Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: If the how to was the problem, then the Internet would have solved everyone's issues. A single book would solve all your issues. But if you're not focused and you're not consistent and you're not applying things with leverage, then you're just going to keep consuming. Consuming another course. Another course. I need. No, it must be a different kangaroo drawing video that I need to watch.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Hey, welcome to the Agency. Our podcast where we help digital agency owners build real abundance for themselves, their teams and their communities. And that is not something that chatgpt told me to say, by the way. This week we're taking an honest look at your team and asking some tough questions. Are you unknowingly teaching your team to lose?
Oh, it's a big question. I'm joined by Simon Kelly, CEO and head of growth at Seriously Good Design for a conversation that cuts through the fluff and gets to the heart of what makes a team thrive. We'll explore why most job ads fall flat, how to use AI without over prompting it to build your ideal team member profile, and what really drives autonomy and connection inside high performing agency. We also dive deep into my shifting views on ChatGPT, how to stand out in a crowded service space, and why shared beliefs, not just shared goals, are the real glue that holds great teams together. I'm Troy Dean. Stay with us.
I'm just going to start mid sentence again like I usually do.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: Right.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: I had dinner. Do you remember Nick, who has spoken at a bunch of Dave Jennings events? Thackeray, Nick Thikalal.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: Nikesh Thikol, Nick. We call him Mr. X. He's like one of the smartest dudes I know. And we were having dinner on Tuesday night in Sydney. I was up there talking at the Go High Level Sasspreneur event. I've got a lanyard around my neck to prove it. And I went out for dinner with him on Monday night and we had the most amazing Thai food in Sydney, but I ate way too much of it and I haven't eaten since.
And anyway, we'll talk about AI and I've played with Claude a bit in the past. I'm kind of all in on ChatGPT and having custom GPTs and OpenAI and stuff. He's like, oh, dude, you're gonna, you know, try Claude again. So I've been trying Claude the last 24 hours. My God, it is incredible. So this morning I had to do a presentation around Ideal client Profile. So I. Two prompts, man. Two prompts in declaud. The first one was And I'm not gonna go deep on this because we're gonna talk about team, but I'm gonna. This is my thinking on this, right?
People are like way over prompting AI2 prompts. First, one, help me develop an ideal client profile for my business.
And then Claude asked me a bunch of questions. Just ask me a bunch of questions. You know, we were taught a couple of weeks ago and you were like, the fucking framework where you're like context and act as if you are. And interview me.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: One question, just like one prompt.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: All that bullshit, man. Help me develop an ideal client profile for my business.
We know what chat GP would ChatGPT would do. It'd just start being. Trying to be super helpful.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Yeah, there you go.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: You're right. Your client Claude was like, well, I'll help you create a comprehensive ideal client profile. Let me start by understanding your business better. Could you tell me what type of business do you run? What's your main offering? Do you. Here's the killer question. Do you have existing clients you particularly enjoy working with or who bring you the most success?
[00:03:09] Speaker A: This is the kind of questions that we would ask people in coaching conversations.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Correct. While you're thinking about this, here's the framework we'll use to build your ideal client profile. Then it goes through demographics and firmographics, word I was not familiar with. Then it goes through psychographics and behavior, pain points and goals, qualifying characteristics. Anyway, turns out the thing ends up designing it writes this incredible ideal client profile. Then I said. So I answered the questions. Prompt two. This is perfect. Can you design this into an ICP card I can share with my team and include a picture of Strategic Sarah, which it came up with. So then HTML and css, it designs me this card that I took a screenshot of and shared with the team. And I'm like, holy hell. Like, who needs a designer? Do you know what I mean?
[00:03:56] Speaker A: How would you rate the accuracy? Are you like two prompts, 150%.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: It's. It's. So here's Here, let me a couple of key insights that I got, right?
One is it talked about.
So the pain points of our ideal client.
Feast and famine, which we know. It calls it the revenue roller coaster, which we know, right? Project based income dependency, which we know. I didn't prompt it, I didn't tell it.
All I said is that we work with, you know, it said, what? You know, what kind of business do you have and what do you do? Right? And so I said, we run. I run a coaching and mentoring business for digital Agency owners. Our main offer is a four month one on one coaching program where we help digital agency owners grow their recurring revenue by teaching them how to sell and deliver paid discovery workshops, also known as digital roadmaps and then upgrade those clients into growth plans, also known as retainers. Our best clients have a very positive and abundant mindset, take massive imperfect action, are coachable, have at least one team member who can help them implement, and are already consistently generating 20k a month in revenue and are probably called Simon. Okay, maybe I didn't say that bit about Simon. Anyway, it's determined that Strategic Sarah is our ideal client and the pain points are revenue, roller coaster, feast and famine, project based income dependency clients see them as order takers, scope, creep and boundary issues.
