Building The Future Show - Radio / TV / Podcast

You welcome to Building the Future, hosted by Kevin Horrick. With millions of listeners a month, building the Future has quickly become one of the fastest rising programs with a focus on interviewing startups, entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs and more. The radio and TV show airs in 15 markets across the globe, including Silicon Valley. For full Showtimes, past episodes or to sponsor the show, please visit buildingthefutureshow.com. 

Welcome back to the show. Today we have Hamish Anderson, he's the founder of three piece Marketing. Hamish, welcome to the show. 

Kevin, thank you so much for having me on. 

Yeah, I'm excited to have you on the show. I think what you're doing at three piece marketing, kind of all the other stuff you're involved in is actually really innovative and cool and it's kind of a timely conversation just based on kind of what's happening in the world right now. But maybe before we dive into all that, let's get to know you a little bit better and start off with where you grew up. 

Sure. Absolutely. Well, I'm based in Sydney, Australia at the moment. I grew up here, did a stint in London for a while, as a lot of Australians do. But I was educated here, went to Macquarie University where I did my undergraduate degree specializing in marketing and psychology and then worked for a couple of years before going back to school and studying at the University of Technology in Sydney and doing my MBA where I focused a little bit more on the digital marketing sphere and started to hone my skills there a bit more interesting. 

Okay, so what got you passionate about marketing at an early age? 

That's a great question. Look, I grew up in a family of salesmen. My dad's a salesman, my grandfather was a salesman, and they're both highly successful and built companies around what they did. And I never had the passion for sales. I saw the behind the scenes as being more exciting, the strategy and the reasons to do things, whereas they were put your foot in the door and make things happen by talking to people and just don't take note for answer. And I liked the art of subtlety a bit more. So I think marketing drew me because I heard all about the sales and the things that it could do, but I liked the nuance of why people thought things or why they wanted to do something. 

So I got into it that way, I suppose because it really ticked a few boxes for me. 

Very cool. Okay, so you get out of university, maybe walk us through your career, maybe just some highlights along the way because you've done a ton of stuff up until what you're doing today? 

Sure. Yeah. So I did university. I was working, as I was at university for an advertising agency, and as advertising agencies do then merge. So who it was back then isn't who they are now, but they were called Emirati purist Lintas, which I think is now low hunt in Australia anyway. And I worked there for a couple of years, then finished my degree and did a trip with a friend around Europe for six months before landing in London, where I decided to take my skills that I'd learned and put them into marketing properly and started working at the University of College, sorry, the University College of London in their marketing and sponsorships department and started to understand a little bit more about the beast that is marketing and what's involved with the grind. 

And did that for a while before coming back to Australia and going back to agency land, working in medical advertising and marketing and understanding a little bit more about the intricacies of how you have to learn about what is ethical, what you can and can't say, and really trying to find the strategic imperative behind something, because you can't just go out there, especially in Australia, and say whatever you want about pharmaceutical and healthcare. You have to be a lot more particular about what you're saying so you don't lead people down the wrong track. And that really gave me an insight into there's something here to make people think a certain way and how you can get messages across. 

And that really excited me, which is when I started to go, oh, you know, what if we paired this with digital, where you can actually start getting some feedback? And this is early days where feedback was, if we put a campaign out and get them to email us, we'll see how many people are responding. And that was a great metric and I really got excited by that. And so then that fast tracked my career, I suppose, into doing more marketing and agency style roles, where were focusing a little bit more on the digital evolution that we could take companies through. So then I started working in digital agencies or working in marketing functions, where I could really start to grow out the digital function and how companies were utilizing it. 

So that took me forward a few years working in construction companies, an IVF company, which I'm really excited by some of the work which we did there, and then eventually starting my own business nine years ago, I say a couple of years ago when I realized the other day just how long ago it was, but yeah, where I started to want to take big company and big agency thinking and bring it to clients in a way which was actually meaningful. And not necessarily super expensive, and have adopted a philosophy which I still use today at three piece marketing, which is adding value at every interaction and getting clients to spend less on production so they can actually put more money into lead sourcing. But giving them that big agency, big. 

Company thinking, okay, it makes sense, but how are you actually doing that? Because that sounds a lot easier than it really is. 

