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{( speakerName('A') )}
We've had a chat before today, and it was apparent to me that whilst I thought I had an idea around website marketing and other sorts of digital marketing, I really have not got a clue. However, you were able to talk to me in such a language that I immediately understood what you were talking about, which is half of the battle, isn't it? When you come to digital online strategies, there's so many smoking mirrors and there are so many people out there doing it, it's hard to know where to place your money to get the right kind of return and what you want delivered as well.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Definitely. I think that there's a saying that says don't talk down to people you want to respect you. I have a saying, don't talk at your clients. Right. And when you get into something as technical as website marketing, it's really easy to get into the weeds and the buzzwords and the technical jargon and all that other stuff that goes along with it. And so my job is to simplify it to the lowest common denominator so that my business owners don't become so confused, they don't know what they're getting into. The confusion will create fear. Fear creates this anxiety around your marketing. And if you don't believe in your marketing, you will sabotage it and you'll do it subconsciously. Nobody wants their business to fail, but you have a subconscious element to your business that you want to protect it. And so if there's something that you feel you don't understand that is happening to your business, you're going to create this almost mother like protection about it. And you'll subconsciously either push away the great ideas under, deliver on the needs that the marketing campaign requires to be successful, or you'll just reject it altogether and walk in a direction that possibly come from into like the woods of the Wolves. And like you said, all the snake oils and all that good stuff. So it's really important for me to keep it understandable, talk English to people.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah, but this is where the conversation comes in, isn't it, Michael. I know that within my field of B2B telemarketing, there's all sorts of jargon that really is needless when you're having a conversation, if you're getting to the nitty gritties of things, then you're already involved in that. You're looking to educate on that. But I think to give an understanding that then compels you to want to move in that direction because you trust that it's the right thing to do. That doesn't really need to be bogged down with the technicalities and the jargon. Just how you're going to get there and how you're going to make them feel really isn't it?
{( speakerName('B') )}
I always know when I'm dealing with somebody who's open to new ideas versus folks who are sceptical. And scepticism is usually cloaked by a level of knowledge in buzzwords and technical jargon, without understanding them. So I will run into people who will actually use the jargon on me incorrectly to make themselves feel that they understand what's going on before I even have a chance to get into the conversation.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Nobody wants to admit that they don't know do they?
{( speakerName('B') )}
Right. But that front really shows that you have your guard up and that you are not there to truly just receive, just take it in. And if you don't get it, you don't get it and walk away. I get that right. The person who gave that information is educating you, didn't do a good job of educating you and making you feel comfortable with what's going on. Don't buy it. Don't buy things you don't believe in. I always tell people that. And that's something that you have to do with your business. Right. If you have a service, you have to be able to explain what you do to everybody. And most people don't know what we do. Even chiropractors. I've been going to chiropractors for 20 years. I go to a new chiropractor. I have to go through this process of them educating me about chiropractic care every time because they understand even though I've been to other chiropractors, they don't know the quality of education I got from prior chiropractors. And so they want to make sure that everybody comes in at the same level so that they can give everyone the same level of service, the same level of care. So I always tell people if you're going into something new, a new technology, a new methodology, it doesn't matter. Be open, ask the questions. If they can't answer them to your satisfaction, to where you feel you trust that system, you trust that methodology, you trust that technology to do what they say it's going to do, then you do walk away. But if you do feel if you're always coming in with this guard, you've never given that technology or that methodology a chance.
{( speakerName('A') )}
I think it's right what you're saying there, Michael, because I've built my own website on Weebly years ago and then kind of maintained it, and I thought that was all I needed to do. And then it all changed and somebody said, "oh, WordPress!" And I was like, I haven't got a clue. Now. I haven't got line of sight of my own website because I don't understand it. And I haven't really had the time for anybody to particularly show me. The only thing I want to do is upload the blog. For me, it should be fairly static. When people have told me that there is so much more to having a website than just having a website, I haven't come away feeling convinced. People that are talking to me about having a website because everybody does. And I don't want to be like everybody else does and just trust that you're telling me that and you want me to part with how much money and then them say, oh, but you've got to treat it like person. It's a person's salary. It's the equivalent of a person's salary. Well, I can't afford a VA. So why would I pay for another salary? It makes it conceivably out of reach for a lot of people, because then they don't really understand what it is that they should be doing and what it is that they need to have. So they can go and ask somebody to say, "can you do this for me?" Because if you don't feel like you know the questions, how do you ask?