Anyone ever get an email after hours and the client expects you to email.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Back or you expect yourself to email back as well, right?
[00:05:29] Speaker B: There you go. That's right. Can't scale beyond personal capacity right now here's also how about this? Red flags, Scarcity mindset or blame mentality.
Solo operator with no team revenue consistently below 15 grand a month, price shopping, behavior resistant to change.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: I mean this is even for the sales team to be like, well qualify based on this. This is solo 100%.
[00:05:59] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: 100%.
And so this is not trained, not.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Trained on any of your data.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: Trained. Not trained on any of our data. Not trained at all. Custom GPT. Blow it out your ass. Nothing. No knowledge base here, no training. Zero zip. I've never used Claude before to talk about my business. I only ever used it before to give me interesting chord progressions for my jazz funk guitar playing.
[00:06:26] Speaker C: Right?
[00:06:26] Speaker B: Never told it about my business before at all. Except this morning. And then it designed this thing which is just gorgeous and you know, and it also then gives me insights like a few key insights from your description that I've expanded on. The coachable factor is crucial. I've emphasized mindset and attitude indicators that signal someone who will be receptive to coaching.
[00:06:52] Speaker C: Right?
[00:06:52] Speaker B: And then it named it Strategic Sarah.
And so you know, and then I said can I have this as a PDF now? You know what, ChatGPT, can I hire you as sales team Please look, ChatGPT, so here's the reason I'm using Claude. I've been getting pushback and massive hallucinations from Chat GPT recently, right? If I'd said to ChatGPT, can you make me a PDF, it'd give me a link. It's oh sure, here's your PDF and it'll give me a link and I'd click on it would go to a 404.
[00:07:21] Speaker C: Right?
[00:07:21] Speaker B: I'm sorry, that page doesn't exist. I've asked ChatGPT several times recently. You can't create Canva templates, can you? No, I can't. But I was trying to be helpful. But here's how I would do it if I could. But it gives you a canva link that's a 404 or a Google Doc link that goes nowhere.
[00:07:37] Speaker A: Here's the link. Was one right?
[00:07:40] Speaker B: Correct. So chat. What I've learned about ChatGPT in this interesting phase where ChatGPT is sacrificing honesty in order to be seen as helpful. Now it also know, I think ChatGPT knows that it's only moments away from it being able to create a Google Doc or a Canva template. So it's. It's anticipating that.
[00:08:03] Speaker C: Right?
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Well, here we go. I know you want a Google Doc, so here's a Google Doc even though it's a 404. Claude said, I can't directly generate a PDF file, but I can give you a couple of easy ways to convert the ICP card to a PDF. You can print it to a PDF using your, you know, if you're on a Mac, go save as PDF. It then says if you're on a non Mac, I'm sorry, your life is so horrible and you should move to a Mac. Okay. It doesn't say that Method two is browser save. Most modern browsers also have a save as PDF option. Method three, use a screenshot tool and take a screenshot of the card that I've already designed for you.
[00:08:35] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:37] Speaker A: It's just eating everything.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: Absolutely. Blown away.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: So you learned this on Tuesday. You applied it on Thursday live in a workshop.
Reducing the time of everyone on the workshop that will take to put together their ICP and improving your existing one.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Gave them two prompts. Nice. And he's. Here's his Now I know we're going to talk about team, but I do want to do a deep dive on this later on another episode. But where this is how I think you can use this for team, right?
Is what I've learned in this very short exercise this morning is our messaging is still too generic.
[00:09:16] Speaker C: Right?
[00:09:16] Speaker B: Oh, we help digital agency owners grow their recurring revenue. So does everybody. Do you know what I mean? Cause you know what an agency owner really wants? They want to join a one on one mentoring program and I want to watch their recurring revenue tank.
[00:09:29] Speaker C: Right?
[00:09:30] Speaker B: Nobody wants that. Nobody wants to join a program and watch their recurring revenue Dive. Of course we're going to help you grow your recurring revenue. So is everybody else on every street corner.
So we need to get way more specific about who we do our best work with.
And if you think you know everything, then we are not the droids you're looking for, right? And so being coachable, being a massive action taker, having humility, I remember like Simon Major joined our program, he's already at 1.2 million a year in revenue and he's like, I'm putty in your hands, tell me what to do next.
[00:10:06] Speaker C: Right?
