S1E25 | Accelerating Growth: Personal Brand, Tech Innovation & Outsourcing | Belinda Agnew

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Rev up, uh, the podcast where we talk everything. Revenue growth, uh, from marketing right through to account growth. Uh, today on the show we have the one and only, the amazing Belinda Agnew. Belinda, uh, and I have been talking about getting on a pod together for a long time. Um, this is an awesome conversation. Super real, super authentic. And we get into, you know, some really good conversation around, um, around branding, around personal branding, around building businesses, around, um, choosing projects, around deciding what direction to go next. Uh, lots and lots of topics covered. Um, and Belinda was an awesome guest. Really, really love this conversation. Um, the RevUp is brought to you, as always, by Trust the Process. Uh, at Trust the Process, we help businesses find the right offshore staff members at the right price with the right skills. Um, if you are looking to fill any roles in market, marketing, sales, operations, service, finance, tech, um, jump onto ttprocess Co, uh, and fill in any of the various forms and you'll be able to set up a time to speak with me or one of the team. Uh, so over to Belinda and I. Hello everybody. Welcome to the Rev Up. Uh, today I'm super excited, got, uh, uh, Belinda Agnew on the show. We've been trying to set this up for ages. It's finally happening. Uh, so super excited to have you here.

Speaker A: I feel like it's so embarrassing for me because I feel like that is the introduction for every podcast I'm on.

Speaker B: Well, look, to be fair, track record, terrible. Both had our. We both had our reasons for it being delayed, but we got here in the end.

Speaker A: Yeah. Ah, we have, we have. It hasn't just been me. Hasn't been me. Not solely me. So I don't take, I don't take. Don't feel bad. Thanks for so much. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm really excited to be here.

Speaker B: Yeah, great to have you. And, um, we obviously, uh, well, maybe not obvious to everybody, but we met, um, a few years ago, uh, through your business, uh, focus. Yeah, for recruitment. Uh, I was recruiting some sales roles. Oh, this must be maybe five years ago or something like that. And we ended up talking about those sales roles. But I think like, we've got, you know, mutual friends and all of that sort of stuff. Uh, and so I've kind of, um, uh, interacted a few times over the years. Um, but I suppose, big reason why I wanted to get you onto this, this, um, podcast is, you know, kind of seeing your journey over time has been really interesting to watch. You know, going from that first interaction where you Were, um, building and running your own recruitment agency to all of the things you kind of do now. It'd be really awesome if you could maybe just, um, you know, give our audience a little bit of an insight into what your entrepreneurial journey has. Has. Has been from, you know, from then up till now.

Speaker A: Yeah, um, it's been a really long one. You know, I never really thought about this until recently when people say to me, the overnight success, it's an actual thing. You can for 10 years long straight dedicated to one thing or multiple things, and nothing really happens until, like, the 10th or 11th year. So I feel like that has kind of been my journey. Um, I know a lot of. There's been a lot of success for me over the 10 years, but I would say I'm in a position now where I fully, um, understand where I'm going, and I can fully, you know, reap the awards and, you know, some capacity. So I feel really grateful, uh, for that. But also, complacency is a killer, and I'm starting to realize that now. I feel as though I'm super, super, super complacent. I've been speaking to my coach about this, and I'm like, I feel like I've lost my mojo. And he's like, what do you mean? I'm like, I just don't know who I am anymore. I feel like I need to, you know, find out what I want again in my career. And, like, you know, I need to find that little fire where it was, you know, when I was, like, younger, a younger version of me. I feel like I don't have that anymore as much as I used to. So, um, that's an interesting one, which I've never faced in my life before. Um, but, yeah, my career started when I was, I'd say, 18. I started my first company, um, which was like an rto. I basically got headhunted from a client that, uh, a company I was working for. Their client poached me and said, come work for us. I said, no, how about we start a business together? And he was like, great. We literally started an RTO called aipe. Then we had the back of that an agency called Open Education, which was like a marketing sales agency for RTOs that were recruiting students internationally and domestically. Um, um, so we had, like, government funding. We also did fee for service and things like that. So that was really cool. I left that when I was 24, 25, I would say. And then I started recruitment agency, which is very much the same thing. It was very Recruiting. Ah, not students. Recruiting talent for corporates. And I fell into tech.

Speaker B: Yeah, very similar.

Speaker A: And I did that. Yeah, very similar. So then I fell into tech, which is completely different. Completely different world. Um, and I remember I was having many conversations with really cool entrepreneurs. And I remember one particular entrepreneur, ah, we sat down, he's like, I just raised 5 million bucks or whatever it was at the time. I don't know the exact figure, um, for this idea. And I was like, wait, so people gave you $5 million for this idea that you have? And he's like, yeah. I was like, wow, is that a thing? I'm like, is that a thing? Like, I had no idea. Right. I'm like, is that even a thing? You're like, how does this even work? Tell me the structure. Like, what do you mean? I have so many ideas.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And, um, little obviously did I know back then, but that's, uh, when I had a light bulb moment and I was like, I'm in the wrong space. I'm playing so small. So then I basically worked in recruitment, you know, uh, went on a few advisory boards in the tech space to really understand what it was all about, you know, what raising was what, you know, a board was, what a corporate structure was. The fundamentals of running a tech business. Mvp, building product, um, go to market fit. Like all these words. Right. I had no idea. Um, so I bunched. I jumped on a bunch of boards. Ah, learned from the best, and then pretty much kind of went from there, I'd say.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Short story.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And do you want to just maybe share with the audience a little bit about. About where you're at and what you're working on now? I know you just mentioned. Yes, you're in a spot where you're kind of thinking about what's next, but what are you working on now?