{( speakerName('B') )}
You're bringing up the point of pricing, right? And so that's, like, the next level. You could love my methodology and you could love me. You could say, I buy into the buzz. Buzz is the man, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if I bring to you a price that you can't afford, you can't afford it, period. End of story. But you also have to understand, even if you can't afford it, it's good to get your options out there. It's good to do research and talk to at least two people. No more than three. If you go beyond three in your research, you want to find the two to three that you really like. You understand at least what their website is saying. And you've gone to their social media and you're like, okay, this person seems like they know what they're talking about. That's great. Now go in and ask, okay, what are you offering? How does that help me? And what is the pricing for that? The lowest price is usually depending if it's super low, you know, you get what you pay for. So if it's too good to be true, it probably is when it comes to pricing. But on the high end, it's much more difficult to decide whether or not you're getting the extra value. Right. So with websites, we tell people a WordPress website is only as good as the content that goes into it. I can make you a flashy website, but if you don't have good content, who cares? Right? And so we actually created a process that allows people to build out their own website on a what we call WYSIWYG. What you see is what you get. And so you point and you click, you put something. So we populate it for you with your first content, and then you play with it. But there's no upfront cost. You just pay $100 a month, and we maintain the backside so you don't have to do any technical stuff. And you may maintain the front side. And then we have services that scale from there all the way up to you. Don't do a thing. We decide what the content is, we design it, we maintain it. You have changes, you give it to us, and it's hands off. Right? Because you have people with more time than money and more money than time so when it comes to price, you have to decide how much money am I spending to save how much time, right? Or how much time am I having to spend because I don't have the money. Once you've understood that balance, you're going to go into your purchasing process a lot more confident that, hey, I'm doing the right thing for myself, for my company and for my marketing.
{( speakerName('A') )}
What advice would you give to somebody who has heard it on social media? And I see this across Facebook, LinkedIn, where they're told you don't need a website for your business.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Run, run, run, run. The days of relying on Facebook and Google my business pages and the like are gone. We have been now shown that these companies don't care about your property that's on their platform, because it's their platform. They're going to do what's in best interest of their shareholders. They do not take into account a small business that's working out of their home and this is their livelihood. And when that site goes down or it gets changed to a way that you can't reach your following, that you now can't pay your rent. They don't care, plain and simple. You're just a number. And for a lot of those people, not even that you're a part of a bigger number. And the individual pixels of that chart are not identified as individuals. Okay, so websites are yours. You should own your website. Okay, if you don't have the money. So when you buy a Weebly or a Wix or any of those types of platforms, you're kind of leasing a website, but at least it's affordable and it's a good start. You at least own the property that's on there. As long as you're paying your bills. It's a great way to get past the social media myth that you don't need websites. If you think about it, 68% of all consumers go to a search engine to find a solution to their problem or a pathway to their dream. Those links are rarely unless you're actually looking for a specific name going to a social media link. Because if they don't know who you are, the people who have websites, because that's what gets indexed are the ones going to show up, not you. because your Facebook arena, your Facebook property is not optimised for the keywords that people use to find your service or your product. So anybody who's telling you that you don't need a website is telling you that two thirds of the market, you don't care about them. You don't want to do business with two thirds of the market.
{( speakerName('A') )}
You're reducing your opportunity drastically and relying on the infamy of your name. When if you are looking to attract new people, they won't have a clue who you are!