Yeah, I just don't take a salary. No, look, the way I do it is I've got a local team in Australia where we do all the strategic thinking. And it's the head of creative, it's strategic, it's the head of infrastructure, all local. So we can have our team meetings and get togethers and do all of our thinking for clients here locally. But we built our own team in the Philippines, not outsourced team. It's our own team on the ground that we can pull from one project to another. And there's cost advantages, obviously, with exchange rates for us, we pay them well. So we've got the best of breed over there, but it's a lot less than we'd have to pay here or in the States or in Canada. And it means we're passing that on to our clients. 

We know that especially in Australia, we're one of the lower priced companies offering what we do. And when we then go offshore, because we've got a number of clients around the world, our advantage is that the Australian dollar is not that strong against many other currencies, so we become even more affordable. So we are able to do it by virtue of the fact that we have a diversified employee footprint. 

Got it. Okay. And I guess especially with what's going on in tech and kind of the world right now, with all the uncertainty, especially around even just like all the layoffs and stuff and people's budgets are shrinking, it makes sense. And your business model then, right, to support that? 

It does. Look, we did this a number of years ago when the world was still expanding, but I think we realized early the power of technology and that you could have a diversified workforce and that there were tools like Zoom and Meetup and all of these other things that we could actually bring the workforce to you and interact on a daily basis. And so we did this nice and early, and were really embedded down during the pandemic and all of these things that kept people at home. So we then were able to grow our footprint and start talking to people. 

And as the world is now laying people off, and as you say, there's this crunch coming, we have got the resources and I think some resilience in place to actually allow us to speak to people about their problems and to do so in a way that gets their attention. Because we can say, we're still offering you this, but we're doing it at a great price. 

Yeah, that's fair. So walk us through the types of services that you guys offer. 

Look, I hate to put labels on us, but we are a full stack agency, really. We like to preface eveRything, though, in strategy, everything has to have a strategic imperative. We don't want to be a production house. We're not just someone you come along to and say, this is our website, build it for us. We want to understand a little bit more about why. What is the audience persona that we're talking to? Is this UX and UI going to talk to them and actually achieve your goals? What are your goals? Not only from a marketing perspective, but one of the things I learned in my career is that often that marketing function gets left out of the boardroom and there's a pivot that's made and they're like, oh, we're going to do this. 

And you sign off at the beginning of the year and halfway through they're like, oh, we forgot to tell you, we've actually gone left here and you need to catch up. So we want to understand what business goals are. We regularly check in on those, and then we make sure that the marketing goals are aligned to that. And once we understand that, as I say, the imperative behind those, we then put campaigns in place. So we will build the website out, but we've put those adjustments in place to make sure that it's a little bit more interactive and it's speaking to the right audience. And then we'll build campaigns that support that. And we look beyond just the tried and true. 

It's not just about Google, it's not just about Facebook or Meta, it's not just about TikTok, it's where is your audience, how can we reach them and how do we talk to them in a way that engages them? So we really want to bring all of that together and make sure that we're lining those boxes up to bring the best value to our clients. 

No, that makes a lot of sense. And I'm curious to get your thoughts on this. And if you run into this all the time, I deal with a lot of startups and whatnot, and even just some, even businesses that have been around for a while, it boggles my mind how much their stuff does not match each other. And I'm not talking subtly like one campaign or their trade show booth is orange, but their app is like all green, for example. And you're like, sure, they might match complementary color wise, but they are like two separate companies. Am I correct in that? And how important is it to match? 

It is. I have a mantra that consistency is the key to success and that comes across everything from your color palette to the tone of voice that you use to the campaign that you're putting out there. Some people have these knee jerk reactions. That campaign didn't work. How do you know? It's been out there a week and we haven't seen a tick in sales yet. Okay, let's step back. What is the general purchase cycle? How much are you asking people to spend? Let's look at these things that will actually affect their decisions. And one of the things that will affect people's decision is the trust they have in you. 

And if they don't feel that they can trust you because you're orange on the stand and you're green in email, and then you're blue here, or your tone of voice is condescending here and it's light hearted over there, they don't know who you are. You come across as neurotic and they're not going to trust you. So 100%. One of the big things we are pushing with our clients at the moment and in our discussions with potential new clients is how consistent are you? Is your tone of voice the same? Are you putting out things in social media that don't have any harmony with what they're going to? 