Speaker A: Yeah, so I run, um, a company with my business partner, Prashant Garmi. Uh, so he's like the, the cto. And I'm more, I would say cmo, you know, partner, um, growth, kind of, you know, advisor, which is where I came into the business. And then now we are 50. 50. So I bought into the business not long ago and we're essentially now scaling, we're changing the name completely to a different name. Um, which happy to announce it because it's going to be announced by the. Probably by the time this launches. Um, it's called Accelerator. So originally it was Enabler, but Accelerator just really is something that we're doing for the future of the company. So we're not just building products, we're doing so much more than that. So we are accelerating brands, accelerating product accelerating and scaling companies. Um, so that just kind of fits for us. So we're completely changing the name, feel. Look, we've got about 120 developers at the moment. Internally we've got access to 1100 contractors. So, so we do two sides of the business. One is our internal staff come into companies, grow, scale, build, um, and then our contractors come into companies where they can tap into a subscription based model, have access to the developers to build today. So if you have a product, don't necessarily, or have an idea, let's just say don't necessarily have the budget to build something. You can just tap into those subscription based models. There's three versions to start from like 5,4k a month. Um, and you can start building. So that's really cool. Um, and that's our Daz product.

Speaker B: Yeah, and so that's um, essentially if you're a software business, you're a software business and you need, yeah, you want

Speaker A: to build an app, you don't necessarily need to be a software business. You can literally be any business. And if you've ever thought about going into tech in your business, creating something like a digital footprint, it's definitely the way to go. And especially building a roadmap, it's really good just to have those developers there on your team to do that.

Speaker B: Perfect. So I mean I obviously know this. We're in similar sort of, uh, worlds. We're obviously an outsourcing business and provide the teams and uh, all that sort of stuff as well. You and I were talking just before we hit record, um, about this year kind of being a bit of a weird year and it being a bit of an odd time in business generally.

Speaker A: Um,

Speaker B: lots of, um, lots of fear, lots of uncertainty. Actually one of the things that somebody said to me the other day that I thought was really interesting, um, they said, uh, you should watch out when there's a lot of false certainty. Uh, and it seems like there are a lot of people out there really kind of trying to give this level of certainty that everything's fine and we should just ignore it. Um, but it just brings me back to that, that Warren Buffett, um, you know, be fearful when others, when others, um, uh, greedy and be greedy when others are fearful. Where do you kind of feel like we're at? I kind of wanted to talk about some macro stuff here. Like where, where are you feeling like we're at? In, in, um, you know, the small business world, in the small medium business world. And like, are we in that moment where people should be freaking out? Are we in the moment where people should be really doubling down and focusing on growth? What's your kind of take on, on what people should be really doing at the end of this? What's kind of been a very weird.

Speaker A: Odd. It's so weird. Yeah. I think, you know, to be fair, you've had Covid now there's like, interest rates went up. We had a moment for about a couple months where it was good. Recently it's gone back down because interest rates have gone up. You've got a war going on. So there's lots, lots happening in the world. Right. Um, so in that usually a lot of investors or a lot of people freak out on growth. I think, you know, I've never been the one to really fear, um, in anything really, in my personal life or my business. I think you just need to keep moving forward, regardless of whatever's going on. Uh, I think, you know, as you would know, being in business, you know, like myself for so many years, I think fear would only, um, you know, bring you a lot of, I would say, negatives. Not just in the business, but, you know, your team, uh, your board, your investors, whoever you're working with, you just, you can't, you can't be fearful. I think you just need to keep growing and scaling and, and moving and innovating and changing. If it's not working, changing it. Keep, you know, innovating for whatever you're doing, services, product, whatever you're trying to do. Um, I think you just need to keep going regardless of the situation. Um, I think the, the best will survive. Um, I think this is what's happening in the market now. I think it's getting rid of a lot of the, I would say, cowboys. And I think it's really good for us, um, especially for the tech space. There's been such a, you know, um, huge wipeout of people. And I think it's not because of the market, it's just because they had shitty businesses or shitty services or shitty products. Um, so I think, you know, really just doubling down on what value you're giving into the market, what value you're giving to your customers. And is that, is that something that will allow you to survive through this market and forever? So I think, yeah, it's, it's good for us. I think it's going to wipe out a lot of shitty businesses and people. I, I think it's, um, that's where it's going.

Speaker B: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Uh, I think one of the industries where that's like the most obvious. It goes in the. In the biggest ways like that is, um, my dad's a real estate agent. Right.

Speaker A: And I love it.

Speaker B: Property boom markets, just terrible, terrible. Real estate agents just grow on trees. And then as soon as things go the other way, you've got all these people that have no idea how to actually sell anything or how to actually add value or make the process easy. They've just been living off the. The easy market, and they all disappear. And I think that happens in so many. In so many industries, but it happens exactly like you said, it happens to companies, you know, marketing agencies and tech companies and outsources. Right. Like, um, you get these. You get these difficult moments. I don't actually even think it's just the bad ones. A lot of the businesses that kind of get into these moments and then do nothing disappear as well, you know, like you said, the fearful. Being fearful doesn't help you. It only creates negatives. You really only got one choice, and that's like, through. The only way is through, literally.

Speaker A: And you have a story to tell to me, you know, which is great.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: It's an opportunity.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's an opportunity to, like, make your product better, improve your sales process, do better marketing that's more engaging, that hits your customers right in the, uh, you know, right in the heart and in their problems perfectly. Like, it's an opportunity to. To force yourself to improve and to change and to be better so that when the market turns again, now, you're a way better company and better set up to be able to shoot through the roof. And I hope. I hope a lot of businesses do that. You certainly see a lot that just kind of throw their hands up in the air and go, the market's bad.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, it's happening all the time. Yeah. And I think, you know, those are the people that just are not meant to do business. Right. So, um, that's like another conversation.