{( speakerName('B') )}
They understand they have a problem or they have a dream. Those are the two things that service based businesses, service centric businesses offer. They offer solutions to problems or pathways to dreams. It's really the only two things. Right. So when you go out there, you're usually saying, okay, I would like to solve X problem. I need a plumber. If you knew who you just go to your phone, hit Google Maps and go, Bob's Plumber, click call, and you're done. That's a completely different game. Right. But if I don't know which plumber I need, like right now, I'm trying to find somebody to do dog waste removal in my backyard because the snow is gone and there's a bunch of waste there that I don't want to have to pick up. I don't know who to call. So dog waste removal, . Those are the top three I'm going to call.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah, Bob a job, isn't it?
{( speakerName('B') )}
Susie down the street, who might live like four or five houses down for me, does that for a living, doesn't have a website and hasn't optimised it for the searches, she's not even going to be in the running and she's right down the street.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yes. So the moral to the story really is it doesn't matter if it's local or global.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Especially if you're an online service. If you have an online service like we're completely remote workplace. Our company is online. We work with Zoom to go face to face with people all over the country and in other countries. We've got people we work with in the UK and Canada. As long as you're speaking English, I can do business with them. Right?
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah. The boundaries have been removed, haven't they? I would say that even more so it's important to be found for what it is that you do. And it's highly competitive, isn't it?
{( speakerName('B') )}
It is. And that's why I find that starting local and working your way out to global is the best. People do business with other people they like and trust. The closer they are to where you live, the more you're going to have in common. So the more likeable you're going to be and more trustworthy. We trust our fellow Englishmen. I trust my fellow Alaskans, where I lived for 18 years. Right. If you say you're from Alaska, there's already this kinship. Right. Boom. We've got a connection. We just shortcut the conversation by 20 minutes because I already know. Right. So I should tell people your net should only be as big as the fish you can handle because you trying to handle too many fish... trying to reel in so many fish, you can't actually serve them and they'll spoil in the net because you can't process them that fast, is actually killing your business because you're going to create negative responses, negative reviews, and a negative word of mouth out there, instead of let's catch one fish with one pole. Now let's do that and then work your way up.
{( speakerName('A') )}
I use that fish with a spear. It's in my book.
{( speakerName('B') )}
There you go. Start with a spear.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah. Get good at that. And then you can start to broaden that conversation out. So conversation, as you know, Michael, is kind of everything that I do. You've been able to take a very complicated subject matter that is surrounded by jargon and technology and all of that, and you've been able to condense that into what you call your rule of 26 to help people. You've got a book....
{( speakerName('B') )}
Rule 26. Yes. So because the Internet is so vast and within the internet, there's this vast landscape of digital marketing. I found it necessary to boil down as far as we possibly can reduce it to the lowest common denominator of success for service centric businesses, which is who I predominantly work with, okay. So that they understand what metrics out there will actually move their revenue needle. The rule of 26 simply states that if you increase your unique traffic to your website by 26%, the conversion rate of that traffic by 26%, and the average revenue per client by 26% you will get a compounded results of 100% more revenue versus places like HubSpot that say there are 38 KPIs key performance indicators out there that will dictate your success. Or maybe Shopify who says there's 72 or 73 KPIs out there that they focus on for success. Let's just start with three.
{( speakerName('A') )}
The more complicated it gets, the more I'm just holding my head in my hands, thinking already, I just don't want to know 76.
{( speakerName('B') )}
I've been doing this for a long time. I don't want to know 76. I don't want to know 38.
{( speakerName('A') )}
No! But you know you just mentioned a magic number which is three!
{( speakerName('B') )}
Three is easy, and then I only have to explain three metrics right instead of 38. And where do you start? Well, where is the easiest one to start? Because once I explain them to you, it's going to be pretty easy. Are you not charging enough? Are you not garnering the value of each of your perfect clients? Do you even understand who your perfect client is? Your most profitable client is? If you don't know those answers, then we'll probably start with the average revenue per client. If you know that and you know exactly who you want to do business with, but you're not getting enough traffic to test your conversion rate, then we start with traffic. You're getting plenty of traffic with what you feel qualified visitors. Then we need to look at what are you saying on your website and how is that website flowing for the user to make a decision to reach out to you.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Oh, they don't go behind my mouth because I have absolutely no idea.
