Are you depending on word of mouth, referrals and your network to grow your business?
While we’re big fans of leads from these channels, the problem is that they can be up and down, and don’t generate leads consistently.
This makes it harder to predictably and consistently grow your revenue and your business.
That’s where we come in…
We help B2B businesses build a pipeline of qualified leads and turn those leads into high value clients.
HOW WE DO IT
We’re not a "typical" marketing agency that tries to run your Facebook Ads for $2,500 a month and then pats ourselves on the back for increasing your “likes” or “getting your brand out there”.
We measure our results in leads, clients, and REVENUE - and for our clients we GUARANTEE results. After all, marketing should be a strategic INVESTMENT and not a gamble.
To get those results, we:
- Get you in front of your “ideal” leads (and get their attention)
- Create the right messaging and positioning to help you stand out and position your product/service as the ONLY choice for them and
- Implement systems and processes to turn as many of those leads into long term, high value clients as possible
We’ve helped:
- An IT company get noticed by 90% of their “dream 100” leads, and get responses from 60% of them
- A B2B financial services company book meeting with CEO’s from listed companies, generate new clients within 30 days and build a multi-million dollar pipeline (in less than 60 days)
- A publication increase their monthly sales by over 30% in 90 days, and increase their average client value from $3,500 to over $12,000
[Podcast Transcript Using Artificial Intelligence]
Umar Hameed 0:01
Are you ready to become awesomer? Hello everyone. My name is Umar Hameed, I'm your host on The No Limits Selling podcast where industry leaders share their tips, strategies and advice on how you can become better, stronger, faster. Just before we get started, I've got a question for you. Do you have a negative voice inside your head? We all do, right? I'm gonna help you remove that voice and under 30 days guaranteed not only remove it, but transform it. So instead of the voice that sabotages you, there's one that propels you to much higher levels of performance and success. There's a link in the show notes. Click on it to find out more. All right, let's get started.
Umar Hameed 0:41
Hello, everyone, welcome to another episode of the No Limits Selling podcast where we talk to industry leaders on how they grow revenue, how to get leads, how they create sales, because the blood of any business is sales. And there's lots of companies that have great salespeople, but no qualified leads. I mean, the system can be broken in many places, but I know someone, someone that can help out. Today I have the privilege of having William Wang, he is the Chief Marketing Strategist for growth labs, will welcome to the program.
William Wang 1:13
Umar, thank you so much for having me on. Can't wait to dive into this.
Umar Hameed 1:17
Brilliant. So you know, the top of the funnel is where we need to get leads coming in. And let's start there. If you've got somebody coming to you, starting a brand new business wanting you pick what that business could be, and we'll use that as the example throughout the show. And then let's talk about how you'd find the target audience how you'd get leads. And let's build this company from let's say, zero to $10 million over the course of the next few years. Take it away.
William Wang 1:47
Yeah, sure. So that's, that's obviously a very broad category there. So let's why don't we use a b2b software business as an example, just because it's top of mind, I can pull up some numbers. What I find is that obviously you can this is a sale podcast, we can talk about sales. And one of the things I always find is, across different levels of revenue for business, you start to get this kind of angst between sales and marketing, right sales always like leads suck, and [garbled], you're not working less properly. So I think for me, it's been really interesting to see some of my clients on their journey from zero to up to 50 or $100 million a year. And I think the way I like to break it down is, depending on where you're at, the salesperson, or the salespeople, I should say, is going to be very different at those levels. So at zero, it should really be the founder as the salesperson know he's going to evangelize the product, as much as then no one's going to have the passion and the drive or even understand what it is you're trying to do like the fans as well. So that point, it's literally the founders going out and pounding on people's doors, finding out if people want to solve the solution they're trying to solve for. And this is where, you know, marketing a top of funnel doesn't really matter so much at the very beginning, because literally it's how do we get sales, just go straight to the bottom of the funnel, talk to people who you think are your ideal clients or the theory that you've got, because obviously, when you actually go to market and do the marketing, that might change, but at zero, as a founder, you've just got to do what doesn't scale. And that means having a conversation or a sales conversation every single day as a minimum. So that's obviously the very beginning.
