Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
What sets this podcast apart? We believe in the power of meaningful marketing—a holistic approach that prioritises authenticity, connection, and purpose, whilst still turning a profit.
Chantal Gerardy is an International Award Winning Marketing Strategist who empowers purpose-led businesses to revolutionise their online marketing approach and create a brand that resonates deeply with their online audience. If you're tired of cookie-cutter marketing advice, and seek strategies that truly make a difference, this podcast is for you.
If you are a business owner feeling overwhelmed, stressed, or struggling to cut through the noise online? We've got your back!
Our podcast is tailored for entrepreneurs hungry for clarity, confidence, and tangible results in their online marketing. Our podcast isn't just about boosting sales; it's about creating an efficient marketing machine that reflects your values, passion and purpose. Whether you're stuck or looking to maximise your marketing, we're here to guide you every step of the way.
Our episodes dive deep into practical skills, customer-generating strategies, and streamlined systems to help you thrive without relying on paid ads. From mastering social media, creating content that converts, ranking on google, getting your website to work, lead list building and email marketing, each episode is packed with tips and techniques to help you thrive online.
Join me each week as we explore management and monetisation online marketing strategies designed to reduce your time online while increasing your impact. With our guidance, you'll align your business and marketing team more closely, ensuring every effort moves you towards growth. From overcoming challenges to seizing opportunities, each episode is packed with actionable advice to help you thrive in the world of online marketing and effective management.
Are you ready to transform your online marketing, build a business that you enjoy, and leave a lasting impression?
Tune in to the Meaningful Marketing Podcast and unlock the secret sauce to marketing success.
📈 More from Meaningful Marketing
📥 Download our FREE Marketing Guide
🎧 Catch all episodes
👉 themeaningfulmarketingpodcast.com
🌐 Learn more
👉 onlinebusinessmarketing.com.au
This podcast is brought to you by pod pro Australia,
social media, Google email marketing systems, website traffic, and the endless content creation that comes with marketing. It's overwhelming, right? Say goodbye to endless stress and hello to clarity with the meaningful marketing podcast. In this podcast, I will share with you fast and free practical methods to help you manage, monetize, and market your business all infused with a healthy dose of motivation.
Let's do this.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Meaningful Marketing Podcast. Today I've got the lovely Damien here all the way from Brisbane down on the Gold Coast. So Damien is a business coach, he's an entrepreneur, he's a public speaker, multiple business owner, and I'm so excited to have him here today to talk to him about his unique, meaningful method to run businesses and handle marketing.
So so good to have you here Damien today.
So,
tell us a little bit about your story.
The very
beginning of Little Damo.
Well, I grew up in western suburbs of Sydney. Single mum, four kids kind of situation. So, don't come from any money. And then I ran away and joined the army. I was in the army for 14 years.
And then I left the army and I went into business for myself. I've done a whole 15 years now and I've done a whole heap of different things. Um, Businesses very successful and some spectacularly collapsing. And so I've been through the trenches of, of the army and the trenches of business as well. Yeah, it's been, been interesting.
Yeah, that's good. So share for us a little bit about how you got into business after the army. Like what was the journey of that for you?
I think for me, I was always pretty driven and ambitious about making my life. meaningful and successful. And the army was a great start for a kid who came from nothing because I, you know, you get paid, you get trained, you get a lot of experience very early in life.
And, and so then after I did my time in the army, I really wanted to get into business cause I wanted to be self employed. I wanted to grow something meaningful and have the freedom. That being self employed can give you and also the rewards, which I think is why everyone goes into business for themselves is more time, more money, more control, right?
And then of course, most of us get smacked in the face with the reality of that and it's not necessarily that easy. And then I kind of liken it to a boxing career. You have to sort of get knocked out a couple of times if you want to win the belt. And yeah, so that's why I went in. I did work for someone else very briefly and I intended to.
I worked for them for a few years, but then I just, when I sort of got inside that business, I could just, there was a lot of unethical things that I was not comfortable with. So I decided to, to leave early and start my own business.
So tell us about the spectacular failures because everyone gets into business and they think it's just going to all be roses and it's a lot of up and downs, a lot of challenges and a lot of learning.
So share with us some of those.
Yeah, I think, and I'm quite open about my failures because I think that's where I can actually do the most good is helping people to learn from my mistakes so they don't have to make those mistakes themselves. But I've done a whole heap of things. I think at the very start, the first business failure I had is I went into business with family and with a family member and, and what I discovered is, you know, people say never go into business with.
