Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Digital strategy roadmaps have helped us significantly with our sales pitch and our ability to go beyond writing a proposal for a project. From our point of view, it's fantastic because recurring revenue from a client's point of view, we don't have to continuously negotiate scope. What is this? How much would this cost? What do you think about building this? Create the strategy once. Let's put the destination into the gps and then let's just go.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Welcome to the agency hour podcast, where we help web design and digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their teams, and their communities. This week we're joined by the one and only Simon Kelly, who is a director of SGD. Seriously good design. They are a digital marketing and web design agency. They serve predominantly service based businesses and they help those businesses generate leads and grow. In this episode, we explore digital roadmaps and the difference between tactics, results and strategies when you shouldn't be using AI as part of your client's digital strategy and how to make your boat go faster and much more. If you want to use strategy and growth plans to grow your recurring revenue, then this episode is for you. I'm Troy Dean. Stay with us.
Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, please welcome back to the agency hour podcast, the one and only Simon Kelly. How are you, brother?
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Doing good, Troy, nice to be here.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Great to see you. We must be light on guests if they've got you back on again.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Bottom again.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: We're back again.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Have I been on the adam, if I've been on the agency hour, I.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Think, oh, maybe you haven't.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: I think that. I think maybe that's why you're like, yeah, really? Again?
[00:01:38] Speaker B: You again? Again. I mean, I thought we'd picked you. I thought we'd extracted everything from your brain that was in there.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Yeah. But here again, I'm just recycling old stuff because I figured that, like, maybe your memory is fading a bit, so just come back to just say the same thing. We'll do that old every couple of years and.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: Excellent. I need the reminders. It's funny, I was. I was. I heard someone the other day said, we don't need to, uh. We don't need to. Yeah, a lot of the times we don't need to learn anything. We just need to be reminded of the stuff that we already know. Because it's very easy to get distracted by the new shiny thing.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: And just to forget to do the basics that we know that we're supposed to do. But that's not what we're talking about today, is it?
[00:02:17] Speaker A: No. It's not, but. No, it could be. That's fine. We can feed that in. Fundamentals are key.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Before we dive in, we should tell people who the hell you are and what you're doing here. Who is. Who is Simon Kelly? Have you had your existential crisis yet?
[00:02:30] Speaker A: There's been a few. There's been quite a few. Yeah. So I'm Sam Kelly. I'm one of the directors of SGD, which stands for seriously good design. We're a custom web design, SEO and Google Ads agency based in Collingwood in Melbourne.
Yeah. We help in particular service based businesses that have marketing managers to grow and turn their website into a lead generating machine.
And, yeah, we're growing our team. Our team is across six different time zones. We've got 20 people on the team and, yeah, it's an awesome thing that we're building at the moment.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: That's great. And way back when, Simon was a coach at one point with agency Mavericks and we co hosted a funny little show for a while called silence is golden, which was super fun. You can YouTube that and watch us being complete goofs. And Simon started out actually as a customer of WP elevation way back when you were running an agency called Renegade Empire and then partnered up with James Fulton, who I think was the very first ever platinum coaching client I ever had, and partnered up with him with seriously good design.
So 20 staff. What's your role in seriously good design now?
[00:03:45] Speaker A: Yeah, so I'm the head of sales, but the official role in my signature is digital strategist, but sales internally, like that, that's my main thing. Growth, sales, marketing.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: Cool. And then you. And so then you sign a client and then hand the client over to who manages the client then. And who manages the team.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: Yeah. So we've got sue, who take the reins from there after I've done the initial sales work and the digital strategy typically with the client will be the first thing that I'll do as part of digital strategy roadmaps, which we've learned from you, which has been an absolute massive game changer for us over the last two years. So then I will brief in Ray Miladoni, who was the marketing manager of agency Mavericks, or WP elevation way back when. So he's on the team now as customer success manager, and also Ismay, who's in Sydney, who's our project manager, who leads the web, the website of things. So they will take it from there and work with the team to execute.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: Great. Excellent. I hear Max is looking for a job too, so maybe he can come and join. Seriously, join the ship.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: I'm kidding. No, it's great. We were at Mavcon recently and it was awesome to see Ray. It was great. It was so good to catch up with Ray because Ray worked with us for a while and like most people that work with me, I ended up cooking him and he then ran screaming from the building, said, get away from me pretty much the way you did as well.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: It was great to see over here, actually. That's what we filmed. It's not really. That's right.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: It's the. I used to work with Troy, now. Now I'm in this, now I've come to work. It's a good design to rebuild my self esteem.
Was great to see you guys partnering up and doing some awesome stuff. Hey, so what happened? Talk to me about a digital strategy roadmap. What the hell is that? When do you use it? What does it do you know, how does it work?
[00:05:37] Speaker A: So I think in order to. I'll give you the quick answer for that. Cause you'll be across this as well. But for those who aren't quite across this, there's a big difference between doing activity and actually achieving a result. So tactics are typically activity like doing things like posting on social media, email marketing, creating a blog post, building your website, they're all things to do. That's all activity. But you don't know which one of those is going to get you the result. You start with the result and work your way backwards. And what you don't do, that's a strategic decision.