[00:10:06] Speaker B: What a great mindset. He knows that he's, he's at his, above his pace, guys. I have fucking no idea how we got this far. It's a miracle we're this far. Like, you know, I've been winging it. Now I need someone to give me some structure. Most people, if they get anywhere, if they get anywhere above a hundred grand in revenue, they think their shit don't stink and they think that they've figured.
[00:10:24] Speaker C: It all out, right?
[00:10:26] Speaker B: So being coachable is a massive piece of our ideal client. And if you think about your ideal team member, so the question I love that Claude asked is, do you have existing clients you particularly enjoy working with or who bring you the most success?
And that's why I said they're coachable. They take massive imperfect action, right?
It also says what also say. It says something about like they turn up on time to coaching calls, right? Like the initial description that I got before, before it turned it into a pretty card, the initial description that it gave me was that, oh, here we go. The leadership style of our ideal client is someone who delegates effectively and trusts their team.
Thinks strategically about business growth, not just day to day operations, right?
Their, their personal qualifying characteristics, right?
Time to participate fully in a coaching program, Existing client base that could potentially be upgraded. These are the perfect clients for us. Willing to follow proven systems rather than reinventing the wheel, right? Responsive and punctual for scheduled calls. Prepared and engaged during coaching sessions, right?
So I think you should answer this question about your ideal team member. If you, if there was, there's always, if you've got any more than three staff, there's one team member apart from yourself. You got you, got you, plus three. There's one out of those three that you just want to replicate, right? So who, so who is it? Who is it and what are the characteristics about that person that you want to replicate?
And if you run it through an exercise like this and you come up with an ideal team member, Profile your job ads just wrote themselves, right? Because now what you're going to do is say, if this is you, and you also give Claude or whatever tool you're using, but I would just suggest Claude any information about your business and it will position your business as somewhere good to come and work as a great opportunity for the right candidate. But then, so then your job ad is just, if this is you and you're looking for this type of place to work, we're a great fit. Cause most job ads suck for the same reason that most marketing messages suck.
And that is because most marketing messages start out with, look at me, here's what I've got, and here's how good my vacuum cleaner sucks.
[00:13:05] Speaker C: Right?
[00:13:06] Speaker B: And at that point, I don't give a shit about your vacuum cleaner because there's nothing in it for me.
[00:13:12] Speaker C: Right?
[00:13:12] Speaker B: Your message should start off with, do you have kids with allergies and your lounge and couch and carpet is full of dust that you can't even see and it's causing your kids damage and it's invisible? Yes.
Great. Now I've got your attention. And so the same with a job. At a job ad should talk to your ideal candidate about them and their journey, not about how great you and your company are.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: Yeah, big time. It's. Yeah, like the problem.
It sounded like you're, like, describing what the actual issue is in their terms. Like, so they're going, yes, yes. And they're leaning in as opposed to, like, cool. Another description about another company that I have no idea about.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: I want you to tell me because.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: I'm already bored and I can tell you I've. I've been in the line, I've been in the queue waiting for a takeaway coffee at enough cafes and overheard enough conversations with people in their, you know, age 27 to 40, talking about how, how disenfranchised they are in their current career.
And not one of those conversations is about money. Every single one of those conversations that I've overheard is usually about the lack of growth in the role or the company that that person is currently working at.
[00:14:27] Speaker C: Right?
[00:14:28] Speaker B: They just feel like there's no opportunity for me to develop and grow as a person. And that's why they're looking for another opportunity. Oh, I've applied for this job and blah, blah. I've never heard someone saying, oh, I've applied for another job because I want more money. Money is like the. Probably the least. I mean, it's a factor, but it's the least influential factor.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: Right?
[00:14:44] Speaker B: That I think we've spoken about this. The most influential factor is a cause that they believe in, a leader they respect and then money. And if you think about the cause, a cause can very. Your team and the culture can very quickly become the cause that they care about. That sense of belonging to a professional family environment.
[00:15:05] Speaker C: Right?
[00:15:06] Speaker A: Yeah, there's. There was something I was reading in the book Indistractable and it was talking about building indistractable teams or something like that. And it was saying autonomy is really important. Like a sense of ownership over your own work, a sense of connection, like connection to the team, to the cause, to, to each other as.
And a leader that respects. I think that were the three things as like essential for, for a team that wants to work together and individuals that thrive.
It's not just the, not just the paycheck.
So where is that in the job description? That's not about the company. That's not like, here's what we do and who we are and what we say our values are.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: That's right. That's right. Because the reality is like, listen, in a service based business, I don't give a shit how many fucking books you've read on the hundred million dollar offer and all that crap. In a service based business, at the end of the day, we are all doing the same shit, right? You are building websites, you are reconciling people's books, you are lodging their tax returns, you're putting together a financial plan, you're helping them get divorced and get the maximum settlement and maintain their integrity. You are helping them navigate, you know, their career trajectory. You're doing SEO. Whatever the services you're providing, it's the same. There is no difference really.