Then come through your website and see if your messages are disparate, if your color palettes, your font usage, whatever is all over the place, people are going to think you are and they're not going to engage with you. So you're spot on, Kevin, we totally on the same page. 

It just. It still boggles my mind, even though we're talking about it, is how many people just don't seem to care or make time for it. And to your point is, if nobody trusts you, it doesn't matter how great or how many features you have or whatever. If nobody actually logs in or signs up or pays you a nickel, it doesn't matter if you have one feature or a million features. 

Yeah, that's right. We boil it down and look, given your background in UX and mean, I try and take some of those things and say Ux and UI is not just about how you interface with something. Think about it. When you go into a brick and mortar store. If you go in and you look at a pair of jeans in the window and you walk in and the salesperson says to you, how can I help you? And you say, I saw that pair of jeans in the window. And I say, yeah, go find them out the back. That user experience is pretty crappy. And if they say, yeah, the blue jeans, you're like, no, they're red in the window. The green ones, the blue ones. I'm talking about the blue. 

If you confuse people in store or you do that on your online store, whatever, they're going to hate you. So, yeah, we boil it down to, and same as I'm sure you do, make sure that there's seven components ticked off from a UX perspective, usefulness, desirability, accessibility, credibility, findability, usability and value. And then we say, if you're not consistent with all of those across all of that, all of the time, you're going to disenfranchise people and that's not going to be good for business. 

No, that makes sense. So walking through those, at what stage do you typically like to work with a company, or does it not really matter? 

I think that we will work with anybody at any point in time based on a key provider. They have to be ready to challenge the way they're thinking already. If you're doing marketing and you're coming to us going, oh, we've done this in the past and we just need you to do the same. Why are you changing agencies or why are you using it? That doesn't make sense. You need to be willing to embrace change for us to push back on you with the view that we're not doing it to be contrarian. We're not doing it because we're going to want to extract more money from you. We're doing it to get the best results possible. And it's like if you go to a doctor and you get a diagnosis that's less than what you expected. 

You're not going to take that first docTor's opinion. You're going to go to a second one and get a second opinion. And you should do the same with your marketing. We encourage people, speak to an agency, then speak to us. Speak to us and speak to someone else. We're confident enough in what we're telling you and we believe in what we're doing to say that even if you speak to someone else, what we've said to you is right. And we hope that you'll come back and talk us because of multiple factors. 

Yeah, that makes sense. So I'm curious, how does AI play into this space? Because it's all doom and gloom right now. I have my opinions on it and we can talk about that. But how does that, in your opinion, play into the space so far? 

Look, I think there's an inevitability about AI. We can wax lyrical about how bad it is and what it's going to do that's detrimental to society, and I believe that there's a strong argument there for some of those factors. The truth is, though, I don't think it's going anywhere. And it's about how you can get ahead of the curve and use it in a way that is advantageous and ethical. I think those two things need to be hand in glove. Look, AI is going to change the way people obviously are producing content first and foremost, whether or not that's just written content or it's going to start moving into. I mean, we've all seen AI created images. There's AI now with interviews that are being put out. 

There was the recent debacle around the Michael Schumacher interview where he was interviewed based on previous interviews and it went out as a new one. There's a lot of that unethical aspect to it out there. I think it's about embracing it and using it to actually want to communicate with your audience in a way that's meaningful to them. If we lose sight of the fact that every interaction, marketing and business is about engaging other humans and we just rely solely on technology, whether it's reporting mechanisms, AI or other, we are losing the human side of marketing and then marketing is going to go down the pipes. I think we need to understand it's a tool, but it is not the whole engine. 

Yeah, well, and I always argue too, we've been using templates for things for years. Sure, it doesn't generate that one custom to my needs. I needed to start somewhere and evolve it, but now it's just down the road a little bit further. Right. If everybody has access to the same tools for free, basically at this point, well, everybody's just moved up a level or two. You still need to add that human element or it just doesn't matter because everybody's putting out the same content, really? 

That's right. Absolutely. I totally agree. I totally agree. It's like that argument many years ago where people were moving into SaaS and then cloud. I don't trust my data in the cloud. And you're like, why? Because it could be stolen. I said, you've been working with the cloud for years I have not. I said, have you been using email? It's in the cloud. They're like, oh, I didn't think of it like that. And it's one of those once the penny drops, people get it. And I think that there's still this negativity around the whole focus of AI, which is still scaring people. But you're right, if you don't step into the benchmark which is lifting at the moment, you're going to be left behind and then play catch up or have to pay for expensive tools. So the key is now to understand it. 