{( speakerName('B') )}
And there are tools out there to show you how they help, like literally heat maps that will show you where people are stopping looking, clicking, hovering, reading all of these metrics... these are MicroMetrics that tell you whether you're doing a good job or not. Right. But the success of the conversion rates, what's important. The tactical metrics are just tools to make that KPI move. That revenue moving KPI.
{( speakerName('A') )}
If I just looked to see, I could potentially be moving the needle.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Yeah. You can't affect those things, you don't track.
{( speakerName('A') )}
True.
{( speakerName('B') )}
So one of the first things I talk about in the book is your tracking mechanisms. Let's get your Google Analytics set up. It's free. And literally, if you don't know how to do that.
{( speakerName('A') )}
I'm having a Homer Simpson moment!
{( speakerName('B') )}
And I even in the book offer to do that for you for free. Because I don't want people spending a day... wasting a day learning how to connect their Google Analytics to their website. That is so important people don't spend time there that I offer anybody reading my book to follow instructions on how to get that free service because we'll do it in 15 minutes. And I even say you spend more than 15 minutes. Stop email me. We'll take care of you. That is not where we spend our time. The tracking is another tool. Right. Like picking up a hammer should not be the task. Right. Swinging the hammer is the task.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yes. The energy that goes into it.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Right. If I don't have my tool belt on me, I'm always looking for my hammer. Having your analytics properly set up allows you to have the tool belt so that when it's time, you know, you look at the problem.... I know what I need to do because I know the metrics that I need to affect.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yes. It just comes down to boiling it down to the "Oh, I understand that because that actually resonates in similarity to how I apply over here."
{( speakerName('B') )}
But if you're only looking at a handful of metrics versus all the things Google Analytics will give you. Right. But if you're only looking at your conversion rate and your traffic, you can go, okay, those are good. Okay, now you can start boiling this next one. My conversion rate is down. Okay, what's my bounce rate? How many people come to my website, don't do anything and leave? Oh, shoot. If we have a high bounce rate, then we know we're not grabbing their attention. We're not giving them calls to action or reasons to click and to get more information. Right. So while we will look at other KPIs going through it's not the ones we're focused on. We just use the other ones to lend what the next step is. You don't need to learn all that. You just have to focus on those three. Does Buzz move one of these three so that I make more money so I get a return on my investment. Because when you hire a marketing professional, you must get ROI.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yes. And it does often feel like a well, that you never quite hear the plonk of the water.
{( speakerName('B') )}
And that's because you're not tracking. Right. If you don't track, you don't know. And there's a saying out there that says 50% of your marketing is working. You just don't know which 50% is.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah. Flip a coin.
{( speakerName('B') )}
And so you have to do all of it because you don't know if you're just cutting off your revenue by taking out this part of your marketing campaign.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yes.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Because you have no idea. So until you measure how everything is working and producing, then you have no idea. Now, there are things that have what we call fuzzy metrics, like social media. Social media is a lender to the major KPIs. It's a conversion tool, but it's part of the conversion process. So when people come to your website, they say, oh, you solve my problem. You understand my problem. You can solve it and you're trustworthy. Do I like you? Let's go to your social media and find out. Yeah, okay. Yeah. He's likeable, we'll do it. Okay. Now they're coming back to the website and they're going to pick their call to action and they're reaching out to you. But nobody is reading one of your posts and going, oh, my gosh, I got to do business with this person. This is not how that works. What it will do if you get a hashtag or something like that that you happen to put in there and somebody's new has seen you, you might get a follower that follower is now going to find out if you're going to afford them or not. At some point, you're going to have some call to actions to bring to the website. The website is then going to do its job all over again. It's going to introduce the fact that you understand the problem. You're the person, you have a process of solving that problem or attaining that dream and that you are trustworthy enough to do that business. They already like you. They just need to know those other things.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yes.