I believe there's very little difference between an agency here in Melbourne that does SEO, does SEO for allied health professionals versus any other agency on the planet that does SEO for allied health professionals. If they're good at what they do, then they're all the fucking same.
[00:16:53] Speaker C: Right?
[00:16:54] Speaker B: The only thing that's different like I am, if there are other agency mentoring companies and other agency coaching companies on the planet that actually deliver results for their clients, then we are all the same. The only thing that changes is the frameworks we use and the energy and the, and the personalities that make up the company now. So I know that some people think I'm a goofball and they don't like me. I've seen the comments about my various haircuts over the years. I've got an Australian accent, they think I'm A game show host that I think I'm old, that's fine, I don't care. Go and play with someone younger with better hair, whatever, and a different accent. I don't give a shit.
[00:17:31] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: The point I'm trying to make is that it's very difficult to differentiate yourself as a service provider apart from the culture and how much your team actually cares about your clients.
That, I think, is the true differentiator.
[00:17:48] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: And so I think you should lead with that. When you start attracting talent to come and work, it's like, you know, sure, we've got our own frameworks and we've got our own tech and we've got our own way of doing things, but at the end of the day, we're a digital marketing agency.
[00:18:02] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: And why are we different? Well, we might not be different, but if you were happy with your current digital marketing agency, you wouldn't be on our website. So maybe we should just have a chat.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Yeah, it's still a commodity. It's still the same stuff everywhere. Like, it's not like, oh, oh, what's this SEO, what's this website thing like? I have no idea what that is. It's the same thing. So it's like, all things being equal, it's the team working together, it's the culture, it's how much they actually, you know, give two shits.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: Russell Brunson called them funnels because, you know, he was in a mastermind with Dan Kennedy, who was teaching him how to do direct response copy. And one of Dan Kennedy's things is that you gotta, like, the best way to. The best way to own a category is to invent it. And at the time, this is how fucking ridiculous things are right now. It's worked very well for Russell. Don't get me wrong, he's made a lot of money. But this is how ridiculous it is, and this is how people fall for it so quickly is at the time, the competitor was LeadPages or Unbounce. And I remember being frustrated with Lead pages and Unbounce because I couldn't keep my pages organized. They didn't even have folders. So Russell comes along and says, let's put them in folders, but let's not call them folders, let's call them funnels.
[00:19:07] Speaker C: Right?
[00:19:07] Speaker B: And then the only place you can get a funnel, and we all knew that funnels worked. We just weren't calling them funnels. There was just a series of pages, an opt in page, a thank you page, an upsell page, whatever, right? And he Put em in a folder and called it a funnel and gangbusters, right? Scaled to $8 million a month in recurring revenue. Then High Level started to kick his ass. And you could import funnels directly into High Level from clickfunnels, URL. And so he changed the name and called them directional websites and tried to trademark directional websites and tried to sue High Level. Now I don't know how that played out, but this is how fucking ridiculous the, you know, the unique mechanism is.
The unique mechanism. It's a directional website, a direction. What the fuck is a directional website?
But if you're gonna try and trademark a directional website, you have to sue everyone that's ever made a contact form page, ever. Because they've always. They've used a contact page with a thank you page. That's a directional website, right? Like this is how ridiculous the unique mechanism bullshit thing has become, right? And it's because people are trying to trademark intellectual property where there is no intellectual property.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: Let's start trademarking the word service and see how that goes, right? Yeah, right.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: If you. Or a website, you know, or you know, CRO. I mean, it's all the same shit. The thing that is different is the energy and the culture of the people. It's like football, man. Like, why do some teams win?
And then you look at the Melbourne Football Club that my wife's a fan of and have been a member of her whole life and I'm pretty much a Melbourne supporter these days, even though I'm from Adelaide and I'm a Crows supporter. But Melbourne Football Club were fined for tanking, right? Because just think about this for a second.
The way that the AFL draft works is that if, if, if you, you know, if you finish bottom, you get the first draft pick the following year. Because the AFL says, well, you need better players, so you get the first pick of the best next year, right? So when Melbourne realized under, under, I think it was Dean Cameron, his last name, who was their coach, when they realized that they couldn't win, they tanked. They deliberately lost games. Now they will deny, but they were fined for deliberately losing games by a big margin to finish bottom so they could get the first draft pick the following year, right? Absolutely. Disgraceful behavior. But you can understand it, right? It makes sense why they would do that.