Umar Hameed 3:29
So the business started and you've got $100,000 in revenue, you got some programmers, you got the chief sales guy, who's the owner, and now it's okay, we need to hire a few more salespeople and maybe get marketing involved as well set up a marketing department. Take us to that stage.
William Wang 3:47
Yeah, that's where you have to start really aligning the culture between sales and marketing. So the best companies I've seen that I've worked with, you know, these unicorn companies, but he both in Australia, as you can probably tell from the accent on Australian Burford in Australia, and also in the US, the unicorns that we've worked with who have gotten funding in hyper growth, and just really scaled really, really quickly, what the founders or the investors or the advisors, whoever, whoever it is, what they've been really good at, is holding the marketing and the sales team really, really closely together. So the analogy is, well, the analogy I like to use is kind of like you've got two magnets, and I've got a bunch of magnets here. It's kind of like if you have opposing forces, you're going to have to work really, really hard to get them close to each other. And they're never going to, you know, and they're never going to attract. But if you flip it around the right way, you have magnets that just magnetized to each other. So as a founder or an investor or an advisor, I believe the best ones I've seen, they've been able to switch it around so that cells actually want to talk to marketing. And marketing actually wants to talk to sales. So that becomes a cultural thing.
Umar Hameed 4:57
So from my point of view, I think actually say deals belongs within marketing, like marketing is the superset and sales is a subset of it. And so marketing needs to take the responsibility of we understand the market, we understand the customer. And this is the solution that they want. This is how they want to be sold, sales guys, gals go in and sell it in this way. And either they're successful or they're not. So let's say they are successful, everyone's happy. And then marketing comes back in and says, Okay, how do we continue the relationship? How do we deepen into the account, and the tip of the spear is sales. But let's say sales is not successful, then it's marketing's job with sales to diagnose what the issue is, and resolve it. But in most companies, like you said, its sales on one side and marketing on the other, and the finger of blame is going back and forth. Building suck, and then marketing is not there, like you suck. And so yeah, it takes a strong leader to come in and align everything. So let me ask you this question, in hopes of doing that they've got this title called the Director of Sales and Marketing. And in theory, that's a good idea. But I'm not sure it's a good idea in practicality, your thoughts on that?
William Wang 6:11
Yeah, I've seen it work really badly. interests me too. Yeah, more often than not, but I've also seen, so titles like like head of growth, Head of Sales and Marketing, I think it takes a certain person who's worked across both disciplines to really you know, and also know how to manage a team. So it's almost, it's about the hire, and the person itself, rather than the role, I do see the role being one that can be very successful for a company. But because the person directing it, it's hard, if she or he has a bias towards one way or another, that's always gonna be a difficult. Exactly, exactly. So it's got to be someone who's had experience across both who's been a salesperson, and who's also been a marketing person and has seen on both sides of the fence, what it actually looks like, because it's rarely ever one or the other. It's, it's rarely ever marketing completely sucked in the funnel sites, or that, you know, sales completely sucks, there's always it's always in between, right? The leads might not be perfect, but the salesmen don't really know how to work the leads, and then the feedback doesn't go to Marketing, it's almost always a combination of the two sides not fulfilling their full potential. So to have that person at the very top across both teams, they've got to really have solid experience in both disciplines, to be able to impartially find weight with a wiki just actually happening.
Umar Hameed 7:34
So a couple of things come up is the first thought that comes up is they have ride alongs, with the police, if you're part of the community, or an organization, you can write in a cop car for like a night or a day or whatever. And that opens your eyes to the reality of policing, as opposed to sitting in your office and judging what's going on. And it almost seems like, what we need to do is to get some of our marketing people to go out on sales calls, and actually observe what happens there in front of a customer and really get oh my god, okay, this is what it's like. And on the other side, I think sometimes marketing is sitting in their offices, thinking about these things. And it would be really good to have a salesperson in the mix with them saying, that sounds good. But think about this. And I think that cross pollination really get a much stronger organization. And there's much better understanding. And also when there's an issue that comes up, you've got bridges built between the two departments. So it's not like, it's your fault. It's like, how do we solve this together? And I think that's where you can actually out think the competition.