{( speakerName('B') )}
And the process goes through more. If they don't, they unfollow you and they move on to the next person on their hashtag list. That's okay. Not all business is good business and you're not going to be able to serve everyone. So focus on the people who are the most profitable and the people you like to do the business with the most. The clients that when they email you're, like, great, they email me, I want to see what they want or they called, oh, I got to take this call. This is one of my favourite clients. You want to clone your favourite client.
{( speakerName('A') )}
We hear this all the time. And yet there's something that always feels a little bit out of reach about it, isn't it? This is kind of my search for perfection. I don't think any of us are ever going to get to the perfection. Certainly you just said it there, Michael. You measure yet we've been introduced to this belief of test and measure. And if you test and then measure, and then you test something else and measure, there's something about that. There's still ambiguity as you're continually testing!
{( speakerName('B') )}
You're always testing, but you're only testing a portion of the traffic against something that's already working.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yes.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Okay, so when you first start out, you have to start with something. So you put that out there and go, okay, how does that do? That's not doing really good. Okay, what are some other ideas? Let's put that next to it. And since this is not working, we can go 50/50, right? Okay, this one worked a little bit better. Okay. So let's get rid of this. What's another idea? Okay, well, this is a little bit better. So we'll give this next one just a little bit less and we'll see. Oh! It out did it. Okay, now let's get another idea. And now your ladder is moving with you. You're building the aeroplane as you're taking off is what I call it.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah, that makes sense, because I think that's the other point to make is that we can often feel like we're grounded until we've solved it.
{( speakerName('B') )}
There's no solving anything. You're building something. It's not like you go, oh, that's how you do the house. And there the house goes, no, you set the foundation, you put up the trusses, you do the walls, outer walls, the inner walls, the flooring, the accuderments, the electricity, the plumbing. All of those things are going, right? And then you have somebody move in. What do you do when you move into a new house? You walk around, you go, what do I want to change? And you're always changing stuff in your house. And then when you're done you're like "Oh this is awesome!" Except now that room is old because we did this one new. You're always working on it. A website is just like a brick and mortar office, right? And if you ever do retail, retail will tell you you never leave the floor looking the same too long.
{( speakerName('A') )}
No.
{( speakerName('B') )}
You never let your website just sit there and work until it doesn't, because then you have to go through that whole ramp up system. But you're always testing and just finding new ways, even if it is like, hey, we just let off 20% of our traffic or even 10% of the traffic. We're testing this other idea and it completely fails. You still had 90% of the traffic producing and continuing to produce sales until this 10% all of a sudden goes, you're like, "Whoa, shoot. Well, let's try that with 30%", and then all of a sudden it's at the end and it's still outperforming. This. We're getting rid of this. We got the new winter, and then we start all over. But what you've done is you've increased from what was working, not just throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Good advice there, Michael. Honestly, I don't do nearly enough. Going to go and give myself a little talking to in the corner.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Well, I'm sorry that made you feel that way.
{( speakerName('A') )}
No, it's good. And half of that is because until I feel motivated enough to do it because it's worthwhile, I'm not going to keep spending time and energy and potentially money at it. I don't really understand what it is I'm doing. So I'm the expert in what I do. You're the expert in what you do. I shouldn't need to have to suddenly try and make myself the expert. But it's finding those experts that you can trust.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Exactly. Definitely. Yeah. And that's why I say in the book, there's things you can do on your own. There's things that you should probably use an expert on. Right. That really is the moral story. Understand enough to where you understand what you're hiring or who you're hiring or what you're hiring them for. You can get paralysed by measurement. They call it analysis paralysis. So if you found something that works, then you need to see if it scales. If it doesn't scale, then you need to test until it does. So say my goal is to get four new clients a month. One a week. And I'm not getting there yet. I'm testing until I do. I'm getting forward now. Okay, great. Do I want to get any bigger? Maybe one more a month. Okay, well, if I put more of whatever is working into the equation, do I get one more? Yes, I do. Okay. Now I'm scalable. Now I can look at my marketing as a predictable lever of sales. So if you're getting what you want and it continues to be predictably, delivering what you need to get what you want, then testing is not a big deal. You can spend your time crafting a better way to do what you do, leveraging the processes you have in delivering your service, maybe pouring time into your product to make it better, streamlining the process of methodologies, training your people to be more effective so that they're more profitable and they're happier in their business, all of those things until the predictability starts to slide. Well, then we need to go back, because without that flow, you're going to go out of business. And that's the fallacy of starting a business is that people start a business plan versus testing their market and creating a marketing plan and then building a business plan around their marketing plan.