They went from that to winning a Grand Final in less than 10 years.
Now 10 years sounds like a long time. But to go from the cult, they didn't know how to win. They were taught how to lose. The whole culture of the Melbourne Football club was how to lose games by the biggest possible margin without it being obvious.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: I mean, if that's in your DNA as a team, that's. That'd be hard to shake, right?
[00:21:55] Speaker B: So now a lot of those players went on to win a Grand Final, right now. So what's the difference? At the end of the day, they're playing the same sport. They're kicking a ball around and trying to get it through two big sticks, and they're playing the same teams that they were playing 10 years ago, right?
What changed? What changed?
[00:22:13] Speaker A: It's what they want. It's the team. It's not the team individuals, but it's what they actually give a shit about.
[00:22:19] Speaker B: It's their shared beliefs, right? It's they, they. Paul Ruse was the guy who taught them that they could win. He changed their belief. And then Simon Goodwin came in and, you know, stole the glory and good on him and he's a great coach. But Paul Ruse did an enormous amount of work turning that team around.
From a team that were taught how to lose to a team that won a Grand final. They kicked 16 of the last 17 goals in that Grand Final against the Bulldogs. It was an absolute master. I remember watching it just in absolute shock. It was an absolute masterclass in how to turn a game around from a team that were taught how to lose. The only thing that changed, sure, they had a few extra players, but the only thing that changed wasn't the sport, it wasn't the commodity, it wasn't the rules. The only thing that changed was their belief.
That's the only thing that changed.
[00:23:12] Speaker C: Right?
[00:23:12] Speaker B: And as a marketer, and if you're hiring staff, you are marketing your business to talent.
And as a marketer, your job, our job is to change the beliefs of our audience so that they are in alignment with our beliefs.
[00:23:29] Speaker C: Right?
[00:23:30] Speaker B: And that's why people buy from us, because they. Because they trust us and. And they believe the same things that we believe.
That's why every agency is the same. What's different is what we believe. And attracting clients who have the same beliefs and attracting talent and staff have the same beliefs.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: So there's a couple of people in our team who are like, our ideal, which is good. That makes sense that we've got people who we think are like, yep, we want to clone these guys. And our Google Ads guy, Nico, I was talking to him the other day because I was doing a bit of coaching with him, and he was talking about, like, his work. Cause he works with other clients too. He was talking about like how important it is for him to be as if he's world class at what he does. He's like, I might, you know, I don't have a big agency, I don't have, you know, thousands of clients or anything. But he's like, if I'm going to work on a campaign, he's like, I just want to be like the best. One of the best. I just want to be world class at this. I was like that. Like, he's doing the same thing. He's still. We've worked with lots of LinkedIn ads companies. Lots of, lots of, yeah, freelancers, Google Ads people. But at the exact same time, we had someone else who was running some ads who definitely did not think that. Not at all. And the results showed it was like the same thing that they're doing. But the results show the way, the energy that they brought to things, how they would speak to clients. And you could try, oh, my God. And we did try in some way to coach those little bits. Oh, why do they do that? Or that thing's really cool. But it wasn't, it wasn't the bits, it was the overarching. It was the overarching belief. I want to be world class at this. And then everything else, all the decisions, all the actions, everything else filters down and we're like, oh, I like how he sets up his Google documents to share to clients, whatever it might be. I like how he communicates. I'm not going to try and clone. That'll take forever. But what about that belief?
[00:25:17] Speaker B: That's right. This is, this is why when agencies come to us and they're like, oh.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: All I want is, I just want a library of SOPs to run my agency, right?
[00:25:26] Speaker B: I go, great, you want to fucking slow down for three months and just get bogged down in admin for three months and get nothing done. Here's my library of SOPs, because that's what it's going to do. My SOPS aren't going to work for you. His SOPS aren't going to work FOR you. Her SOPS, as beautiful and as color coded as they are an airtable, are not going to work for you. Because her SOPs come from her set of beliefs and her team and the way they do business, right? And you're going to have to reverse engineer every one of those SOPs to make them fit your team and your culture and your clients and your beliefs. Don't do it. Just get your team to document the SOPs. And if you're micromanaging the way people do things. Oh, well, you know, usually what I do is I do the thing first and then I edit it and then I proofread it and then I publish it. And you've just published that and it's got some spelling errors in it. So let me have a look at your process. You're having the wrong conversation.
[00:26:16] Speaker C: Right.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: The conversation should be, how do you feel about what you just published?
Are you proud of what you just published?
[00:26:24] Speaker A: Is this your best work?
[00:26:26] Speaker B: Is this your best work?