Speaker B: But yeah, yeah, the ones that are in business, uh, because they kind of built themselves a job rather than a asset.

Speaker A: Correct.

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, so a big part of why I wanted to have you on the show. There's a bunch of things I want to ask you about. Um, but you're certainly somebody that I, I think is really good at building a personal brand and leveraging that personal brand across the businesses that you work through. Um, can you talk to me just a little bit about your approach to that, like, why that's something you decided to really go after. Um, how you've got kind of gone about building your own personal brand and then how you use that to sort of leverage into the businesses that you work in.

Speaker A: Um, I think in any, um, especially service, I would say any service businesses, business, you know, that you're in, I think people buy people, as everyone would know, that's in service. Um, not necessarily so much product, product's a bit different. But, you know, selling a service is essentially selling yourself, uh, and people need to like you. So for me, personal branding was about that. I wanted to showcase my story, who I am, I wanted to share my personal life, bits and pieces of that, um, you know, for people to like me and to know me, uh, to possibly work with me. So that was really kind of the whole angle. It wasn't really a strategy. I still don't have a strategy. And I think anything in life, you just need to show up and keep going, uh, until you see something. Uh, but also you need to post things and be mindful of the content you're putting out because you want to be known for the things that you're putting out to the world. You can't just go and post random stuff that isn't aligned with your business or your person. Um, so I think, you know, just being mindful, mindful of that. Uh, so LinkedIn, I'm pretty active. I'm not as active as I used to be a year ago, I'd say like a year and a bit ago, I used to be really active every day posting, sometimes twice a day. Now I probably post like one to two times a week, which is quite bad for me. Um, just because I've been. Again, I've lost my mojo. My flame has gone and I feel quite complacent. Uh, so I'm, you know, working through that process of, you know, the fire. I'm trying to find the flame again, um, that I once had. And then once that flame comes back, I'll definitely start posting more and probably come up with, you know, better angles to post on LinkedIn. That's. That's for sure.

Speaker B: Well, I think that that probably plays into the point that you were making. Like, um, you need to have. You need to make sure that the, the brand that you're building and the content that you're putting out there is aligned to actually you. Yeah, there's gotta be that level of authenticity. And so m. Um. M. If there's not something that you're feeling super passionate about, then you're probably not going to post about it.

Speaker A: Yeah. And not only that, I think PB is super underestimated. My girlfriend runs a successful personal branding agency in London. It's called Clout. Her name's Amelia Sordell. If you're not following her, you should be following her on LinkedIn. She's incredible when it comes to personal branding. And, um, she's built a following. I remember when she started, she. She had like 10,000 followers. Now she has, like 150,000 followers on LinkedIn. And she's just killing it in terms of her personal brand. But she's nailed every angle when it comes to pb. And, you know, when I look at Amelia and people like, you know, Stephen Bartlett and, um, you know, even, um, Elon. Right. Like, all these people have such huge personal brands, so whatever that they decide to do in business, they can leverage off their following and community. They already have grown and then start, you know, push the green button 10 steps ahead. So I think, you know, personal branding is super underestimated when building, you know, continuous businesses or, you know, continuous projects. I think this is where people, you know, don't understand it, um, too much. But I think, you know, you're essentially building a community that's following your journey the whole way through and supporting whatever you do the whole way through. And I think when people see the journey that you've been on and see everything that you're a part of, they almost feel like they're in it with you. So they need to do everything that you're doing. They're so invested. Um, and even just being on LinkedIn and being active in the community, when I attend these events, people just come up to me all the time saying, oh, my God, Belinda. Like, I follow on LinkedIn, thank you so much for this piece of content you posted on this. Or, you know, when you did this or when you spoke about this, you really helped me with this. And, you know, you're not only changing, um, people's lives, essentially, you're like, creating a really strong community of people that are following everything you're doing, um, which, you know, you can leverage off in all your businesses.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's a really great point. Um, if you're, if you're only building a business brand, if you want to do other things in the future, it's hard to kind of leverage off that business, uh, and shift it from one thing to the next.

Speaker A: Correct.

Speaker B: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Um, actually, you speak of people, uh, coming up to you and Talking about posts that you made. Um, I remember a conversation that you and I had on LinkedIn a while ago. Um, you posted that it was essentially that like, marketing greater sign than sales. Uh, like.

Speaker A: Oh yes, I remember you debated me

Speaker B: on this is not so important. Sales is not so important. Um, yes, marketing should be the kind of sole focus. Um, is your, is your opinion still in the same place around that? M. And do you want to maybe share a little bit of, of, um, I suppose how you think about marketing, um, and sales and you know, the growth functions, the things that actually draw all growth in businesses. Marketing.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I definitely think it's marketing before sales for sure. Mhm. Yeah. And M, I'd love your take on this. I'd love your take on this, um, as well. I think for me, um, I've always been the other way around. I've always been sales first before marketing and it's how I built my first business, it's how I built my second business. Um, but I think now being in my space and really, you know, surrounding myself with amazing people, truly I'm so incredible by the people I work with, the people that are invested into me. You know, I have like the most smartest people around me. Uh, my mind has changed and I've shifted because if you want to scale and you want to go big, big, big, it's always marketing first before sales. Sales is very small. You play it means you're playing quite small compared to the other play. Right. So for me, you know, now I'm at a stage where I'm like playing with the big boys. So for me it would always be marketing because I can leverage the masses versus individuals, uh, one by one. And I can't sell if I'm not talking about it. And if I'm not talking about it, no one's actually going to know what I'm selling. So I'm all about one to millions, not one to one.

