Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: A lot of businesses just treat their website like a. Like a brochure. They spend all this time trying to produce this content and trying to get conversions, but then they don't touch it yet. They're spending tons of time on social media or on one to one sales and outreach. They're not taking the learnings from those conversations and improving an asset that gains a value over time.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Hey, welcome to the Agency, our podcast where we help web design and digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their teams and their communities. And yes, this week I know the biggest talking point is the fact that I've shaved the mohawk off. If you're listening to this and you haven't seen it, I strongly encourage you to come over to YouTube and spend a couple of minutes marveling at my bald head. It seems to be providing endless entertainment for everyone on the Internet and in our community. So join in the fun. This week we're joined by Simon Kelly, CEO and head of growth at sgd. Simon's been a part of our agency ecosystem since way back.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: He.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: He first took our blueprint course in what feels like 1994, went on to coach inside our Mavericks club community, and now leads a powerhouse team helping Australian businesses grow through custom WordPress design, Google Ads, and SEO. And in this episode, we unpack how to turn your website into a scalable sales asset. The real value of content and how to communicate that to clients. What prospects really need to believe to become clients. Why the boring stuff like repetition and consistency actually works. And why your website is the only platform you can truly control. So if you're ready to stop winging it and start building a business that gives you time, money, and freedom, this one's for you. I'm Troy Dean. Stay with us.
Hey. Hey. Welcome back Simon Kelly to the Agency Hour. How are you, brother?
[00:01:48] Speaker A: Doing good, mate. How's yourself? I see the new. The new haircut. You've gone with something easy to maintain.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: I've gone with what's known as the Kojak. You're probably too young to remember Kojak, aren't you?
[00:01:59] Speaker A: I heard some people talk about it and that was as far as it went.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: Kojak was a police show when I was a kid and the main guy was bald at a chrome dome. And so this is now called the Kojak. Yes, I've shaved the mohawk off for a number of reasons. It had nothing to do with the idiots leaving comments on our ads on Facebook. I can promise you, if you ever left a comment on our ad saying lose the mohawk, my decision to shave The Mohawk off has nothing to do with you, you silly little person.
It has to do with the fact that I wasn't happy with the shape of it. And there's only one way to fix the shape of Mohawk. That's to shave it off and start again. So that's the plan. Although I must say, I'm really enjoying being completely bald. I mean, I could grow a full head of hair if I wanted to, but I'm really enjoying being smooth up top at the moment. So tonight on the Boring show, we're going to talk about Troy's hair, or lack of.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: This is good, Stay tuned.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: This is good. Stay tuned. Now, you ran a marathon since we spoke last, is that right?
[00:02:55] Speaker A: Not another one. I think we've spoken since. Yeah, yeah, it easy. One per week.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: Well, I still haven't heard from Barry the beer mogul, so you must have done a great job there. He hasn't reached out, so he's sponsoring me.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: That'd be nice, wouldn't it? That'd be great.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Well done.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Just crack one while we're talking. That'd be fantastic.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Well played. Well played. Now this is the agency where we help web design and digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their teams, their families, their communities. And today we are talking about your turning your website into. Into a scalable sales asset. Does that mean your website gets bigger over time? We're scaling the website, I suppose, yeah.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that's one way to look at it. It's using it as a tool that gains value over time for your marketing and your sales team. It's where various other things you can do when producing content or working in marketing in sales can require an exceptional salesperson or an exceptional marketer. And when they leave your team, they take all of the ip, all of the assets with them. But you can carve that in stone. You can put that as an asset on the website so it increases in value over time, supporting your marketing efforts and supporting your sales assets.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: Why?
I mean, you know, what is. What is that versus what most people are doing at the moment? Isn't that what most people are doing at the moment? I guess so. I guess we need to define, like what, how do you know if your website is an asset or if it's just a vanity credibility indicator? Because I actually think most websites are credibility indicators that someone says, well, I'm a web designer, we're a design agency, go and have a look at our website. That proves that we're legit. Right, but how do we know that it's an asset in the sales division.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: What needs, you know.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. The first area that it needs to, it needs to tick the box of accuracy of information around what the business does. That's the first piece. So when assessing a website, even if it gets absolutely no traffic at all, if it's not accurately representing the business, then that's, that's a fail. It hasn't passed step one.
