horse was ever gonna get replaced.

When television came in, they didn’t think it was ever going to outdo. Radio television, I think got caught. They didn’t think that streaming was actually going to take over. The movie theaters or the, the TV itself to pay for television, my goodness. Like people now are paying for television.

We never paid for television. It was free. So it, it’s unless you’re

in the uk the UK by the way have been paying for television forever. There’s always been a tax to, or a levy that they have to pay every year for for licensing, for television, for free to Airtel free to air television.

Really? I, that’s super. So they’re the ones who started this paid television. Absolutely. They’re responsible

for it all.

Yeah. You, if people don’t, no matter what businesses they’re in right now, if you’re in the roofing business, I can tell you right now that environmentally friendly shingles are coming forth.

I have clients that, that, talk to me about this all the time. And they’re using it as a differentiation factor to come in because the old shingles, the asphalt shingles they can’t dispose of them like they used to. So there’s environmental factors. They don’t, they just don’t decay.

So there’s different types of room. Who heard of a metal roof years ago? Unless it was on an industrial building, yeah. Solar panels, they were a thought. But now they’re mainstay, right? There’s all of these things that, not just innovations of new products and services, but within our business.

My, my original college focus was on the medical field. My goodness, is that changed? It’s now like crazy changed, with not just the technology, but in the United States, it’s become way more of a business versus even healthcare. And if you were banking that it was always gonna be what it was 30 years ago, 40 years ago, and you had planned on being in that business, your business is very different or you’re no longer in business.

And to your point, Anthony, if they don’t roll with it, and that includes selling, if people, you know are still trying to sell like they were back in the. The eighties and the nineties, or the older sales methodology, the internet completely changed how we sell. Not because you could just buy things online, but because you could find information.

The sales channel used to be the expertise for people making decisions. And no longer is that the case because now. Pretty easily the potential buyer can have as much or more information than the sales channel even has themselves.

Yeah, it’s it is, it’s the truth, isn’t it? You walk into, particularly if you’re buying something of reasonable value, although it still happens, actually, I had this experience with my kids recently and they wanted to buy a book and they’re standing in the.

In the shopping center looking online at how much it is and they’re going into one shop and then another going we can get it cheaper over here so we can save $5 by going to this shop. And you don’t, I mean we, we went to a shop the other day and we were not buying, I think we bought a kettle.

That’s right. And it was advertised at a price that already said discounted. We actually didn’t even look it up. We went to the counter and said, is there anything better you can do? And they knocked $20 off it. Wow. They didn’t have to, but that’s the but they also know, the reality is that.

Majority of people would have looked it up and said this same kettle is $20 cheaper or $15 cheaper over here. So they not going to get the sale unless they do that. So that whole idea that people are very much armed before they walk into a store. You can’t have a sale no longer. Is there the opportunity for a salespeople to twist your arm with a few words because you know they know more than what you know because.

That is not likely.

No. And it’s it happens as you said, in the retail aspect or in the stores. It also happens in the manufacturing world. It happens in the software. I actually happened today. I a friend of mine introduced me to a new software company and they’re out of they’re in Pakistan.

And I’m like, okay, I’ll talk with ’em. And it turns out that they’re 20% more than my current development team, which is in a much higher cost area. And I asked them, I said, you’re in Pakistan. Correct. ’cause I know what the wages are in Pakistan. And they said, yes, absolutely. I’m like you’re five times what you’re supposed to be price wise from Pakistan.

Because, I’ve worked I’ve, I had a company in India, I know the region. So it’s, but it’s very easy to look things up online and know what a senior developer, for example, makes in Pakistan and Pakistani money. Which isn’t even close to what they were telling me.

They wanted to charge us for the price. So it’s that won’t happen business wise. I can also find out cultural differences. I can find out, if anybody, I had a company in India, so I can say this. They take a ton of vacation days. It’s in, compared to the United States, it’s very culturally different on the time off.

We can factor all these type of things in. If we’re looking to buy a laser guided whatever, machine for our inspecting the bottles and cans for our manufacturing plant, we can look up this stuff and there are people who are proud to put that stuff, that information out.

And we can find out all kinds of things before that sales person comes through the door, or before we even invite a sales channel. In. A lot of times there are meetings now that happen within companies. So that whole dynamic shift, will continue. Ever changing shift will always continue.

With AI today, it’s taking another shift. You can have conversations with it to elicit responses that you might have had with meetings with sales teams. And so you can have all the, those conversations ahead of time, so you can just zero in on these things.

So there, there’s, innovation is always a thing that’s going to happen. Adaptation is the thing that sort of lags. I think Anthony, that’s been my experience,

So talk to me, let’s get into this whole sales thing a little bit more because I know one of the things that you like to talk about is the the problems that people have with unpredictable revenue.

Pretty common problem in majority of businesses, and you’ve been through plenty of businesses back as a child, and the businesses that you’ve owned as, as well over the years with innovation, constantly changing. How do you actually teach? Sales techniques that are going to continue to work and adapt, be because of exactly that problem, unpredictable revenue and change that is happening in the areas that, that we’ve just been talking about.

It’s a great, that’s a great question, a great point. So firstly, math never changes. The outcomes might change based on the formula change, but the reality is that selling is really foundationally grounded in metrics in math. Revenue growth is f is grounded in metrics in math. So the first thing that we wanna do is always figure out what our true will goal is.

That’s step number one. And that’s the part that people miss. They like, I’ll talk to companies and I just talked to one, he wants to. He’s 7 million today and he wants to be 12 million within a year, which is not doubling the business, but it’s good growth for that type of business. And we got talking and I, it’s long story short, after we got talking, I’m like, what’s the real number?

He’s nine, right? So it’s if we design a plan and mathematically build a plan till 12 and you don’t. Wanna do that type of work or put the budget in to get that and all that other stuff, it falls apart. Frankly, it never gets off the ground. Most of that. I had a gentleman one time tell me he wanted to go from 3 million to 51 million in his first year, and he had no marketing budget whatsoever.

No sales budget whatsoever. It’s not gonna happen, right? Yeah he would’ve needed, at least in his industry, 5 million. Just for the marketing budget alone. So once we understand what the truth truthful goal is, then we can really start objectively looking at, ’cause we can put math to that process and then, so no matter what the economy’s doing or what the markets are doing, that never changes.

It’s a standard concept of and condition. So now, yes, if the, if the industry is, wreaking havoc. On on the business owner, conditions might change, but the math will never change. It’s always gonna be the same thing. We have this to sell at x with this is our cost of selling it.

These are, soft cost, hard cost, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We wanna net this type of profit. We just figure out the mathematics at that point. We’ve gotta sell this many things at this and that at this. Going back to your original point, one of the, one of the foundational things that we do is who’s the ideal right fit buyer for those?

Because, most companies, frankly, are selling a lot of things that if they just focused on other things that are already selling, they would sell more and grow more than, the old Pareto principle, right? The 80 20 rule of 2080, 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of the clients, and 20% of the revenue comes from 80% of the clients.