And even if people are listening now and they think, I don't want to use it, learn about it, because if you don't learn about it, you're going to get left even further behind. 

I also think too, people are already using it and they don't even know they're already using it. Like Google Keynote was just ending as were getting on this call and they're billing it into search. Neva's had it into search, other things have had it into start. It's going to be an office right away. It's going to be in all your Google products. You're just going to be using it and you're not even going to know anymore. 

Yeah, they're all using it. And whether or not Microsoft is building it into copilot and doing all of these things as well. And it doesn't matter what tool you use because you're using one of the big boys, ultimately you're going to be using it and not even realizing totally, I'm on the same page there. 

Interesting. So I want to get a little bit into what advice do you give to? Because a lot of people that are founders or startups or kind of newer companies will listen to the show. What advice do you give them to? Maybe start down the marketing kind of brand building and lead generation path because all those things are very important, really hard to nail, especially when you're trying to still figure out product market fit. 

Yeah, look, we have a couple of tools that we utilize to help these businesses, but one of the most important questions that we ask as part of one of these tools is work out what you know about your market and work out all the things that you know from who they are to what they like to where they consume, and then look at what you don't know about them. Do you not know that what they're doing after they get off the commute, on the train, on the way home? Or do you not know what other products they've used in the past. Build those lists together and then work out what do you want people to know about you. And then more importantly, work out what they don't know about you already. 

Because when you start figuring out what you don't know about them and what they don't know about you actually have this information divide that you can start filling. There's a void that sits there between those two. Normally, if you don't know something about them and you can figure it out and they don't know something about you, but you can tell them about it, there's where you have this information connect that's really more meaningful. Because if you go and yell at people, which is sometimes what marketing is, and you're saying the same thing as everybody else, well, then how are you going to stand out? But if you can stand there and yell at them and you know that their first, middle and last name, you're going to get their attention a lot more than someone just yelling their first name. 

So start to learn a little bit more about them, figure out what they're passionate about, and then those things that you don't know and then tell them what they need to hear, that's important to you. And those two things will really help you connect with your audience a little bit stronger. 

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I'm curious how important is kind of social media these days because it seems to really work for certain types of people and brands and others not so much. Is that a fair statement or do you just need to figure out what works for your brand or company on certain platforms? 

I think there's a little bit of A and a little bit of B, really, because I think some companies need to use social media to drive their business completely because they can put products out there, they can use influences, they can do all of these things that actually leverages social media, and then there's others that it doesn't make as much sense, but what it can do is continue a conversation. If you're a business where you're relying, well, you have a longer lead time on decision making. Let's say it's buying a car. You're not going to be selling cars through Instagram or TikTok, but what you can be doing is talking about their product advantages and showing how it can be used and doing all of these things, which adds another touch point to their decision making. It's another brand reminder, all these other things. 

So I don't think that whether or not you're on social media or not, there's conversation happening. If you remove yourself from the room, then you're never going to know what's there and you're never going to be injecting yourself in the conversation. By being there, you're part of the conversation. You can learn as well. I think too many businesses, and we say this to our clients, too many businesses still use social media as a one way platform. Turn it into a communication. Have a conversation with people, listen to what they're saying and then respond accordingly. Don't just keep yelling at them what you want to say because that's old school. So I think it's integral. 

It should be part of an integrated marketing strategy where you are saying, this is our core pillar and that might be social media, but it might be that it's a website and brick and mortar, that you're going to support it through other mediums and drive people to one of those two pillars. 

That makes a lot of sense. And yeah, you're creating content for the platform is also super important. Right? Like so many people post the same video or whatever across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. Sometimes that works, sometimes that doesn't work. Right. 

I agree and I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, sometimes it will work and it depends on the nature of the content that you're putting out there. But doing it every time for every post is boring because people will do research of who you are and they want multiple touch points. If you are putting out the same content all the time, you're not speaking to the audience in the frame of mind that they're in. I use LinkedIn during my professional hours, but when know going home or at home, I don't want to be seeing the same post on Facebook or on YouTube because my mindset's different. So talking to me in the same way is not going to get my attention. I'm a dad. 