[00:26:27] Speaker A: Not in a. Like, is this your best work, mate? But not like that. But like, honestly, yeah. Before I even look at it, like, is this your best work? Doing this?
[00:26:33] Speaker B: Is this your best work? It is taking it. Yeah, right.
[00:26:37] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: There's no excuse for spelling mistakes. There's no excuse for, you know, it's not your best work. Now chant. You could be overwhelmed.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: Spelling mistake, thankfully, that. I wouldn't even get into that detail if there was. I'd have no idea. Yeah, right.
[00:26:49] Speaker B: So, you know, because. But. And we've spoken about this for so many years, like, the belief informs the behavior. Right. What was that stupid acronym we came up with? Lieutenant Bar.
[00:27:00] Speaker C: Right.
[00:27:00] Speaker B: Language, Behavior, actions, results.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: Beliefs, action results. Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: Belief, actions, results.
[00:27:07] Speaker A: They influence each other because your correct action. So just as you were saying that, like, your beliefs influence your behavior. We're just staying with B and B.
Your behavior also influences your beliefs in the case of building evidence to support that belief.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: So I am world class at this. If you don't do anything about that, then it's very hard to see the evidence that you are actually world class at this. So go and be as if, like, take the actions to show. And then it reinforces. Yeah. Fucking oath. Look what I just did there. World class.
If you're like, I'm at this. And then you will go out to prove that you are. Indeed.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: That's right. Well, this is what happens. And. And 99 of the time, that's what people do instead of the opposite. Right. 99 of the time, people think they're at something, so they do something. They sabotage it subconsciously. In fact, I don't even think it's that subconsciously. I think consciously they sabotage it to prove to themselves they're shit at it. Which either gets them off the hook. I don't have to do that. I can't do that anymore. I'm shit at it.
[00:28:08] Speaker C: Right.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: I had this conversation with somebody the other day.
They're asking me to do something and I said, yeah, because I'm the Only fucking person that can figure this out, right? Like, I. Clearly, I'm the only person who has the mental capacity to learn a new skill. Go and learn how to do it.
Learn. Just learn how to do it. Don't half ass it and then go, I told you I was no good at that. Oh, yay for you. Best off just to go to bed and wrap yourself up in a fucking blanket and turn the light off for the rest of your life. Right?
[00:28:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: Good on you. There's zero personal growth where you're at.
[00:28:41] Speaker A: Just how is that serving you? Like, how is that going to help you?
[00:28:44] Speaker B: It's not. Learn. Go and figure it out. Get on Google, fuck it up, make a mistake, Try it again. Watch a YouTube video. Ask ChatGPT. Actually, ask Claude. Ring Simon Kelly. Ask him. Ring a friend, phone a friend. Flip a coin. Try something. Just do shit.
[00:29:02] Speaker C: Right?
[00:29:02] Speaker B: Stop overthinking it and stop thinking that you're crap at it before you start.
[00:29:07] Speaker C: Right.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: The example I always give is you. It's. It's almost impossible to behave incongruently with your beliefs.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: Which is why my challenge for anyone listening to this, by the way, don't get yourself arrested, because it's not my fault if you do. But my challenge is to walk into a very busy intersection in the middle of the CBD and wet your pants in public right now. Just think about that for a second.
What. How many psychological barriers would you have to overcome to walk into the middle of Times Square or walk into the middle of Feed Square here in Melbourne or walk in the middle of Hyde park in Sydney and just wet your pants?
[00:29:44] Speaker C: Right.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: One of two things are gonna happen. One, most people are probably gonna think you're a homeless person. And I don't say that with any disrespect, but that's probably what most people are gonna think. Right. And they'll probably ignore you, or some people might even look at you and be disgusted. And that is gonna reinforce your belief that. That we don't do that.
Your belief is that we don't urinate in our pants in public because if we did, we would be ostracized from the tribe.
And so the. The actions and the results that you will receive as a result of that behavior will reinforce the belief. Yeah, you're right. I shouldn't have done that. I feel bad about myself. I've embarrassed myself. People looked at me with sympathy and disgust, and that was a. Wasn't a good choice. Right.
So the behavior will reinforce a belief. So here's an idea. Why don't we try something that reinforces a belief that we know to be true, but we just haven't got any behavioral evidence to prove it? Like, I'm fucking awesome. I am world class at this.
Go and do something to prove to yourself and the rest of the world that you are world class at it.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: Why not? Because otherwise, what are you left with? You're left with the default.
And the default, unfortunately, without psychology, is not amazing. It's like.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: It's horrible.