So that would be the first piece. And a lot of websites do not even tick that box. So anything beyond then doesn't really matter if you get more traffic through the website. You're just sending more traffic to an inaccurate website that doesn't accurately represent the business. So that, that's part one is just accurate representation. A lot of businesses just treat their website like a, like a brochure. They spend all this time trying to produce this content and trying to, to get conversions, but then they don't touch it yet. They're spending tons of time on social media or on one to one sales and outreach and they're not using any, they're not taking the learnings from those conversations and improving an asset that gains a value over time. That's the big mistake. And where I see businesses that are doing it really well is they're taking, they're doing the opposite of that. They're having sales conversations, they're using what converts, the messaging that converts and they're improving their sales pages to empower their entire organization, all of their sales team, and improve the value of that asset for the, for the company.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: When I was building websites 100 years ago, I would ask a question in our discovery workshops, the people think that a website needs to have a goal. What is the goal of the website? But I actually think individual web pages need to have a goal. And what is the, in terms of like if you were working with us as a client and I said to you, well, our website's doing X, Y, Z, what would that need? What would I need to say for you to go, oh wow, you guys are doing a pretty good job? Like what's the success metric of a website or a webpage on that site? For you to say, yes, this is an asset.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: So the ideal asset is. Well, the ideal metric is that it's getting people to pick up the phone for a service business. For your business, it would be booking in sales conversations. That would be the overarching success criteria. If it did one thing, if it's doing that, that would be fantastic because the likelihood that that's generating return on investment for your business is pretty high.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Can we dig a little bit deeper into this? Because I want to talk about top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. I think it's difficult. Well, I know it's very expensive and very difficult to get your website to play a very important role at the top of the funnel. Right? Usually depending on for our business, it's been difficult anyway. Right. Our website is really good for middle of funnel and bottom of funnel. But top of funnel, it's usually social media that converts for us. If you are a service based business, if you're a plumber in Elsten Wick, where I live, calling all plumbers in Elston, Wink, you're all shit. And your websites are terrible. There's one guy who's kind of a little bit further away who's doing a really good job, but he's insanely expensive, even too expensive for me to even seriously consider. And I spend money like a drunken sailor, but he's just ridiculously expensive and he's been well trained and he frankly doesn't want me as a client, which is why he's too expensive. Right.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: Have you hired him before? How do you know?
[00:08:00] Speaker B: Because he turned up on site and he's got a very particular process that he goes through. And, you know, I mean, I have kids who don't understand what toilet paper is. And so we get toilet blockages all the time, right? And so I called him out one day to unblock the toilet. I didn't want. The problem was the toilet's full of toilet paper and it won't flush because we have old pipes under the house. He quoted me 12 grand to replace the pipes under the house. I'm like, dude, you don't need to replace the pipes. You just need to clear the toilet paper out of the pipes that are there, right? And it was 1200 bucks to clear the pipes. I'm like, you've seriously, like. I mean, if I had a plunger big enough, I could have done it myself. But he's, I watched his process and went, okay, this guy's clear. And we had a conversation about it. He's got a business coach, he's got a very good process. He, he, he looks at it, he takes photos, he goes out to the van, he puts a quote together on the iPad, comes back and shows you and says, you can have sheet in your toilet or I can fix it for 1200 bucks. I'm here, what do you want to do? Right?
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Smooth.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: And so I paid the idiot 1200 bucks and he cleared the toilet and Then I told the kids, don't do that again. Right.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: It's, it's a training problem by the.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: 4 squares, maximum 4 squares. Anyway, I'll digress. So the point is if you're a service based business, like maybe it's search, maybe search is the top of the funnel. Right. And then it's just a Google Ad to a call like does, does, does the website. I think my opinion is that a website plays a more important role with retargeting or nurturing someone who's already aware of you.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: So maybe middle of funnel and bottom of funnel. How do you so, so I'm kind of being difficult here because I want to see, I want to unpack, I want to get into the weeds here because I think nurturing, particularly if you're a high ticket business that requires a lot of trust in a relationship before someone buys is that the website is an opportunity to drive people to some kind of whether it's frequently asked questions, whether it's the business owner answering those FAQs and a video to build trust before the salesperson turns up on site, whatever it is, right. Whether it's the dentist answering questions in video before you walk in and decide to drop seven and a half grand on Invisalign or whatever it is. Right. Like what is the middle of funnel function or the bottom of funnel function for a website as opposed to a top of funnel function.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: I think that, yeah, I think it's good to get into the, into the details here for sure and thinking about like not just yeah, tofu, mofu, bofu side of things, but what stage of the customer journey are they at. And when someone is searching, if they're at the problem aware, not solution aware stage, they're not ready to buy yet. That's where top of funnel, social media, perhaps search ads, those kind of things will. There'll be 95% of people in that stage. But we don't really want to capture that because the sales process and the expense to retarget them and nurture them and all of that is significantly more expensive than the 5% that are most likely to buy right now. The best return on investment is to focus on those first so high intent to buy, which is middle of funnel, bottom of Funnel, that's the 5% of, of searches. So I think there's a. And this kind of throws back to our last episode around talking about content assets. People tend to throw out a wide net in the hope that we'll trickle down, trickle down, trickle down, trickle down and then they'll convert. Whereas if your content was forgive the language, but like shit hot and converting in the bottom of funnel, you're going to get much higher return on investment and effort by making that content better. And that's on your website, that's videos on your website. That's closer to the conversion point, the point where people pay. So the con, the content, the website structure, the FAQs, the trust building, the five star reviews, the testimonials, those things have the highest return on investment and effort.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: Love it. You don't have to forgive your language, by the way. You might have noticed I've dropped the f bomb about 12 times up to now. So you know this isn't a family show, it's not meant for kids. So if you're listening and language offends you, I'm sorry, but we're Australian. That's how we communicate with each other, because we're a nation of convicts. So here's how do you get a business owner who, who is. I had a conversation this morning with an agency in Phoenix, Arizona. Guy's been doing this for about 10 years. He said he recently fired a client who's a doctor because the doctor turned up to their first onboarding meeting and was so inconvenienced by having to get on a call with him, right? He was like, well, I don't want to be here either. So, like, I don't want to be here if you don't want to be here, like. And he said this. I loved it. He said she didn't value the value I was bringing. So what the fuck are we doing here?