At the end of the day, I talk to my kids in a different way to how I'm talking to you. I'm still the same person, but I'm not going to need to have the same conversations with you as I do with them. So talk to me differently as well, because I'm a human and I want to be spoken to in the mindset that I'm in. And if you're just beating me with the same message, I'm going to tune out faster. 

Yeah, that's an interesting way of putting it. I never really heard it like that. Talk to me. Yeah, that's smart. Okay, interesting. So I'm curious about some ideas around maybe lead generation, because what have you found that's worked? Obviously, probably different things work for different industries and who you're trying to target. But what are your thoughts around some of the more traditional stuff, like the cold calling, cold email towards maybe just trying to run some ads and everywhere kind of in between, or what are you seeing and what's working? Or what advice do you give to people? 

I think I'll ask a quick question. Are you asking for what's working for us or what works for our clients? 

Maybe both. 

Yeah. And the reason I ask is it changes. Look, if I talk about clients first, every industry is different, and we work with clients across healthcare, construction, agriculture, hospitality, everything's going to be different. How they go out and get different customers and different clients for us. We're dealing with all these different industries, but they're looking for marketing. So when we build campaigns for them, it might touch on all of those things. It might be a cold outreach, it might be utilizing a database, it might be Google ads for us. We're using, I can proudly say around 90% of our business is word of mouth and repeat business. And that could be someone who we worked with in organization A who's then gone to organization B and they've taken us with them. 

Or they have said to an organization C, I've worked with Hamish and the team before, they're awesome, you should try them. And we build our business that way. The rest of it comes down to, and networking, I think is a large part of that as well. Getting out to when you could industry events and talking to people. And as I said, I think earlier, one of the things that I'm passionate about is adding value at every interaction, whether you're a client or not. If I can add value, same as now, if I can add value to someone who's listening, then I think that I've done my job for the day and I see that as being important. Do we do cold outreach, emails, phone calls, et cetera? Absolutely. 

If I see that there's an opportunity and I've looked at someone's website or social presence and think you could improve it by doing this, sure. I'll Reach out and we'll get someone on the team to do the same, because I think that sometimes you don't know what you don't know and you might be doing your marketing thinking. This is humming along, but that's a business with 60 people. But it's been led by Mum and Dad for the same 35 years and they've been doing it the way they've done it, which is great, but they haven't kept up with the times. They're not using AI or social media to the extent because they've done it in house and they don't know how to do best of breed and they've never invested that into their business because they've never needed to. 

But now the crunch is coming. There's competitors AI. If they don't evolve, well then they're not going to keep up and they don't know that sometimes. So yeah, cold outreach will absolutely work sometimes. 

Interesting. And obviously you would just basically try a bunch of different things, see what works and doesn't work in the industry. 

Yeah, look, everything is there, every industry is different, everybody is different. And if anyone taking tips from this, I would say just because it hasn't worked ten times doesn't mean that you shouldn't try, because I can have the same conversation with ten different people in a room about politics and no one's going to see eye to eye with me. Why are they going to see eye to eye with you on a product that you're talking about? It's all nuanced, it's all very particular to each person. Don't give up. Look at refining. Of course, if you're sending out emails and you know that you've got tracking on there and you've got no open rate, well then of course tweak your subject, of course. Change the time of day you send it. Try those factors first before you throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

Don't just go, didn't work. Change this completely. Use market intelligence and the data that you get back to actually figure out where you can chop and change in an intelligent way. It's not just about marketing had become a precision tool. Don't use blunt force trauma to try and get your way. 

No, that makes sense. I also find that people expect results now because we're such a now society these days and it can take weeks, months, sometimes even longer for some of this stuff to start working, especially if you're in a software sales cycle. And sometimes clients don't buy for 18. 

Months, procurement cycles will change and you need to take stock of that. I mean, I used to work in an IVF industry and I proudly say helped change the conversation around that as part of the team. But one of the things we recognized early on was that the decision making process for someone who is unable to conceive and then considering their options and then making a decision is 18 months. If we run a social campaign, there's no tracking in place that would be able to track that 18 months down the track necessarily. So we had to look at changing the metrics that we use to understand how are we changing the conversation? Have we changed it online? Have we got more people talking about it? Those things are as important. 