I’ve never found that to be exact, to be honest, but it, the proportions aren’t really the key. What is proportion. What is important is that there is a percentage of clients who buy quicker, pay more, are a lot more fun to work with. And if we could identify those and double down on those with, and here’s the key, don’t give up the others because you don’t wanna knock off 20% of your revenue just to gain back if the other thing doesn’t work as well as you want it to.

But when you find out who that ideal right fit buyer is, your messaging gets clearer, your targeting is clearer, everything just falls into a lot more, of an aligned process. And from there, once you understand that, it’s okay, now how do we massively prospect to get these people? And then once we massively start to prospect to get these people, I always like to induce at least six new ways into a company that are working.

Within a year to grow a company. And then how do we automate those six ways, right? So we can free up our time and our monies. And it’s just constant influx of business coming in at that point. And so then how do we up our sales conversations and how do we anchor all the math to each one of these stages?

And I think one of the more important ones that people miss are there, there are two, and this is one of the reasons I developed the. Personalized follow-up system because I literally lost $125,000 sale by going on vacation. Yeah. The vacation cost me $4,000, so now you can figure out what my vacation really cost me.

And I was like,

I hope you got a couple of decent margaritas out of it.

Yeah. I actually thought I needed at least a dozen more margaritas after I lost that video.

Wow, that is a huge, yeah,

so follow up is super important. So we follow ups, the glue that holds everything together.

It’s the glue that holds the relationships together. And so we built that system. But I think one of the things that most people miss out of the whole thing, an Anthony and growing revenue is we can’t if we just grow the company revenue, but we as individuals don’t grow our mind. Like shape our mind to accept the new growth, accept the new challenges, accept the new responsibilities, accept the new fact that we are now doing way better than we were.

If we see ourselves at a, say a seven, but we grow to a nine, I see this time and time again, the entrepreneur will actually start coming back to who they believe their identity is and they’ll start sabotaging the growth. And so a big component is also conditioning that part of us because we all have desires, fears, wants, doubts, confidence levels at certain levels.

But we’ve gotta, we’ve gotta constantly keep growing that otherwise we and I’ve done this to my own businesses, I’ve done this, where I’m like, why am I doing this? I don’t know why I was doing it right. And then I figured it out and you gotta keep going in that process and keep growing.

If you want to continue to grow, going back to your innovation and things that are happening, the world will do this for us. It’ll kick us over and over until we understand that we’re not the center of the universe. We’re just part of it.

Yes. It’s a and that’s. And that’s an important lesson. It’s simple, but it’s the, but it is the truth that we often forget that there are other people around that matter. And it goes back to what we were saying in the beginning, really, that businesses need to understand fundamentally there audience.

And in order to be able to respond and to grow, and innovation is a part of it, because that’s part of the process as well, is that now there are expectations. We talked about it before, that the expectations of what people have are very different to what they were 20 years ago. And they’re going to be different again in 20 years time from now.

They’re probably gonna be different in a year’s time, the way change is happening. And, AI’s a good example. AI has come into sales. I know of a. Company that replaced 80% of their sales team with AI and they’ve had a 60% growth. And as a result of doing it, now, it depends what you’re selling.

That’s a low ticket, a hundred dollars a month kind of subscription idea where it’s fairly straightforward for people to understand and AI can sell that. Yeah,

And so to that point, Anthony, I think you’re bringing up a very smart cautionary phrase, which is, it isn’t for everyone.

Folks, you’re not gonna, probably in high probability, redu, take out a. Complex sales situation with AI today. It’s li unlikely to ha not happen, I should say. It’s unlikely to happen. Very likely not to happen. So before you run out and start deploying AI and kicking your sales team off, let’s do a thorough study on that one.

Yeah, it’s it is one of those things, isn’t it? And it’s cautionary with all of this sort of stuff, AI is a good example where some of these things are worth trying. There are some things that will take you to a certain point, but it does depend on the nature of the industry.

It does depend on the nature of what you’re selling. And in, in that particular case, it’s a product that. Doesn’t need isn’t going to, it’s not gonna be service driven, put it that way, that it’s, you’re not going to actually need to engage with a human. It’s a, it’s basically a software product that they’re selling a subscription to.

So it can make some sense in that market. But, I’m in a, in the business of podcasting, that’s not something that is going to be able to be replaced by ai. I know there are ais that can do certain amounts of things, but. We traded, we’ve traded a number of stories here today, and you can’t do that with an ai.

They’re not going be able to do that in the same way. And that human element and how we respond, particularly in a sales process is also important because often it is that rapport that you develop with someone, which has a big emotional stake in your ability to be able to connect and sell.

Yeah, I don’t know what the future.

Brings in that regard. Maybe in time podcasting does change, maybe in time, hugs change, maybe AI can create a hug feeling. I don’t really know, a rapport building. I don’t, we have a need as a human being to have other human beings in our lives. And if we, and I, this is the whole I would say pet peeve of mine, right? Where I think people are so far moved on the technology side that they’re actually getting away from the human to human side. And I see it in restaurants. I watch people in restaurants and they’re on their, they’re looking at their cell phones, like through, three quarters of the meal and barely talking to one another.

And I, I think, AI can do that. But I don’t think it will ever get to that. I shouldn’t say ever. I don’t see it getting to that place where it replaces what we’re talking about, what you’re talking about right now, Anthony? I think it’ll give it a shot for sure, because, the video cloning is so good now.

I can’t only imagine where it’s gonna be in another year where, you just feed it a script and. To ai, video clones or having a conversation back and forth, and it’ll be a little more hard difficult to discern, is it accurately. AI or not I don’t think like you, I, we just heard a dog in the background, right?

I’m assuming it’s your place because we don’t have a dog. Yes. I think

that I think someone’s decided that there’s something at the front door or a package is arriving, something like that. So there’s a. There’s a dog that’s going a little bit nuts in the background, so apologies for that.

No that’s the greatest part of AI can’t do that, right?

We can’t respond. The AI on this side would not go, oh, it’s a dog. At this point maybe down the line it could. But that’s how people, you and I are both human beings having a conversation and that’s, I don’t think selling ever will get that far away. That won’t happen.

But I do agree that if you’re selling a moderately low end or commoditized type process in most cases, AI will do an amazing job on something like that. If you’re buying a I don’t know, just pick anything a a. A piano for your kids, and you’re like, what? Piano sounds great.

And the AI can work out these things and tell you differences in these type of things. And you could probably make a decision to buy a piano, right? But if you are a concert pianist who is, playing at a high level, high end, you’re probably not ever gonna get AI to be able to get you to buy a piano.

You’re gonna want to go into a piano. Store or shop that’s been established for a long time was, has Steinway or Yamaha or a whatever brand you’re looking for, and you’re gonna wanna talk to people. So I think that, I don’t think that’s ever gonna go away. Personally.

Yeah, and it’s fascinating you say that because when my daughter was 12 and she had an opportunity, she got given some money and collected some over a period of time and wanted to buy a piano.

She only had a certain budget to it, but she was very strict. She had to play those pianos and wasn’t what anyone was selling her. It was sitting down and actually. Enjoying it and appreciating the sound and going through her own process. And it wasn’t something that you could have done online.

No. And it does make it, it does make a difference. And sometimes that, touching and feeling the product or service is an important aspect of of how we go about all of this.