So strategy is a lot about what and when. So social media may not be a now thing because it may not get the result that you're actually working towards. So it may be something later, but it's not a now thing for a lot of businesses because they typically want leads and they want more customers, whereas they think maybe posting on social and getting their name out there is going to help them. So strategy is about what you're not doing and the order of things that you would be doing. Typically, building assets is a key part of marketing strategy. So a website is an asset. Your unique value proposition is an asset. Growing your email list is an asset. Those things are one time projects that build value over time, like compound interest, as opposed to I'm just going to keep coming back to posing on social, but opposed to activity like posting on social, which is a one time thing that doesn't give you much return over time. It's a win thing because for some businesses and some companies, posting on social is absolutely fantastic. It's a thing that can work. But there's the when part is really important.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: This is. I love this because for the first, I don't know how long, but the first kind of batch of years of my entrepreneurial journey, I didn't understand strategy right at all. I'd fucking no idea what that word meant. It scared me. I was like, I don't even understand what it means. That's like, you go and work at McKinsey's if you want to do strategy. No idea what. And I just thought strategists were overpaid wankers, really, and had no idea what it meant. And what happened is I. And you, what, you were there, you witnessed this, right, is that I would just spin my wheels, just doing activity, right. And then going, well, you know, and never giving anything enough time to actually produce results, right. Like by lunchtime I would have changed my mind and I'll be doing something else. And now strategy has helped me, and I do have an attention span problem, I will admit. And I want to do everything all at the same time, all at once. And strategy has helped me go, no, we're not doing that right now because we don't have the resources to do it properly. And we've decided in advance that we're actually going to focus on. So for us, for example, it's Facebook ads and YouTube, really? And the podcast, that's what we're focusing on. I've got people pinging me all the time that want to take over our Instagram account and, you know, reckon they can make us another 100 grand a month in Instagram. I'm like, that's great, but I'm just not doing that right now because not just the financial resources, but it's the team. I don't have the. I don't know, I have the bandwidth to manage another person running something else, right? And so the strategy has helped me calm down and say, no, it's really allowed me to manage my fomo, I think is the big thing, right? And if you think about. I always think about battle, right. If you go, well, our job is to take the fort of the opposition. We get off the boats on the beach and we have to get to the fort of the opponent. The strategy is how we're going to get there without getting killed, right? And a big part of that is what not to do. So don't come in and then fire the foghorn of the boat and let everyone know we're here. Don't do that. Because we want to do this in stealth mode. And so.
And I think the problem with strategy, the problem with understanding strategy is that it's invisible. Right. Strategy is the invisible layer that drives the tactics that you see. And a lot of people see what their competition are doing online and they go, well, we need that pop up on our website. We need to do that on social media. We need to start a YouTube channel, because they can see the tactics, but they don't understand what's going on at the strategic level. And it's the strategic level that will.
That will help you succeed, not the tactical stuff.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: Right, yeah, exactly. That hidden layer. But it's very. That shiny object is the thing that gets your attention, and it's like, well, we need to be doing this. How do you know it's getting a result? You have no idea what's going on behind the scenes. That could be a horrible investment for them. And you're like, you're chasing after something that could be working horribly. And their marketing manager just got fired because of that move. You're like, we need to do pop ups. And you're like, sweet. Like, you're just not seeing those things. It's interesting that you mentioned boats, actually, because there was something I wanted to bring up today. There's a book called will this make the Boat go faster? Have you heard of that one?
[00:10:30] Speaker B: No. No.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: It's the british rolling team's journey to the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Their journey to achieving gold in the Sydney 2000 Olympics. And they came up, like, through the story. They came up in their training with that particular phrase to help them filter all their decisions. Will this help the boat go faster?
[00:10:51] Speaker B: That's great, isn't it?
[00:10:52] Speaker A: So, like, when you're trying to. So that's what I mean about, like, this is. This is starting with the end in mind and working backwards, as opposed to, like, which tactic do I do moving forwards? It's, where am I trying to get to? And then I've got to work backwards and delete all the things that will not make the boat go faster.
So you're thinking about what to eat. I'm going to gorge on ice cream, or we're going to eat something a bit more healthy. Like, which one will make the boat go faster? Which one will move us towards goal? So all the tactics, all the strategy doesn't make sense unless it's in the context of what you're trying to achieve.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: Digital marketers, this one's for you. I've got 30 seconds to tell you about Wix Studio, the web platform for agencies and enterprises. So here are a few things you can do in 30 seconds or less. When you manage projects on Wix, work in sync with your team on one canvas. Reuse templates, widgets and sections across sites. Create a client kit for seamless handovers and leverage best in class SEO defaults across all your Wix sites. Time's up, but the list keeps going. So step into Wix Studio to see more.
This is a question that I get a lot from our agencies and also a lot of people who are just starting out who don't really understand strategy or don't have the confidence to say to a client, I can't build you a website unless you have a strategy in place because it's going to be a complete waste of time. Right. What do you say to a client when, you know, you get pushback and they're like, oh, we don't really need a strategy, we just need a new website.
What's that conversation look like?
[00:12:24] Speaker A: Yeah, it depends on how, like, confident or playful I'm feeling at the time. I might just spell out, okay, so you're like, it's okay for this to be, it's going to be $15,000. It doesn't really need to get a return on investment. Doesn't really matter who sees it. You're not trying to get any leads. It's just going to sit there and not really be an asset for the business. That's the plan with this. And they might say yes if they're feeling cheeky as well, but they typically won't. And they're like, oh, no, we definitely want blah. And they'll come forth with some kind of KPR objective or something that's actually important to them. And then we can, we'll start talking a little bit more about strategy from there.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
And you only need to ask one or two questions that I call these circuit breakers that, you know, everyone in the room knows that they should know the answer to this question, but everyone also knows that they don't know the answer. And so, like, one of the great questions I like to ask is, well, what's the, what's the top three pages on your website that get the most traffic?