And over time, what we did was we actually put more messaging out there because people didn't recognize that there was such a stigma in this industry talking about inability to conceive or falling pregnant. And there's so much secrecy about it that we needed to change that. And what we did in doing that was we actually brought the waiting time, not the waiting time, but decision making time down from 18 months down to 14 months. Those four months are huge for someone, especially if they're trying to fall pregnant, because those four months can be a make or break in some instances for some families. Or it's also you've got four months extra that you're not in this limbo of heartbreak. So we change those conversations and we change the metrics that we measured at that point in time and that becomes important as well. 

So don't necessarily just think, oh, I have to get them buying at this point. Look at your decision making cycles, look at the procurement times, as you said as well, those things. Can you change some of those factors? So it's not, if it's a software cycle, is 18 months, is it usually twelve months to get in the door? Can you get that down to eleven months? And is that a win? Look at some of those factors as well. 

Yeah, no, that's interesting because I find sometimes startups come with this innovative idea, but then they're not innovative about how to get the word out about it. It's not like you launch this product and a million people rush to your website and hit by. Right, but there is that mindset still sometimes, especially if you're a nontechnical founder, I find. 

Anyway, I totally agree. Every founder is more passionate about their product and their business than anyone else will ever be. I try and be as passionate about business, my clients business, as they are, but I never will be. I'm not as invested in it as them. But there is a beauty in that for them because it's about getting them to tap into that and then extract some of that information that I don't know that I can take to market. But in doing that, explaining to them, you know what, you are passionate and you have all this to offer the market, but we need to take a slower approach you didn't get from where you are or where you were to where you are today overnight. You didn't just conceptualize this and it happened like that. 

Nor is anyone going to hear about it and snap their fingers and suddenly want to buy from you. It's going to take time because they need to learn, they need to consider who you are because you're new to the market or they don't know about this new industry or this new product. Give them time to develop confidence, and confidence is only going to come through consistency of message, consistency of brand experience, and by telling them something that they don't already know and how you can solve that for them. And when you do those things, it's going to take time, but it's going to be more rewarding for you at the end. 

No, that makes total sense. So I'm curious, what advice do you give to somebody that's maybe later stage, maybe been around for a number of years, their stuff's a little bit all over the place and they're trying to rein it in. And maybe they have an internal marketing person, but sometimes having a fresh set of eyes and maybe some external people come in and try to help clean that up, because sometimes it was maybe partially the marketing person's fault. Maybe they're new in the role, maybe they had no control over it. What do you advice you give to kind of reining it all in and trying to get everything matching like we kind of talked about earlier from look and feel, tone, everything? Because that's a daunting task. 

Sometimes it's a horrible task because people don't know where to start and they're like, it's a mess and we don't know why. And it's okay, let's step it back. If we strip everything back, what is it that you want to be known for? Do you want to be known as if you're a water bottle? To show my example here, are you the biggest water bottle? Are you the longest thermally insulated? Are you the cheapest? Are you made from sustainable material? Strip it back. What do you want to be known for? What are you saying to people at the moment? Have you tried to become a product of complete utility, which is not who you were at the beginning? 

Come back to your roots, look at what you want people to know and get back to that understanding of what is it that you're trying to solve for people and you didn't go into the business to be the same as everybody else. So don't make your marketing be the same as everybody else is what I have to say to a lot of clients. Drip it back. What was it that you're passionate about? Why did you go into business? Or why did the business go five years ago? If you're a 30 year old business, what was it that you're passionate about when things were last working for you and where did you change that approach? 

And then is that where we can then see that when you introduced a water bottle that was suddenly only for cold water drinks and not a thermos, did that change things for yOu? If you can understand what you've been doing and what you need to be doing, you'll see where the disconnect is. Just step back and put a lens on. And this is why we say, get a second opinion on your marketing. If you've been doing it for a while, sometimes just a conversation. You don't need a new agency to come in and change your website or do all of these things, but it's a strategic piece where they can sit there with you and ask some of these hard questions and put a mirror up on you. Do it with a friend. 

If you're a small business, get someone to come in and ask you the horrible questions that you don't necessarily want to be asked. But when you are, you have to answer, and that will give you a direction as well. 