You know, friends and family and people don't understand what that, why that is. And I think it's, it's a lazy recruiting thing where you go, well, I trust my family, I trust my friends, so they won't let me down. But then what happens is their expectation is that you will cut them some slack. You won't yell at them, you know, and then what ends up happening is they end up underperforming.
and making mistakes, and then you can't fire them because they're your friend, and then, you know, as I say to people now, the fastest way to lose a friendship is to go into business with that person. So, that was one of my first things, and that was a landscaping company, and, and basically I just, I dropped probably a hundred grand into that, and before I had to cut it, and then that family member was like, why are you giving up?
And I'm like, well, you're not putting any money in. It's not the money, man. And, um, And so that was, uh, a hard lesson learnt. And I think one of the problems that I've perhaps suffered from is being I'm just too optimistic, and I'm saying I will work it out as we go. No, you need a plan. You need an actual plan.
You need to be sure that what you're about to embark upon is viable and is actually going to work. So that's one example. I've had a very successful, my most successful business is actually in its second version because despite it being so successful, we had a company that we'd done a lot of work with.
They owed us a lot of money and they went under. And then so through no fault of our own, we ended up going into contraction and ultimately two years later being forced to go under ourselves, which was really, really painful, very embarrassing, very painful. and very stressful. And I think that, you know, people should not underestimate how challenging business can be.
And when that company went under, it also took down a couple of other things, other businesses that I had started and I was subsidising them until they were profitable. But because the first business then got in trouble, then that flowed through. And I think one of my key messages for people If you are not absolutely certain that it's a viable business, do not start it.
Do not just go in with hope and optimism and, oh, I'll find a way. You might not, and you might lose your house, you might lose all of your savings and things like that. So, be very, very careful in the first place what you go into. I wouldn't discourage anyone from going into business. Definitely go into business.
Just make sure you're going into something. That's, that's going to work.
And I think the lesson here as well is that shit does hit the fan like when you're running a business and it's unexpected shit. So even with a plan, there is going to be a roller coaster ride of ups and downs and unexpected things.
They are going to be learnings and like with yourself, you could have stayed knocked down, but you didn't. You got back up again and you kept punching through, right?
Yeah, I did. A lot of my friends call me Mr. Resilience, uh, because, but I think I've also just got a bit of a healthy ego as well, like, and someone said to me, well, you only fail when you quit, and I'm like, okay, well, and if in hindsight now, my only regret is that I didn't get back on the horse faster, I probably spent it.
a bit too much time just sort of sobbing and feeling sorry for myself and playing small. Whereas when things go wrong, and I really enjoy helping other business people now, but and what I say to them is that when things go wrong, it's usually a lot went right. And there was only one or two things that actually went wrong, but often people will jettison the entire idea, because like, oh that doesn't work.
And so it's really important, and not just in business, but in relationships, in anything in your life that goes wrong, it's really important that you just stop and think, well what went right? And what was the actual, and it was probably only one or two things that pulled the pin out and the whole thing fell as a result.
And it's important that you don't. You know, waste all of that other experience and knowledge that you acquired and, you know, when, and get back on the horse as fast as possible. Most people, they get very embarrassed and they're worried about what other people think. And then one of my mentors said to me, don't worry about what other people think of you because they're not thinking about you.
They're thinking about themselves and any, any comments they make about you, they're actually referencing to themselves. Yeah. They're, you know, they're trying to put you down so they feel better themselves. They're trying to call you a failure so they can call themself a success. And when I thought about that, I thought it was true.
And, and that same person said to me, no one more successful than you will ever put you down.
Yeah,
nice. And I
was like,
that's interesting.
So there's a couple of lessons in that. And the first thing is, I always say, allow tantee. Okay. A two minute tantrum, go for gold, but then pick yourself up and get back on the horse as quickly as possible.
Super, super, super important. So thanks for sharing that with us. You spoke about, you know, there's one little thing that might be wrong in something. And I see this a lot when it comes to people's marketing, they have our entire marketing funnel and a business and a plan, and they're getting on with it.
And suddenly it's not working. So say for example, something's not converting and they go. That's it. I'm going to do a rebrand.
I'm going
to change my logo, change my business name, change my offer, change everything. And I'm like, Oh my God, stop. Like literally there is probably one thing inside that whole.
strategy or plan where there's a kink that needs to be fixed and yet they go through everything and want to start all right back at the beginning again.
Yeah.
I love it when you said that.
Yeah, no, it's a very valuable point with marketing and, and marketing, you know, is a funnel or it's a straw, it's a stepping stone path and all you need is one of those stepping stones to break and the flow will stop, right, and so often That point is very valid.
