Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: The same principles that got me into healthcare will take me through into this space as well. One of those values is I don't stand for mediocrity. I hate mediocrity. I hate, oh, that's good enough, that'll do. That's not acceptable for me. My philosophy is you do the best that you can and if that's your best, and that's your best. And so that's what I expect from my team and I know my clients expect that we do our best as well.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Welcome to the Agency, our podcast where we help web design, SEO, AI, paid ads, content, any kind of digital agency create abundance for themselves, their clients, their families, their communities. We're welcoming back to the Agency Hour this week, Simon Major. This is the third time we've had him on the podcast. He's become a very good friend of mine over the years. He's one of our upper echelon agencies, if you like, in Maverick's Club. We've been working with Simon for almost six years now and helped him, you know, it's been an incredible journey actually to see him grow the agency, grow the team, grow the revenue, grow the profit. He's now, you know, spends most of his time racing cars around the racetrack as a hobby and he's a fantastic operator, great entrepreneur, just an all around really good, solid human and I'm very glad he's in my life and he's come back to share some insights with us here. We talk about AI, of course. We talk about the advice that he would give himself when he was just starting out, if he could go back in time knowing what he knows now. We talk about team and staff and how their roles are going to change with AI and we talk about the fundamentals of business which really haven't changed and probably won't change. So no matter where you're at in your agency, if you're just starting out or if, if you're already running a multiple seven figure a year agency. Sit back, relax and enjoy this episode. There is tonnes of gold in it. I'm Troy Dean. Stay with us.
The three Pete, Simon Major from Practice Edge. Welcome to the Agency Hour podcast Again. Thanks for joining us. For those that don't know, how long ago did we cross paths?
[00:01:54] Speaker A: Well, our first, I reckon it was pre Covid 2019 and I reckon it might have been probably early 2019 because I reckon I was in it for a few months before we headed off to the States and then when we came back from the States after doing mavcon in the States. It was one of the last flights that was sort of being let out.
So yeah, it was pretty, pretty fine line there. But yeah. So yeah, what are we in 2025? So that's six years.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Yeah. February 2020, we flew back from San Diego and then went into lockdown and.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: I'm still picking up pearls.
Yeah.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: And so it was mid-2019. You joined where?
I don't want this to be an ad for Mavericks club or what we do, but I have seen and I'm not going to take credit for this. Right. I mean, frankly, I think if you have a mentor or a coach or an accountability partner who has some framework. Right. It could have been anyone. It just so happens that we cross paths and we've had a great relationship.
What I want to talk about though is the difference between trying to figure stuff out yourself and being humble enough to surround yourself with people who not necessarily are smarter than you, but just have a different point of view or a different type of experience. Right. And you'd had coaching in the past and you've always been big on self development and professional development.
Where were you when you started with us?
And that's the first question, I think. And then I want to unpack. Like, if you could go back in time to when you started your agency, knowing what you know now, what advice would you give? Simon Major?
[00:03:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So for those that don't know, my background was as a chiropractor. So I spent my first 15 years of my working life practicing and that was a great period of my life. But it didn't sort of fill the Egypt, the entrepreneurial sort of spirit that I had.
So a lot of the coaching that I had done was related to how to improve my healthcare practice.
But in essence, a lot of that is business related information. And you know, one of the things that I always talk about that I learned as a chiropractor was look after your patients and your Porsche will look after itself.
The same adage applies now to business in general. If you look after your clients, your business will look after itself. And I think that's a really important lesson that I learned from that early coaching.
But so when I started, I really had no structure in how I could manage a digital agency. It's just not second nature to me. It's something that I had to work hard at.
And so when I came to you, I was in a situation where I was, I suppose, being asked questions I didn't know the answers for. And so I needed a little bit of coaching in the Sense of.
Now that that's not important, don't worry about that. And I remember one time I messaged you and I said, oh, I've got this developer and he wants to build headless WordPress websites. And he's telling me it's the bee's knees. And you said, mate, don't be stupid, don't do that sort of thing. You know, just keep it simple and whatever. And, and we sort of, I had to, to put the, you know, the kibosh on that and say, no, we're not going to do that. It's not what we need to do.
So you helped me understand a lot of those things. And so for me, that mentoring was, was critically important to help me develop my understanding and to allow me to, I suppose, be exposed to different types of management style and structure within a digital agency.
So that was critically important. But probably the thing that I would say is that had I not done that and I learned this lesson later in life, now when it comes to whether it's a financial planner or whether it's a great accountant or whether it's a, a landscape gardener or something like that, that shows you how to do something, you know. And my son says it to me all the time. He says, poor man pays twice.