Sure. What advice do you give to companies struggling with? I've had this a number of times in my careers where the CEO or somebody in the C suite maybe has been around forever at the company, maybe even the founder of the company, they're so set on their ways. But everybody else at the company, or at least high level management, know that they need to change and kind of modernize. How do you work with companies like that? Or kind of like convince your CEO or kind know? 

Is there an easy answer for that one? Kevin, because I've come up against that one several times, and I would love to say that there is a simple solution to that. I think sometimes what it is I've noticed is, especially with the C suite or the owner, is that they're scared of change because they've been burned before. When they have, and it comes back to what I said before, if you can understand what you don't know already, you can then answer it. So sometimes it's a matter of asking them, okay, so you don't want to change. You've said that this doesn't work. Tell me, when did you try this and what went wrong so we can understand what not to do because you're just saying, don't do it. I need to know why not to do it. 

And what went wrong when you did, because you might then give me something that I'm like, oh, crap, if I knew thAt, we would definitely not do this and we will change our approach. Because you tell me that when you do that, the market thinks that you're bonkers and they're not going to engage with you. Or is it that something else happened? And that understanding will give you a really strong platform to then say to them, okay, let's try this, which is totally different to what you've done before, which burned you, and therefore you're going to feel more comfortable with and take them on that journey. But if they don't feel heard, they're never going to want to hear the story and then approve it. 

No, I actually think that's really good advice. And rephrasing that question can really kind of open their mind to at least trying it again or trying something again, instead of just saying like, no, this isn't for us. 

Well, I think perspective is everything if you can change perspective on things. I did a talk once where I talked about perspective and you talk about Pink Elpin in the room and how do you change perspective on how big an elephant is? You tip it over, it's a lot smaller. And I use this framework and people who are not watching won't see. But I've got two fingers up creating a frame like, let's call it a six X four frame. When you look at it that way and you look through it, you can only see certain things. But if you turn that a different way, you'll see something completely different. When you change perspective on how you look at things, you will actually have different ways of coming at a problem. And that can be the pivotal difference between success and failure. 

Or convincing someone to try something new. 

No, I actually think that's really good advice. I'm curious, though, you've been doing this a long time. Is there things that you've noticed that we haven't covered that you'd wish people would maybe do more of or really stop doing? 

I touched on it before and I don't know if I gave it enough emphasis, but treating online completely differently to what you would treat people offline, the user experience is more than just colors and fonts on a screen and how many clicks people have to take. It's about treating them like a human and actually getting them to engage because they want to, not tricking them down a pathway or I used that gene's example before. Make your digital experience. Make your marketing experience holistic and wholesome. Don't make this a. I mean, marketing for many years had this reputation of, you're selling me something that I don't want. And I think we've evolved past it to a large extent. But if you go down these routes of talking to people like they are transactional items in a process, they're never going to trust you. 

And I think that we need to make sure that Ux comes back to this experience of engaging with people and telling stories and getting them to buy in and be passionate about what you're offering. I think if we can do that, then we've got much better chance of talking to people. And I'm passionate about seeing the new. It's not so new, but the newly termed scrolly telling, which I'm sure you know all about as people scroll through long pages, whether it's on a desktop screen or on their device, how do you change that experience so that you're telling a story and bringing them on a pathway rather than just throwing reams of information or video or images at them? Make it something that they want to engage with. People are built on stories. 

As a kid, you love hearing the story about when your granddad did this or your grandma did that. It gives you energy. Do the same with your marketing. Make people want to tell your story for you, and then your marketing budget can come down because they're perpetuating what you need them to. 

Yeah, that's interesting you said that. Because I always tell people that I think everybody at a company should be doing user experience. They might not be writing the code, doing the design, but if there's an issue, let's have a conversation around it. Right to your point. And then the other thing that I think that seems to get lost these days is just if you'Re not the target market, you may hate it. And if you're the CEO and you're not the target market, but your target market loves it, does the CEO or upper management really need to love it? And I would argue depends sometimes. No, because if you tested it and it's converting but somebody hates it, I love that sometimes. And I'm sure you get this all the time. 

It's like you have to make everybody internally love something and then your customers love it, too. And how important is internal people loving your message if it's working and converting and putting across to your potential customers and your customers? Sounds like you are agreeing with me here. 