Yeah. And I think there’s a place for AI to do that. And I think there’s a place for AI not to be able to do that.

And, I use AI every day of my life and it’s great for the things that I use it for. I just, again, those complex or those it’s really hard to f. I don’t even know if it’s impossible, but it’s certainly hard, I think, to emulate or replace what you’re talking about with your daughter.

And if you’re sitting into a piano and you’re feeling the weight of the keys and the touch and the feel and all of that, when she’s pressing down the notes, she’s gonna feel a little better playing a certain type of keyboard than another one. And they’re all different. And so I, I know this ’cause I’m a musician and I play piano and those type of things.

It’s the same thing for, a vocalist in a microphone. I don’t think, I think AI can make recommendations, but I don’t believe it’s gonna be able to pick the microphone for you until

you hear it. Exactly. There’s so many more things that we could have touched on and talked about and we do have to wrap things up, but I do want to ask you two final things.

One thing I wanted to ask about and we are only just going to touch on it, you talked at the beginning about an incredible background. I wouldn’t say slave labor at three years old, but starting work at three years old with your dad and I understand that, and that would’ve been an amazing experience.

And watching those businesses that he was involved with, going through the military, having many of your own businesses, what are the big lessons that you’ve learned from all of that, that you impart then in as part of the strategies that you give the people you work with?

So I had A mentor’s name was Richard Menino.

Richard has passed on. I have no idea why he even mentored me. He was very wealthy guy. I think I reminded him of a young hymn, when he was going through and he said something to me one day. And I think this encompasses what I learned in the military and throughout life. And as I get a little more seasoned in my years, I still.

I learned, I come back to this lesson, he said to me, son, ’cause I asked him, I said why do people not get what they want in life? Why do people like just not get it? Anything is pretty much achievable. I can’t imagine a male would have a, a baby unless it was a seahorse or something.

But, for most normal things, you can get what you want in life and if you’re willing to, and he said to me, he said, son, here’s the thing.

When you’re going for a goal, the only thing you can do is point your nose in that direction and take one step a day. He said, you just keep pointing your nose in the direction you know you want to go. And I promise you two things, one. It will take you two to three times longer than you figured. And two, it’ll cost you two to three times more than you figured.

But if you keep going, you will get your goal. And he said, oh, I didn’t answer your question. The number one reason people don’t get what they want is they quit. Yep. And I learned in the military you can sustain, all kinds of things for a period of time. I’m freezing cold and, combat, all kinds of things like that.

I learned from my dad’s business, you’re always gonna have ups and downs. When he was I was 16 and he had a heart attack, and my dad was the center of the business, and all of a sudden, I’m 16, I gotta run the business. So created a lot of confusion in my life at that moment.

But, I made it through, I just kept going. And then my dad, when he got better, he came back and the business grew again. And we did that as you’re always gonna run up against things that are always gonna challenge us. And the question is, how clear, and this is the reason I start people with a truthful goal and why they want it.

Because how clear are we? On that truthful goal and what we want, and if we are committed to it, we will get there. In most cases, I’m sure there are people who have not, but I know even in my life that’s been a very helpful thing. It’s not fun when you know there’s an old song, frank Sinatra made it famous. It was called, that’s life, you’re riding high in April and shot down in May. That was one of the lines I found that to be the way it is in business. It’s the way it is in selling. You have a great day and you’re like, oh my gosh, I just sold five outta six, and then all of a sudden, like four days in a row, no one’s buying.

And it can beat up on your mental and emotional. Desire to say, you know what, I’m going to the beach, or I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go to the pub, or I’m gonna, whatever. I’m gonna watch te tell you, but the reality is you just gotta keep focused. And this is the second thing I learned, Chet Holmes, when I was the president sales for Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes.

Chet used to talk about pigheaded discipline and determination, which means you just keep going like Dick. Menino said, and Tony always talked about can I constant and ever, never ending improvement. If we take those two concepts with what Dick Mino said, that’s how you get your goal. And that goes back to what we were talking about, where you gotta innovate and you gotta be fluid and you gotta be able to move through the process because it is not always a linear line.

So much great advice in that there. And it’d be remiss of me not to point out to everyone listening in and we’ll include some details in the show notes. There is a regular newsletter that you produce that people can sign up for and get lots of information on a regular basis about that. So we’ll include the details of.

In the show notes for everyone. Just a final question for this time, because I think there, there has to be more in the future. As I’ve enjoyed this conversation, I hope everyone listening in has as well. What is the big aha moment that people have when they come to work with you that you wish more people knew they would have in advance?

Wow, that’s an awesome question. I’ve never been asked that question. I’ve done hundreds of these and never been asked that question. The big aha moment that I see is, there’s two things. Number one, there’s rapid growth that can happen, and rapid growth, everybody has it on their own level. Anthony, right?

So I. I love working with solo consultants. I, it was one of those things that it was originally it was like they don’t pay enough. But, I’m at a place now where it’s I take clients when I wanna work with them. ’cause I got the other businesses, supporting everything else.

I’ll give you a couple of examples and then, a larger company, I had a gentleman, his that I worked with, his name’s Jonathan. And Jonathan was an interesting man. He’s super smart. He’s a consultant. He was doing 700,000 a year and he went from 700,000 to $945,000 in six weeks in revenue.

But we attacked. Not just the business side of it. And I don’t, when I say attack, I don’t mean blitz Creek. We attacked the things that needed to happen. But what he did was a great job was also attacking the mental side of the business because that’s what was holding him up. So when we can free that up, the metrics and the math and the application of that.

It can work very rapidly. I just was working, this just happened literally last week. Sam, he’s a, also a consultant and Sam we got a 20 x increase in product in production of outbound activity happening for two weeks in his business, and he’s already set. From the previous numbers, $450,000 in new business that’s expected to come through the door from this activity based on our close rate, right?

So you can have massive growth quickly. I have done this with large companies. Intuit, for example, which many people know the QuickBooks company, they do Rocket mortgage and a bunch of other stuff. They went from a $10 million loss to a $7 million gain in under a year, so in, in one division.

So these things can happen quickly. So I think that’s probably, maybe the shock and awe of it, Anthony. But what I really see happen with people is when these things happened. Is there, not only does their business life get better, but their personal life gets really better too because they, the skill sets they’re learning to grow that business and get that rapid growth directly impacts their personal life where they have better family relationships, better friendships more life satisfaction, all kinds of things.

So that’s what I would say.

Fantastic. So much great wisdom and I really appreciate everything that you’ve given us, and I think we’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg as it were in, in what we could discuss and go into. Doug c Brown, thank you so much for being an incredible guest on the Biz Bites for Thought Leaders Program.

Oh, Anthony, thanks for having me. Again, I’m very grateful to be here.

And to everyone listening in, of course, don’t forget that all the details how to get in touch with Doug are going to be included in the show notes. We look forward to your company next time. On the next episode of Biz Bys, four Ford leaders.

Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bites. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Biz Bites is proudly brought to you by podcast done for you, the service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance. To the world. Contact us today for more information, details in the show notes.

We look forward to your company next time on biz.