I was like, how do you this. Because what you're talking about, like, I get it. The challenge is how do you communicate this to clients in a way that. Because they don't understand, right? This is the thing that blows my mind about what it is we do. And for anyone listening, if you are in the game of building websites, doing marketing services for other businesses, you have to realize there's less than 0.01% of people on the planet who understand what it is we do, right? They think we're aliens. They have. People have no idea. Ask someone at a family barbecue. Start explaining to someone at a family barbecue what you do and watch their eyes glaze over. They don't get it. They haven't got a clue and they don't care. However, we are all consumers of content. Every single person you know, you have watched them scroll right in the shopping center, at the supermarket, in bed, doom scrolling. When you can't sleep waiting for the eggs to boil, Whatever the situation is right on the toilet. Not that I would ever do that. It's unhygienic and disgusting. But I know some people do. Whenever you have scrolled and everyone you know has scrolled, they are consuming content. And most of that content is designed for some kind of commercial outcome. Even if it's influencers just, you know, putting shit on reels on Instagram. They're either getting paid from a brand deal or they're just monetizing through ads or whatever. Right? Or they're building a following and then trying to sell some kind of product. So every person we know is consuming content.
How can we then communicate to our clients that content is important? Because the moment we say that, they don't get it. Like, it's such an uphill battle to get them to engage in the conversation about producing content that is going to capture the attention and nurture and build trust and shift a belief with the target audience so that the target audience converts into whatever we want them to convert into. Right. What is that? What does that piece look like?
[00:14:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And it kind of comes back to that 5% rule that I mentioned before of like, I'm not trying to convince the. The 95%. Well, hopefully it's less than that. The 90, 95% of business owners out there who don't believe this is valuable because you're just kicking shit uphill trying to convince them. But, but the 5% that are like, we, we work a lot more with marketing managers these days than, Than business owners. They're trying to get their job done to grow the business. They're struggling with getting the website content to accurately represent the business. They're struggling to get traffic, they're struggling to get conversions. It's a pain in the ass to use, but they know the value of producing it, so they already are sold on the value. So for us, it's a lot easier to sell our services to support them than it is to try to convince someone who's like, please explain to me why this is valuable. I have had that happen once, and I vowed never again. Now, this is probably eight years ago. I had a assistant to a real estate agent call me up and they said, oh, we'd love to get a new website created for, let's say, Dave the real estate agent. And like, I'd love for you to come, come down to the office and, you know, let us know about what you can produce and what we can. We can put together a bit of A plan and some pricing there. He's really excited to meet you. I was like, awesome, this sounds great. So I went down there and this guy clearly had no idea that I was coming, which is great. So he's on the phone, alpha male, just, like, beat up on the desk. I'm like, no, I've walked into the trap. And I sat down and he, like, did. Don't even, like, acknowledge my existence, first of all, on the phone, kind of, I don't know, did it hang up back in that day eight years ago. Now press the button. Yeah. On the wind up phone turns to me and he's like. Shakes my hand. Simon. He's like, so sits back, like, it kicks back like this. And he's like, why should I need a website? And I was like, I am 100% in the wrong room and I'm never doing this again. And I can't remember what I said, but just, yeah, no deal walked out of that. I'm like, I'm not here to convince you why you need one. I want to put together the mechanics of let's make this work. So I from there, I only want to talk to people who already believe and they're sold on the idea of this because there's heaps of them out there. So I want to make my job easier.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: Right? So let's just park you for a second because we need to get messy here. We're about to get in a rabbit hole.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Because what you've just said is you only want to talk to people who already believe that a website is going to benefit them in some way, or you already want to talk to people who. You only want to talk to people who already believe that SEO, that optimizing their content and their website for search engines is going to benefit them in some way. So we have a thing that we do here with all of our clients where we make them write out everything that a prospect needs to believe in order for them to become a client. Right. And so what you're saying is, well, I need them to believe that a website is beneficial to their business. Right. Before that, you need them to believe that their business is a good idea and an idea worth pursuing. I hope I'm talking to multiple business owners at the moment who are like, you know what? I don't know if putting extra money or resources into my business is a good idea right now. Because of what's happening in the global economy, things are getting very fucking weird. Maybe I should just put money into, you know, more Property or, you know, the bank or super. I mean, my superannuation did incredibly well over the last 12 months. Like ridiculously fucking well over the last 12 months. Right. Like the best that's ever. I mean, like, can I just put more money into Super Now? Unfortunately, here in Australia, I'm capped at how much I can put into my super. But if I could put another 100 grand into my super, I would. Right. Because I know the return I'm probably going to get on it. So the first thing they need to believe is the business that we have is a good idea worth pursuing, which is why we always start our conversation with it's a great time to own a digital agency and here's proof. And I can back it up with data and stats that show them. This is a great time to be building a new website. This is a great time to be doing an SEO campaign. This is a great time to be embarking on SEO. Despite what you're hearing with AI, this is a great time to be doing the thing that you're thinking about.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: And here's why, like you were saying, stats and proof. Yeah. It's not just like, I reckon, I hope it's like, no, no, no, here's why.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: Right. And so if you want to talk about, you know, middle of funnel or buyer journey content, one of the, one of the streams of content you should have is, is content that helps your prospect believe what they need to believe in order to buy from you. Now, we're not, we're not trying to. Sometimes we're trying to shift their belief, right? Sometimes we, like, for example, I would actively try and shift someone's belief that they can just use AI to write all their content. I would actively shift their belief away from that because I don't think it's right. But I'm not trying to make them believe something just to buy something from me. I'm trying to help them believe what they need to believe so that they can buy something from me which I know is actually going to benefit them. So, for example, we produce a lot of content around the fact that one of the big beliefs in the, in the, in the agency space is that no one will pay for a discovery session, which we just know is not true because we have many agencies, yourself included, plus many of others in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the uk, the usa, the Netherlands, Malta, Thailand, South Africa, selling all sorts of services, websites, web design, SEO, pay per click, content marketing, video marketing, podcast growth, YouTube, funnel hacking, you name it, who are selling paid discovery sessions for anywhere from $497 up to 15 grand. We've got a Shopify agency here in Australia that sells paid discovery for 15,000 fucking dollars. Right? So don't tell me that no one will pay for discovery. We help agencies sell paid discovery. So it is in my best interest to put out content to help agencies believe that people will pay for discovery. And we do that through case studies and proof. Right. So I'm not trying to get them to believe anything other than the fact that I want them to believe something that I know is true. They just haven't experienced it yet. Does that make sense?