Like it's only that one little blockage and you clear that, everything else is fine. Just clear that blockage and then the leads will flow.
And sometimes, you know, when you're inside the jar, you can't read the label. And this is why working with coaches is, you know, absolutely fundamental. I mean, I've got like a coach for everything, a coach for everything.
Okay. So let's talk about some of your meaningful marketing strategies that you apply inside your own businesses currently.
Okay. So. A bit of this is, like, my answer to this is really just like a Marketing 101 answer. There are a lot of, marketing is actually not that hard. If you just focus on the customer and what they want.
And I think the first thing is to get very clear about what your product is. and who it best helps. So who is the ideal customer for your product? I think you start with what you do, because that's what you're good at, whatever it is, product or service. And then you go, who's the ideal customer for my product?
I think people do, they go, oh, who's my avatar? But actually, you think about the product first, then think about who the ideal customer is. And you probably already have a couple of them already. Think about your customers you have now, and that it's really easy, and they love it, and they buy lots of it.
And then go, okay, that's my ideal person. Then spend a lot of time defining who that person is. and your ideal customer. Where do they live? How old are they? What, what social media platforms do they consume the most? Like if they're really young, they're probably on Tik TOK. If they're older, probably on Facebook.
And so work or, okay, okay. Where am I going to get in front of those people? But then the clear stuff is, you know, don't think about. yourself and your product just yet. Think about them and what problem they have. And a great example for us is my property investment company. Is that most people I'm just thinking about buying their own home and paying it off, right?
And they're not thinking about buying investment property. And actually, one of the strategies to pay your house off faster is actually not to pay it off initially and put all your spare money into buying two or three investment properties. Then have the two or three investment properties go up in value.
And use that money to pay your house off. Rather than working a job, being a wage slave and chipping away at your mortgage. So this is the number one strategy. But the problem is, to bring it back to main. No one thinks that way. Right? So I could go and advertise a property investment seminar and most of those people who just, I just want to buy my own home and pay it off, they're not even thinking that way.
Right? So, so what you've got to do is you've got to think about the mindset that your ideal customer's in before they've met you. before they're enlightened and find a problem that they have. And so we talk about how to get your own home, how to get a property without using any of your own money, all these different strategies.
And they turn up for that. And while they're there, I throw in a few other things. I go, here's a different strategy you may not have thought of and then educate them through the marketing process. Either through the books that we write or the seminars that we conduct and then at the end of it, and then they draw that conclusion on their own, I was thinking this, but actually, and then they come to you and go, actually, I want to do that now.
And you haven't even, you've just indirectly educated them and then they've made a decision that's what they want to do, which is much better than having a pushy salesperson. Trying to force a product on them. So it
comes back to again, connecting with your audience, really understanding who they are so you can effectively communicate to them.
And then it's about offering them consumable content that's going to support them and educate them so that they build know, like, and trust with you. And you increase your credibility with them. So you become the go to person. So the way you're doing that is through your seminars, which I've had the privilege of sitting in on.
Actually. In person behind you while you go doing it and it's the webinar funnel, right? And the webinar funnel is a great way to be able to do that. And you run these webinar funnels quite
regularly, don't you? Every week. Unless I'm on holidays, I run one or two a week, religiously, and that's my heavy lifting in that business.
A bit like going to the gym. You know, and a great person who I don't know who they are once said, show me your marketing calendar and I will show you your cash flow. And it was very insightful because all your business starts with your marketing. So if you can, if you want to be fit, consistently go to the gym, if you want your business to be fit, consistently market.
Yeah. I knew you'd like that one. Like every week you have to be doing something and you can't turn your ads on and off, they've got to always be on. You can't turn your email marketing on and off, you've got to always, you've got to achieve that consistency. And then when you achieve that consistency, you will achieve recency and frequency.
In the eyes of your prospects and then they'll start identifying and knowing your brand and start turning up. So that's my, what I do, you know, and I give the webinar, there's about 30 people work for that company now. But the one thing that I do, well two things, one is I chair the weekly company management meeting and the other is I do the webinar.
And now that, but I started that business in the spare bedroom. of my house on my own and now it's 30 people and it basically runs itself.
Yeah. So I do want to put a little bit of a disclaimer in there because everyone knows how I feel about paid advertising. So if it's not working organically first,
do
not spend money on ads.
And my second thing is, I don't know if you're going to agree, but unless you're a six figure business, you shouldn't be doing ads yet.