LinkedIn Brand building, how to stand out in today’s digital business landscape. Welcome to Biz Bites for Thought Leaders, where we deliver actionable insights for today’s business leaders. I’m your host, Anthony Pearl, and today I’ve joined by Steve Dart, who is a fractional FMO. And a creator of the Brand Salience Factor.

In this episode, you’re gonna

discover how to optimize your LinkedIn presence, build a memorable personal brand that stands out from AI generated content, and apply marketing lessons from global brands to your business. Steve shares his journey from Red Bull to helping businesses create digital impact.

Of all shapes and sizes for brands just like yours, Steve Dart is a very special guest because he has huge amounts of insights, lots of information to give you. Get your pen and paper ready. Let’s get into it.

Hey everyone. Welcome to Biz Bites for Thought Leaders, and I am very excited to be having my guests Steve Dart with me today because Steve and I have known each other for a few years now and got to know one another better and better all the time. In fact, we were just sitting in something yesterday together, so I thought, why not get him on the program?

Steve, welcome to Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Thank you so much Anthony. Great to be spending time with you and we do seem be crossing paths a lot lately, so you’re in those good circles as well as I am. It’s great to see.

Yeah, it’s always interesting, isn’t it, that you have that situation, but we’re gonna get into that in a minute or two I think.

Firstly, I’m gonna allow you to introduce yourself to everyone.

Wonderful. I’ve got a bit of a new title after working with Steve Broman. He’s an amazing guy. So I used to be a LinkedIn trainer, but look, I’ve got this and I’m I’m a fractional FMO, which is Freelance Marketing Officer, and I’m the creator of the Brand Salience Factor, and I’ll talk about that as we go through this because Brand Salience is about building a brand online that’s remembered very quickly through a purchasing or service.

Conditions. So I work with people especially on LinkedIn or who wanna know, understanding of how to use the LinkedIn platform, especially the premium products like Sales Navigator core for lead generation, but actually build your brand profile online to be the number one in the market you serve.

So that’s a little bit about what I am.

We are gonna delve into that in a minute. But firstly, I’ve, I would like you to do a bit of a shout out to Steve. He’s been a guest on the program in the past. So those of you that don’t know Steve, check it out. In a previous episode we’ll try and put a link in the show notes to that as well.

But let’s dive in Steve, because as I said, you and I go back a little while and I guess we got to know each other. The primarily initially through LinkedIn and a around that. And I wanted to ask you that as this kind of a starting point

[03:07] Evolution of LinkedIn as a Business Platform

before we go a little bit more into brand, because LinkedIn has become, the accepted place for businesses to hang out.

Is that the best way of describing what LinkedIn is these days? ’cause it’s gone through a few iterations.

Yeah, look, I had a friend of mine call me up the other day and said, you’ve been on this LinkedIn stuff for a while now, and it seems like it’s all coming to fruition. And I said, look, LinkedIn is just a place where it’s a massive my, like it’s a place where people store data, especially LinkedIn.

And I’ve always used it as a communication platform. And the early situation for me with LinkedIn is I was on the platform early when someone sent me a connection request and I didn’t know what it was. And I built a profile out. And sorry. Build a profile out and basically left the pro, left, left LinkedIn.

I just think I, I had a job. I was working with Red Bull. Everything was going good. I didn’t really need to put a CV up on there. And then it wasn’t until I came back in 2012 where actually saw it was a different platform. It looked incredibly different. So Richard Branson was the first millionth follow up person on there, and you could create content.

I was like, wow, this is quite incredible. So I actually stayed on the platform and started building out and used it to communicate with my other business professionals lead generation, and just really storyboarding what I was doing in the market. So its iterations has happened over the last 21 years.

It was just a place you had put your CV to a place now that you actually build brand and build profiling and it’s still a recruitment tool and I understand that. But you can actually have really good conversations and a lot of lead generation activity within the platform. So yeah, that’s how I see it.

Yeah, I think that’s the interesting point for people, isn’t it that posting is one part. Getting followers is another part, but ultimately it’s about the conversations, isn’t it? I think people miss the point of that, that it’s lovely to post, it’s lovely to for an ego trip to say, I had x number of people like, or comment or share it or whatever it might be.

But that is not much more than an ego trip, right? The million followers is nice, but what does it actually mean? It’s the true engagements, the one-on-one conversations that you can have through LinkedIn, which I think are the most powerful aspect of it.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know what I love about LinkedIn is when you connect with someone, you’re giving each other authority to then talk, to get to each other on the platform.

You don’t have to go to email or any other kind of communication. You can actually talk them directly on the platform and then share content and that kind of thing. I love it because it’s a place where business professionals do go to learn from other business professionals and better themselves every day.

And one of the things I love to see when people are on the platform and they are getting better and they are using it as a tool of trade, and I do call it a tool of trade because like you have a car or a computer or anything else that helps you get through business, LinkedIn should be seen as that. I call it the oxygen of business because it’s where business does.

Come to play. And if you think about it, in the market we live in, out of all those seven different apps on your phone now being Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube and all that, LinkedIn is where business happens. Why do they rob banks? ’cause that’s where the money is. And why do you go to LinkedIn?

[06:17] Personal Branding and AI on LinkedIn

’cause that’s where the people that are doing business within the social serving place. So that’s how I look.

I want to start crossing over into brand building and things as well. And I think using LinkedIn as a starting point for that conversation is a really interesting one because it’s become a playground as well for a lot of ai and trying to balance that use of AI and building your brand because they can be in conflict with one another if you’re not careful about it.

And it’s interesting to me that LinkedIn has. Really decided to embrace and even push AI to a large extent as well. And I wonder if that’s to the detriment of a lot of people and a lot of brands.

Yeah. Look, time will tell on that. I know I’m using AI every day. I am probably 10 hours in ai. I use it.

Part of my business activity, one that I’m in quite often is notebook L. And that is a fantastic ’cause. It’s an actual resource gathering where you can actually put your LinkedIn profile, you can do website and all your other assets. And when you prompt engineer it, it’s only pulling from that resource.

That’s what I love about that AI tool. But AI tool, it’s one of those things that, I think that people will discover it’s gonna be a great time saver, and I think people are discovering the more that these ai agents come into play, it’s gonna be very interesting times. One thing that I’m trying to really make stand out to most people I speak to is, you must get your personal brand out into the market.

Because the way that AI’s coming it’s now equaled the playing field with knowledge. So our brand and our personal brand has to really be positioned higher now, so people would choose us because of the experience we hold as a human being. So I wanna pick

up on something you’ve said there as well, because you referenced personal brand and I think we are in this really interesting situation because for a long time it’s been about business brands.

Yeah,

it’s the personal brand is very much taken a backseat. But that seems to have changed again, that the need to push a personal brand and trying to find that balance of where do you have a personal brand? Where do you have a business brand? And I know certainly if you go back a few years. It was, I remember seeing a statistics on Facebook and saying that on average people followed one brand only, and yet follow hundreds of people.

So it’s not a surprise that personal brand has started to build, but it’s really started to take some more momentum. And again, it’s that balance on some, on a platform like LinkedIn, how much energy do you put into the business versus the personal one? What are the risks attached to that?