They haven't got a fucking clue. And the, pardon my French. And the moment you ask that question and they don't know the answer, it automatically elevates you as someone who knows what you're talking about because you're asking the right questions. And if you ask the right questions, what happens is they automatically credit you with being able to answer those questions and provide them with a solution. And if they're not asking those questions themselves and they don't know the answers, those questions. I actually learned this on shark Tank. You watch shark Tank and these guys go out, there was, you know, these contestants go out there with all these great ideas, and they go, what's it costing you to acquire a customer? What's a lifetime value? And what's it. And they're like, they don't know. And usually one or two of the sharks are like, I'm out. You don't know your numbers? You know, I'm out.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: And they're pretty consistent questions, like, the numbers, it's between different episodes. And, like, understanding those fundamental things about a business, like, if it's inflatable shark pools or it's little bowls made out of coconuts, like, the same questions will apply. How much does it cost to make the thing? How much does it cost to acquire a customer? What else? What's the customer lifetime value?
[00:14:35] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:14:36] Speaker A: That's across, like, all businesses. So how does what you're building, the website, the Facebook ad campaign, whatever it is, your Instagram growth strategy, whatever that is, how does that contribute to, to where we're trying to get to, given these numbers?
[00:14:50] Speaker B: How does it make the boat go faster? What, what happens, what happens if you come across a client that they don't know what they're. What they don't know what they're trying to do. They don't know what they're trying to achieve. They don't have a gold medal in mind.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, perfect. Well, um, like, I'll either give them some that I've heard from others, and that's also a positioning thing. So as we worked with blah blah blah, they wanted to achieve this. Like, we work with this large cybersecurity company doing some name dropping and showing some of the results we've achieved. So we worked this large cybersecurity company, they really wanted to achieve 1200 sales qualified leads in twelve months. So that was what we're trying to achieve. And we work backwards from there. And that just gets their brain thinking about, oh, yeah, like, this could be something, and I'm just hoping for something that aligns with them that's a bit of a match, because, like, it's kind of writer's block. It's like goal block or something like that. A blank page. Like, what are your goals? And they're like, no idea. Like, well, is it. It's like the budget question as well. Like, is the budget $100,000. Like, no way. Like, well is it $0.10? Like no, it's more than that. Like, well, you do have a budget. It's a similar thing with the goals. Like, all right, so we want to be getting 100 leads per month from the website and you're getting zero now. And like, no, no, nothing crazy like that. Okay, well what are we looking at? We're kind of like five. Like what would be in twelve months time? It's like the Dan Sullivan question. In um, in 90 days, what would need to happen? What would need to be there for you to be really happy with the results?
[00:16:17] Speaker B: Yep. How, how, what percentage of clients that come in the door for you guys? What percentage of prospects, I want to ask this for new prospects and existing clients, what percentage of your new prospects have all the answers to these questions? And they come in and they're like, we know exactly what we want. We just want you to do this and you quote it out and you do it versus how many come in where you say no, we have to go through this kind of digital strategy roadmap first.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: So I'd say 10% actually. Like, yep, we really know what we want. And then out of that 10%, half of those actually have a clue and have a good strategy. And we're like, wait, let's just make sure we're aligned and we'll do the strategy roadmap anyway. And they're 100% on board and the other half just have absolutely, they've really been burnt. They don't have an idea and they're being very protective. Like, no, no, we're trying to control costs. They don't say this, but they're typically, they've been burned by another agency. They've lost a lot of money. And the, the new plan is micromanagement. That's their new strategy in order to not get burnt again. So.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Yeah, which unfortunately, so 95% really don't have a well dialed in strategy and don't really know how to achieve what they want to achieve.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: And I know you've had a lot of success with digital roadmaps. Once you go through a digital roadmap, what do you then? This is the question I get, what are you selling off the back of that? Are you then selling a project or are you selling a retainer or what are you pitching to the client after a digital roadmap workshop?
[00:17:45] Speaker A: So the digital roadmap itself will be twelve month plan of what to do when, like in what particular order to achieve the goals that we've collaborated and decided on, which is typically around more traffic and more leads or sales from their website. Their website being something that is an asset that helps their business grow. And there's just the various levels of specificity from there. So there'll be a, if their website is crap, there'll be a like, your website needs to get redone, but that's not going to get the win in 30 days. We want to look at like, what's going to get you a win in 30 days? That's a, either a signal that we're doing a great job or a signal that like, their revenue is growing. We want to see that. We don't want to be like, and even if it is the case, SEO takes time. Website design, it'll take time. Like, I'm sick and I'm very, very sick of saying that to clients. Like, that's, that's not good enough. Like, let's get, how can we get return now? Because there are other ways to do that. Google Business is a fantastic underutilized opportunity. Getting reviews, making sure your Google Business profile is up to is looking fantastic against your competitors. That's a quick win for a ton of local businesses that can be something that can be introduced first, gets results in less than 30 days. They're feeling fantastic. They're like, this is, this is great that we made the right choice. So we give them a twelve month plan that'll have a series of digital marketing tactics in an order so they know when to do certain things.