Speaker B: Mhm. Yep.

Speaker A: If that makes any sense.

Speaker B: It makes perfect sense and I actually fundamentally agree with you. Right. Um, marketing is leverage, right. So it's really hard to have any leverage of your time, um, if you are, uh, focused purely on sales, especially as an entrepreneur. So many entrepreneurs get stuck in the sales of their business because nobody can quite do it as much as them. And the business gets reliant on them doing the selling. Um, marketing gives you that audience and that leverage to be able to talk to many people. I think the only place, you know, it's like anything in, in the world of business Advice, there's context to it. That always matters. And the one thing that I've, I've, uh, found so much over the years, and, you know, I was at, um, the Entourage for years, and I've been involved in business coaching and mentoring.

Speaker A: This is what you guys sold? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: The thing, well, the thing that I've, I've found so much over the years is that you have people who use a lack of marketing as an excuse to do nothing. And, and so for me, if you don't yet have an audience, an audience is a thing that's not that easy to build. And you've got things that you need to do and steps you need to take in order to build an audience and a database and all of those things. And for me, for small businesses that are growing, I've always thought that you just have to get off your ass and go and sell some shit. Right?

Speaker A: Totally.

Speaker B: Like, yeah, you've got nothing else. Just go and talk to some people and sell some stuff, um, while you build your brand and while you build your marketing function. Um, but other than that, like, I fundamentally agree, like, you only get scale and you only get fast growth if you can build an audience that is engaged, that understands the problem that you solve and understands how to solve it, and then believes that you are the best person in order to be able to solve it. Um, I had, um, know if you've ever followed Chris, uh, Walker from Refine Labs before, um, he's big in this kind of build an audience through podcast space.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And his, uh, thing that he talks about sometimes is you want to ultimately beat Google. You're ultimately trying to create marketing where people don't. Aren't going to Google to say, who should I talk to about outsourcing? They're saying, I want to talk to trust the process. I want to talk to Ben and he can tell me what to do. Right. Um, they're coming to you because they want to work with you. And then you end up out of the loop of all of the price negotiations and, um, competing on price and all of that sort of stuff.

Speaker A: I think it's hard. Yeah, I, and I think, you know, with, with selling, you know, going in with sales first before marketing. It's, uh, the reason why I think it's such a small play is because also the, the salespeople, your, the customers are building relationships with the sales people. They're not necessarily building, uh, a relationship with the brand, and the brand is the one that stays from A to Z, whereas salespeople don't stay from A to Z. Yeah, uh, they usually stay, if they're great, two years, if even less these days. Right. So it's all about the relationship game as well. So I think that's something that I, you know, found out later down the track. It's such a, it's a, such a small thing, but if you really think about it, it's like these customers are building a relationship with the sales people, not necessarily the brand. Um, so that was a really big one for me. I was like, it's always marketing. It's always marketing first. Um, so I think anything I touch from now on would definitely be marketing play than sales.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, um, yeah, totally. I totally agree with that point. Yeah, the, the whole, um, the whole marketing aspect for me, um, as much as it being about scale is also just about like stackability. You know, you talked about, um, salespeople not, not staying forever. They're people in jobs, they're obviously not going to stay forever. Actually, I saw, um, I saw a stat recently that said that, um, the average salesperson reaches peak performance after two and a half years in their role. Uh, but the average Salesperson stays for 18 months. Yeah, that was quite interesting.

Speaker A: It's true. They don't stay usually more than two years.

Speaker B: Yeah. But it's, it's also like a sales focus is also not a very stackable business model because salespeople are typically quite expensive. Uh, they take a long time to onboard and train and get up to speed. Um, and if they don't have a massive flow of inbound leads, then they're doing cold outbound and um, you know, a relatively sort of inefficient sales and marketing strategy. Whereas if we focus on the reverse of that and we're trying to really, really invest and build a pipeline, build an audience of people that are coming through that want to work with us, that are qualified. Um, you know, even thinking about it in terms of as a B2B marketing division, can we make it so that people would transact on our website if they could? Right. If, um, we can think that way and bring as many people through as possible that are highly qualified, then actually our ability to scale significantly increases because we don't have to, we don't have to wait to be able to afford an extra hundred thousand, a hundred thousand. Hundred thousand dollar person in order to be able to stack the growth. Such an inefficient, expensive way to grow a business just through stacking sales people. And it's part of why all these tech businesses the last three or four years got into massive trouble. Right. The um, the sales forces and whoever else that were like, we're going to do massive expansion and a lot of smaller ones too. Heavily funded, smaller ones going to do massive expansion. They just said let's hire 100 SDRs and 10 AES and see what happens. It's such a. Yeah, it's a cost, it's a cost, inefficient model. Right. Rather than the marketing version where we are focusing on building stackable channels that we can grow over time that consistently bring us that, that flow of pipeline that now can convert at a higher rate, you know, 1% converting content downloads. Um, one of the biggest fallacies of good marketing, I think. Have you found, have you found a similar thing? Is that what you've seen?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very true. Yeah. I think uh, it's so funny. Like all these companies hire all these salespeople and SDRs and it's like literally maybe one or two of them are actually holding the whole team.

Speaker B: Oh, that's so true.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: The uh, 20 as in they're the one that's selling.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. They're the ones that are selling. The rest of it is not really selling.

Speaker B: Yep, yep. Uh, and they paid so much money for them. Like the, all of these expanding the tech companies were the worst for it. But it wasn't just tech companies. All these expanding businesses trying to, to spread out across the world and um, you know, they were paying a player money for C players and it just totally messed up the whole salary expectation of the entire sales world, I think. Yeah, um, you know, people getting, getting pulled out of $80,000 a year jobs with $150,000 salary offers from the sales forces and whatnot of the world.