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Like they've got all the evidence in their world that it's not true, they've got none. And so of course, what are they going to believe? Like, well, it doesn't work because I don't see it, I don't see it working. But you're like, I see it everywhere. I need to share it with you that it's working here, here, here, here. And so now their evidence changes. They're like, oh, there's a bit of evidence. Do I trust this?
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: So it's not about making something up. You're. Yeah, it's real, it's actual evidence.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: Yes. And this is, you know, and I think the, the. So if you look at the, you know, sort of tofu mofu bothu and you overlay that with like awareness, consideration, decision, right. In the buyer's journey. Is that the kind of mofu content that moves a prospect from awareness through the consideration phase. The more you can educate a client and help them shift their belief around the misunderstandings or the myths that they might believe. Like, for example, keto and intermittent fasting don't work right now. If you're in that space. You'd just be showing Brendan Favola, right, Like every single day. Keto.com Brendan Favola's all over their website. He is the case study. He lost, you know, whatever it was, 16 kilos in four weeks or something because, you know, frankly he let himself go a bit. So it was low hanging fruit. Wasn't that hard to lose that way because there was a fair bit there to go and he just did intermittent fasting and keto, which is calories in, calories out, no carbs. It's pretty simple science right now. If people don't believe it but they see proof, they go, well, now I want to go all in on keto. Where am I going to buy my keto meals and my keto plan from keto.com because they're the ones that helped me understand and showed me the science and the evidence that shifted my belief. Where previously I was believing a myth based on no evidence, now I'm believing a truth based on actual evidence and science and data and case studies and proof. So I think that's probably some of the most powerful content that you can produce.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Exactly. And it's for that audience that I mentioned before, 5% that are actively looking for a solution, not people who are on the toilet scrolling and you're trying to capture their attention, but they're not. They're actively doing something else useful in some way, but not the highest return on effort, return on investment, internal return on energy that we're looking for here.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Now, the other thing, the other thing that I will say is that don't ignore the bottom of funnel or the decision content. Right. Because and for us, a lot of that comes down to email.
We produce a lot of content on email which, which, which gets people on a call and reminds them and gets them to turn up on the call. So it's like the old days of just sending a reminder. Hi, Simon, your call is on Monday at 9am with Troy. Here's a quick reminder. Right, great. And Simon, as you know, I'll quote you all the time, going, well, that sounds like a you problem, not a me problem. Like I'm in your calendar, but you're the one still chasing me. Right? So what we do now is we just share case studies, you know. Hey, before you call, you might want to watch this episode of the Agency Hour with Simon Chin where he paid discovery to double his conversion rate. Oh, that's interesting. So I'm continuing to educate at bottom of funnel because if you don't, what ha. And this is, I've seen this happen so many times, is that you put out all this educational content and what that does is it either raises the awareness or it increases the desire of the prospect you're talking to. And then your competitor comes along with better bottom of funnel decision conversion content and they convert the customer. You've done all the work shifting their belief and priming them for the sale. And your competitor comes along with a better sales process, a better discount, a better retargeting campaign, a better cart abandon sequence, whatever it is, better case studies, better testimonials, whatever it is, better brand, better salespeople and they take the sale even though you've done all the work to prime the prospect.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: I think a lot of that like the content that's. Yeah, absolutely. And I think A lot of it comes down to speed as well. I'm amazed to see how our conversion rate increased this year. Like, we've also like massive. Thanks, Troy. Like since Paid Discovery. I mean, I've told you a million times and I've presented on stage at and worked with you.