From there, it'll be a mix of like what we're good at, but also things that we recommend that we don't offer. Like we don't do professional photography, we don't do like high definition videos of their team or their office. We don't do anything related to social media other than, other than posting. Like, we don't focus specifically on helping them generate leads from social, but we help their profile look good. So any, we will still recommend things even if we don't do them because that's the strategy. That's a consultant, that's someone who actually is a partner to someone's business. Saying these things are broken with where you are, considering where you want to go, you need to work on these. We can do these, we can deliver these for you, which would be a new website, SEO, Google Ads, some social posting, Google business. We'll put those in the particular order that will help them get results.
They need great photos, they probably need some video, they'll probably need some kind of email marketing to talk to their prospects and their customers. So that's required. But even if we don't deliver that for them, it's going to be on the plan.
[00:20:17] Speaker B: This is actually, I'm just making some notes here because you're inspiring me, brother. This is one of the questions I get as well is well, you know, I can't talk to my clients about email marketing because I don't do email marketing. And if I talk to my clients about email marketing, they're getting out and find another agency and I'm going to lose them.
What do I have?
[00:20:35] Speaker A: What do you have to say about that? Yeah.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: What do you have to say about that?
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I think there's two parts. One, like I really think it's important to be a t shaped skilled marketer or web designer or whatever it is, and t shaped being wide, a breadth of knowledge but then very deep in some particular specialty. So specialty, very deep in some particular way, so t shaped. I think maybe Ryan Dice said something like that. So like we being in this industry for quite some time, I think we've got team, we've got quite breadth of knowledge but like we are awesome at websites and conversions and SEO. Like that would be like our depth of knowledge. So we can talk on email marketing but we don't have the inclination or the infrastructure to do done for you. Email marketing for our clients, it might be something in the future, but that's a strategic decision for our business. So we can talk on that. We'll talk about principles, we'll talk about best practices. We've got some referral partners we can guide to, but also we could say, look, do you think that nurturing your prospects and your customers would be a good idea to stay in touch without spending more money on ads through email? Yes. That would really help our business. Yeah. Awesome. So it seems like you need an email strategy. It's not something we do, but here are some key principles. Then off you go. That's it.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: And then you can obviously refer to another agency that you know can do email marketing for them.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: Because a lot of agencies are scared of losing the relationship with that client and then thinking, well, what if that agency that they go to that does email marketing also does everything that we do and they're a full service agency and they end up stealing the client.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Not a great partner. Not a great business partner. Don't you know like referral partner to have if they just your competition and do it better than you? That's not amazing. Ideally it's a good match with someone that you have a good relationship with who has complimentary services. So, and there's an agreement where the relationship stays with the person who received the lead and managed that sale. But I want to be in a position and we are, thankfully, that if I was to refer one of our clients to someone that does social media, let's say a restaurant or a venue or something like that, we're doing their website, they're doing their social that it doesn't need to be white labeled, it's not like, oh my God, we need to put you on an sgd.com dot au email address. It's like, yep, talk to, talk to Sean. He's amazing with social, he works for this company. It's going to be great. We're just going to stick in our lane and crush it with what we're doing and it's going to be even better with Sean on board.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: Okay. So then once the client has and you after the digital strategy roadmap and you get back and you present what it is you're doing, is there like a contract in it? They have to sign up for twelve months or three months or is it just month to month?
[00:23:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I made mine as risk free as I think I could. So I'd do the workshop, put together the roadmap. So twelve month plan and I'd present that in a call with the client. I'd say what it is.
Does this all sound like a good plan? Would you like our help implementing this? Great. So the two step closer I learned from my good friend Troy Dean. So do that part of it and then I will wait a little bit of time to see how that lands. I'll say if after 30 days, so we try this for 30 days, if at that point you're like, look, this is just, this relationship doesn't work. This just wasn't what we expected then it's just that one payment and you can leave, we can stop it there. There's no twelve month commitment at that point.
And then at three months we'll have another check in, we'll will keep delivering at that point we should definitely have some results. We should be well and truly getting a return on investment at that point. But still, if you're like, this is not, the working relationship isn't particularly good, we're not getting the results we expected. Again, at that point you can say like we're just going to leave this, but after three months there is then the commitment for twelve months. We don't put that in a like just to be completely honest, we don't put that in a legally binding contract that you have to commit to the twelve months. But we have had clients that have been with us for over two years and they, they continue because of the results that they were able to achieve together.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: So a 30 day love it or leave it, essentially a three months kind of ripcord which it really, also at three months you might be firing a client because they might just be a dickhead who just doesn't approve things and doesn't give you content and just drags their feet and it's just a bad fit, right?
[00:25:05] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because it is a partnership like you. If you're working, I don't know if you were, I've never been a personal trainer, but I can imagine some clients, if you're a personal trainer it would be very painful to work with. So there's like you, you can't run on the treadmill for them, right? You can't lift the weights for them. You can be there, you can be screaming, you can be doing all the things and if they're not getting results, it's just, it's just not a good fit and it's not going to make you look good. So like what's the relationship with your client where it's going to make you both look good? Like let just make your life easier by working with people because there are many out there, many great businesses, many fantastic marketing managers to work with that you'll be a great team, you know, to drag them kicking and screaming.
[00:25:47] Speaker B: I want to talk about AI in a minute, but before we get there, how well dialed in is your ideal client profile? Like if a client turns up on an issue on an initial call, are you in a position to say, look, we're just not right for you and here's why.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: Yeah, how? Dialed in. I mean I feel like it's about a five out of a ten dialed in, but I can pick it very easily on, on the sales goals.
Clear with goals, they're typically a service based business in Australia and that they have, they have growth goals like they want to grow. They're not just looking for like a pretty website or something like that, or someone told them they need one. They are actively investing in growth and they're looking for someone to partner with to help them grow.