{( speakerName('A') )}
That's really interesting that you say that, actually, Michael, because I always think that the two go hand in hand. It should not be one before the other or vice versa.
{( speakerName('B') )}
You have to have demand before you can build a business.
{( speakerName('A') )}
And the business plan really is when it boils down, we've all got bills to pay. So you've got to know where your breakeven point is, so it's a viable business, even.
{( speakerName('B') )}
But the marketing, test marketing is testing a few things. Is there demand for it? And how much will people buy it for? Okay, so if there's demand for it and people will buy it for X, can I make X a profitable business? Then you're going back into what's, my break even? How many do I have, right? Yeah, but a lot of people, they'll start with, well, I have a business and I think that people would pay this. And then they go and they launch it and they see, oh, shoot, nobody wants to buy that or they like it, but I keep getting price objections, and it's not that they're not willing to pay that price. You just haven't created enough value to pay for that price. And that's where marketing comes back in.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Or they'll say, oh, well, I've put post out about it and nobody's buying it. Well because you expect one post to do all the work for you.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Again, social media is not where we test markets. Unless you have the following of your perfect clients, your target market, you are not testing on social media. You have to go gorilla. You have to go out and talk to the people in the segments that you want to sell your service or product to and ask them the questions. Simple surveys. That's where you can start. Right. And they say, yeah, I'd buy that. Okay. Well, here why don't you be my beta and let's go through the process and you tell me what you like and you don't like. And then when we're done with it, you can continue to if it's a reoccurring service, you can continue to do it at whatever price it was that you said you pay. That's a great way to start.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Absolutely. Just that sentence there is going to solve, not just one person's pain point, I think.
{( speakerName('B') )}
When you do a beta with somebody on a new service, you're working out everything along the process, and the person is now paying with time for a product. And as business owners, that's the one commodity that we seem to be the most easily separated from, but the one that we can never create more of. But in this instance, as a marketer, we're going to take advantage of that. We're going to say, hey, listen, I have this service. You said you like it. You said you would pay this much. But what I'm going to do is I would like to test this against. I want to test my thesis to make sure that this is what I'm going to be providing what I'm providing is doing what I say it's going to do. We're going to get that outcome. Are you interested in doing that? Who's going to say no to free on something they believe can work? Now I have that beta, or maybe you do it a discount. Maybe you do it at cost, I don't care. But give them incentive to be part of the research process so that they know that there are going to be bumps in the road. And you don't create an enemy. You create an ally who is going to let you know at every point. Man, I would really not. You're paying them for that input. Right. But if I'm charging full price on my first client, they're expecting it to run. And every time they complain, then you have to fix it without any other input because they're not going to be as open to telling you what needs to be fixed. They're just saying it's broken.
{( speakerName('A') )}
What you have just given us as an overview for myself and the listeners, I'm going to put my hand up and go, I'm not doing enough. And that's okay because I now know what it is that I'm not doing enough of. So I can go about fixing that. First thing I'm going to do is buy the book. I'm going to read it until that point where I go, Michael, can you help me, please? And this is kind of why I talk to so many people in so many different fields, is because I know what I'm talking about. And that sounds like common sense to me because I've been doing it for 30 odd years. But to somebody who doesn't know what I know, it's like, really?! that's the same for you in your field. So just TO say thank you for sharing those info because it makes sense. What is the point of the fishermen going out on his boat with the cost of fuel these day, if all you're going to do is come back with spoiled fish when nobody wants the catch of the day because you haven't got the resources to cope with it. So unless you're in Alaska and you can hang it, but anyway....