[00:25:06] Speaker B: Keep talking.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: How much Paid Discovery.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: I'll never get sick of hearing it, brother. I'll never get sick of hearing it.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: It has had such a massive impact and we kind of may. Well, I dropped the ball a bit at the, at the end of last year because I was busy traveling and having a great time while working there. Wasn't do. Wasn't it Took my sales ball a bit and we dropped a bit in December. But we've put our foot back on the pedal in this, this year and we've had our best quarter ever. So big part of that is just doing what already worked, but just, you know, not, not thinking something else. Yeah, just consistency. Just doing the same thing.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Like fucking boring, isn't it? It's boring. It's like it's, it's repetition and consistency.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: Even when it changes.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: Apparently even when it works.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: Even like, even like we have. It's not. Maybe it's fear of success or something like that, but even we want novelty so bad that even when something is working, we want to change. Like what. What is wrong with my little brain? Like, this is working great. What else can I do somewhere else? Like what do you.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: Just do the thing that worked. Do you need to hand it over to someone so they keep doing it?
[00:26:10] Speaker B: Like what you need to do. So he's the reality, right, Is human being are born to solve problems, right? We are like it's, it's in. I believe we've evolved and it's in our DNA to survive, right? Because not that long ago, not that long ago, ladies and gentlemen, if you look at like where we started as like the first cell that figured out how to get out of the water and walk on land, right? Whatever your belief is as to how human beings came here, we've been on the planet a very long time. And not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, we were literally running away from a saber toothed tiger and trying to catch a fucking deer or a lion or something to take it home and feed the kids, right? And the cave woman, right, like that's the reality, right? We are hardwired to solve problems. And the. And the truth is that most of us and most people listening to this podcast don't Actually have any real problems to solve, right? Most of us have got a roof over our head, we've got food on the table. And so what happens is we go looking for problems to solve because if we're not solving problems, we start to question our own existence and our mortality and we have an existential crisis. So we create problems just to solve them. So what I like to do now is create problems outside the business, right? So I have a bunch of hobbies. I'm in bands. I've started a YouTube channel around music. I don't create problems in the business anymore. I used to. You've seen me do it for years. Hello, Ray Miladoni. Sorry about that, brother. You've seen me create problems just to try and solve them because.
And I should apologize to you too, actually, for my past behavior. But I've learned now I create problems outside the business because I need a problem to solve. So I bought a house and I had two kids. So that's going to keep you pretty fucking busy. Lots of problems to solve there. But I create problems outside the business to solve because when things are going well, right, you go, well, what am I supposed to do now? So you create new problems just so that you can solve them, which is why it's difficult just to do the basics consistently and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Because you go, well, it must be something wrong, right? Otherwise, who am I? I need a problem to solve. Go solve a problem somewhere else.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: Mastering the mundane. I've heard it called.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Michelle Bridges spoke at an event years ago with the entourage. And Michelle Bridges was, I think I've told this story. The two people in my life that I've met where I knew they were in the room before I actually saw them because every hair on my body stood up and I had goosebumps in places I didn't know existed. The first was Hugh Jackman. The time I met Hugh Jackman. My. Have I told you this story? Far out. That's a story for another time. The second was Michelle Bridges. We're in the green room speaking at this event in the entourage in Sydney. And she walked in behind me. I knew she was in the room and my back was to her. I turned around, she was eight months pregnant. She was about to get up on stage and do a keynote and. Far out, mate. The charisma and the presence that emanated from her was palpable. I was speechless. It was like, same as I met Hugh Jackman.
That's a whole other story.
Anyway, Michelle Bridges got up and gave this great presentation about all of her success. And then she said, now here I know why you're all here. You're all here for my secret formula on how to do it. Right. And I have, I do have a secret formula. The three Cs. You already write this down. Number one, consistency. Number two, consistency. Number three, consistency. Thanks very much. Bye. And she left the stage.
[00:29:30] Speaker A: It was like mic drop.
[00:29:32] Speaker B: That's it.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: Simple.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: Consistency, consistency. You don't want to go to the gym. Go to the gym especially. You don't want to eat the right food. Correct. 100. You don't want to pick up the call and call that prospect. Pick up the phone and call the prospect. Five follow ups a day, five sales follow ups in your pipeline every single day.
[00:29:50] Speaker A: That's it. Focusing on like process goals. Create the outcome goals.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:55] Speaker A: When you're just looking at the outcome all the time. I want this, I want the secret formula because that's a shortcut to the outcome. It's like, well, correct. It's the activity, it's the, those leading indicators. They get into the lagging thing. There isn't really a secret formula.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: Take. There is no secret formula.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: The secret is there is no secret.
[00:30:13] Speaker A: The unfortunate truth that you have to face at some point when you stop trying to take shortcuts and realize that you got to roll up your sleeves and get to it.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: That's right. And marketers have made a lot of money over the years selling the secret formula. And at the end of the day, how many times have you bought an online course and logged in and within five minutes you go, there's no fucking secret formula. I'm gonna have to do some fucking work now.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: Damn. Thought this was the magic button. And so with content, my advice to every agency is produce one piece of content every single week, Right? That for me, that is the bare minimum. One piece of content every single week. Decide whether it's I, you know, if you're not doing this, I would decide I would go for MOFU or BofU content. Get the prospect through to a conversion because as you said, that's where you're gonna get the roi. You can do top of funnel content later.