They've usually got a couple of staff, like they've got a marketing manager, but they've got more of a team. It doesn't matter how big their marketing team is, but they've typically got a marketing manager, a bit of a team. It's rarely a one person operation. We just don't with the team that we've got, it would just typically cost too much to be able to get a return with what they have to work with for someone who's just starting or quite small or doesn't have funding.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: And when you say service based, is it professional services? B, two b, is it b, two c? What are we talking like dog washing services or accountants or financial planners or.
[00:27:11] Speaker A: A lot of technology services like MSP's cybersecurity.
There's some manufacturing, 3d printing and prototyping engineering. Those are some industries that we do a really good job with typically because they're not amazing with design or communication, great with big words, great with technical specifications. Like they would use like the, you know, like the hex color picker to pick a blue. And it's like blue and yellow and green and it looks awful. And they're like, oh, we did our own website. What do you think?
[00:27:43] Speaker B: I'm like, yeah, yeah.
[00:27:45] Speaker A: Good.
[00:27:46] Speaker B: 1994, here we come. Yeah, yeah.
Yes. Are you open to putting that in the bin and starting again? Yeah, love it. Now, also, you've been on the record and mentioned this publicly, so I'm not talking out of school here, but you've grown significantly over the last recent period of time. And based on, and I'm not going to take credit for this because you guys have done the work, but the message I'm trying to get across here is that paid discovery and growth plans have been a key factor in the growth of seriously good design.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, big time. Yeah. And for our clients as well, thankfully. So it's been a massive for our growth, but we're also riding on their growth because we aren't able to grow if we're not getting results for them. So the growth plans have really helped. Well, the digital strategy roadmaps have helped us significantly with our sales pitch and our ability to go beyond writing a proposal for a project. But giving our clients like a meaningful, useful plan that will help them even if we don't implement it for them.
But then of course it makes sense for us to implement it for them using growth plans. And that has been able to increase our recurring revenue. It's gone from, instead of being project to project from our point of view, it's fantastic because recurring revenue from a client's point of view, we don't have to continuously negotiate scope. What is this? How much would this cost? What do you think about building this who's driving this? Let's create the strategy once, let's put the destination into the GPS and then let's just go. Let's just do the directions and do the thing for twelve months and let's just work on that. Come back to the plan. You've got a new idea. Let's come back to the plan. Let's stay on track. Has something changed? Has the goals changed? Okay, cool. Let's park that for later.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: Yeah. New, new destination in the gps. If the goal has changed.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: Right. And that's okay, we need to reroute. There's lots of changes that need to be made. If that's a new destination, but usually won't be. So let's stick to the plan and keep executing on that. And just with that, it means decision has been made in advance.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: Correct? Correct. It also makes it. I learned this from Brendan Temple, one of our agency owners based in South Africa, who's doing very well with paid discovery and growth plans. And he said it's actually made his team super happy because his team now know what they're supposed to be working on from one week to the next, and they're not just running around like headless chooks trying to manage expectations and keep clients happy. Who was screaming at them.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: Yeah, big time. Yeah.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Is it easier for you guys to manage stuff internally now because the decisions are made in advance?
[00:30:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I'd love to say yes, and if Izmay was listening to this, she'd be, I'd be interested to take. She's very, very forthcoming with like, oh, cool. We're shifting things around. Let's execute on this plan and being adaptable and resourceful. So like massive thanks to the team as we've been making some shifts, so it's helped to make that decision in advance so the team know what they're doing. For the entire twelve months, it has been a change in a useful way because we've been very, very much web project and like custom web builds for quite some time, the team are learning, they're becoming more t shaped where they've been specialists, now they're learning a lot more around SEO and conversion optimization. It's helping lift the game of the entire team. So I wouldn't say it's been like completely smooth in making that happen, but it's, it's just lifted the game and the results that we're able to do across the whole team. Love it a little bit. Yes, a little bit of know.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Love it for those listening, by the way, there are two programs that we have. One is called the paid discovery method. The other one is called the growth plan method. We will put links wherever this is you're listening to on our website. You can go and check it out and grab those trainings and implement exactly what Simon has been talking about here. Hey, let's talk about AI for a second. How are you using AI to develop strategies, implement things, answer questions, augment your process. How are you using AI and what do you see happening with AI over the coming months?
[00:31:41] Speaker A: Yeah, so we've got kind of a filter for how we decide when and when not to use AI. And that's, again, coming back to that like, activity does not equal results. Like AI, kind of like automation. It'll just get the result that you're getting, like faster and easier. So if you're writing content and it's getting a result for you, like if you're writing copy, you're writing emails and you're getting sales, AI will help assist with that process of getting that result. But if you're writing content and you're posting on social and it's getting you no results, AI will help you get no results faster, it'll help you get nothing and you'll just be doing more stuff and like going deeper down the rabbit hole and getting, getting no results. I don't think it's like the thing that you, oh, you introduce AI and you introduce a new channel for results. I think it's like an accelerant for what's already happening.
[00:32:36] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Yeah, like automation.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: Right, exactly, like automation. So from a marketing perspective, we've got like the message. So that's like the offer of the business. So there's, there's some kind of message, and before the Internet there was a message that would leave someone's mouth and into someone's ears and they would hear the offer. Like, what is that? So that would be like a one to one distribution in person, not very scalable. And the, you know, the, like megaphones has made that bigger door to radio.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: Selling encyclopedias and vacuum cleaners. Like one to one.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Radio, television, that makes that bigger. The Internet makes that insanely huge, but it still has the message and the offer at the core of that. And if that sucks and you're just distributing that crap message infinitely wide and it's not going to work. So that.