[00:30:58] Speaker A: What is it? Avoid. Avoid pain, seek pleasure, maintain status, quo. The motivational triad.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: So we're just gonna, like, just regress into not nothingness and not push ourselves. Avoid pain. Cool. Just sit inside, do the work I'm comfortable with, turn off the lights, chuck on some porn, and we're good.
Come on. Step up.
Right?
[00:31:19] Speaker B: And I'm telling you, the older you get, when you're 16 years old, you believe you can change the world, right? There is this. You just have. I mean, I did anyway, when I was 16 years old. I'm fucking. I'm gonna take on the world, man. The world is mine.
[00:31:32] Speaker C: Right?
[00:31:33] Speaker B: And then you kind of get to your mid to late 20s and you realize that you've been sold a lie.
I remember watching Fight club in my mid-20s. And there's one line in Fight Club that just. It hit me like, I couldn't breathe. When Tyler Durden says. And I don't mean to genderize it, but when Tyler Durden says, we're a generation of boys raised by women and we were told that we could be anything and we've just figured out it's a lie, we're not all film stars. We're not all rock stars. We're gonna fucking pay the bills. We're gonna man up. We're gonna take responsibility.
[00:32:04] Speaker C: Right?
[00:32:05] Speaker B: And no one ever told us that we had to do that. And we're fucking pissed off about it. And I remember. I remember going, oh.
I couldn't speak. It was such. Had such a profound impact on me.
[00:32:17] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:32:18] Speaker B: That was the moment I realized that just believing you could change the world doesn't mean you're going to change the world. That you are not a unique and beautiful snowflake, that you're just a piece of bacteria floating around on the planet and for a very short period of time. And you'll die. And the sun will swallow the earth and nothing really fucking matters anyway, Right?
But the older you get, the harder it is to maintain that energy. That I can change the world. It gets harder.
Obviously. About this. This Morning. It's like, I would love to be 16 again just for a day, just to have that self belief that you can do anything.
Because as you get older you realize life knocks you around, right? You get, your arm is kinked and you get injured and psychologically and emotionally and physically you start to break down, right? And you realize it just takes more energy. You have to be more conscious and more intentional about what it is you want to achieve. And the alternative is, what you said is you just coast, you coast into fucking oblivion.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Because unfortunately coasting regresses.
Yeah, unfortunately, like gravity wants you, it's going to take you. It just goes down and down.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: When you're on a skateboard, what do you do on a skateboard? Like you know, like kick, kick, kick, push, coast, right? Yeah, but eventually you got to kick again, don't you? Because if you just coast, you just stop. The skateboard stops because momentum stops. You got to kick again, right?
[00:33:49] Speaker A: You've got to kick.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: Anyway, I don't know if any of this is helpful to anyone listening, but you know, I think, you know, it's. I just think people are, it's a very anxious world that we're living in at the moment for a whole bunch of reasons. But there's a lot of anxiety around at the moment. There's a lot of fear. People are, you know, very obviously sit this high level event, you know, and you can just feel it in the room. There's just 150 entrepreneurs there and a lot of people are very interesting. Stat about 150 people in the room. And I said, who's doing seven figures a year in revenue selling high level as a SaaS with no additional services and not talking to any customers.
Two people put their hand up.
Two out of 150, right? So and then I said, who wants that? And everyone put their hand up.
I said, guys, did you burst the bubble?
[00:34:48] Speaker A: How did you.
[00:34:49] Speaker B: You're living in a fucking dream. Like there's two here out of 150, right? That's 1.5%.
You have a 1.5% chance. Even if you go and do exactly what these two people have done, you have a 1.5% chance of success.
They are fucking horrible odds.
But you're still all chasing it, aren't you?
What are you doing?
It's like self torture.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: Did you get a chance to talk to those two?
[00:35:21] Speaker B: No.
[00:35:22] Speaker A: Might be distracting from the topic, but I the story from them. I would imagine I'll totally make this up because you didn't talk to them. So that Makes it easy. Is that like, it was. It was fucking hard, and it is still hard. And so, like, the reality of it, I think the dream is much more always much more exciting than the reality. Like the one that got away. That you're like, oh, like, I love to imagine that. Well, it's better that you imagine because if it was realized, it'd probably not be any good. So keep that in your imagination.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: Way better. In your imagination. Yeah. Yeah. Like your imagination. Your imagination is. It's. Everything is better or worse or scarier or funnier in your imagination. Yeah.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: There was.
Sorry, go on.
[00:35:59] Speaker B: No, nothing.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: There's something else. Some book from Steve Chandler or something that I was reading. And it was a little chapter. It's just like little. Little chapters of little stories. And he's. He's like, there's a.