Yeah. Okay.
Those are kind of my fundamentals there.
No, look, I definitely, I think when you're starting a business, and you're short on cash, you're not short on time.
100%.
Get the foundations right, invest in yourself.
Yeah, and there is a lot of marketing you can do by spending your time on it. And so, but every strategy requires resources, whether it be your time or your money. Or, or your energy, or stress, or whatever. And so, but I agree with you. I don't think you should be trying any paid advertising until you've got all the free stuff sorted.
Because, you never know, like, and there are people, particularly with viral content and things like that, people can You create just one good piece of content that goes viral and their business skyrockets and they don't have to spend a cent on advertising. And then of course there's referrals as well and repeat business of the clients you've got.
And so yeah, like you don't need to have lots of money. We do spend on ads, but we do everything else as well.
Yes. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. I just get really worried because a lot of people go, I don't have any time. I don't have time to do my marketing. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to do ads and then they only want to put like, you know, 10 on something and they don't even have a proper funnel in place.
They're not capturing emails. And that's my other thing. If you don't have a way to capture email addresses, don't do ads. You've got to be able to capture email addresses so you can retarget and you know, follow the funnel is what I like to say or follow through with the funnel. So thank you so much for that.
So I want to touch because you've got an amazing, amazing, amazing. Method that you use with your business coaching and it's something that you've developed from the army. Okay. It's a takeaway from the army It's a method that you have I'm very intrigued by it. You often present on it I've heard you present on it as a public speaker.
So share that with us and enlighten our audience
So I have this belief about business Everyone wants to win the lottery everyone would love to win 10 million 20 million dollars if you're in business for yourself You can engineer that win Right, by building your business up. But to build your business up, you can't do it on your own.
I think someone working on their own without any sort of employees or software or machines or people working for them. You're only going to get so far. You might even get to a million dollars revenue a year as an individual. But you're not going to go beyond that because one person's productivity is only worth so much, right?
So you have to grow your business, and if you want to grow business, the military's actually been running like, the Australian Army's a small army, it's got 30, 000 people in it. How do they do it? How do they do it? And there's a lot of things that they do and I've, that I've taken from the military and I put into, into business.
So the first thing that they do really, really well is career streaming. So they'll actually create a career and you'll join the army and they'll say you are a rifleman. And then you go, what's that? ? And they go, well, you're in the infantry and here's your career path. And you'll start here as a private, and you'll do these courses.
And then you'll go into a section and you'll, and you'll be in a section for a year or two. And then if you're good enough, you'll get selected for promotion training. And then you'll go do the promotion courses, uh, or, or, or specialist courses. Then you'll go over to the specialist role for a while, and then you'll come back to the rifle company and you'll be a section commander and then you'll, and they just spell it all out and see.
The brilliance of that is 99 percent of people have no plan for themselves in their career. They're just going from opportunity to opportunity, and whatever opportunity is put in front of them, they go, is this better than where I am now? And they go to that opportunity. But the military says, no, no, no, you can spend your whole life here.
We've got it all worked out for you, and this is the model we want. But that model also serves the military, because they need to grow their own leaders, they need to grow your capabilities, and so that's what they do. So what I try and do in each of my businesses is create. a career stream. So in my property investment company, for example, there are three career streams.
There, well, there's actually four, but there's the marketing career stream, marketing manager career stream, which is in all of my, and those people can jump around between all of my companies. Then there's property investment consultants, there's property investment administrators, and there's property investment operators, right?
And there's three different streams. And the, the administrators are generally Filipino staff who are learning the backend and all the. Admin processing tasks and things like that, and then the consultants are the, are the strategists and giving advice, property investment advice and building plans and getting things done for clients.
And then the operators are the back end of the business. They're usually Australian staff who are delivering what is being sold by the consultants. So the consultants might get a great property for a client and then once it's all set, the deal is done. They then hand it over to operations and operations will support that client journey to deliver that property and all the supporting services around it.
So when someone comes to my company, I say to them, you have a career here and there are four or five levels, trainee, junior, senior. and senior manager, right? And we show them what jobs they can do in the company, and they go fantastic. And then they then conclude, I have a future here, I have a left and right of arc, I have a lane, I have the stepping stones, and I know what I have to do if I want to succeed.
And most businesses have nothing like that, at all, right? And the problem is, if you don't provide a future for your person in your company, then you They're going to stay for a while and then they're going to leave.
Yeah, wow.
Because they, if they have any drive and ambition, right? They're going to, they're going to go, well, I've done everything I can here.