[00:33:24] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like that's the thing to focus on the most nothing distribution of your crap offer, but a better offer, a better message, a message that works, something that we have taught in many workshops together is this concept called convert organically? Can you get someone on board with an idea and offer your message, your marketing in person on a call? Can you do that? If you can't, then like scaling that with ads, you're just going to spend tons of money. It's not going to help.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: Yeah, so that's the filter through which.
[00:33:59] Speaker A: To look at AI again, it's results and then working backwards from there.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: But you know, by the way, I ran a live stream in the Facebook group this morning. We normally get, I don't know, we normally get a handful of people reach out, go. Yeah, can I have the details for this live stream? I put a post in the Facebook group yesterday, it's had over 300 comments. I said a hundred comments on the livestream. I went and checked that, it's had over 300 comments and it was because I was teaching how to use AI to build custom growth plans for clients. AI is the number one thing that you can use to start a conversation with prospects or existing clients. Go to them and talk to them about how they're using AI and if they want to learn how to use AI, they will put their hand up. You will just have more conversations, you will book more calls, and as long as you can deliver on your promise, you'll sign more clients. It's just an, it's a, it's a crazy buzzword. It's not going away in a hurry. People are just frothing at the mouth for information on AI. And I actually think, talking about growth plans, I actually think one of the smartest things you can do is actually help your clients put together an AI strategy. How are you using AI over the next twelve months? And maybe starting with a filter, like is this going to make the boat go faster or are we just amplifying something that's not working? People just aren't having these conversations. They're not thinking about AI this way. They're just using AI to try new tactics and see what works. And that's not a strategy. So from a tactical point of view, like what are some of the AI tools that you're using? Come on, feed the lizard brain. What are some of the AI AI tools or things that you're doing to help your process?
[00:35:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so one of the, I'm using AI every day, using it all the time. So just the lizard brain can just wait for one moment to start with is like, what is getting a result in your business? And how can you do that faster, cheaper, better? So sticking with something like sales in the sales process. So thinking about the digital strategy, growth plans before researching a client or getting on a call with a prospect, I will use AI to do some research about them before jumping on and it'll be something. I don't have a very fancy way of doing this, but I've got a little bit of a prompt and if I don't have it here, I will just make it up because it's very not fancy.
I typically use the be as if prompt prompt at the beginning. So be as if exactly what I'm doing. Be as if you're a digital agency owner, you're about to get on a call with a sales call, with a prospect, and you want to do some research. So you're identifying their competitors, what's important to their business, and a little bit about their target audience. So go look at this URL and come back with concise summary of these details to prepare for the sales call. It'll go and do that and give me a concise summary. And I've done that tons of times. So I put it in the same thread in chat GPT, and it'll use everything I've already talked about as context.
[00:36:44] Speaker B: That's not particularly one thread for each client or, you know, you do that, right?
[00:36:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Because it'll take that into context and at some point it starts to use. There's a bit of a mix of messaging and you can start a new thread from there, but I like to keep it, keep it in one so that that prompt and it just gets better at retrieving those results, that information. Love it. So that's like a non fancy, super easy way to use AI in something that works, that gets a result. So that's a sales call. I've got to do that. That contributes massive value to the business. Saves me time. I enjoy it. That's a good win.
I also am using AI, as I've talked a lot with the Mavericks community when I'm delivering the digital strategy roadmap as well. That's a key part of that process. And there's, there's a lot of prompts that I've shared with the community. There's a templates that we've got in there about how to really accelerate the research before the workshop as well as after the workshop, putting together that strategy in a clear, concise way. So there's beyond what we could talk about in this podcast, but there's tons of prompts and I've basically just spoon fed my entire process in there. So go check that out. If you're in mavericks and if you're not, then hopefully Troy may give some free stuff. Or maybe not, but join. What else are we talking about? AI.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
And is it like. Is when you're, when you say you're using AI, are you mainly just using chat GPT or are you using any other skins or any other platforms built on top of AI?
[00:38:16] Speaker A: So yeah, mainly chat GPT, but the assistants as well, within chat GPT. So it's out of the chat, it's OpenAI but with the assistant bots. And then I've been using this scraper tool called Bardeenen AI.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:31] Speaker A: That connects a couple. It does some scraping, but it connects different things. It's like a zapier AI with different tasks built in that can happen in sequence and similar with Make.com, combining a few different steps together. If you've got to do recurring or you want to do recurring stepped AI task, like when this happens, do this and then when that's received from AI, then do this step make is a fantastic bridge to connect multiple things together.
[00:39:00] Speaker B: Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Love it, love it, love it.
What do you think? How do you think, I mean have you thought much about. I think a lot about the future because I'm old.
Have you thought much about what AI is going to look like in three years time and how our role as digital marketers is going to change?