And so what he's basically saying and what all my coaches have done for me is they've given me the fast way to make progress without making the mistakes that I can't see. And what I often say to you is that, and why I keep turning up to all the calls and whatever is because I want someone to look around corners for me that I don't know exist. And so for me to be able to have someone who has experience at doing the things that I don't necessarily have great experience at is a critical part of why I continue to do what I do with you.
And so even, even to the point of like, we had a Mavericks mini meetup the other day and I came away from that and it was one of the best days I've spent on the business in a long time. And it was so good because I just, I often hear things for a second or third or fourth or fifth time and they don't register until I hear them at the time when I need them. And so when you spoke about, you know, AI and Hawkeye and whatever, well, as you know, we're just started doing different things with that and it's, it's not until you actually apply those things to your, to your needs at the time that you Understand what it is that you need. And so for me, you know, what I would say to Simon starting out all those years ago is invest in, support and help have other people that have been there, done that, guide you, but make sure they're the right fit for you, because there's a lot of people that are out there that are prepared to take your money, but they're not always the right fit. They're not always working in your favor. And that's something I think, too, that, you know, don't always, you know, go for the shiny object and think that it's the latest and greatest.
Just think, what. What do you need now and. And try and find that thing.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: I think there's a. I appreciate your transparency around that. There's a couple things I want to unpack. One, I don't have all the answers, and I have people around me that mentor me. And you. I mean, you've actually been a big inspiration and kind of become one of my mentors over the years as well. Right. And we've had many conversations where either of us want to jump off the Westgate Bridge or both of us at the same time, you know, and it's just, like, burn the whole thing to the ground.
And so I don't have all the answers. I think one thing that I've learned, and I've been in a lot of masterminds and programs where they try, and basically, they've got a. They've got a template, and it's like, well, this is. This is what you have to do. And they don't customize it to your business. Right.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: And big learning.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: Right? Huge learning. We talk about paid discovery all the time. You'd be one of our most successful agencies. And you don't sell paid discovery because it's not part of your process. You don't need it. And so I would be the first to say, what we do is lay out all the options and say, here are all the Lego blocks that we have that we can use. Just take what you need when you need it. Right. And know that you can always come back to that later.
Right. And. And also, if something's not broke, don't try and fix it just because Uncle Troy said you should do it that way.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: Well, that's right. And it took a long time for me to develop the confidence to be able to say no. And I think that's a really important lesson I've learned. But one of the things, too, that just. Just reminds me is that hindsight's a wonderful thing.
And One of the things that I look back at and you know, I look at all these spruce who say, oh, if I can do it, you can do it. Well now that's bullshit because people have different skill sets and I think you have to apply where you become most successful is when your skill set is in alignment with what your passionate about or what you're really good at doing. And sometimes you have to step outside and you have to do the things that are uncomfortable, but that's not always the best pathway forward. Right. It might be that you have to employ someone to do the things that you don't want to do, but you can sit around and one of the big lessons that I learned was when I read the book by Gino Wickman, I think it's called Traction.
[00:10:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: And that helped me understand why I couldn't implement.
And until that I read that book, I thought I was just useless and I couldn't do these things. And I didn't know how to sit there and follow through with things. And I just didn't know that. That's just not part of my makeup. I'm more of a visionary sort of person that can look and think of an idea, but don't ask me to implement it.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Implement it.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: I'll fall flat on my face.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: Your brain's just wide different.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: Doesn't do it. Yeah, that's right.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's. They're the big lessons I think that I've learned is no, you can't do everything and you know, listen to other people and find where you fit within that advice and say no when it doesn't suit you.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: I think also it's important to surround yourself with people who are, you know, we say like minded, like minded souls or kindred spirits. Like when we meet up at mavcon, you know, it's. We love kind of hanging out with each other because we're all like minded people. But I think it's also important that you surround yourself with people who are in a similar stage of business or might be a little more ahead. But if they're too far ahead, like if, if we were hanging out with agencies that were doing $70 million a year in revenue. Right.
There's nothing to talk about. Nothing to talk about because they have a completely different set of problems. We move way faster than them and break shit all the time. They can't do that because they've got corporate infrastructure and you know, so. And also if you, if we were hanging out with, you know, Large consulting companies, right, that were consulting with Fortune 500s. Well, that's a different business model. So I think you need to, you need to surround yourself with people who have a similar business model, but also at a similar stage of business to you or a little bit further ahead, but they're not so far ahead that you don't recognize them.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: And you know, one of the things that I find, I'm 52 now, and I talk to my brother, who's a bit older, he's 55. And I kind of felt this when I hit my 50s anyway. But my, my brother's wife, my sister in law said this phrase recently, and I'm sure it's not hers. You would have heard it from somewhere. But she said, well, that's because we're in our I don't give a fuck 50s. Right. And, and I felt this in my 40s where I, I kind of developed this resilience where I just stopped putting up with other people's bullshit. But when I, when I hit my 50s, it became, it was, it was palpable. It was like, I just don't have time to put up with anyone's bullshit anymore. And I think that's reflected in, you know, I work with a lot of agencies who are just terrified of picking up the phone and calling someone or sending an email or introducing themselves to someone at a networking event. Right. Because for whatever reason they have social anxiety or whatever. I, I don't know, I've had a lot of therapy which has helped me present myself in a way publicly where I can manage my anxiety. But also, as I said, I'm just at that age now where I just don't have time to waste anymore. And I just wonder, going, I wonder how different Simon Major is now than when did you start the agency? How long ago?