William Wang 8:38
Yeah, I mean, one, one of my favorite things to do as a marketer who gets brought into companies and as a copywriter who gets paid, you know, to write things that sell, I don't actually speak to marketing teams too much. When I get started, I want to speak to sales, because sales are the ones on the front line, talking to the customers handling the objections that get to hear what people are unsure about that they get to, you know, just really get to the core of it and talk to customers day in day out. And they're the ones with the golden nuggets that the marketing team or even, you know, an outside agency can really pick finger on this is really interesting. Tell me more about this. So with all the marketing that we build, I actually start from sales. And so I think it's almost crucial. If you have already gotten the established sales team or an established marketing team to have new members from each team second, or do a stint with the other team during their induction period. I think that's that's super important to actually get things right.
Umar Hameed 9:34
So we'll let's say you have a company with an app that's designed for salespeople on the front line and what it's designed to do is keep them in the right mindset, no matter what's going on in the day. So if they feeling like they don't want to pick up the phone, they can listen to a track they'll program to pick up a phone or if they feel like a lot of salespeople don't ask for the order. And they going in they can just listen to a track that will force them to ask for the order all frickin Bailong it'll just program their mind. So if we will launching that to sales departments, the CEO is going out knocking on doors. What does that look like? Like? Where would you send them? First? Would it be like the auto industry? Real Estate? Where would you find a bunch of salespeople that could potentially buy this thing?
William Wang 10:18
That's such a great question. I love that question. Because in reality, you know, because I'm already doing sales for my for my business, I've already got that I've already got that. That set of tracks that I listened to, where it's like, I'm not feeling it. But I need to put food on the table. Listen to this, and let's get close. You know what? I think there's two ways of thinking about this right? For me, the first way is, who needs this the most? Like, what are the most? I don't know if cut for is the right word for what are the most competitive industries that are sales reps and people working? And yes, real estate? Definitely. Yes, the auto industry, definitely stock current stocks, financial services, all of those industries where you've got to be on your game to make money. And if you don't get the sale, you don't get paid. Those would be I would do an outreach campaign into these industries, into salespeople, get them on a trial, and then turn them across to paying customers. If that's one way, that's a very generalized way to do it, we can dive into a little bit more in detail. The second way to action number two, is just to run ads to it and let the salespeople come to you and self select, run a Facebook ad run a LinkedIn ad to target people who have got interested in sales, and say, Hey, I've got this, this performance track, that's helped all of my salespeople go out there and crush it. See if this helps you too. And people are going to self select and go, Oh, I'm a salesperson, I need this shot. You know, we'd love to, we'd love to have a crack.
Umar Hameed 11:49
We've all had days where we're the down days, and kind of what least from my point of view, I think if you take a look at all the days that are out there. So for salespeople, my hypothesis is that a maybe 5% of days in a year, and that's probably overreaching is where you wake up and you feel unstoppable. You're just in the mood, and it's just like any, any compensation, you're gonna get a yes, then you've got 80 days that you are going to be 80% of the days, you're going to be just average. And then there's probably 20 some odd days 20% of the days where you're just going to be down in the dumps. And the question is, how do you take 80% of the days and move some of them over into super mindset days and take some of the a lot of the bad days and turn them into average days? is kind of where I think a solution like that would help is to get you more productive days out of it. So would you say offering a trial is the best way? Hey, test it out for a week, test it out for a month, if you like it by it?
William Wang 12:47
Yeah, yeah. Before we get into that, I'm actually curious about one thing about what what do you have on your track before we jump into that, and we can go into [garbled] I love talking shopping numbers. But before we dive into the I love mindset side as well, what would you have on on your track? Actually, what what do you listen to?