There's the story of this. This guy. He's insane. He's in an insane asylum. And he gets up every morning and he gets a blank sheet of paper and he draws a monster on it and then screams at it and then runs out the room. Like, that would look crazy, but we do that in our minds all the time. Like, oh, my God, like, either which way. Sometimes we'll dream something amazing, but, wow, what if other times, like, oh, that's horrible. But, like, you made it up. You made it up and now you believe it. And then you're being as if that's really hard. Like, what the hell is going on? You are crazy.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Billie Jean. Billie Jean was there the day before me. I didn't see his talk. I tend not to go to these things unless I'm actually speaking. So I just kind of went into the room, did my talking and got out of there. I don't kind of hang around and do all the other stuff because I find it exhausting, frankly.
And I say that with all respect. And I think I've been, you know, hundreds of these conferences over the years, as you know, and I think they're all fantastic and very beneficial, but I just can't. I just can't do it anymore. I just have the energy. Just completely saps me of energy. Right? You just end up people, you know, you have 100 people telling you their life story, and it's like, oh, for sake. I love you all, but just leave me alone. Give me some space. Anyway, Billie Jean, the day before, apparently did this exercise where he was like, I'm going to show you how to do something and then you're going to do it. And so he drew.
He put A. He drew a kangaroo on a whiteboard, right? Or he put this video up about how to draw a kangaroo on the screen. That's right. He put a video up. So how to draw a kangaroo. He's right. Now everyone do it. Everyone draw the kangaroo, right? And it's like, everyone's kangaroo was fucking horrible. Everyone's kangaroo was horrible. I think the point he was trying to make is, like, it doesn't matter if people show you how to do things. When you do something for the first time, particularly if it's not something that you wanted to do, you're gonna suck at it, right? So just, like, let yourself off the hook and also realize that just because this person is good at drawing kangaroos and shows you exactly how to draw the kangaroo, they've been doing this a long time.
That's why they're teaching you how to do it. So you can't just go and replicate what someone else has done and expect to get results in three weeks, right?
What I learned at the summit, and a big part of this was hanging out with Nick on Monday night, is, man, focus and consistency is everything.
I cannot stress that enough.
Focus and consistency is everything. Like, if you're not playing the long game, you may as well just quit now, right? And leverage. If you don't have leverage in your business model, you're on a hamster wheel. That's. They were the big takeaways from me from the. And as I said, I didn't even attend any of the presentations, but just hearing what people were saying in the hallways, and that's. That's the big takeaway. So anyway, Claude, AI come up with your ideal start, ideal team member profile, and then use that to write job ads. Use that to put out content to attract the right talent to your organization, and also do the same for your ideal client profile and use that for your marketing messages.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: Yeah. And the SOP for the kangaroo drawing from Troy Dean will be coming out shortly.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: Keep an eye out for that.
All right, mate. Well, it's been a pleasure.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: I feel like this is turning into a philosophical podcast. Getting deep, which, frankly, man, I would be more than happy for this thing to pivot into talking about philosophy and less about the how to. Because, you know, as. As we were saying, like, if you don't have the right beliefs and the right thinking and the right mindset, the how to is irrelevant. Completely irrelevant.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:36] Speaker B: Doesn't matter.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: How to is. It's out there. It's already there. That's not the problem. If the how to was the problem, then the Internet would have solved everyone's issues.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:39:45] Speaker A: A single book would solve all your issues. But if you're not focused, as you're saying, you're not focused and you're not consistent and you're not applying things with leverage.
[00:39:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:55] Speaker A: Then you're just going to keep consuming. Consuming another course. Another course. I need not. It must be a different kangaroo drawing video that I need to watch.
[00:40:02] Speaker B: Yep. Or another plugin. Gotta buy another plugin. You know it's going to solve everything.
Yeah, that's right.
[00:40:09] Speaker A: Shortcuts are not the answer. All right, mate.
[00:40:12] Speaker B: The noise between your ears. All right, Good on you, Simon Kelly. Thanks for joining us on the Agency. I will do it again soon. All right.
[00:40:18] Speaker A: It's been a pleasure. Cheers, mate.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: Thank you, brother. Ciao. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the Agency, our podcast, and a massive thanks to Simon for joining us once again, if you'd like to join us live for our agency workshops like the one I mentioned. In this podcast, we go live every week to teach one of the 81 ways that you can use to scale your agency in 2025. And it's only $1 to get started. Okay, folks, remember to subscribe and please share this video with anyone you think may need to hear it. And we'll leave a link to our workshop and community near this podcast so you can join us. I'm Troy Dean, and remember, chainsaws were first invented for childbirth. Is that true?
Wow.