Produce a piece of content that answers a really common question that you get in your sales process. Helps them shift their belief around something. So it's helpful. It shifts their belief around something and it has a call to action. That's it. Just do that every single week. And a year from now you look at your sales pipeline and go, holy shit. That's a different story to where it was a year ago because you've consistently produced and published one piece of content every single week, a video or a blog post. I mean videos for me are the no brainer because you make a video, then you've got a blog post, you've got screenshots, you've got images, you've got a whole bunch of different breadcrumbs that you can sprinkle around the place which lead back to that one piece of content on your website.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. Like if, if there was so business owners and agency owners listening to this. If, if they're like, oh, like I'd love to but I'm short on time and I've, I haven't been able to produce content that I'm happy with so far. So one content per week, although it doesn't sound like much, maybe a bit of a tall order. How would you recommend approaching. They may think that, I mean that's just their belief at that time, but hopefully it'll be shifted soon. But how would you recommend that they could, like what are some ways to approach that?
[00:32:14] Speaker B: So it's interesting because I'm working on something at the moment, I'm putting a training together at the moment where I'm going to be helping not just agencies, but business owners in general to create a low ticket digital product. Because I, my belief is, and we're launch, we're shooting a bunch of videos here this afternoon for our, one of our low ticket digital products. My belief is that your sales, the quality of your prospect will increase dramatically. The volume might decrease, but the quality of your prospect will increase dramatically if they buy a low ticket digital product before they talk to you. And so what my advice is is you take the first thing that you do for a client, right? The first thing that you do for any client and you turn that into an SOP, which is a simple Google Doc checklist with a 5 minute video or a 10 minute video explaining to another team member how to do it. And you put that up online and you sell it for $7, right? Or $17 or whatever it is. And the, the headline is, you know, how to achieve X in this much time without headache, right? Get the, get the recorded session now for seven bucks now you can give that content away for free. What we're doing actually is we'll be producing a low ticket digital product and then we'll be producing what we call some satellite videos that explain the why and the what of that thing, but we won't Talk about the how. So the first digital product we're launching is the Triage Call script. It's a script on how to run a triage call and sell paid discovery. And the promise is how to land high ticket clients for your agency in the next 48 hours. Because if you have prospects in your pipeline, you can run this call as you know, you've experienced it, you can sell paid discovery to someone. And my belief is that if you get off your ass and do the work, you could convert a client in 48 hours, run the paid discovery, come back, pitch a growth plan, onboard them into a recurring revenue package, right? We have enough social proof to know that works. So the why and the what will be, here's why. You should stop writing proposals and trying to sell large projects, right? And here's what you should do instead. You should sell paid discovery. Now we have a training on this that helps you do it. In fact, we're giving you the script. It's, you know, stupidly priced, right? Now go and get it while it, you know, while stocks last and being a digital product and then the prospect comes through, they, they, they part ways with $7 or $17, which proves that they are motivated enough to solve the problem, to pay a little bit of money now. So the answer to your question is take any SOP that you've got in your business or the most commonly asked question by people in the sales process like, you know, how much does it cost to install an in ground pool in the backyard?
Well, that depends. So I make a video explaining why it depends. That's one piece of content, right? What's the next sop? So the first thing we do when we come out and we measure up your backyard for a pool is here's how we do it. Now I'm going to train someone to go and do that. So while I'm training them, I'll make a video. I'll just get on. The easiest way is to get on Zoom with someone, even if they're in the same building, just put them in another office, get on Zoom and explain how to do it. Record the Zoom call, you've just made yourself a video and then share that. Obviously don't share any sensitive data or any IP or client data, but just make it generic enough, you share that and go, here's the SOP on how we measure up your backyard to see if a pool's gonna work in ground or above ground. So you can go and do this yourself. These are the tools you need, right? Here's how we install our fences to make sure your pool's compliant and that it's a self closing gate and it's all level and get council approval, all that kind of stuff. Here's how to get council approval and register your SPA in your backyard. Now we can just do this for you or here's a checklist. Go do it yourself. So there is endless amounts of content in your business already. There are frequently asked questions and SOPs. How do I train another team member to do this? Make the video once, share that as a piece of content. The more you do this, the more you position yourself as someone who's got their shit together and actually knows what they're doing. And the more you'll be positioned as the authority. And then people will reach out to you and say, hey, I love that video you shared. How do we work with you? This ha. This is what inbound marketing is. It happens all the time.
[00:36:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's, it's like, it's not sexy, but it, it works. And people, I think we're so animal brain, lizard brain. Like, oh, I want to, I want to do the catchy headline. I want to do the, like, I don't know, like sneaky. But I want to do like the new marketing trick or something like that. But that's again, avoiding the heart. It's not even that hard. It's the uncomfortable work. More than hard. It's just a perception that it's hard. The uncomfortable work of taking what you do inside the business and making it visible outside the business. The crazy thing is Alan Dibb mentions this in the one page marketing plan. He says no one knows what it's like to do business with you until they've done business with you. All they know is how good your marketing is.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: I just like blows my mind. Like if you're not able to take what you do on the inside and put it on the outside, then you've got to, you've got to paywall up and that's it. Like, how are you going to convince someone to buy if the only way to know what it's like working with you is to buy from you? It doesn't really make sense. So it's taking that stuff you do anyway and just making it public.
[00:37:26] Speaker B: Yep, 100%. People are scared to do this because the reason that they go, well, if I teach this for free, then people don't need to hire me. What they forget is that people pay a premium to save time.
Right. That's what people will pay the most for is to save time.