10, 15 years?
[00:13:17] Speaker A: 2010, I think.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: Okay, so 15 years ago, what was your. Back then? And you didn't know what you were doing, you were a chiropractor, right? So you had to learn all the hard skills. You learned website, you learn SEO. Then you had to learn how to hire people in this, in this space, right? Not other chiropractors. You had a huge learning curve.
How you know, it's impossible to transplant your resilience and your confidence now back to yourself 15 years ago.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: True, but, but I think my DNA, as far as what my, my principles and values are, hasn't really changed. And I think I learned that from another coach and he said that the same principles that got me into healthcare will.
Will sort of take me through, into this, this space as well.
But, you know, I, I sort of.
They're my principles, my values. And one of those values is I don't stand for mediocrity. I hate mediocrity. I hate. Oh, that's good enough. That'll do.
No, that's not. That's not acceptable for me. My, my philosophy is you do the best that you can, and if that's your best, then that's your best.
And so that's what I expect from my team, and I know my clients expect that we do our best as well.
We're going through some change at the moment within our SEO process. And what I'm saying to. When we're reviewing it, I'm saying what we need to understand is, is the process being done as the process is meant to be done, or is the. Is it the implementation of the process very, very important to understand? Because if you don't know the difference between whether it's being implemented the way it should have or whether it's just wrong and it's not delivering results. And so they're the sorts of things that we look at and we challenge ourselves all the time to be better. And I think that's. That's a, That's a principle that I've always had. It's like, near enough. He's never good enough for me, and I always try and do the best I can, and that's. That's okay. If it's the best that you can do, that's what I. And it's just a DNA within me.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: I think also, if you're working on something that you're passionate about.
Right.
If you're working on something you're not passionate about. Yeah, you can't. Anyone can kind of go, that's good enough. Because I don't really care about it that much.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: But if I really care about it, then I know when I'm. I know when I'm. I'm cheating. I know when I'm not giving it my all.
I can feel it, you know, in your, in your heart of hearts, that little voice in the back of your head says, you could have done a better job there.
You just don't care. Right. And so I think it's really common for.
I'm pretty lucky. We've got a very low churn on our team, and I've had team members that have been with me for a long time, but I see agencies and I see larger businesses and have Friends that work in corporate that couldn't give a shit about their job and they're just clocking in and getting the pay and clocking out and they are quietly quitting, to coin the phrase, they're just doing the bare minimum to get through. Right. First of all, as a business owner, how do you know when someone is just fucking in the wrong seat? They shouldn't be here and they're just not. They're just doing the bare minimum. And then what do you do? Like, how do you try and train them if they're not passionate? Do you have a conversation, say, listen, you need to get off the bus because you just shouldn't be here. Like, what does that process look like?
[00:16:27] Speaker A: It's a really, sometimes it's incredibly challenging to solve that problem because if you have capacity issues, you've got to walk on, you know, you're treading on thin ice.
And so if you put pressure on someone then they typically will either respond to that or just say, I'll talk to it. Oh, I'm out. And so you sort of, you've got to protect your business first. And we actually do have a situation at the moment with some team members that have had that sort of sometimes limiting belief and resolution to be able to do the things that they need to do. And so do we have the, do we have the chat or don't we? And I think that I'm going to protect myself and make sure that we have the capacity before I have the conversation. So it's one thing to have a standard, it's another thing to shoot yourself in the foot. And so it's, that's balance business owner and that's 100%.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: I've hung on to people way too long because I realized that if they're not in that seat, then someone else has to be in that seat. And that could take us three months.
And therefore, you know, there goes another four hours of my day because someone has to do that job. Right. And it is tricky. You and I are working on something around this.
We can't talk too much about it. But I, you know, funny how where all the great ideas come to you, but literally I was in the shower this morning and I just had a brainwave. I'm like, oh fuck, this is, this is a no brainer, right? That the. And you and I'll talk about that offline. Sorry, dear listeners, but we can't divulge too much right now. But, but the, the point is that if you need to hire someone and you don't have a list of candidates that you can go and talk to very quickly. It's going to take you a lot if you're like, well, I need to hire a developer and I need to hire them now. So I'm going to start looking now.