Umar Hameed 13:06
So what I listened to is, and I'm asking this question, because I'm at some point in the near future, launching an app like that. And what it's gone is it's me, showing people how to tap into the power of the mind. So it's not music to inspire is like taking you through a process. I'll give you an example of one of the tracks. It's a lot of people come home, and when they come home, they're physically there but not mentally there. They're still back at work fretting about problems or what they're going to do tomorrow. And even the family dog can figure out hey, Dad's not home. So someone comes home before they get out of the car, they listen to a track for six minutes, 44 seconds, and it gets them to release the stress for the day. It gets them to remember the very first time they fell in love with a significant other, like feel it here. And then they walk into the house with that loving, warm feeling. And they just show up differently, fully present with love in their hearts, even for the family pet. And so my mission is to really change the world and make it a happier place. And this has been a labor of love to kind of craft it. And I think salespeople need it the most in terms of, you know, business is probably the strongest force for creating change for good that we have. Like certainly some businesses do bad things, but most businesses, they provide jobs, build communities build nations, I'd heard the story once it was in Israel, where they're doing business with the Palestinians. And when shit goes down, the Palestinians are protecting their partners because business is more important than not. And it builds relationships. It builds strength, it makes the world a better place anyway. So I'll send you the app to play with let me know what you think. And so it's all designed to if you're not feeling the magic today, in seven minutes, you will be frickin' unstoppable.
William Wang 15:00
That is amazing, you know, with something like that, first and foremost, it can be used sideways, especially because people were actually working from home so much more. Like, for example, we used to have an office where all my teams to go in and you know, every single day when you leave the office, that was like a trigger of like, Hey, we're leaving work, let's leave it at work. Nowadays, you know, we work from home 90% of the time the office is there, but we really go into it only once a month, we have a big meeting, right? So now there's, it's like when I finish work at whatever time it is, now walk out of my room, it doesn't have the same triggering effect, the habitually have, hey, phones down and work down. The kids are here, let's let's let's go. So I think that'd be super, super helpful. And with with an app like that, you know, normally on 5050 on trials, I think sometimes when you do trials, you get a lot of Tychicus. So, you know, sometimes if we can avoid a trial, I'll actively Steve on clients to avoiding that and just going into like, like a paid trial. So for example, pay me $7 For a month, but then after the first month, it's it's $50. But you could do it like that, or you can even give them a free trial for seven days. I think once people get into the habit of using it, they'll see the benefits. And the beauty of an app like that, you know, it's not that you're building is that it's not just hey, I'm going to take take your app, use it, and then I'm good for the rest of you know, as a salesperson as a business owner, I know that it's a constant battle with where your mind is going, right. But this whole business sales thing, I truly believe it's such a mental thing. When you look at the top salesperson in the company, yes, the bottom salesperson in the company, what's the difference? Like and it's not experienced, because some people just coming in, they just blitt it. It's not experience. It's, it's, you know, yes, it's a little bit of product knowledge. But that's such a small percentage, the rest of it is the confidence, their focus, the drive the determination, how hungry they are, you know, just how mentally prepared they are the rituals, the habits they've got. And for an app like that, I mean, you can absolutely change someone's life, instantly by giving them the right habits to become a successful salesperson. So get trial, get people on board, and then charge them and you know, the value that you can create for a salesperson could be 100, [garbled] Yeah, so I mean, you know, what you're putting out to the world versus the payment for an app, I mean, it's disproportionate in terms of value.
Umar Hameed 17:28
So tell us about a one of your clients, you can change the name to protect the innocent, and walk us through what you did for them. So we get a really good sense of what you do for customers.