When you get to your deathbed, you ask someone who's, you know, dying how much they would pay to have another five years with their family.
Right. Like more money than I've ever earned in my life. I would pay to have another five years with my family.
[00:38:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's where the value is. And people may not say that out loud, but they, they know that, like time is the only non renewable resource.
[00:38:08] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:38:08] Speaker A: So if we can, if we can just save some time here, I'll spend some money to save that time to get me to the result any day of the week.
[00:38:15] Speaker B: I mean, the five Fs that we discovered years ago, all those years ago, we're doing Silence is Gold. And we discovered that story about the estate planner who, his job basically was to sit with people who were dying and work out their estate and their finances. And he said every conversation was the same. The things that they valued most in life were in order. Family, friends, fitness, faith, and finance.
Now, faith I've replaced with fulfillment, because I'm not a man of faith, I'm not religious, so I say fulfillment. Right. Family, friends, fitness, fulfillment, finance, in that order.
Right. I mean, that tells you something, doesn't it? Like, the number one thing that people want is a sense of belonging. They want to feel connected to their tribe. They want to know that they're loved by their family and their friends and their community.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And them sitting around figuring out how to do things entirely themselves doesn't really hit the top of that priority list.
[00:39:12] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: So save them some time. Help them get the results correct.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: As Dan Sullivan says, ask who, not how. So how do you become the who that they hire so that they don't have to figure out the how? Well, how you do that is by sharing what you know in forms of content. Now, the final thing I think that we need to iterate here is, you know, you can, you can have content and you can publish it on LinkedIn and you can have a podcast on Spotify and you can have a YouTube channel, but at the end of the day, you don't own any of those assets. So I think it's important to use those outposts you like to, to attract attention, but then use, you know, thank God Tim Burners Lee invented the hyperlink. Use the hyperlink to link those outposts back to the main fort, back to the mothership. Right. Hey, here's this thing we did. If you want to learn more about this, come and visit us right in aisle Four and have a chat with our team, right? And so like if you go to a, if you go to an expo, you don't just stand at your booth all weekend unless you're an idiot. You go on your network and you talk to everyone else at their booth. Oh yeah, we're just down at all four. Come and check us out. This is, I mean, you know, come on, this is what, this is what it is. You know what I mean? So use LinkedIn, use YouTube, use Facebook, use Instagram, don't use TikTok, use, you know, whatever other platform there is, Google Search, whatever other platform there is to array to raise awareness and then bring that awareness back to the mothership, because that's the mothership that you own. Your website is the only digital asset that you truly have control over and that the algorithm largely can't actually, you know, just can't just block your YouTube account or, you know, remove your Facebook account overnight for. I mean, we had our Facebook ad account blocked a couple of weeks ago for fucking no reason. Like, you know, we, we updated our credit card details. Nah, sorry, can't pay the bill. What do you mean? He's a brand new credit card. No, I'm sorry, won't accept that. On the phone to Amex, on the phone to the bank. I still owe Facebook $2004 in an ad account that I cannot pay. They will not let me pay it, therefore can't run ads.
[00:41:15] Speaker A: Risky when the business depends on it. Hey, single channel dependency is like a two weeks these days.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: No Facebook ads. Two weeks Facebook ads were off. What do we do now? Luckily we get leads every day from YouTube and the podcast and the blog and organic and my social media and the Facebook group, but you know what I mean, so, so, you know, unless you don't pay your hosting bill or you forget to renew your domain name, your website is a pretty safe bet. That's why all content should be hosted. Your podcast, your videos, everything. Host them, even YouTube videos. Embed them on your website. Host everything on your website, because that's the mothership. And then you've got control over the lead capture forms, you've got control over the journey there. You can track activity through your website. You can do CRO. You can't do CRO on bloody LinkedIn or YouTube. Right. You can't control which videos they're going to suggest at the end of your video, but you can control that stuff on your website.
[00:42:06] Speaker A: Yep. So it's posting externally, but bringing it back to your own asset. Playing the rented asset game, LinkedIn, YouTube and all that stuff. Multiple channels, as you mentioned before, which, you know, if anyone caught that, rewind, multiple channels, super important.
And Troy has been doing this for a long time. You've been doing this for a long time. So that's why you have so many channels. But that can be overwhelming for a lot of people. So, you know, pick two, probably pick one and go all in and have.
[00:42:31] Speaker B: Have a. Yeah, I don't, I don't like to pick one model. I think that's lazy. I think it's advice that a lot of people have been dishing out. You know, one channel, one message until you're at $1 million a year. I think that's horseshit. I think it's dangerous. I think you need to pick two.