[00:39:19] Speaker A: I have, yeah. I think that we're on kind of the, the beginning part of the bell curve, I think so were the early adopters here. So well be looking a lot into like, oh my God, like the future is going to be so much different but theres still so much opportunity for industries, manufacturing, education as well that will be slow to adopt, that are not at risk of taking everyones jobs for many years to come. But I think the like code was a change on the Internet and developing software. AI is just going to be built in to things. We're talking about AI now, but it's just, I don't think it's going to be like, oh, with AI as it currently is, it's just going to be assumed that it's in there, it's not going to be talking like, we don't say, oh, this was built with code, it's built with software. Like check out this new software. Like everything is software, it's all online, it's all built with apps we just don't talk about. That's not a fancy thing anymore. So at some point AI will just be baked into everything, it'll just be ubiquitous. So knowing how to use it and the tools that are built on top of it, I think that the longer you wait, the more competitors are going to be able to take advantage of this and move a lot faster. So knowing how to use these tools, you don't need to go so far down the rabbit hole in order to be an AI expert. But I think knowing how to do something helps empower you to get other people to build it for you. But don't sleep on it because you'll slip behind, I think. Yeah, yeah. Where are you seeing things shift?
[00:40:58] Speaker B: I'm really excited and nervous about the prospect of spatial computing with AI because I see a future where, I see a future where you and I are actually having this conversation, but there are no computer screens involved. Then I'm just wearing my smart glasses, you know, which look like this, which for those of you aren't watching, I've just put on a pair of these are supposed to be blue filter glasses, right? They're a gimmick. They're complete placebo. They do nothing, these glasses, but they make me look like Clark Kent with a mohawk. And I imagine at some point in the very near future that I'll be wearing glasses that look like this, and so will you. And they'll have 50 cameras in there that kind of track our eye movements and also project screen in front of us. You can already do this with VR headsets. There's a space top computer put out by a company. It's actually called the Spacetop G one, I think it is. And it's a VR headset that you plug into a keyboard and a mouse or a trackpad and you put your AirPods in. And so you and I'll be doing this podcast remotely over Riverside, but there'll be no computer screens involved. And the AirPods that I'm wearing will be the best speakers ever built. And the microphone won't look like this microphone. The microphone will be connected to the AirPods that I'm wearing, and itll be the best broadcast microphone that youve ever heard. And none of this infrastructure, none of this hardware infrastructure will exist. It will be all wearables. Right. So thats exciting for me because I feel like its going, I feel like for the last 40 years, human beings are being trapped looking at computer screens. And I feel like this is the emancipation from the hardware that were about to witness. I think the problem or the challenge with that is that when my kids are teenagers, Im not going to be telling them to put their phone down because Im talking to them. Im going to be telling them to take their glasses off because Im talking to them, because everything will be wearable and I think it will actually possibly make us more isolated than we already are because we'll be walking around the street or we'll be on public transport, but we won't be looking at our screens, we'll be looking up at the world, but we'll actually be checking our emails and our glasses. And so you won't know if people are talking to you or looking at you. It's going to get fucking weird because everyone's going to be walking around, talking to themselves, having conversations and checking their emails, bumping into each other. And the big risk that Scott Galloway has talked about recently in his predictions for 2024, it's a great presentation he did at a conference in Hamburg. Can't remember the name of it. Look it up on YouTube. The big risk is that young men who are already at risk of isolation, and I don't mean to make this a gender based conversation, but the reality is that young men are four times more likely to commit suicide than young women because they are socially isolated. That that is just going to be exacerbated because a lot of the jobs that young men are doing now, they won't need to perform in the next three, four, five years because the robots will be doing it. Manufacturing, even basic, you know, data entry kind of stuff, coding. Right. Young men are going to be trying to figure out who they are in the world and what their place is and also going to be socially isolated even more than they are now. Right. So that's a real concern for me because I have a young boy, seven, I worry about his future. So I'm really excited about technology and what's about to happen. I think it's going to be more disruptive than the Internet. I think we haven't even begun to understand how this is going to disrupt society. As I said, it's very exciting, but also have some big concerns. I'm also, from a marketing point of view, very curious as to how search and social is going to work, because if I'm wearing wearables and I'm talking to my assistant, I'm saying, open my browser. I can now be very selective about what, instead of saying open my browser, I can say open riverside.
Right. And so the interruption marketing that we've had through, you know, display ads, search engine ads, Facebook social ads, that model, I think, is done. Email. Right. Reading my. Read me my emails and automatically unsubscribe from all the shit. Right. Open Facebook, but block the ads. I mean, that'll just be a command to my assistant. Right. And I'm on my wearables. It just will happen. So I think marketing is going to get very different because how do you interrupt people with display ads if we're consuming Internet via wearables?
[00:45:12] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:45:13] Speaker B: It's going to get interesting.
[00:45:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so, too. What I'm looking forward to is if we're having this conversation and we're wearing glasses and I'm walking around Albert Park Lake sounding like an idiot, but so is everyone else, so that's fine. And you're wherever the hell you want to be and you're walking around and you're maybe even engaging with your kids at the same time, but you're able to be unplugged. We're plugged in, but unplugged. And I can finally stand upright without using a stand up desk. I can look up and my neck will get a bit more fixed because I'm continuously looking down and everyone on the tram is looking down like this and getting neck problems and back problems. I'm looking forward to the upright revolution of computing. That's going to be fantastic and to be out in the sun and to be able to do that. So we're all plugged into this Internet age and everything, but we're going to be plugged in but able to unplug at the same time, which is going to be awesome. But also has the downside of continuously being plugged in and that isolation that you talked about, which is a big challenge as well. I think that that is just going to exacerbate how things are currently. I don't think there is a particular solution. I hope that people will continue to contribute and things like headspace and. Yeah, various mindfulness programs become not a, like a novelty, but a. A thing that's encouraged and accepted and welcomed as part of. We do personal training, but emotional and mental training as well. I think that would be a fantastic thing for young people and, and old people, I guess. I think that'd be great.