{( speakerName('B') )}
Love it.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Until you know the right questions to ask, then it's about finding the people that you can trust to answer those questions without you feeling like you've been hoodwinked blindsided or that you're not supposed to understand it love.
{( speakerName('B') )}
You have to understand how. But you should understand the what!
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yes. I mean, there's so many things that are even in my game, I will sit here and go, well, that's not working. I'm not feeling the effect. So it can't be working. And then I'll speak to the client and they go, "oh, we've had so and so on the phone". It's just because I'm not hearing it. It's not a disconnect or a separation between that information. It doesn't need to say it's not working. And I've just gone, that's great. I'm not going to question how!
{( speakerName('A') )}
It's come to that part in the show where I always ask the guest to think of that pivotal conversation that if it hadn't happened, the thing would have changed. So now, Michael, what is your conversation?
{( speakerName('B') )}
The pivotal conversation I've had in my entrepreneurial career had to do with life balance. And it was a self conversation, internal conversation. I had just come back from Italy, shooting a feature length documentary. And there was a little coup d'a ta while I was gone. And I came back to quite the headache. And after I flushed all of the issues out, I looked at what it was going to take to get myself back to where I was before I had left for this eleven day trip, which seemed to me like, how did 15 years of business crumble as much as it did in ten days? And so I had to be honest with myself. The conversation was all about honesty. Yes, the business was successful. Was it as profitable as should be? No. How long would it take to make it profitable? A long time. Right. And so then it was a matter of, okay, do I spend the next five years rebuilding, or do I cut it off and just kiss the frog and start over and rebuild? And that's what I did. The end of 2018, I closed a multi million dollar creative agency, and I started all over again to what is now called Buzzworthy Integrated Marketing, where I am very happy. I don't overwork. I only work when I actually... like, my day to day work is there, but like weekends or nights and stuff like that when I choose, when I feel motivated to put in extra time as an entrepreneur, yes. My clients are happier because they're getting better results because these processes are better. And they're more profitable. The honesty that I had to have with myself in 2018 was probably one of the hardest things, because when you build something that big over a 15 year period, blood, sweat and tears to get to that point. My now wife, a girlfriend at the time, had not been dating me very long. And I told her what I needed to do because I was miserable. And for the first time in my life, I was having panic attacks. After I made that decision, I couldn't sleep. I was all over the place. I was an emotional wreck. At one point, I think I actually just said, well, maybe I'll just go and get a job as a CMO in a medium sized company and make a quarter million dollars and not worry about it. Just nine to five. And we went through the whole process of brushing up a resume that the last time I had written a resume was back in 94. So it's been a while. And by the time we got done with it, Heather looks at me and says, "you can't work for anybody, right? Like a nine to five is not your thing". I was like, "you're so right!" and so that was the other conversation. Nope. Back into entrepreneurship. And so that's where 'Buzzworthy' came about. And it's the best decision ever made. Hardest and best.
{( speakerName('A') )}
The moral to the story really isn't it, is you saying about how going and getting a job was just a way to numb the whole situation, wasn't it? To stop having to think about it.