One or two things going to happen. You either going to hire the wrong person because you need to hire someone quickly, right? And then that's going to actually cost you more in the long run and send you back, or if you do, you, if you actually do the hiring process, probably, probably going to take you six weeks or maybe even three months to hire the right person.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: We're three months in trying to find someone for three months.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: So the point is, I've, I've been saying this for a long time, right? One, never stop marketing. Golden fucking rule. Never stop marketing. Now you, your marketing is called SEO. You do great SEO on your website. It brings in lots of incoming inquiries, right? Why would you turn that off? Because we're at capacity so we need to dial down the SEO. You'd never do that. It's craziness, right? So whatever your marketing channel is, kids, if you're listening, never stop marketing. If that means you're really active in slack groups or Facebook groups and you pick up work that way, if you're on Facebook, ads, if you do networking, whatever it is, never stop marketing. And on the flip side, never stop recruiting. And when I say recruiting, I don't mean you have to hire people all the time, but you should always be building a pool of talent that you can tap into.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: And I think one of the things that I learned too, and this again was, was probably two years in when I started working with you, was understand capacity and don't let capacity get to a point where it's a breaking point where you need someone now know those numbers and be able to work out at a time when you say reach 80% capacity, that's when you need to be hiring, not when you're at 95% capacity. Because, and, and I had to work out how to do that. And it was, it was something that just, I had to sit down on. I, I, I love doing maths. And so I just sat down and I worked the numbers and I came up with a formula that allowed me to do that. And we monitor that part of, part of our, you know, team lead KPIs that we look at on a monthly basis and we say, right, where's our capacity at? And so that then allows us to trigger when we, when we go for the Recruitment aspect, How do you, how do you get.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: I'm curious about this because I know Adam Silverman over the years has used ClickUp and he built some capacity dashboards over the years. How do you, how do you find out, how do you get the truth from your team? Right, Because I reckon, I reckon your team are always going to tell you they're at more capacity than they actually are, right? So how do you objectively get the true understanding of your team's capacity?
[00:20:46] Speaker A: So the way I work it out is I say there's a book value that I expect my team to be able to achieve. And so let's say if the $40,000 is the book value that I expect someone to have, then we look at and that's worked out by the number of clients they have, by the value those clients bring.
And then what we do is we work out how many hours those people have as part of their actual hours that they can manage servicing clients. So we take out meetings, we take out public holidays, we take out all the other things that should be taken out and we're left with, I think it's about 80 hours a month that they have as client facing, strategic sort of hours they can do. So if we divide, you know, 80 hours a month into 400, it works out to be $500 an hour, right, that you charge. And so then what you do, if you say, if you charge, if a client pays $2,000, it means that you get four hours with of strategic thought for that client on a monthly basis.
Now what we can do is we can then look at the numbers and let's say someone's at 35,000, their book value is at 35,000. Well, they're at 35 over 40 as their capacity score. So it's an objective measure. Now it's not perfect. Now the other thing too is people might be thinking, $500, that's a crazy amount to be charging. But that includes, that's my team, right? That's my wage, it's my wife's wage, it's our copywriters, it's our support staff, it's everyone, right?
All tied into that. And so you get four hours to sit there and think strategy and review and all the other things. We allocate different time for client communication and reporting. But basically the way it works out is that you should be spending four hours on that client per month. And if you're not, then you're under servicing. And if you're doing more than you're over servicing. And so it gives them a healthy way to be able to manage how much time they should be spending.
And also whether we've underquoted or overquoted the client in terms of how much work needs to be done. So it's a good check. That's how we do it. And it's a really objective way to do it and it gives us really good clarity. The hardest part is to choose whether it's 40,000, 30,000, 50,000, whatever it might be.
[00:23:01] Speaker B: Yep. And that doesn't include implementation. This is just the.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Well, we have an implementation team as well, so they do some of the implementation, but there's largely another team which is part of that $500 an hour. There's another team that does the back end stuff. So it's all done through the sort of like the strategist. The strategist and the implementation implementer.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: Okay, got it.
80 hours a month's about. Yeah, call it two weeks of the month. What do they do in the other two weeks?
[00:23:28] Speaker A: Well, they're doing reporting, they're doing, you know, meetings, and there's a whole heap of things. I can't remember what's in it. But it does work out to be about 80 hours.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, now I have to ask, how does. How is AI?
How do you think?
And we've had this conversation. I'm pretty bullish on AI.
I mean, every day, every day, every day I use AI and I go, well, they just. There goes another job, there goes another fucking. There goes another career path. Right. Just being completely replaced. And we've seen it happen. Video editors, right? Copywriters. Now, I'm not saying there's. I think there's. There'll always be a place for handcrafted art.