And there was something else that you.
[00:46:51] Speaker B: Mentioned that was going to be, my wife's a psychologist. I said to her recently, you're never going to be out of work. And I also think that, you know, imagine this wearable technology if I live in a remote community and I have to drive three and a half hours to visit my psychologist. Imagine being able to put my glasses on and say, hey, dial into telehealth. I say, oh, hi, Cheryl Troy here turning up for my weekly appointment and I have this amazing therapy session that, you know, feels like the person's in front of me but it's just, it's a projection, it's a hologram, right? I mean I, so I think, you know, I know this sounds quite basic but I think the goal is to become very mindful and conscious about our choices, to connect or to disconnect. And I think it will be a matter of putting your glasses on and taking them off, picking your phone up, putting your phone down. I think it's going to be a matter of, hey, take your glasses off, fold them up, put them away. I'm disconnected. Take your airpods out. I'm disconnected. I'm with my people now. I'm present in the 3d world with my family, with the people I love. I'm at a sporting event, it's going to augment sport too, right? Because you put your air, you put in that, I mean I'm actually looking forward to this. You put your airpods in and your smile glasses on, you go to the footy and you've got all the stats in your, in your, as a hologram you've got, you know, you can ask you, hey, who did that guy used to play for last year? Oh yeah, what was the, you know, like shut up you idiot. I watch the footy. Right.
[00:48:15] Speaker A: It's, you're the only one here.
[00:48:20] Speaker B: The augmentation of entertainment is going to be, and of course porn is just going to completely be revolutionized. That whole industry is, and I'm not joking, that whole industry is going to be completely, that whole business model is completely going to be disrupted. Right. It's fascinating to think about the business models that are going to be completely wiped out and the new business models that we haven't even thought of yet. Yeah, exactly what you were saying.
[00:48:48] Speaker A: With a marketing side of things like are you interested how the interruption marketing is going to play?
[00:48:53] Speaker B: Only.
[00:48:54] Speaker A: So with that, one of the things that you mentioned was like I could say bring up Riverside and bring up Facebook, but turn off the ads. That's like assuming something that is kind of our best self's version of our day, which is that we're productive and we stay on task, which we don't. We love entertainment and we love stimulation and the dopamine is craving all the time and wants to be fed. So with that, like we're scrolling, we're looking at content and whenever we're looking at content, whenever we're looking at entertainment. That's marketing's job, to get in front. That's their opportunity. Sorry, not their job. That's where. Wherever the attention goes, that's where the marketing play will be. If it's sport, it's that augmentation. Augmented ads. All these ads are really killing me. Upgrade to get rid of the ads like that will still continue. As long as there's entertainment, as long as there's content consumption, the ads will follow us.
[00:49:47] Speaker B: I mean, the Apple glasses app that allows you to watch sport, I mean, the NBA, I think, already doing this, right, that you can watch.
You can watch NBA on these headsets, and it's completely augmented, like, all the stats already there. Like, those apps will eventually be brought to you by the big gambling companies here in Australia. Sports basically funded by gambling companies. And so those gambling companies will be the ones that bring you those apps. They'll make those apps, and they'll actually download the Bitfair 360 app or whatever, and, you know, get all the favorite stats on your players, and you'll be able to place a bet just within your glasses. Right? And if Elon Musk has his way with Neuralink, you won't even need to talk. You'll just look at something on the screen and think it, and you'll place a bet, hey, put a bet on that bloke, you know, or it's done. Right? I mean, it's a scary proposition. I think that the interface between humans and the Internet is almost going to disappear, right? And we'll be wearing it, and we'll be. It'll be just part of our everyday existence. We won't have to plug in, as you say, and open a screen. It'll just. It'll be easier to engage, and I think. So we're going to have to become more conscious and more mindful about disengaging so that we can stay present in our real world.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:50:56] Speaker B: There's been a fascinating conversation, and I could talk about this for weeks, as you know, and we should probably do it again sometime. But in the interest of this being the agency hour and your time, I'm very grateful of how generous you've been. Is there anything I've missed? Any question I should have asked that I haven't?
[00:51:12] Speaker A: No, not at all. That was. That was a good, interesting, useful conversation. Hopefully, it's helpful to some business owners, agency owners, people out there who are trying to improve their. Their strategy, their result, in less time and making their boats go faster, whatever that looks like for them.
[00:51:28] Speaker B: Awesome. Love it. And how can people reach out to you and say, good day, simon.
[00:51:34] Speaker A: Sgd.com dot au check out that sgd.com dot au website. I'm posting there pretty regularly. We've got some good resources, so go and have a look.
[00:51:42] Speaker B: Awesome. Simon Kelly, thank you so much for joining us on the agency hour podcast.
[00:51:45] Speaker A: Appreciate it, Troy. Catch you, dude.
[00:51:50] Speaker B: Hey, thanks for listening to the agency hour podcast and a massive thanks to Simon for joining us. Mavcon. Our next live event is happening in San Diego in October, and you don't have to already be in Mavericks club to attend. At the time of this recording, we literally only have a couple of seats left. It's almost sold out. So if you would like to get a taste of Mavericks club and what it's like to work with us to help you grow your agency and you want to tap into our amazing community of agency owners and mentors and check out the link in the description and book your tickets to Mavcon now. Okay, folks, remember to subscribe and please share this with anyone who you think may need to hear it. I'm Troy Dean, and remember, there are giant technicolor squirrels in India.