{( speakerName('B') )}
If you think about when you first started your business and said you had to start there again, but what nobody's going to tell somebody is that even after five years of something that you're struggling with, starting over could be the best thing for you. And it's not that you're starting over. You're starting anew with all of the five years experience you just went through on how not to do it.So I had a 13,000 square foot facility. I had 20 plus employees, blah, blah, blah. I had all the things that you're supposed to have at that size of a company. And it says, well, if I keep doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results, well, Einstein says I'm crazy. Okay, well, how do I reverse that? Well, how about this? Why don't we knock off $15,000 of overhead and get rid of a building and let's go 100% remote? And that's what we did. It took a year. I went from 13,000 sqft to 1300 sqft to 500 sqft to coworking space. I went from 20 employees in house with contractors down to one employee and a handful of contractors, remote. And now we're back up to a staff of seven and freelancers that work on ad hoc stuff that we need every once in a while for our clients. Great. And we're more profitable. And I'm making more money now doing a it of the revenue as it was with all of that stuff. And I'm technically working less. And I travel now and not worry about coming back to hell. And all the things.
{( speakerName('A') )}
And that's the thing, though, isn't it? I always think that we're a bit like trees. What you see up here on show with our branches and our leaves and flowers or whatever. And this is where we mirror when we're in the ground. And if what we've rooted ourselves in has any toxicity or doubt, fear, regret, it, erodes. And at some point it will show. And it will show in the tips of things that we do and the impact that we have on other people's lives. So I'm so pleased that you have that conversation with yourself. Often the best conversations are the hardest ones that we have to have with ourselves. And I know I've reinvented my company a few times. There was me when I started out and there was a call centre with eight staff that was hideous.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Call centres just don't sound fun at all.
{( speakerName('A') )}
You get to the point where you're not actually doing the work that you love anymore. You're just wheeling the machine. And it's at that point that you know that you've got to change. So, like you were saying earlier about websites, it's constantly about building. So if it doesn't change...
{( speakerName('B') )}
If it doesn't evolve, it will die.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah, absolutely.
{( speakerName('B') )}
And digital marketing is the fastest evolving industry known to man.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah.
{( speakerName('B') )}
There's a lot of snake oil. There's a lot more snake oil now than there ever was in any of the traditional medias previously. And the thing is this, like we talked about KPIs, it's like there is statistics. There is. There are damn lies. And then there are statistics. Statistics can tell you whatever you want to see. So you have to take a certain level of.... you have to get with a grain of salt at a certain level. Right. I can create case studies that will show you great numbers, but if those numbers are not revenue moving KPIs, then really, it's just flash. It's just show. So you have these software as a service out there that will tell you, like, hey, we increased the conversion rate of this one website by 255%. Does that mean that they went from two conversions to five conversions in one month? Or was that website doing 100 conversions a day and now they're doing 250 conversions a day? Same statistic. Different input, creating different output. So we just have to be careful of what we spend our time, energy and money in. And we have to test. We have to measure and we do have to test it. And testing means sometimes it's just hey, listen, I want to try it out for a little bit and see what does happen right. So you see a tactic out there that says it's too good to be true but it's so cheap I can't afford not to try it. Okay, great.I'll give you three months. If a needle that counts to me, one of my top three needles don't move right or we got to try a different way of doing it but we can't just let it sit there and burn money.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Nobody wants that. Certainly when it's your own business if you're an owner managed business it's personal. Even if it is the company money, it's still personal.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Yeah, the money you save a company could be your bonus.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah, scary thought.
{( speakerName('B') )}
They'll pay you once for that ongoing savings. If they really appreciate you for sure.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Michael I could talk to you for another few hours and maybe have you fix my website but I'm going to let you go. Thank you so much for your time. I always say we will carry the conversation on. There is bonus content that comes out every Sunday after the episode goes live where just me and Neal the producer reflect on what we really take away from it. So if the business want to reach out to you to carry on the conversation, where's the best place for them to do that?
{( speakerName('B') )}
Go to my website at buzzworthy dot biz. That's two ZS - B U Z Z and down towards the bottom, you will find links to the book or if you're just interested in the book, go to ruleof two six dot com. That's the number two and number six dot com.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Fantastic. Thank you so much again, Michael for joining us.
{( speakerName('B') )}
This was an awesome conversation. Thank you for making it interesting.
{( speakerName('A') )}
We made it count.
{( speakerName('B') )}
That's right. We made a conversation count. Your brand promise is intact.