There'll always be room and a market and a place for beautifully written stories or content. Right. There'll always be a place for the handcrafting of a song or a video or a film. Right. I went into what I went through an amazing film. One battle after another. The latest Paul Thomas Anderson film. It's two and a half, three quarter hours long, two and a half hours long in the cinema. Everything in that film was shot in camera. There is no AI. There's no computer generated images in that camera in that film. And I came out of that film and I felt it was. It's an incredible movie. It's an absolute work of art. It'll be the film of the year. All the critics are saying it's the best film made in years. Right. And I walked out. I was like, what was it about that film? One, it was shot on 70 mil film. He rebuilt a Panavision 70 mil film camera from the 1960s. You can't get them. He had to have one rebuilt. He shot it on film. There's no special effects. It felt like an old movie, right? And it was, it was, it's art. There'll always be a place for that. However, you look at something like K Pop Demon Hunters, right, like, or any of the latest Pixar films right there. I mean, it's all generated by computers and it's generated a lot quicker than they used to be. Right. Because of AI and technology.
So how do you fast forward three years and look at your agency structure now and say, you know, like one, are you nervous about AI or are you excited that AI is going to allow you to do more for your clients at a higher profit margin? Where do you sit with this? Are you still, are you still skeptical that it's too early to.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: It's a little bit early.
And the reason why I say that is because I don't necessarily 100% trust the results that come back from AI at the moment. So if I put in, do keyword research for this client and competition analysis, it can't really come back with the sort of level of detail that it needs because you never really know if it's 100% accurate and most of the time it's probably not going to be.
So that's the first thing.
I can't ask AI to produce something that I would be happy to put my name to.
Like the lawyer did a few weeks ago when they had that case where they pulled out a fictitious case and said, oh, you know, according to this one, it wasn't, wasn't real. Right.
And he got crucified for it. But I. So number one, I don't trust the results 100%. Right.
And I think that most things that we do with AI have to be, you know, vetted.
Where I see the role at the moment is, is in efficiency. And so what I think is that, and the way that I'm approaching, you know, the way we run our agency is to have strategic human thought enhanced and made efficient with AI. That's the bottom line that I will always adopt until such time as it. As it gets better. Now, you know, we did some research a few weeks back and found that because I asked the guys, I said, tell me what, what percentage of search results are coming through from AI and what are coming through from Google?
And on our Website we're getting 2% coming in from AI, from ChatGPT and whatever and still 90% coming in from search.
And I got them to do it on a few other clients and that's pretty much the standard, right?
So it's funny, I was talking to a psychologist this morning who is looking to get some help with his website and I said to him, do you think that, because I don't, do you think that people are going to trust the bots to choose who they go and see and bear their soul to?
And so I, I mean I think I'm a little, little bit protected in health care because I think healthcare is a very personal thing when it comes to looking for information.
AI is going to take over and obliterate the search results.
But for the things that we do, which is largely service based, location based type things, I think SEO still has an incredibly powerful role to play and I think that AI will help to make that more efficient. But I don't necessarily think that it's going to remove all strategic direction for a campaign in the immediate future. And I know even with Google Ads, we do a lot of Google Ads as well.
The results that we're getting from AI, we don't use AI because they're just, they're just not accurate and they're not good and people might disagree and they might have found some, some things that they find work really well for us.
I can't in good faith trust AI to deliver the output that we can get from human strategic thought at the moment, but we will use. And look, I just explained to you before I, I did a sales call before Use Fathom to record the call, plugged it into a custom GPT, wrote the most amazing summary email telling the guy that what he needs is local SEO for his campaign and this is why. And all this stuff, it was unbelievable. It would have taken me an hour to write and I wouldn't have done it as well. I did that in five minutes, right? So that's saved my day. I can do that. And that's the sort of thing that I want. Another example using what's that bolt new to try and build some software.
And I'm not a coder, so I get to a certain point, it does about 60% really well. You get to a certain point and it just gets stuck and it can't get past it, it gets into a loop.
That's the problem. And I think we're well versed in how to use SEO. Sorry, how to use AI, but for the average Joe blogs out there, there's still a long time for them to pick up and get to the point where they're going to feel confident.
I think that's still a while off.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: What about here's the future?
I think this is the future. Right at the moment there are a couple of tools, SEO tools that put a bit of JavaScript on your website and they will analyze your website from an SEO point of view and make changes to your website on the front end using a bit of JavaScript. Right. It doesn't make changes in your WordPress website in your content management system, it just does it on the front end.
Problem with that is that if you cancel your subscription, that goes away because the JavaScript goes away. Right. So on one hand it's sticky for clients, on the other hand, I think it's a short term play.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: Yeah. And what happens if the client gets in and updates part of the website?