Yeah, I think it’s an end story there because we know that people don’t buy off logos, they buy off people.

So that’s why LinkedIn was formed to actually put personal profiles before business company pages. But I’m seeing a real trust recession at the moment, as most people are, and people are really not trusting of brands as they’re not trusting of people these days as well. So I think by showcasing yourself as your authentic self.

On these platforms, all those seven platforms, and presenting yourself as the, the way you’re putting yourself into market and that you are trustworthy and that you’re credible, and that you’ve got competency. And that’s why I love LinkedIn, because it’s the one stop shop for displaying all that at one viewpoint is a big reason why.

You can see people are elevating into the market because they’re micro nicheing, their skills and talents. Yes. And I’ve been on a lot of presentations and podcasts recently talking about LinkedIn because I’m positioning myself as a knowledge person on that. And that’s why I’m getting asked to do a lot more of these presentations and podcasts.

[10:12] Top Tips for LinkedIn Success

And I’ve sat in on some of those presentations and I know how good you are at that. And it’d be remiss be not to ask you. Before we delve a little deeper into some of the other things what are the, probably the top three things that people should be doing on LinkedIn to really make a difference at the high level?

What are the areas that they should focus on?

Yeah, number one, absolutely publish your profile for your authentic self. And then there’s what’s called an add to profile button on your profile, which then extends it out and you can actually publish your honors and awards. You can put your, any kind of detail for projects you’ve been doing, if you’ve got any licensing, and really populate that so people get an understanding when they review your profile, what it is that you’ve actually accomplished over the years you’ve been working or in that kind of situation.

So what I have felt with the. The clients I’ve worked with is when I see them in real life and then I look at their profile and I’ve spoken to them, they’re completely different. So I want people to build out their digital twin from a, a headline that is representing of how they help people in market.

Also, a banner image that has their trust value phrasing or overlay and their photo to be up to date and current, and especially. Positioned as you would meet them belly to belly. You don’t wanna have something from 10 years old. You don’t wanna have a profile photo. It’s got glasses.

You’re at the races, it’s a professional site. Make sure you’re smiling. It’s warmth. And people want to really get a an understanding of you. They actually form a bias of you before they even met you by. So your pro profile is your digital twin, and if it’s relevant and positions you as the person they’d love to meet or do business with, it’s a great first stepping stone.

Yeah, I think that the photo is something that is actually really an interesting one because when you meet people, whether it’s physically in person or whether it’s gonna be online, invariably you’re checking out their profile before you go and have that meeting. And I had one recently where I had to do a double take because I’m going, hang on.

The person that I think I’m meeting because I did see them somewhere else and their profile photo. Were so completely different that I thought it was the wrong person and it was only when I started digging a little deeper and going no, this is the right person. Then I started looking more closely at the face and I went, okay, yes, there’s a difference here.

In the, in. In some of the other features and things, but the core of it, it is definitely the right person. And a shout out to Nancy Za as well who’s also been a guest on the podcast in the past who I know specializes in taking a look at people’s images that are there and helping you identify how best to interact with them.

So it’s, it does tell a lot and it’s interesting what you say, how often there are photographs that are. Substantially older than it, and when you start getting to photos that are 10 plus years old, then you should be going, hang on, this is, what are you hiding from? Why aren’t you showing a current professional photograph?

So it is something that’s, I think is an important aspect that is often overlooked.

Yeah, and one of the things about LinkedIn, when you actually sign onto LinkedIn, the algorithm firstly checks your in contact info card and it actually scans and has a look at the details and the photo to see if it’s a current photo.

If you can actually remove your photo, then upload exactly the same one, it actually makes you a better time value of data for LinkedIn because it’s number one client is recruiters, and if you are a better product on this and for recruiters to find you, that’s always a good thing in. In your favor.

So here’s a good opportunity to remove your photo and upload a current one, and then you get a better time value of data. So you’re doing two value exchanges there on the platform.

I wanted to ask you as well before we leave LinkedIn a little bit behind, but in ask you keeping up with. What’s happening on LinkedIn?

It’s a very difficult thing. The algorithm is one thing, and I think for the longest time people have been obsessed with how do I, crack the algorithm, which is constantly changing and almost impossible to crack. But I think it’s also balancing that with how do I keep up with what is the latest features that I should be cottoning onto?

Is it just. Fun and nice to have? Or is it actually making a difference in, the way you are going to be found and the banner image and the change of the changes that have happened with that in recent times. Is it probably a good case in point is are they something that you go, yes, you have to jump on?

How do you stay on top of what the latest and greatest is? ’cause it is literally just following someone like you. Yeah,

look, I like the way that LinkedIn has moved. Look, it is a free site. It costs nothing to join. But what it is LinkedIn is trying to upgrade people into their premium products.

’cause you get a better experience. For instance, the banner, rather than being a static placement, it actually gives you five rotating banners. And that’s good for people that have got multiple things going on within their work. Whether it be an event coming up or they’re displaying a couple of jobs that they do within their, in, in their current work situation.

So it gives you a better experience that way. It gives you a better analytics when you’re sending out connection requests on a premium product, you get to send out up to 150 connection requests. Out to somebody rather, and with a personalized note, except for the free version, you only get five a month.

So it’s really decreasing its opportunity with a free version and extending opportunities and analytics and the experience for the user in those premium offerings. LinkedIn is a business. It actually Microsoft purchased it for $26.2 billion. And it’s starting to reclaim its money, but it’s giving you a better experience in the premium offerings.

I use Sales Navigator Core because it’s a premium sales analytics tool, which gives me 40 features or 40 filtering options, advanced search just to find my ideal client profile or person out of, 10,000 data. Data points. So if you are looking for lead generation or you’re trying to get more sales activity happening, sales navigator call is the one.

It’s about 99 USD a month that is. And I highly recommend it for someone to trial it at least.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s one of those things, isn’t it? You have to make use of the tools. I think we, that’s one of the challenges in this day and age, right? That there are so many tools and you need to make use of them in order to justify their, their value.

And I think the key is as well with LinkedIn is, as I said is I’d encourage people to follow you because. You give tips regularly on what the latest and greatest is, and I think it is important to stay on top of those things. We will absolutely make sure that those details are in the show notes, but I wanted to delve deeper into this whole idea of brand a little bit more and how you are positioning yourself as well.

‌

But let’s start off with the background. How cool was it working at Red Bull and why would you leave?

Yeah, look, red Bull’s fantastic. I was there in the early days and it was one of those brands that was new to market. They were coming out from Austria. Unfortunately the founder just passed away last year, Mr.

Mani or Dietrich Mani. But it was a very progressive brand. It was very youth orientated. And one thing I learned from being there was they were different to market. And I love that about the product. I was there in the early days when there was only six of us, I think, within the Queensland office with our energy teams, which is the little Volkswagens that drove around with a can in the back.

And they gave us the opportunity to wear many hats. We were sales, we were event organizers, we were dealing with PR teams. And it just gave me such an opportunity to have a diverse range of skill sets. And I worked with there for many years and thought after working there, I think for eight years, what could I actually take from the market working with Red Bull out to the SME market and see if the Red Bull way really worked?