What's next? And they'll go look for it. And they may not be able to go up, but they'll go sideways to something different. And a lot of. Companies have the high turnovers usually. Why? Because they're not painting a picture, a career progression picture. So that's the first thing.
So before we move on to the next thing, I just wanna go back a little bit here and talk about something.
So we will clarify something. So it's about having the right people in the right seats. Yes. And often when I see people going and trying to get. Virtual assistance or getting somebody to support them in their business. They try to get a jack or Jill of all trades and try to fit them into everything.
They go, right, this is going to be the marketing person, the administrator person, and this is going to be, you know, the graphic designer, plus they're going to be the website analytical person. They completely different types of people. So the right person in the right seat. The other thing I heard from you there, which is really important is that they've actually got to upskill.
So in order to move and get through, you know, on the career path, they actually have to invest in some of their training as well. And again, this is something that when people outsource to virtual assistants or get team members in, they just go, I'm paying you for a job. You just need to know how to do this job because on your resume it said you know how to do this.
I just want you to go do that. But people have actually got to train inside their job. A lot of them are implementers. They might have low level experience. It doesn't mean they're not capable or competent, but they do need some training. They need a strategy and they need training. And that was the other thing I took away from that is that your strategist and your implementers are completely different people.
They are different, but they are not the same person. So I see it on social media all the time when they go, I've had so many virtual assistants and none of them worked as a strategist. And I'm like, they're not strategists, they're implementers. So really important. So I love the way that you broke that up and, and, and you made that clear.
So chat to us about number two.
So, and you just mentioned it as a good segue, is training. So once you've got the career model worked out, and you say, okay, when someone comes to work for me on day one, we don't want to throw them in the deep end, because they'll probably fail. So we have a trainee, sort of, cadetship, whatever role, junior team member role, and then you can build training.
Now the military has done training really well, and I, when I first got into business, I really envied the military, but they had, you know, big bases with training schools and instructors posted their full time and I'm like, we'll never be able to do that. But the whole game has changed for us in business now with these learning management systems where you can basically build an online course actually very easily and there's a whole heap of different platforms you can use and I think you've got a platform that Yeah, we use OBM
Hub.
Yeah, and you can build some online training and things like that in there. But it's really simple and all you do is just create a list of all the tasks. that you want that person to do, and then just do like a Google Meet or a Teams meeting with yourself. Share your screen and record it, and then go, this is how you enter, SOP 101, this is how you enter someone in the database.
Go to this website, hit this button, put in this login, click that, file, enter the data, hit save, done. And then take that video recording, and save it in a folder, and rename it How to Enter Someone in a Database. And then, get an online course, learning management system, and create an induction course for my business.
You know, or whatever, leadership course, whatever, and you build these staff training courses. And the beauty of that, is quite amazing when you think about it. Because then you only ever have to teach someone how to do that task once. And thereafter, that recording goes into your online course and the online, everyone who joins your company can do the induction course.
So we are now up to 15 training, online courses for staff training alone, internal training. And they're all in various stages of development. Probably about 8 of them are fully developed and implemented and then the other 7 are in the process of building now. And all you do is you just say, okay, well, yeah, I want, uh, an induction course.
I want a team leaders course, whatever it is you want anyone in a particular part of your business. And you can do it, not just on a screen, you can grab an iPhone. And if it's machinery in the factory, you can stand in front of the machine while someone films you and go, this is how we operate the whatsit machine and, and build it.
And it's extremely pivotal. So I have once a week, I have a meeting with my training manager who runs all this, but you don't need a training manager when you're small. You can do it yourself.
Yeah. Yeah.
And, um, but we have delivered 5, 500 and something hours now of training, staff training.
And you only have to do it once.
This is the whole thing. So I always say to the business owners and the virtual assistants that I work with, slow down in the beginning to go faster at the end
because
you only do it once. So I'm currently just working with a business owner and virtual assistant and they've just gotten rid of one of their marketing managers and none of the SOPs have been recorded.
So it does not, it's when you are training that initial person when they come on. Just record that session and from the beginning like my virtual assistants all know and the virtual assistants I train all know that when I give them a task they have to write out an SOP and it's got to be added to the SOP folder and whenever I say add that to the SOP they've got to go and update that folder as well so that is from the beginning I set that so that if they get hit by a bus straight away somebody else can pick up that document and be able to take over.
And you know, something which is absolute, like when I worked this out, it was brilliant. A lot of people know they should have SOPs, but they don't write them. And so actually, You can start with the training before you write the SOP. So you might just get some, hey, video, video me while I explain to you how to do this.