And I think that it's live on the front end, but it's not.
[00:30:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Right.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: So there's huge problems there.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So the other thing is There are already AI agents for WordPress where you can basically log into WordPress and tell it what to do and it'll make changes in your WordPress website. We are moments away from, we are moments away from your implementation team largely being replaced. Sorry. By a WordPress AI agent that's like, here are the changes we need to make to the website. Go and do it. And an AI agent's logged into WordPress and makes all the changes and can make those changes to 100 websites concurrently. Right. We're moments away from that now.
I think the challenge is for all humans. I put myself in this category as well. Right. This is, I'm, I'm a strategic thinker, but I put myself in this category because I think we are moments away. I mean, I'm using custom GPTs and custom Geminis now, thanks to Duncan in Mavericks. I put me under Gemini because I just haven't got there yet. I'm all over ChatGPT and Claude is like, dude, you're a Google workspace user. You should be using Gemini. I'm like, all right. I went and build a custom gem to do the same thing that the custom GPT does on the sales call analysis. And I'm like, this thing is telling me how to close a client that I spoke with yesterday based on their specific, like it's giving me a playbook on exactly what I need to do to cover the objections in the, in the post sale email follow up to close this client. Right. Now sure, I, I may have got there, I may have thought about that if I had the time, but I don't. My calendar is completely smashed with sales calls. So I don't, I don't have half an hour after every call to think, you know, what can I put together? I started fucking time, right? So I think the call for all of us, the call to arms for all of us, it's a huge opportunity for those of us that are thinking like this. I think all of us need to redefine the value that we bring as humans.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: I agree.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: To our clients, right?
[00:32:51] Speaker A: Completely agree.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: Because, because if you're doing repetitive work, you're, you're toast, it's game over, right? If you're doing, I mean have a look at what Canva just released with Canva AI a few days ago, right? It's a full, full production studio, video, audio, design, copy code, written content. Right? It like, and this is just every single day I discover a new AI revelation that just that I just can't even, I can't even keep up with how fast it's moving. So, so, and there are people saying that, you know, you can run a million dollar a year agency with one person and a bunch of AI and I absolutely believe it. I absolutely believe it. So, so what does that mean? And I can also tell you that there are, there are thousands of HubSpot agencies all over the world who have made a very good living over the last 15 years of helping small businesses scale up with HubSpot. Because HubSpot's a, a beast, right? We're a HubSpot user for a few years. It's a beast. It's a big learning curve, right? Well they've got their own co pilot Breeze now I'm working with a private coaching client. I'll be doing some work for them in HubSpot. And he gave, I said look, I haven't seen HubSpot for a few years so I might need to refresh my memory. He gave me view only access to his HubSpot the other day and I logged in, had a look and I'm like, this is a no brainer because I'll just use their co pilot to design all the workflows, right? I don't need a developer. No, I don't need a HubSpot developer. So there's hundreds of HubSpot agencies all over the world that have to pivot very quickly, otherwise they're done because all the clients are bringing it in house. Right? We're hearing this from our Own agency. So what is.
You know, I mean, I'm not scared, but I've got a. I've got a rocket up my ass to reinvent our value proposition. And I'm just. You're an established agency owner, you've got a big team and you're not as bullish on this as I am.
So what, you know, am I like, am I just. Am I too enthusiastic about this? Am I too nervous? Am I too scared? Like, where do you think this is going to settle?
I mean, is AI just going to become our executive assistant and book flights and accommodation for us, or do you think it is actually going to replace a lot of jobs?
[00:35:03] Speaker A: I think it's going to replace a lot of jobs, but I also think that where it's going to be most valuable is under the control of a human.
Yep.
I'm old enough to remember Terminator. Yeah. And the bots take over. Right?
[00:35:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:20] Speaker A: I don't. I don't think that's going to happen, but at the same time, it's. It's a little bit scary because now you have to vet things that you see on social media. Go, is that real or not real? And it's more often than not. And I think that's going to become better and better.
But here's the opportunity that I see.
If everyone was using the same AI to produce the same outcome, where's the strategic advantage that comes from a human to think outside the box?
That's what I want to do. And so most of the things that you said before about what you're using AI for, just, they're not replacing you, they're enhancing and creating efficiencies within what you do. That's where I see that. So what we will do is we will look at our process and we will say, can this be done with AI and can it be done with a high level of accuracy, or can it be done 80% with AI and directed 20% or review 20% with human to save 80% of the time? And if we can do that, then happy days, we all win. But ultimately, again, what I said at the start, look after your patients, Porsche, look at itself. If you push out with AI and lose clients as a result of that, don't come back and blame AI because it's not AI's fault.