And I’d worked with a couple of companies after that using that kind of methodology and had enormous success. So I loved learning one. Or a one style of skill within marketing and the methodology of being a mystique brand in the way that Red Bull went to market, and then taking across into smaller, medium brands and using the same philosophy.

To give you an idea, I actually worked writing a blueprint for the Hard Rock Cafe. And the first thing I did was I created an activation where we had Axel Roses Harley Davidson, that set up on a showcase piece. You couldn’t touch it, you could only just take photos. And I said to the general manager, why is that sitting up there?

He said, oh, people take photos of it. I said, why don’t we put on the ground with a banner of the hardware cafe Gold Coast with all the elements of the skyline for the guitar? Let’s let people sit on it and let them have the experience and then they can take Instagram shots and help promote. And we had basically a lineup down the stairs.

So people came for the activation of sitting on Axel Roses, Harley Davidson, and taking a photo and then sharing that for the company, and then they decided to grab a burger while they were there. It’s using that really cool activations to try something different in markets they hadn’t tried.

I think that the really interesting part about that is it’s an experience and I think that’s what people are looking for, right? Is they need to experience something with your brand in order to then be able to share it and to, take some kind of enjoyment out of it. ’cause the interesting thing about that is, the.

The burger just needed probably to be good and didn’t need to be great in order to get people to come back because you had this showpiece that was there, whereas the emphasis on trying to be well, are we the greatest burger place in wherever you are is a lot harder road to travel and it’s the experience that you get.

That was really what Hard rock cafes were all about, wasn’t it? Yeah. The experience.

Yeah, rock and roll even. I actually had a conversation with the general manager and the team and I said, unless we are relevant to the youth, because everything was, there was heritage, it was old, photos and guitars.

And I said, we have to be relevant to the youth, otherwise we don’t become relevant as a brand and they’re out, they’re outta business now. And I think that was one of the main reasons they just didn’t look at new activations or new markets to actually bring their product in front of. So it just became an old brand in the end.

Yeah, it’s interesting. Because it was, and for those that maybe that don’t even remember Hard Rock Cafe that might be listening it, they really were a phenomenon, weren’t they? They were, you would go to different ones in, around the world because you wanted to see the stuff, but the problem was that once you went once there wasn’t really a reason to go back because there wasn’t a rotation of things.

And so you went and you had an experience and you had a great experience. Maybe you went back a second time, but it’s unlikely you went back thir three or four times because. There was nothing new about it. And I think that’s the, that is also the dilemma with something like that is, is creating experiences but keeping up with, need to adapt and change.

Otherwise you do fall behind.

Yeah. One thing I learned from being at Red Bull was about you always had to re, you had to be relevant to the youth. And that’s one thing you can see in their marketing today. They’re very relevant to the youth market coming through because then they get brand loyalists starting at a young age and carrying that through.

Also with LinkedIn at the moment, the most engagement on the platform is 25 to 33 year olds, the Gen Z market. And it’s a, it’s an interesting stat when I bring that up. People can’t believe it. They think LinkedIn’s quite old with, its with, with its viewpoint. But no, it’s a young demographic coming onto it and they’re omnipresent across, seven of those different platforms.

They understand they’re native to these platforms. They know that they need to be on it to be relevant because attention is the asset. And so I, when I teach my programs within the LinkedIn platform is about making sure you are not only omnipresent, but definitely be on LinkedIn because that’s where the business is

and it keeps you feeling young, right?

We are definitely in that age group, aren’t we, Steve? Absolutely. Now I just finishing up on I’m intrigued. A little bit further just to push you a little bit further on the Red Bull thing because, I find it fascinating that I’m, engaged with Red Bull as a brand on a regular basis.

’cause I happen to love Formula One and Red Bull is very prominent in Formula One, of course. But I’ve never drunk a Red Bull and I don’t think I ever will. But I love the brand and that’s a really interesting thing, isn’t it? Because you do have these brands out there that are like that, that you want to champion.

Because you like what they stand for. They’re the, they’re on the edge, right? They’re a brand that is of a similar ilk to Virgin in that they’re not afraid to take risks and they’re not afraid to go out there and promote. New things, but it’s interesting. I find that it with such a prominent brand that their market is, they’re not expecting me to be in their market either.

That’s the interesting thing about it is I don’t think people my age are picking up a Red Bull for the first time. I think their target is a lot younger. Yeah I think there’s a lot of lessons to be learned from those kinds of experiences as well. That you have to know your market, but doesn’t mean you can’t be.

Seen in a broader sense as well.

Yeah, and obviously that was one of the big programs for Red Bull was the marketing of the sampling program, where they sampled you the product and they actually told you about the benefits and the ingredients and things like that. And so they spent a lot of money and time on educating the consumer on why the products functionality use and when they should have, and how they should actually, use it because it is just a delivery through the can.

The actual energy, it does give you wings and you might not be a consumer at the time, but if you are gonna make an energy drink or a drink consumption and you need energy because you’ve got that brand persona of Red Bull supported you, you are more likely to grab that as a product than you would as a competing product.

So just putting Red Bull in the conversation.

And I think the question then becomes for you is, as you’ve delved into this role, and I love the interesting title this whole idea of being a fractional operator, it’s become a, a trendier term. I’ve heard that used a little bit more in recent times.

So explain to me what that is and explain to me how you take learnings from. Your experiences in Red Bull Hard Rock Cafe what you’re doing with smaller businesses through LinkedIn and other places, how does that play out in what you’re doing now?

Yeah, look, I’m just coming in with fresh eyes and I deal with a lot of head of brand just to come, just speak to them about what they’re doing with their programs, their marketing strategies, managing in-house teams.

And a lot of them are, they don’t have the wisdom of seeing what brands going from, startup to being more progressive in the market. And so I just come into these businesses and I just see what they’re doing now and work with their head of branches. Just say, look, maybe you should make. Try these, you should be broadcasting your branding message across different platforms and just being fresh eyes to what they normally know.

Like when I started with Red Bull, one of the first things they said to me, if you’ve got a marketing degree, don’t worry about it. We don’t use it. We do it our own way. And I thought that was really interesting that they said that. And they were a hundred percent right. They didn’t do anything. That I was learning in marketing.

And so I actually take that into marketing teams now and I say to people, especially even on LinkedIn, make sure your marketing in the year we actually live in, doesn’t matter what you’ve done before. Have a look at what the market’s doing. Look who the creators are, look at the culture of things and make sure you are relevant in today’s market.

And a lot of people, especially with their LinkedIn, talk about the good old days. We’re not on the good old days anymore. We wanted to work with leaders who are progressing ourselves and our brands forward. And that’s what I love about where LinkedIn can place you in today’s market because you can be talking about in your content what you are doing as a business professional and you’ve learned from those scars, but you are, you’re looking forward and that’s what people are looking at.

One of the reasons, I dunno if you know this, but why is the emu and the kangaroo on our coat of arms is ’cause they’re only two animals that only will go forward. They’ll never go back. So I dunno if you know that, but that’s what I love to see if people are progressing, not about the good old days.

And once upon a time.