And then they do that and they say, great, make that video a training video, but then I want you to write an SOP using that video. So the training video comes first, the SOP comes second. If you've already got your SOPs, then you can task someone to create a training video on the SOP. But either way, you've got a manual and you've got a video for every task in the business.
The other reason why it's It's so exceptionally important because when you go to sell your business later, it is extremely valuable for the purchaser of that business to go, oh wait, so there are online training courses about how to do everything in this business? Yes. Shut up and take them.
Love it. Love it.
Dame, I absolutely love that. One of the most important things I always say to people to consider is that when they're selling their business, that they have assets. And the training manuals, as you said, those are assets within the business, but also an email marketing list. So having a leads list, having funnels in place, all is going to increase the value of your business when you sell it.
And of course, you know, having good employees that want to stay because you've put them on a career path, right? So let's take it back to the marketing then, and tell us a little bit about the military marketing method.
Well, I think the, the military marketing, what is marketing? At the end of the day, it's finding.
what you're looking for. What do you want? So you want customers. So the military, how does it operate? It goes to find the enemy, right? So what does it do? It sends out patrols out and all different forms of surveillance, electronic surveillance, aircraft in the sky, camouflaged dudes walking through the sneaking up on the enemy, things like that.
So you look at your marketing as that, like how are we going to find and attract, like where are they? And you spend some time first in theory thinking about, like, where are they? Where, where are my customers? And go on a reconnaissance if you have to. Maybe even get in your car and go and find them. And once you work out, remember it's a product.
Who, and then who's the ideal customer for my product? Because if I get the, I know what my product can do. So if I find the right person, they're going to want it. And then where are they? And then go looking for them. And then you constantly. Seeking to communicate and there's, there's research now that says, you know, people have to see your brand like more than 20 times before they trust it, before they, they see that it's, that it's a real thing, you know, because there is a lot of.
Crap that sort of goes out there, marketing that, and I often say to my team, like, I say, look, just when, when you see competitors advertising, don't assume that it's working because, you know, we see some and they've only got like a couple of likes on their posts and things like that. And then ours, we've got like a hundred comments and you know, 500 likes and we're like, yeah, I'm pretty sure ours is working and theirs isn't.
The other thing I think is the team's approach and marketing is a multidisciplinary team. Right. And to get marketing done. You, you know, like, you need a video editor. A video editor is a very different person to a graphic artist. And a graphic artist is a very different person to a writer. You know, who's writing your blogs and your email marketing and things like that.
So there's, there's those core disciplines. But then you also, I think you also need the scientist now. With, with your digital marketing. You need to be testing and measuring, you need to be looking at, you know, okay, how many people are clicking on this, and then what's the click through rate, and what's the conversion rate of the landing page, and then doing split testing, you know, where you, of everything, and someone actually has to be a bit nerdy like that, and it's like, oh, just change the headline, and convert it at 50 percent the rate, you know, you want someone who gets excited about that stuff, because that's incredibly valuable as well, and when you understand that it's a conversion, algorithm, right?
And if you can double the effectiveness of an ad, you'll double the sales at the other end of your process. And so that stuff is quite important. So when it comes to building your marketing team, you need, it's a bit like the A team, you know, like the old TV show, you got the different specialists, but then you need that.
That leader who brings them all together and they're kind of like the marketing project manager. That's what I really like about what you do and you come in and you help people with that to bring it all together and then also help them to teach themselves and their marketing manager, if they've got one, how to do it.
I think one of the biggest challenges that Australian businesses have is the cost of Australian wages. And, and most people are onto this outsourcing to the Philippines thing. But, and I love, I've got about 15 Filipinos who work for me, and I love them all. But there's different things that they can do, and culturally, you know, they're very good, they're very loyal, very hardworking, and they'll get stuff done.
Their English is a little bit different to ours. It's not, it's Americanized a bit, but they tend to write and talk in shorter sentences. Whereas we kind of, so they're not that great at copywriting and emails and stuff like that. And so then, you might need an Australian, but then I conned on to something that's close to your heart, South Africans.
Once you go South African, you won't go back. Yeah, and I actually, I went to live in South Africa for a while, and you know this story. I went to live there for a while and then I come across, wow, I can actually have South Africans working for me from there. And English is their first language, their education standards just as good as Australians.
Their work ethics probably better, to be honest, like, let's be honest about, let's be honest about the average Aussie is not really, doesn't like to work too hard, you know, and, and we do have that tall poppy syndrome and we also have that sort of slow down mate syndrome, let's call it, where if one person's working very hard, the rest of the Aussies will go, You're making us all look bad, slow down.