[00:36:37] Speaker B: And I think you're absolutely right. The problem is, even if you build a custom GPT to think outside the box and to zag while all the other AI is zigging. Right. Well, what you have to remember is that someone else has got that custom GPT to do the same zag.
So it's, you know, Max asked me a question yesterday and he was kind of a bit tentative about asking me the question. And he finally asked me the question. I said, mate, that is the best question you've asked. I said, I wish everyone on the team came to me and asked the same question. He basically said, there's a bunch of things I could be doing right now.
He basically wanted a sanity check that he's working on the right thing at the right time.
Said, this is what AI is going to allow us to do. AI is going to allow us to sit down and say, what is our priority and what should we be working on right now to add the most value to our clients and the business?
Because all the shit that I used to do is 80% of it's done by AI now. So I've actually got time in my calendar to have a conversation about how I can be most valuable to my clients and the business.
And I think very few employees are going to have the courage to admit that they're not exactly sure what they should be working on and they feel a bit lost because AI is doing a lot of their job.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: Right.
[00:37:59] Speaker B: I think I said to Max, a lot of staff are just very good at looking busy because they want to appear busy. I don't want my staff to look busy. I want my staff to look bored. I want them to come to me and go, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Fucking great. Let's sit down and think.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think what you're talking about there is accountability, right? And it's about. Because AI doesn't forget.
So if you can have AI measuring and monitoring what you're doing and making sure that you're moving towards the end point where you want to go, then happy days. And it's because it's not going to forget, it's going to be objective and it's going to be able to give you the feedback that you need in order to be able to produce the result that you're meant to be doing. Yeah. So all the above. And that's why, you know, like these sales calls, summaries and whatever, like, it just doesn't forget anything. You don't have to take notes anymore. It's just incredible. And you've got a record of it sitting on your computer. If you ever want to go back and say, oh, hang on, you didn't say that, or, we didn't say that. Or. I didn't say that.
Here's the transcript.
So, anyway, I think it's.
Efficiency is where I see it at the moment. I just don't trust the data.
[00:39:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:09] Speaker A: Quite at the moment. Because, you know, it does. It literally makes stuff up.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: It does, yeah. Yeah.
I want to tee you up here to kind of hit a bit of a home run, because I think I know how you can answer this question, but I talk to a lot of agency owners who are looking for a magic bullet, right.
And they'll look at someone like you, who's running a very successful agency, and they'll compare where they are to where you are now. And they're just starting out, Right. And I say to them all the time, what you have to remember.
Simon's got over a decade of SEO on his website, and when he started, he had a great referral channel that was referring a lot of work to him. You don't have that. You don't have a referral partner. You don't have a decade of SEO on your website. So you can't compare. Right. If you didn't have that referral partner and you were just starting out, what's the magic bullet? What's the magic secret to go and get clients.
[00:40:03] Speaker A: Deliver the promise, do what you do, what you say, be accountable, look after your patients.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:13] Speaker A: Go after you, look after your clients.
That's it. That's the magic. That's all they want. Communicate.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: Yeah. And when you. And when you. When you were starting out, obviously you knew chiropractors, Right. Did you. Were you doing outreach? Were you contacting them and saying they were coming to you because you had a good referral partner? Right. That was sending you a lot of work.
[00:40:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: And then it was just word of mouth that you were doing a good job.
[00:40:36] Speaker A: When I. When I bought this building that I'm in now, because I don't. I don't rent, I buy.
And I was working at home and it just wasn't working. It just. It wasn't right. And so I looked that night and I made a decision to buy, and we bought it the next day.
And I've been here for eight or nine years since, but I. I just made that decision that I was going to.
Because I had about 20 or 30 clients, so whether or not I made a go of it down here, it was just. It was at that point where I had enough to. To say, you know, what if I don't get another new patient in, there's enough people coming through. It was going to work.
But I just focused on delivering that promise and then we just, because it was fairly early on in the game in terms of SEO for healthcare and things like that, and we were one of the first to market and that really helped. And so that's just all we've done ever since. And yeah, the rest.
[00:41:42] Speaker B: But also the thing I notice about you, and I don't know whether you had this when you first started out, but the thing I notice about you is that you have a genuine conviction when you're talking to someone that you know, you're not trying to convince them you don't have to because you know that you can help them. And in fact you'll say you'll, you'll say no to a client if you don't think you can help them.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: Yeah, a hundred percent. My brother often says to me, your greatest sales approach is that you don't think you're a salesman.
Because I don't, I, I'm not a salesman. I'm just, I just, I'm honest, brutally honest. And if someone comes in with a crap website, I'll tell them because it's not serving anyone not to.
[00:42:20] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: And it's the same, it's what I learned as, as a health practitioner, right, is don't tell patients what they want, tell them what they need.