Speaker A: Yeah, of course. Yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, it seems like it's come back the other way a little bit though. A little bit less. Definitely a bit less.

Speaker A: Yeah. It has, you know, the talent. I was about to say we're so lucky in this market. The upside to the market is that there's extremely good talent everywhere right now. And if you are growing and scaling, you can really have access to the best of the best right now. Like top tier. Tier, um, you know, for, I'd say 25, 30% less than what they're, they're on. Right. So, um, because a lot of companies are letting go of people, people are restructuring and this is the time to really hire good people. We just hired a COO recently, uh, and he's Starting next week, actually next Monday. And, um, he's incredible. Oh my gosh. Like one of the. The best I've seen. And, um, we got him just in this market, you know, otherwise he wouldn't have been available. He wouldn't have been on the market.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So, you know, things like.

Speaker B: An interesting time for that, for sure.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: That talent availability thing has been a problem for, you know, we, we just got into Covid and had that big tech takeoff. Um, and I think the, um, the Australian version of the stats were that, um, the volume of open roles on job boards had doubled in the span of about six months, and it stayed relatively flat through 20. 20, 21, 22. Um, literally double the amount of open roles being advertised on job boards than it was, uh, at the start of 2019. But 2023, maybe from six months ago, that's. That number's been going down massively. It's still 40% up on what it was early 2019. So it's still.

Speaker A: It's going to be going down again. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: If it goes. If it goes all the way back, that'll be a sign that, um, that, I mean, obviously there's way better talent available now. Um, but the computer, the competition for talent has just been so difficult for the last three years.

Speaker A: I mean, it's good for company, it's good for business owners and entrepreneurs and, you know, C levels and. But not the rest. Yeah, not the rest. Because it's very hard to land something. You know, you really got to add a lot of value.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, um, I think of it in terms of the impact on small business because one of the biggest challenges the last three years for small business has been competing with big businesses for talent. They just haven't been able to hire anybody. You've had all of these small businesses that, uh, could have grown and could have grown pretty rapidly if they could just hire somebody, anybody. Right. They couldn't afford people because those people that they might have paid 60, $70,000 for were getting 90 and $100,000. Right. They were just. It was the small businesses, it was the entrepreneurs that were locked out of the market because they just couldn't afford the same prices. And so them having better access to people because a lot of them need, you know, we're, um, a. An offshoring business. We hire people in the Philippines, but some roles absolutely have to be done onshore in Australia, and there's just been nobody for them. So I'm looking as much as. It's, um, you know, we don't want to see markets contract and we don't want to see difficulty for people and all that sort of stuff. Um, I think there's probably some, some good benefits to the small business community coming up. And um, I suppose like we talked about before, great businesses come out of these difficult moments too.

Speaker A: Oh yeah, totally. The ones that are standing, going to be the, the best ones out of all of them. Right, so that's the best thing about it.

Speaker B: Yeah. And so as a tech business, um, one of the things that definitely makes a huge difference in terms of an ability for a company to scale even in difficult times is the use of technology. And obviously where we are now is a really interesting moment in time in terms of, um, you know, automation and AI and all of these tech based opportunities in order to be able to increase efficiency and, and um, be a better run company and have a chance to compete with bigger players. Um, what are you seeing in terms of, you know, there's so much stuff that's been available to bigger businesses the last three, four years that seems to be kind of flowing through to the SME space. What are you kind of seeing are the, the opportunities that are sitting right there in front of us all that we should be, um, maybe taking a

Speaker A: bit more in a technology sense.

Speaker B: Yeah, Um,

Speaker A: I mean, uh, like, can you elaborate a bit more? Like, what do you mean? Like what opportunities should we watch out for in the tech scene for any business. Any business.

Speaker B: So what I'm. Yeah, so what I meant by it is, you know, you're an entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur. Most people listen to this are uh, business owners, founders, entrepreneurs.

Speaker A: Yeah, right, yeah.