Meanwhile, the South Africans are like, get out of my way, I'm going to get stuff done. And, and so I started employing South Africans and in my own businesses first, working remotely from there. And you pay less than half what you have to pay in Australian wages, because they're, unfortunately for them, the economy, as you know, the economy is a bit stuffed over there, but you get some incredibly good.
And that's when I. And then I went, I thought, geez, I'm going to help other people do it. So that's when I started my second company, Smart Workforce Solutions. And, and that's what we do now for them. And the, the, the primary roles that we recruit South Africans for are marketing roles. That's number one.
And the other, and executive assistants are the primary roles that we have South Africans. But I also have them doing training management. My head of accounts is a South African. What else have I got in there? Operations manager jobs as well, where you have to kind of. You know, be proactive and do research and get, get stuff done and, um, work unsupervised and you know, the South Africans are great for that.
So just give that a little play, but yeah, you can achieve all these things in your business if you. Just think laterally about it and you're willing to try new ways of doing business can do it quite well.
Yeah. And I think it, it comes down to a work ethic and it comes down to mindset. Cause a lot of people say, um, I don't have time.
I don't have time. So that's what they want to outsource. So they want to jump into ads or they want to get like a 5 virtual assistant and then they don't want to actually manage them. That type of business owner is not going to be successful. So ones that invest in themselves, invest. in their teams, take the time to invest in themselves and in the teams, but also the money as well.
They don't have these limiting beliefs. They are the ones that are going to scale. They're the ones that are going to grow, and those are the ones that we want to work with and those are the businesses that succeed. So is there anything else that you want to share with us that's jumping out at you and you go, you know what?
I really want to just end today's podcast with this one juicy tip.
Yeah. Okay. Yep. So. So. This is my advice for all business owners, right? Particularly if you're struggling. There is one product or service that you sell. which is your most profitable product. It's the one that has the greatest return for the minimum amount of effort.
What? Just think about what that is and focus on that. Now there's a, I call it, how do you clear a minefield? So often when you're overwhelmed, it's like you've got a minefield in front of you. And if you don't get to the other side, then you know, you've got problems, right? And. What the military teach you to do is you don't, like, roll the blanket back.
You don't, like, get your mind sweeping, clear them all. You actually just make a narrow lane through the minefield, right? And then just a narrow lane that just you can fit, a human body can fit through, and then get to the other side, and then start, and then widen the lane, right? So that metaphor in your business, don't try and fix everything, just fix one thing.
Yep, get one thing right. One
thing pumping.
Yep.
And from start to finish, from marketing ads and content and whatever you're doing up front, all the way through to close the sale, deliver the product, money in the bank. Get that right. So don't think funnel, think straw, initially, right? And then, and so if you're going to get one thing right, what are you going to get right?
You're going to get your most profitable product right. And just spend the time and map it out. And you've already sold it. So, go back and say what is the process to sell this thing and then optimize the, can I swear, crap out of each of those steps and focus on nothing else and say, okay, how can I sell five of these a month?
How can I sell 10 of these a month? How can I sell 20 of these a month, right? And once you work that out, your money problems will stop and your business will have heaps of money. The problem with some people is they've got. Entrepreneur ADHD, and I suffer from it, and maybe they don't like selling that product.
Maybe they don't enjoy it. Too bad. Harden up. Just do your job. Do your, and because if you don't, you'll fail, right? Or you'll, or you'll struggle harder. Just focus on that. Once you've got that pumping, then you've got to ask yourself, do I just make that pump more or do I start adding other, other product lines to it?
But I think that's the best advice. And there's an old battlefield survival technique, right? Which it says, when you find yourself in trouble. Just, you can only do one thing at a time. So ask yourself, what is the one thing I can do right now that will most improve my situation? So let's say in the military context, you're out patrolling on the battlefield and then bang, enemy, the bushes erupt and you've walked into an ambush and so you hit the deck.
And you're overwhelmed and you don't know how you're going to survive. You just ask yourself, what's one thing I could do right now that will make my situation better? And it might be like, okay, get out of where I am right now and crawl into that ditch over there where I'm below ground and they can't shoot me.
Execute. Stop thinking. Execute that. Then ask yourself the question again. Okay, what's the one thing I can do right now that will best improve my situation? Get on the radio, call in some help, you know, what's the one thing, return fire, throw some grenades at them, try and run out and while they're distracted, run out of the ambush area, you know.