I love that. And I vaguely remember hearing that somewhere once before. Maybe you told it to me. I can’t remember. Okay. But I love that It is and it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because we are living in an age where the rate of change, I believe, is faster than it has ever been.

Absolutely. The efficiencies that are being created from ai. In particular are allowing more space to do things. And I think that’s one of the big areas. And when you talk about marketing, it’s creativity, it’s fresh ideas. That’s the big space that marketing has an opportunity to really grow. And in fact, AI is not countering that.

It’s actually. Creating more opportunities for that to happen because the drudgery of what’s in marketing, if I can call it that, where, things like placement of content or and generating reports and other things can now be much more efficiently. Done with some AI assistance. So I wouldn’t say ai, do it on its own, don’t do that.

But you’ve got mo greater efficiencies in there, which allows more space to be creative because in the face of all of the AI and LinkedIn’s a good example of that, the face of all the AI that has been used to publish content, the way to stand out. Is the uniqueness, your unique stories, creativity, fresh ideas, which again, I’m not, I don’t wanna dwell back on Red Bull, but that’s and Virgin is the same.

They’re always about fresh ideas and new things. It’s, you’ve got to keep moving forward.

Yeah. Red Bull was never about being a copying brand. It was always being a leading brand. And I used to sit on round tables with athletes and they’d basically, they’d have to come up with something in their category that had never been done before.

So if you know that when the Red Bull air race happened, that came from the concept of downhill skiing. Going through the gates, but doing it through aerobatics and things like that. So they’re always very progressive in the market. Red Bull was never about following. It was always about leading.

And I take that into what I do every day. I’m always, I’m an early riser. I dunno, I think I think, but I’m up at three 30 every morning and I’m into the gym and I’m listening to two hours of the best podcast of business professionals and forward leading thinkers like Gary Vaynerchuk and Alex Mosey, and I’m listening to that every day for.

The whole year. So whenever I come into my first meetings, I’m talking to clients, I’m energized. I’m like, this is what’s happening, because I know that they’re being bold in what they’re doing and they’re testing the market and I’m listening to what’s happening and I’m relaying it to my clients. And that’s one of the reasons that I’m doing so well in Mark at the moment because I’m paying attention to what’s happening through leaders who are trying new things.

Plus, there’s a lot of great LinkedIn trainers out there. I’m listening to what they’re doing. I’m sure they’re listening to what I’m doing, but together. We’re all help benefiting people’s opportunity to understand how to use this platform LinkedIn in a day-to-day operation and be and to be better.

1% every day.

Yeah. And that’s the key, isn’t it? It’s taking your influences and being on the edge and not being afraid to try things. I think for so long, business has been about what’s my competition doing? And I better just match the competition or try and stay a little bit ahead. But I think you don’t even almost have to pay attention to your competition anymore.

It’s about what you can do, what you can bring to the table, what ideas you have. And bringing the audience along with you, because there’s still, and that’s the interesting thing about brands these days, is you have to almost be like Apple has been for the longest time where they’re, what they believe people will want in the future, not what they know they want now.

Yeah. And also treating your customer, not as a customer, but as a community member. One of the brands I was working with for many years is LSKD, and they’re an Australian brand out of Logan south of Brisbane. And they, every time they’re across all their socials, they’ve got an engagement officer that when they post content and there’s engagement, someone goes back as the brand and has a voice and consistently talks and nurtures that relationship.

So they’re not customers anymore. They’re community members, and I love that about that brand and that they wear that brand in their heart whenever they’re making a purchase decision, which is salience. That’s why they’re growing at an enormous rate. So the takeaway is don’t treat people as customers.

Treat them as your, as a community member or your big sister, to be honest. Go over and above every time you deal with someone.

So let me put you on the spot and tell me about some of the brands that you, whether you’ve worked with them or not, that you really love at the moment. And I think what’s important is that we can, as we have, we’ve talked about, big brands, but let’s talk about some of the smaller brands because most of the people listening to us these days are probably part of a smaller brand and want to know what they can do to make a different, so what’s inspiring you on some of those smaller levels that are making a difference?

[34:44] Making an Impact as a Fractional CMO

Look, I’ve obviously, I do love Red Bull on it and I do love Harley Davidson, some of the biggest brands in the world. But LSKD is one brand that’s doing extremely well. There’s so many that I can’t really put a name to what they are ’cause I’m not following in directly. But anyone that’s, giving it a good red hot go.

That’s the main thing. There’s many brands out there that will come and go, but the ones that you know, have resilience, they’re bold, they’re willing to have a bit of a step in the dark about trying new things. That’s what excites me mostly about brands in the market at the moment.

Obviously Virgin’s doing well. I just love brands that had that hero statement status of progressing forward even at the toughest times.

Is it achievable for smaller brands? You’re spending some, you’re spending time going in to working with smaller businesses and dealing with them.

Are the real takeaways that you can have from what some of those bigger guys are doing? Is it true that’s actually in many respects, easier to be out there? For smaller brands because they don’t have the bureaucracy and the level of decision making that needs to happen, but they may not have the, counted with the fact they may not have the budget.

Few people would have the budget of a virgin or a red Bull in terms of marketing.

Yeah social media’s been the big equalizer because people don’t have to have big advertising budgets. They can actually use their phone record content and upload it across those seven platforms. And if you do that every day and for long enough, you’ll get noticed.

Even if your product’s good, you’ll survive. And if it’s not good, you won’t survive. One of the good things about. The state of play at the moment on the internet is we’ve all got an equal opportunity to be seen and discovered. And so that’s why it’s important especially for LinkedIn, is to people not to post every now and then or frequent it.

Every now and then, it’s actually put a plan or a strategy in place to be on the platform and telling you your unique story. In a way that it’s interesting in informing for the potential client, because most people with your product in market, only 3% are interested to buy now, but 97% are looking for trust value from you and your brand.

And so across those seven platforms. Especially with LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram, just keep showing up and being your authentic self and you’ll be discovered. The main thing with providing content is when you do get pro content that actually starts to get some great impressions and that, and it’s doing well.

That’s the time to boost it with some advertising spend and it’s called brand format. And that way when it’s working, you know it’s working, you put some money behind it and it does well then you can get some really good return in advertising spend and revenue starts coming back in the other way.

Yeah, I think that’s important for people to understand that you can. Compete as a small business owner, you don’t have to, in the past it was like we were dominated by big brands and felt dwarfed by them. But in truth, because of your ability to niche and to be quite targeted in what you do, and you’re talking about, LinkedIn is a great way of.

Being able to find who your, if you know who your core audience is, you can find those people on LinkedIn. It’s not just about the old days where, there were three or four TV stations and you, your chance to was to advertise to absolutely everybody and hope that you hit the right program and spent a huge fortune on it.

Nowadays it’s become more and more targeted, right? And it doesn’t have to be through advertising. You can engage with people in lots of different ways.

Yeah, a lot of brands, smaller brands are using influencers now through social media and getting huge engagement by, user generated content from these young influencers because, TikTok and Facebook and Instagram, they’re getting, hundreds of thousands of followers, and if you have your brand associated with them, you’re getting eyeballs seen on your product.

So the influencer market is becoming a big play within marketing.