Speaker B: Um, in the. Okay, so here's an example. For the last three or four years, one of the biggest plays in big business B2B has been.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, account based, account based marketing. Right. Um, using intent data from Google, for example, in order to be able to identify which companies are searching for the things that you might.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Set that up for yourself has been a relatively expensive and difficult thing to do. And so it's kind of just been available to smaller businesses, sorry, bigger businesses. But uh, some of that stuff is starting to leak through to small businesses now. You know, platforms like Apollo, which have intent data built for certain industries, um, and are doing the analysis for the smaller businesses. Some of these sorts of technologies are starting to come through and SME. There's some things like that that you might not even know exist.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. I think, um, it's obviously just based on understanding your audience, your Customers and what your offerings are first. I think obviously it's always good to ask customers, you know, what, um, what would make their life easier with whatever you're selling to them, whether it's service or product, um, and building something within that, whether it's a product or integrating a software with internally for your team members, um, for your staff to make their life easier, um, whatever that is. I think there's so many plays in technology when it comes to software, AI, blockchain. I think there's, you know, technology essentially is the growth for all businesses is having a digital footprint. And I think you know what a lot of people miss in technology is innovation. So a lot of companies already have their product, already have integrations or already have everything kind of at play. But they seem to forget innovation next kind of step in the next you know, two, three years what do, what would we like to build? Um, you know, separate to this or you know, for an example the, the parking app we for the government, you know that was like an innovation, um, build based on you know, creating the ticket machines on an application versus people getting out of the car and you know, having coins. Nobody has fucking coins these days. Sorry for swearing, but nobody has coins in their car. I don't, I don't remember the last time I carry coins in my car. Um, yeah, like I don't even remember the last time I carry coins in my car, let alone cash. I just, I'm not that person anymore. The world's gone digital so obviously the government has had to implement something for people to pay on their Apple pay through the app or you know, punch in their credit card details so when they park they can just select location where they are, pay, get out of the car, you know and they've obviously got a time off. The one hour, two hour, you know, three hour parking, it times out and they can just top it up if they're sitting at a cafe or an event. So you know, things like that to make the customer's life easier. Um, and I guess you know, fast forwarding, you know, innovation. Right? So um, again another, another really great thing is blockchain. Not many people know about blockchain and it's such an amazing technology if used correctly. And even if you are a non technical um, company or a non technical entrepreneur or don't really understand blockchain, but having people that can um, help you, that has built products in blockchain before for you to understand how the technology, technology could assist your business, um, you know, for whatever that is, is, is really great, uh, a really great asset, um, which is a project we're doing at the moment which is a real estate tokenization which is on the blockchain technology. So what we're doing is we're solving um, the Gen Zs to get into the market to buy a piece of a property rather than buying an actual property. Nobody has thousand dollars sitting in their bank account anymore to pay for a deposit. It's just like ludicrous. The market is just gone so extremely high, especially in Sydney. Um, you know, people just don't have that type of cash anymore. So we're creating a product um, essentially where you could buy a token which is like on the blockchain technology which is essentially like a piece of a property alongside you know, multiple others, um, where you have a piece of multiple properties like one in Parramatta, one in Brisbane, one in Sydney, you know, um, sorry, Sydney City, one in you know, Melbourne, wherever. But you've got a uh, portfolio of tokens on property rather than a portfolio of just shares on companies.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So that's really cool. So things like that. I think you know the best foot forward is really get somebody or speak to somebody like you know, even us, um, what we're doing, just having conversations you know, with your exec team and seeing what your company is doing, where you want to go, um, and how we can roadmap things better for you when it comes to technology.

Speaker B: Yeah. Have you seen this done? Well, uh, in terms of um, you mentioned they're finding out what your customers need. Like what problems do they have in using your product or what problems do they have in, in the, within the realm that you work in. Have you seen this done? Well in terms of how they, a business can go and extract that information like uh, how do you go and find out, how do you find out what, what things you could innovate in order to make your product better and in order to.

Speaker A: I think it's, I think it's just asking your customers, your database like understanding your database, your audience and then I think going from there. So for example, we've said an NDA can't disclose. The company is a very, very, very. One of the biggest food supply companies in Australia. Um, and we're working with them at the moment because believe it or not, their internal system is all over the place. Their tech rated I think 2% in the whole company. That's how bad it is and that's slowing down. You know, um, produce uh, customers, internal team, um, to um, you know, complete certain things that need to be completed on time. It's just delaying, prolonging everything internally and then that leads to external. So, um, you know, just cleaning up their whole system and their internal, um, digital footprint is really important as well as just the external parts. But I think really just starting from your customers and then understanding what issues they're facing on a day to day basis, and then really going internally and speaking to your team about what are the things that they're facing on a day to day basis to make their lives easier, to fast track the process for whatever that is that you're doing. Um, but there's technology as a whole. There's so many, so much to it. You just really need to have a technical person, like a cto, which is a chief Technology officer, or, you know, somebody like us to come in and really understand what you guys are doing and what can be done better when it comes to technology

Speaker B: that the whole piece around just like, just talk to your customers. Um, it's so simple.

Speaker A: But that's seriously the answer.

Speaker B: Seriously.

Speaker A: You can't just sit here and like, you know, speak to your team like, oh, what should we build? What should we do? Oh, this sounds really cool. This is awesome. It's like, that's really cool. Like, you guys can have a little chat about what you want to do, but it's like, is this really what your customers want? It's like having, having a, uh, business idea. It's like, oh my God, I have this really cool idea, I guess all the time, this amazing idea. It's going to like disrupt the space. And I'm like, that's awesome. Have you put it out to the world? Have you spoken to 50 people? Is this something that they would. And they're like, no. And I was like, dude, like, you know, you need to go to market first. People actually got to pay for this. This is something that people will buy and then you decide from there. You know, you don't just go and launch something and put money into something that people don't want.

Speaker B: Huh. How many people have you had approach you over the years and say, oh, this is going to be the Uber of something?

Speaker A: Oh, I think that's like, yeah, I'm sure you do. Everybody, everybody, everybody's trying to do something. Everybody's trying to build something to disrupt whatever, you know, their industry they're in? I think I had, um, I had a conversation with, um, a guy that runs a really big E learning platform here in Australia. We had dinner and he runs a VC fund. He also is an angel Investor. And um, we're having a conversation about people pitching to us on a daily basis on LinkedIn and just in general. And he turned around and he said, and I swear by this because I use it now because it's so true in so many ways, so simple, but it's true. He said, every idea that comes to me is good. I don't think any idea is bad. The bad part in it is the people, because the people make the idea great. If you can't execute well, or if the people don't have a track record of some sort or have the right people around them to execute it in the right direction, it will always fail. Whether it's like a Tesla or Uber idea, it's always going to fail with the wrong people regardless. So I think all ideas are amazing. It's just having the right people around you is what people seem to forget, uh, to really make that move. Even the shittest ideas I've seen move fast with the right people.