For me, if you're in B2B, personally, if you're in B2b, I think LinkedIn and YouTube are probably the two that you should go all in on. And it's pretty easy to do that if you're making video, you know, post natively to LinkedIn, post natively to YouTube. But also the, you know what Google have said in their research around the zero moment of truth, right? So I don't know if you're aware of this research, but Google have all the data on online purchasing and what they realize is that the moment that someone starts researching, you know, how to lose weight with intermittent fasting, they know nothing at that point. They call that the zero moment of truth, right? So they start researching, they put something into Google in between that moment and them Making a significant investment. I'm not talking about spending a hundred bucks on some meals, I'm talking about making a significant investment in maybe like a keto coach or like a six month program or whatever there are. They've tracked that there are, that the ideal kind ofnurture is seven hours of engagement across 11 touch points and four different locations. Now locations can be a physical shop, can be a dental practice, could be, you know, the gym or whatever, or it could be online locations like LinkedIn, YouTube, email, your website, SMS. There SMS is a location. Email, your website, LinkedIn, YouTube, there's five locations. How do you keep someone engaged for seven hours across 11 touch points on four different locations to nurture them into a client. For me, the obvious answer is long form content, like we're doing right now, podcast, video, YouTube audio, same piece of content is going to go on YouTube as the video and Spotify is the podcast, right? So you send an email promoting both pieces of content. There's two locations, two touch points, three locations. Email, Spotify, YouTube, two touch points. They consume this, it's going to be 45 minute or an hour of consumption. Right. So we're just getting them through the middle of the funnel. We drive them back to the website to learn more. They're reading a blog post, they're looking at an infograph, they're reading testimonials and case studies. They go and listen to another episode of the podcast. They turn up on a sales call, they start quoting our podcast back to us.
Right. So this is another argument for making sure that your content is not just on rented assets like LinkedIn and YouTube, but is also hosted on your website, which you own.
[00:45:08] Speaker A: Hundred.
[00:45:09] Speaker B: I wish this podcast existed when I was starting out, man. I wish the agency hour existed when I was starting out.
[00:45:15] Speaker A: Yep, giving the gift back to your younger self.
Care yourself, dude.
[00:45:20] Speaker B: When I started out, I was listening to Amy Porterfield and Pat Flynn and they were all just talking about online and. And, you know, who's that other clown? John Lee Dumas. They were all just talking about online marketing and growth and entrepreneurship, but no one was talking to agencies specifically, right?
Yeah. All affiliate stuff.
[00:45:39] Speaker A: Exactly. I was thinking about Ask Pat just this morning and, you know, like, smart, passive income, but Pat Flynn.
[00:45:46] Speaker B: Ask Pat.
[00:45:46] Speaker A: I wonder, those listening, let us know in the Facebook group or however the hell you can get in touch with Agency Mavericks. If there was a small segment, if we could take questions and, and actually answer them on here, would you ask them? Would that be helpful? Let us know in the group or however you can communicate, because that might be something that we. We may introduce.
[00:46:06] Speaker B: Yeah, but with that, the Facebook group, by the way, is called the Digital Mavericks Facebook Group. So go to Facebook, search Digital Mavericks, join the group. You'll have to answer some questions and jump through a couple of hoops before we let you in because we don't want spammers in there. Or you can just email us supportagencymavericks.com and ask your questions and we'll answer them on the podcast.
[00:46:24] Speaker A: Yeah, wicked. Sounds great. Cool. Well, this has been a pleasure, Troy. Thanks so much as what kind of one action item I wish I had done earlier and I'm doing it now, and it's when it comes to, like using the website as a. As a sales tool, as I'm having conversations, so I'm booking in more calls, having conversations, and I'm getting more questions and objections and I'm learning those, I'm taking them and I'm updating FAQs and our web design process page we looked at in previous episodes. I'm updating those so that the next time I have that call that's no longer a problem. That is the most. That is super high leverage because that's literally helping me close.
[00:47:04] Speaker B: Yep, perfect. Perfect.
[00:47:06] Speaker A: If there's one thing to do, if I wish I did earlier, it would be that. So that's, that's one thing I'd recommend to business owners, agency owners to, to add to their, their value of their website.
[00:47:17] Speaker B: Love it, love it, love it, love it.
We are running Mavcon in Bali where I think we there's maybe 3t tickets left if you want to come to Bali in June. I think the dates are June 15, 16, 17. Something around that I can't remember. 16, 17, 18, I think Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. We're at the Laguna Luxury Resort. It's a resort. It's in. I mean, I bullshit in a good way. It's luxury. It's incredible. It's amazing. There's going to be about 40 people there. Reach out to us. Supportagencymavericks.com Tickets As I said, I think there's about three tickets left and I'm not making that up. So come and hang out with us in Bali if you want to spend three days working on your agency with a bunch of other agency owners. Subscribe. Like share this with everyone you know who needs to hear it and will benefit from it. And Simon Kelly, again, thanks for joining us on the Agency hour.
[00:48:05] Speaker A: It's been a pleasure. Cheers.
[00:48:06] Speaker B: Troy, thanks for listening to the agency, our podcast and a massive thanks again to Simon Kelly for joining us. Hey, if you're enjoying these conversations and want to go deeper, surround yourself with other successful agencies and build a business you actually enjoy while traveling the world, then come and hang out with us at in person at Mavcon in Bali June 16 and 17 in 2025. It's just around the corner and I literally think there are three tickets left. I'm not making that up. We will be at the Laguna, a luxury collection resort and spa. Yes, it's as dreamy as it sounds. Working together in person to scale your agents. Oh, and did I mention it's a tax write off. Spots are limited. It will sell out. We only have three seats left as I said. So grab yours and come join us in paradise this June. I'll leave a link in the description. Okay, folks, remember to subscribe and please share this with anyone you think may need to hear it or anyone who just wants to come and look at me with a bald head. I'm Troy Dean. And remember movie trailers got their name because they were originally shown army after the movie.