Oh, absolutely. I've never thought of it quite like that. I love it. Look, it does remind me something I once was told when I was coming up through the ranks of advertising, and I haven't put it into the same eloquent way you have, but where there was a campaign and you have big corporations, obviously they conceptualize the campaign, then they produce the campaign, then they'll do testing on the campaign and then they'll launch the campaign. And the CEO saw this campaign and went, oh, that one, it's so old, get rid of it. They're like, no, it's only old internally. We haven't taken it to market yet. And I think you're right. You said it really well. If the CEO or the C suite don't love something, but your target market do, at the end of the day, who are you trying to satisfy? 

I think shareholders or the owners are going to judge you based on the results and the result is not, oh, the CEO loved this, therefore we've succeeded. 

Yeah. And that seems to get lost so many times in product and marketing and kind of everything, at least in my experience. 

I love it. It's really good. I think you're right. I've not, as I said, not thought of it like that. 

Yeah, interesting. We're kind of coming to the end of the show, but is there any other advice or thoughts that you want to give the listener? 

Look, I think if I was to give advice, one piece, that if you're starting your Business or you're young, I call it the pedal to the metal conundrum. Everyone when they're building their business thinks they have to go flat out. They have to just do everything at pace and hard and they can't rest. Step back. Let someone else take the wheel sometimes and look around you. This is a journey. It's not just an end destination. And if you're not stepping back and looking at what's happening outside your front view, you're going to lose track of the market. You're not going to understand what they really want and you're just going to be barreling down the wrong highway. So make sure you step back. And you sometimes ask for different perspectives or you challenge the way you're thinking. 

You take the scenic tour or you sometimes take a break and refresh yourself because you're going to get to where you want faster when people are helping you get there. Don't always think you have to do this alone or you have to do it at breakneck pace. 

So how do you make sure you keep that up? Because it's really easy to get sucked back in, especially as an owner or founder of something, right? 

Absolutely. Found it myself a few times. And what it is about being honest with yourself and then leaning on to others. Get yourself a business mentor, talk to your husband or wife about, hey, when I get like this, I know I'm stressed, so I need you to dial me back. And if I'm saying no, I'm fine. Force me to do something to get out of my comfort zone, which is business related, for a day, a week, whatever. I'm telling you, speak to a friend and say, I need you to give me a health, not a physical health check, but a business health check once a month. By asking me these five questions I have to answer. 

I won't give them to you, but I have to step back and do whatever it is people know themselves better than we will ever be able to assume for them right now. But test yourself by getting out of your comfort zone and getting someone to hold you accountable. And if you can do that, then you're going to actually have a way of making sure you're treating on the right path at all times. That's that whole thing. When you walk through a desert, you think you're going in a straight line. You look back and you've been going curves everywhere. If you stop and look at all the time, you'll go in a straight alignment. And because people are helping you. 

Yeah, I think that's actually really good advice. Just having somebody close to you that you can check on you and even talk you off the ledge sometimes, right? You have a bad week or whatever month, and you're like, I just going to quit this and then have somebody objectively say, whoa, do you actually want to talk this through? Right? 

And look, you know what? Have a reservoir of good things that you love about what you're doing so that you can remind yourself, because it's easy to see the bad when the bad is happening. It's not always easy to see the good. Just remind yourself of why you're doing this in the first place and have a list. The same way that you have a list of things to hold yourself accountable, to have a list of things that you love about it and that you have achieved or will achieve because of it. It's not all bad doom and gloom that you have to look at and hold yourself accountable on both sides. It can be the good as well. 

No, I think that's really good advice. But how about we close the show with mentioning where people can get more information about yourself, the company and any other links you want to mention. 

Look, yeah, if people want to jump on look, website is probably the easiest way to find us to start with threepeace Marketing. That's the number three spelt out. Three and P-I-E-C-E marketing. Jump on. You'll find all of our details there for our socials, et cetera. We're undertaking a new website revamp, so they might come and give us some feedback on that. I'm always going to be open to that because our current site's a little bit old. Give me feedback as well. I'm happy to hear it, but I'd love to speak to more clients. We're working with clients across the world, across Australia, across Asia. So wherever you are, don't think, oh, they're in Australia. They can't work with us. We definitely can. So if you need some advice, a thought, a question, please reach out. 

Perfect, man. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to be on the show, and I look forward to keeping in touch with you and have a good rest of your day. 

Thanks very much, Kevin. It's been great to be here. 

Thank you. Okay, bye. 

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