That's the, that's, you know, again, it's, it's the learnings from having to say. Because people come into a chiropractor and they've got back pain that's been going for five years. And, and like you can't fix them in three visits.
It's going to take ages to fix it. It'll take you six months to help them. And then, even then you won't fix them because they're doing the same insult to their back every day when they go to work. You know that ongoing maintenance.
But as a business owner with what I do now is when I get on the phone I say, you know, what's the problem?
How quick do you need your results?
Okay, let's, let's work at a solution. This is what I have. And if someone comes in and they don't have a search based thing, they need social ops saying, look, probably not the agency for you and how do.
[00:43:15] Speaker B: You deal with that? I know a lot of agency owners get, get, get up around money, right? It's like when, when they go, well, well this is, this is what we can do and it's going to cost this much and the client's like, oh, Shit, I didn't think it was going to cost that much. And then all of a sudden the agency owner freaks out and they have all this imposter syndrome and their head explodes because they've got a weird relationship with money.
How do you just kind of hold that space and go, well, if you can't afford it, you know, I mean, does that come from your. The kind of health background, like. I always think the best position you can have on a sales call is that of a general practitioner, a gp. Right. You're going to see the doctor. The doctor says, how can I help? Okay, well, here's the medicine. Go buy it. And if you don't buy it, that's not my problem. You've still got the rash. Not me, pretty much.
[00:43:57] Speaker A: It's like, as I said to this guy before that I was speaking to, that's the problem. There's a solution.
I. Just because you work two days a week doesn't mean I can reduce my fee. You've got to compete with everyone that's doing this for, you know, five days a week or seven days a week, and they're paying full fare.
So I'm fortunate that I don't have to worry about that. We've got leads coming out of our backside.
[00:44:24] Speaker B: Yes, yes. But I will say this.
The moment you adopt that mentality, even if you have no clients, the. Because if you, if you try and go, well, you're only working two days a week, so I'll give it to you for, you know, 40% of the price, right? Guess what? You're going to spend your entire career doing that. The moment you adopt that mentality and go, well, I'm sorry, I can't help you. If you can't pay my fee, I can't help you. The moment you adopt that mentality, everything starts to change.
Right? Now, sure, you've got to pay the rent, right? But don't. I've. I've said this. You know, when I first started out, I was fortunate enough that I was doing voiceovers and I was playing five gigs a week around town. So I was earning enough to pay the rent, right. I wasn't going hungry. I could survive until I got this up and about, until I got this thing full time. But I think if you take on bad clients that aren't profitable because you need the money, it's gonna. It takes a long time to get out of that problem.
[00:45:17] Speaker A: It does, right? It does. And it becomes resentful after a while, Correct?
[00:45:21] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:45:22] Speaker A: It's not a Healthy way to do it. And I think the other thing, too is that working with patients, working with clients that respect your systems and have boundaries is extremely important.
And so I just. I feel as though, you know, being transparent, this is what you need, this is how much it costs.
Then's the brakes.
[00:45:46] Speaker B: Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Otherwise, you know, go and do it yourself if you can't afford to pay that fee.
[00:45:51] Speaker A: That's right. Choose someone who doesn't have 15 years of experience working with healthcare clients and see what you get.
[00:45:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Yep. Mate, thank you again for joining the Agency Hour podcast. I really appreciate your time and everything you contribute to the community. It's just been. I'm glad we crossed paths six years ago, whenever it was we met and you and Carolyn came down to the office and groomed me and made sure I wasn't full of shit. You've become great friends over the years. I love hanging out with you guys. And thanks again for. For sharing your insights with our community.
[00:46:17] Speaker A: Always a pleasure, mate. Always.
[00:46:21] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the agency, our podcast, and a huge thanks to Simon for coming and sharing his insights with the community. I really appreciate him and everything he does for our community. He runs regular calls with our agency owners as well, helping them, you know, just whatever they need in their business. So it's great to have him as part of the community. He's a very important part of what we do here. Please, like, share, subscribe, do whatever you do with podcasts these days.
Stick it into one of your AI tools and have it transcribed and turn it into a summary and read it over and over again. Whatever you do, I don't care.
Get whatever value you can out of it, but share it with someone who you think may benefit from it. And if you want to have a conversation with us about working with us to help you grow your agency, whether you need more clients, if you need more staff, if you need to increase your fees, if you need to make more profit, if you need to pivot, if you need to understand how to use AI. Whatever you need. There'll be a link near this episode where you can schedule a call to chat with someone on the team. And we'll give you 20 free leads just for turning up and having a conversation with us. So take advantage of that. All right, I will see you next week. And remember, the footprints that were made on the moon will be there for a hundred million years.