Speaker B: I've seen some terrible business ideas do well. I've seen some incredible business ideas do very poorly. I totally agree with you. Um, and actually it comes back to your point around talk to your customers. The businesses that tend to do really well are the ones that actually really understand their customers, that really know them. Yeah, like an intimate level. Um, and I think that's true also for good marketing. You know, we do a, um, we now do an annual survey. Um, but for me the most important part of the survey is actually the individual client interviews. Not this, not the mass survey, but, um, doing organized client interviews where you spend 30, 45 minutes with a series of questions that are ultimately trying to figure out things, uh, that maybe you already think, you know, find out from all the staff what are the things that are going wrong? What do we think our customers like and don't like, come up with some theories, build a bunch of questions around it and then go and interview those clients. And actually you get the best stuff out of that. And then you know, the mass survey stuff, you can't really find out individual insights. You can only really test theories at that, that level anyway. Um, but thing doing things like that and including people like whoever is going to be involved in your product dev, uh, your marketing manager, any of your marketing stuff. If your marketing staff don't talk to your clients ever, I promise you they're doing bad marketing. Yeah, most likely that's true. Um, yeah, and so for me, like, I think all of those things, uh, really matter. But that point you made around talk to Your clients. That is probably talk to your customers is probably the single simplest but most important thing that so many businesses don't do.

Speaker A: Totally. It's like having a relationship with a friend or having a boyfriend or a girlfriend. It's like whatever relationship you're trying to build with somebody, it's like you can't just sit there in your head and just make up these things that this person may want, like, oh, I'm just gonna go and you know, do this for them. And it's like, but you haven't had the conversation with him or her, uh, whether they like that or not, you can't just go do things without consulting. Yep.

Speaker B: You know, so assumptions.

Speaker A: Yeah. It's a huge killer for any, any business in my opinion.

Speaker B: Totally agree. Um, there's one more thing I really wanted, I really want to ask you about. Um, well, to be fair, there's three more things I want to ask you about. One of them is, is specifically for you and the others are things I ask everybody on this show.

Speaker A: Um, yes.

Speaker B: So uh, the work that you guys do, there's some crossover and some similarities is to what we do. Um, I find that actually a lot of people in business really struggle to figure out when they should do things themselves and when they should use external help. You know the difference between using outsourcing, using an agency, offshoring, all of these things. Um, how do you tend to think about that? Because you know, whether it's using a marketing agency, a branding agency, whether it's using a ah, um, an offshore dev agency, etc, like do you have a way that you think about that stuff? Because I think a lot of people really struggle with it.

Speaker A: Yeah, look, I think a lot of people have a bad taste about using offshore for one and number two have a bad taste in their mouth for using external agencies. Um, especially you know, big corporates and things like that. I think that in my opinion I have always been the one to be open minded. You know, if you are good at what you do and that's your sole focus in technology or your sole focus is in you know, performance marketing, your sole focus is in branding and graphics. Your sole focus is in social media or content or whatever that is. I'd rather use somebody externally that is really good at ah, what they do versus using somebody internally. It's you know, for all of our branding, uh, we've got people internally, we've got graphic designers, we've got UI ux, we've got all the guys you can think of that do a lot of Our stuff. But for our brand or for, you know, the last four projects we've done, we've used all that externally with an agency in London. In London, not even in Australia. So, you know, this has been offshore. Right. Um, and, you know, even for our content creation, again, offshore based in London. It's. For me, it's about if you're really good at what you do, and that's something that you live and breathe every single day. I'd rather use you than go internally. I just don't get the whole, you know, angst about not having external agencies or, you know, um, partners. I just think that's so, so silly. It's like, why wouldn't I. That. That would be my question. Why. I don't even think about why, you know, I wouldn't do that. It's like, if you, if you're better than my internal team, why wouldn't I use you?

Speaker B: 100 and I mean, obviously that's what we do. We do. We're a HubSpot agency too. Like, we implement HubSpot for people, um, because we're very good at it. Um, however, I think that what happens to a lot of especially SMEs, is that they meet a lot of external partners who are very good at selling it and not very good at delivering it. And I think that's where a lot of that angst comes from. How do you, how do you pick? How do you know for sure this person is going to do it a good job for me, because you're usually going to pay more to do it externally, but you should pay more because you're usually getting access to somebody who is, who is far better at that thing. But how do you pick a. How do you pick a good agency? Right, that's the, I think, the challenging part for some people.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's the biggest challenge. But it's like in anything in life, how do I know if this person is going to be in my husband or not? How do I know if this exec that I just hired, you know, recently, how do I know that he's going to work out or not? How do I know what he says to us and you know, is. Is true? You don't until you try. Like, you can't, you can't. You can't really, um, place people into a basket if you don't necessarily know what they're going to do or what they're capable of without actually trying it first. I think it's like anything in life. It sounds so dumb and so simple. But again, I'm a very simple kind of person and my answers are quite simple because I think life is very simple and I think people overcomplicate everything that they do in their lives. But I don't know why, why they do this. But it's just humans, this is what we do. I think, you know, just try a bunch of stuff and, and try a bunch of agencies or external people in, see what, what fits, um, and what doesn't. But I think it's, you're better off trying than not trying and just keeping it internally. I think that's where a lot of business, uh, you know, owners go wrong is they like to control a lot of their doings and this is where they don't necessarily grow because they're not changing, they're not challenging, they're not you know, putting themselves out there, they're not being open minded about things. And this is where a lot of people kind of stay stagnant in whatever they're doing, whether it be business or individual.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I think that that might, that piece there around, um, try. I think the part where people get stuck is that they make a decision and think that that's going to be the silver bullet. And so they hire them.