So in business, you know, you're overwhelmed, what's the one thing you can do right now and that's going to best improve your situation. And generally it is sell your most profitable product. Don't borrow money. Don't go trying to, you know, cut all the crap out of your life. Don't gamble
on ads
distractions and sell the product.
Don't get a virtual assistant.
If you're VF, you're not selling it. Just sell your most proper product. And do you know what? Everyone's got about a hundred people they know, like, and trust and who know, like, and trust them. And think of that all those people who already know, like, and trust you and just pick up the phone and say, Hey.
I don't know if this is a fit for you or not, but I'm pretty passionate about it and I want to talk to you about this thing I've got. And at the very least, will you just listen to me?
And again, it's not selling it's serving. So when you come from a serving mentality, as opposed to a selling mentality, it's delivered in a much more less spammy kind of way.
Right. So thank you so much for sharing that. I mean, our audience knows a little bit about my story and I'm so grateful. from South Africa, came to Australia, and I will share this now because it's so relevant to what Damo said, is that I came here, and my husband at the time lost his job twice, and I taught myself marketing and grew a six figure business within five years, with no ads, with no support, with no financial, we were on, I was literally on the bones of my ass, and By the time I actually got the six figure business, single then with three children.
And I'm so grateful because I never had Centrelink.
I never
had anybody to lend me money. So I had to have what I did work, which means I had to get that one thing right. I had to get that one thing right. So I'm so grateful because I didn't have an out. And I feel like sometimes here in Australia, because people have an out.
They don't really just need to feed the family or whatever. They just want to have more money, but it's not a need. They don't, they keep looking for other things and they just keep grabbing at straws and you know, where's, they don't get that one thing right. So I absolutely love what you said. It's my journey.
It's what I did. And it's what I teach right now. You know, just get that one thing, right. Please don't fricking rebrand if it's not working. Don't throw that entire funnel out.
It's not your brand. There's just a
kink in the hose somewhere, you know. kick in the straws. So we just want to find where that is.
And yeah, just get that one thing right. But the other thing there that I did is, cause you know, how did I grow this business and then go on to another business and you know, people are in awe of it and And I just, I tell you because I just want to inspire you that you can do it too. If I did it, little old me did it, you can do it.
But the other thing I did was, I wasn't disrespectful to the process. When I lacked a skill, I went and learnt it. I invested in myself. When I, when I then was lacking in support, I went and got support. I didn't go looking for support because I wanted somebody else to do the hard stuff. I did the hard stuff.
I did the hard stuff first. So, you know, business can be hard, do the hard stuff, get the support when you need it, the right support, but you've got to learn that position first before you start going and trying to get other help for sure. All right, Damien, so where can people connect with you?
Well, DamienPatterson.
com with the extra I, D A I M I E N and two T's in Patterson. Um, also Property Investment Companies, IntegrityPropertyInvestment. com and SmartWorkforceSolutions. com. au for the outsourcing to South Africa. And yeah, DamienPatterson. com is, is fine and you know, um, weddings, parties, anything. I love to speak on stage because I love paying forward.
When I started, a lot of people helped me. So I, I love paying forward. The help and I, and I like to go to business conferences and speak and, but I also coach five people at any one time because I'm running this empire at the same time, but I like to sort of just say to people, look, you know, I'm actually doing it.
I've done it. I've built businesses and sold them for money. I've, you know, running all these businesses myself. So there's a lot of business coaches out there that, that, you know, I've never even run a business, you know? And it's like. I've met a few of them. So what's your business? Oh, this is my business.
Okay, how many people got work? Oh, just me. Okay. Did you like, were you the general manager of someone else's business? Oh, no, I used to do, and okay, maybe not, you know. So I'm really passionate about helping people, but I can only help so many people, so five's the limit. And I've got a few at the moment, but I do have, I do have a vacancy at the moment.
It's always worth checking in if you want to, yeah.
Yeah. Awesome. So get the support that you need. So that's awesome. So meaningful marketing podcast. Thank you so much. Our listeners for, for listening in. If you haven't already, please make sure that you like subscribe, rate us. If you're on YouTube as well, please make sure that you subscribe and comment below and follow us.
You can also access free resources and book a call with me on online business marketing. You're listening to another episode of the meaningful marketing podcast with Damien.
Thank you.
Thanks for listening in. Meaningful Marketing is all about you making your marketing meaningful. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please hit that subscribe button.
But subscribing means that you won't miss out on future episodes all about marketing and motivation. Stay inspired, stay focused and make your marketing meaningful.