So tell me, when you go into businesses these days and you’re performing this fractional role, how do you make an impact? And that seems like a, a a high level question, but it’s, if there are people that are maybe a little bit cynical about what difference someone can come in and actually make, what is it that you can see as a difference?

How do you, how does being independent and coming in on a regular basis, but. And a small way gonna work for businesses.

Yeah, look, a bit of housekeeping. Number one, making sure on their website alone that nothing’s broken, no links are broken, they’re easily found. Also, have a look over their, all their pages on a website and see where they’re actually letting the customer know where the pro, what the problem is that they actually solve.

A lot of people on their websites go straight into the, the value proposition of their products and services, but they don’t actually indicate to the potential buyer of the problem that they solve within their products and services. So that’s number one. By having a look over your website and just seeing if it’s actually speaking to the client that they’ve got the issue, that you have the problem that you, that they, that you solve for them.

That’s number one. Also, making sure that you do have a social marketing plan across the seven. Channels that we were talking about before, LinkedIn being one, if it’s B2B and just looking what assets they’ve got within the business to see what they can profile. What’s their unique value proposition?

What do they have that no one else has? And that’s a big part of just building a strategy out around that. The main thing is attention is the asset and whatever business you go to, the reason they’re in business is because they’re solving a problem or they’ve got a product that is value orientated and you just need to get that message out.

To the people that need the product or services. So it’s just some of the basic elements.

Yeah, and I think it’s, it is important that people don’t underestimate the value of someone independent that’s specializing in it. I think the beauty of these fractional roles that have started to come about and there’s certainly marketing is one area, certainly finance is another.

Where I’ve seen that happen and other parts of the business as well, is it allows to have someone who. Can have a consistent view of what’s going on, but are not encumbered by the day to day and can add, high level strategic, ongoing advice.

Absolutely. There’s a sports brand I’m working with at the moment that’s got an outstanding athletics product.

And once that gets passed through an certification, IAF certification that’s got go global distribution opportunities. There’s a few things in place that have to happen with a rule change, but once that happens, this small business they’ll be working with, who’s going over to Germany in, in a couple of weeks will then have the opportunity to sell their product worldwide.

And that’s another challenge this business is going to have from a small business doing, product and service delivery around Australia, Australasia to the going worldwide. So that creates another challenge that they’ll find. So it’s about having those different moments in time where you’re moving from one to the next challenge, overcoming that and then moving to the next.

So it’s working with someone like myself who’s been with these brands where they’ve started off small and you got larger, and what some of the challenges we faced and how they might come overcome them as well.

I think it is an important aspect that people don’t realize. They often stay with the teams that they’ve got, that they’ve built them up through a period of time and they want to keep them there.

But sometimes you’ve, you outgrow those people. And I know I’ve experienced it when I’ve been employed in the past, and I won’t say where, but I remember, the particular organization I was with that we went through a growth phase and the CEO stuck around and I think it was to the detriment of the organization.

Because as, as great as he was at getting us to a certain point, he wasn’t really the person to take us to the next level. And I think that can happen within an organization as well. And you have to recognize those things. And sometimes it, it might not be that someone like that had to step aside, but it’s bringing in the right people around to help make sure that you can take it to that next level.

Because you do need that experience. You do need those people that understand what what it looks like on the other side.

Yeah, absolutely. And, I can’t remember the book, but it’s get the right people on the bus and that’s, getting the right people in the business that’s gonna project you forward.

And I’m noticing a lot of CEOs now are coming back into businesses and sitting on the development or in the marketing teams. To get more involved with what’s happening. They’re not sitting in that high element within a business. They’re getting more ingrained with the business, and I think that’s important.

So they actually see how the business is operating from inside and they’re part of everyday activity. I think that’s a big part of the CEO’s and also GM’s role to have a look how the actual business is going in internally. Is everything cohesive and is the culture good? Most businesses struggle with culture.

Yes, that is a big area and one we might delve into another time. I’ve got a couple of final questions I wanted to ask you. Give me some tips on what you believe is where things are going, not just LinkedIn, but generally in terms of marketing. Where do you think people need to be in terms of focusing their attention?

[41:16] Future of Marketing and AI

Yeah, definitely spending one or two hours on every AI tool that they can see at the moment and getting familiar with it because technology doesn’t care about, it’s coming here and it’s arrived. So getting familiar with the different AI tools and how they work and how to start looking at giving them commands.

And also in regards to platforms like, LinkedIn, things like that. Getting familiar, how to navigate around them. They are a tool of trade and if you understand how to use them, they. They make your day a lot quicker to actually, do general tasks by communication and then posting and getting seen.

It’s interesting I believe with the advancement of ai, especially the way that it’s coming so quick, what we believe to be happening now will be completely different in the next three years. I dunno what that’s gonna look like. I’m excited for it. It’s gonna be challenging. It’s gonna be exciting, but we have to invest our time to understand what’s coming at us.

And one of the tools I’m playing around with at the moment, I said before is Notebook lm? And I think that’s an amazing tool to have a look at and if your viewers can have a look at that and getting involved with that a bit more, it’s a great tool to have as an association within your business. It

is a fun tool.

I know I used a little while back to do to consume a lot of my podcasts. And to do a bit of a review of it, which was really interesting because it delivered a conversational review of the biz Bites for Thought Leaders podcast, which was which was a bit of fun. Yes, if anyone’s interested in that, maybe I need to find that video again and repost it.

Absolutely you should. Yep.

It’s one of those things. Now just to wrap things up, a question that I love to ask all of my guests that come on the program is what are the aha moments that people have when they come to work with you that you wish more people knew they were going to have?

That I give more than I take.

[43:18] Closing Thoughts and Contact Information

So I’m very generous with my time. I sit on a lot of 15 minute calls. I give a lot of advice to people. Sometimes that turns into business, sometimes it doesn’t. I can lay my head down at the end of the night and say that I gave it all my that day and tomorrow’s gonna be a better day. And I love helping people and I love spending time that they can be better at what they’re doing.

And if I can just support that I’m a very happy person.

Fantastic. I love that Steve. And we are gonna include all the details of how to get in contact with you. And people that are listening in can jump on one of those 15 minute calls with you. I know how much value you bring to those 15 minutes.

And I encourage people if you have looking after groups of people as well. Steve is a great speaker to come in and add some real value to that. And lots of things that we didn’t even touch on connected with LinkedIn and other areas. Such as my most trusted and a shout out to Scott and my most trusted as well, which is a great tool to add on to your LinkedIn profile and other things as well.

So you can ask Steve about that as well. And or just hit me up as well because I can also introduce you to that particular one. But Steve, thank you so much for being an amazing part of the program, giving so much advice and tips and insights along the way. Really appreciate it.

Thanks Anthony, and thanks for everything you are doing.

I appreciate it and it’s great having a platform like you that we can tell our stories.

Absolutely. And we’ll look, we encourage everyone to make sure you don’t forget to subscribe and leave us a like or a comment on anything that you want to see on the program coming up in the future. And we look forward to your company next time on Biz Bites for thought Leaders.

Thank you everyone. Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bites. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Biz Bites is proudly brought to you by podcast done for you, the service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance. To the world.

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