Speaker A: Not making a decision is already making a decision.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, make the decision. But they hire somebody, they hire somebody externally and then they don't give that person much direction. They don't really like. I've uh, I always had the belief that if you hire an external agency, a contractor or whatever, you have to manage them like they're internal. Um, they have to have targets that they need to meet and expectations and all those sorts of things set up front so that you have something to manage back against. I think they have, they hire a marketing agency for example. They're not getting results. They say, don't really say anything about it, they don't do anything about. And they let it run on for 12 months and they've invested all of this money and they've got very little result. And it's like well, what was the goal? Dunno. Did you ever talk to them about it? Not really. I just fired them. Uh, okay, so for me that piece around like try maybe the answer for a lot of people is um, they have to go into it almost assuming that this one might not work, but someone will. And so I gotta be harsh about if it's not working, moving on and trying somebody else rather than assuming that the strategy doesn't work. I talk to people every, every week at least One person every week who tells me they've been paying for an SEO agency and they've seen no results from it. How long have you been doing it for? Uh, I had somebody just the other day who said, I've been doing it for 18 months, had no results. I went, just jumped into Semrush, uh, one of my favorite tools, jumped into Semrush and looked at their traffic, and I was like, there's no way. There's no way you've been paying $800 a month for 18 months on your SEO. There's no chance. Uh, and they have. Um, but they just let it run with no KPIs, no tracking or accountability. They just paid $800 a month for 18 months and got nothing out of it. Right. And so, um, talk to these all the time, and maybe that's the answer is just the assume they're going to be bad and then fire them when they are and hire somebody else, you know, rather than just letting it go. Making a decision within action.

Speaker A: Absolutely. That's the line I was trying to use. Yeah, you have to. You're just gonna make the decision and move along.

Speaker B: Um, okay. So I've never met anybody in business or life who has had any level of success that doesn't have some level commitment to their own learning. Um, however, everybody learns differently. I'm always interested to know what is your approach to your own learning and development? How do you seek knowledge? How do you, um, capture that knowledge? How do you work on yourself in terms of your own capabilities and, and knowledge?

Speaker A: Yeah, interesting. Um, I speak to a ton of people on LinkedIn. Like, as in always searching for certain things on LinkedIn. What people are posting about, people are talking about. Because I like to know what thing, what, what's happening based on my community conversations. I think that's one is where I learn a lot. Um, and I think number two would definitely be. I listen to a ton. Ton. A ton. When I say a ton. I listen to, like, probably two podcasts a day, if that. Because I walk a lot. Um, it's a lot. But I listen to key podcasts within my space. Either one in my space, uh, and then another one through, like, health or, you know, personal development. Um, I get a lot of content and a lot of insight and a lot of learning, and I get a lot of creativity out of those podcast I listen to, which is a. Conversations. Conversations like this with, you know, individuals that I want to hear what they have to say. Um, and I think thirdly is my team, you know for sure. I think, um, I have an amazing team around me. I have the most incredible business partner, Prashant. He's one of the smartest people I know. Um, and I think, you know, along with our enabler team, which is now changing to accelerator, um, and, you know, our board members, the people that I do business with in other businesses, um, investors that are around me, you know, my friends. I have the most amazing friends in the world. I'm so blessed with my friends. Um, I think, you know, having the right circle around you can really elevate everything in your life, whether that be business or personal. Um, so I think, you know, that's an underestimated one. A lot of people talk about it often, but they don't really understand it fully until they actually have the right people around them. And trust me, your life elevates a ton when you've got the right people around you. So I think all of those three is definitely how I learn and grow as a person and, ah, as a business partner, um, as a leader, you know, all of that.

Speaker B: So m. So you. You seek people out. You're looking for conversation. You're looking to be able to ask questions from people that.

Speaker A: I seek experience. Correct? Yeah, yeah. I like to listen to people that have gone through that have done stuff they've tried. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Same, same. I, uh, think, um, we've. We've got a similar approach, but maybe from a slightly different angle because, um, like, I read a lot.

Speaker A: I hate reading. Um, I can't concentrate.

Speaker B: And a lot of people do. A lot of people do.

Speaker A: I can't read. I can never finish a book. I've only listened. I've only finished one book in my life. Was a Naval Ravikant. That's it. Because he's like my, um, my favorite person in the world. And that's it. I can't even watch a movie fully. I haven't. I probably watched two full movies in my whole life. It's not a joke. My concentration to movies and books is zero.

Speaker B: Oh, that's. That's amazing. But different. Different mediums, right? I seek out people that really know some stuff and have an amazing story and experience in a particular area, figure out who the people are that know what they're talking about, and then I just read everything that they produce.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's the best way to learn. There's so much free information. Love that.

Speaker B: That's exactly it. That's exactly. Uh, so we have to wrap up, um, for anybody who wants to find you and come and talk to you. Where can they find you and what might they reach out about?

Speaker A: Uh, whatever they want to talk about. Um, but I think, you know, most people come to me in regards to building a product, scaling their product, or even just creating something internally that could be new innovation in their business that they haven't thought of before. Um, that's definitely something we do for sure.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: Um, and you can follow me on LinkedIn, which is where I'm M. Mainly, um, at LinkedIn, which is Belinda Agnew, or my Instagram is, uh, Belinda Agnew. Eth. Um, but yes, there's a lot of accounts at the moment on Instagram, Facebook, uh, not so much LinkedIn, but social media as a whole, um, that's going around scamming people, like, on crypto or selling crypto things. That is not me. So I only have. Okay, one Instagram and one LinkedIn.

Speaker B: Good to know. Good to know. All right, we can, um, we can drop some of the links in the show notes too, uh, to the X enabler, soon to be Accelerate.

Speaker A: Yes. Um, Accelerator.

Speaker B: Website. Uh, Accelerator. Sorry. Uh, and your LinkedIn. Uh, but it's been great having you on the show. Really enjoyed the conversation, and I'm glad we finally managed to make it.

Speaker A: We finally did this. Thank you so much, Ben. You've been amazing.