William Wang 17:40
Okay, cool. So I'm gonna tell you about one of my clients, here in Australia, but they are international now. So their unicorn story recently raised about $500 million yearly revenue of about 100 mil. And we were very, very, very fortunate with them by a massive stroke of luck to work with them at a very early stage, where the team was significantly smaller. There had three or four salespeople, the marketing team was one, one and a half. So one, two people, one of them was kind of part time in different departments. And so they just raised a lot of money. And so they turned around and said, look, we've got great brand reputation, we've invested a lot into our brand, we're growing organically. But we need to drive this forward, like what do we do? And so we work with them at the very beginning to lay out a plan, right? How do you hit these revenue targets, and what strategies you need to you need to use to do that. And a lot of companies at a very early stage, because they don't have the background in marketing, they think they've got to do this fancy stuff. But religiously was about let's send a bunch of cold emails send really, really, really good cold emails. And I think if there's anything that we do well, that we're well classing, it's actually writing really good cold emails that people love getting and responding to. So that was the core of our strategy. They were going on a massive hiring spree of salespeople. And as part of the KPIs from the sales team, is that the marketing team sends a certain number of cold emails per salesperson, the salesperson had to follow up with every single lead. So that was a major KPI across both teams. And that's how the teams are brought together. Because marketing were responsible for feeding sales in sales, were responsible for getting back to marketing. So that was, you know, cost core strategy number one, Core Strategy number two was database building. So you don't need to get fancy with you know, like 20 Step funnels with fancy tend to trip wires and all that kind of stuff. It literally was about, let's put some good value into the world. And what do our customers want to learn, even if it's got nothing or very little to do with what we're doing? Let's give them value and get them onto our database and then talk about what we do well, because eventually, if they want to do this big thing, they'll need our product to do it anyway. So even though our product is a very small part of their ultimate goal, right, it's still an important part. So why don't we help them with the big part? and bring them back the small part. So we ran LinkedIn ads for them, Facebook ads, Google ads, we built a bunch of landing pages, all the typical marketing stuff, we just really simplified it and just did volume. So, you know, when I first started my career as a marketer, I went after the fancy stuff. But nowadays, with the bigger companies work for the, the growth rate of the achieving, I truly believe it is about just doing this simple, fundamental things really, really well. And just doing more of it, and that scale. So this client they went from, I think, when they started working with us, they were probably done about 10 $20 million revenue a year. And now they're just grown exponentially 100 million dollar revenue, raise four or $500 million [garbled]. But the underlying principles of the marketing and how they feed the leads, has stayed the same.
Umar Hameed 20:53
Alright, so let's kind of step back on this. So you said cold emails. So you get an email list from a broker? Do you guys generate here yourselves.
William Wang 21:01
We actually built everything in house, we've tried a whole bunch of brokerages, it's never worked well, the leads are either stale, or they've been hammered 50,000 times. So we actually built algorithm and code and I've got a team of about 20 people offshore that sit there and just actually put a human lens to the data that that we're getting. So we actually build this from scratch for every single client that we work with.
Umar Hameed 21:26
Brilliant, so you've got this cold email, and you send them out one at a time, or do you do like a MailChimp or an email marketing system?
William Wang 21:35
Yeah, so we actually use a system called Quick mail.io. And I wouldn't recommend using like a MailChimp or an active campaign or those type of systems, because they are meant for for warm leads coming in, or leads that you've actually got in either purchased or brought in. Quick bow is a brilliant system developed by a good friend of mine, specifically for cold outreach. So what it does is, it automates the process of you having to send the emails, you put an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV into quick mail with all the contacts you want, and all the merge fields. So we actually really personalize every single email, but we put the personalization into the Excel spreadsheet. And then we load the email templates that we want to set, right, so we load the sequences and put the fields in there. And the system takes the information plugs into the emails. And so every single email that goes out, it's very personalized. And that's where we are we get open rates of 80% reply rate of 40%, because it goes so deep with the personalization. But the system helps helps us automate the actual sending. So whether someone replies or we're getting out of office, or they click unsubscribe, the system handles all of it. And we just focus on putting good leads into the system itself.
Umar Hameed 22:46
So does that go on your email address? Or do you have a temporary one because I know if you get too many on opens and stuff, they can start blacklisting email. So how do you handle that?
William Wang 22:58
Yep, so we actually build our own email servers that we use for clients. So we've got clean email service, Sydney that we keep a very close eye on. And whenever we've had a client come on board, we'll buy a separate domain for that client that looks very similar to to their actual domain. And we'll get the domain to send via our servers out to the world. So that way, we can control the quality of emails being sent out, we can control the servers, make sure that you know they're not being blacklisted. And that's how we get as many emails into inboxes as possible. That's probably the most important thing, the number one thing for us is not getting into the spam folder into the promotions tab, the more emails you can get into someone's actual inbox a high chance of success you'll have.
Umar Hameed 23:40
So are you using plain text emails or do you put HTML and other fancy stuff in there.
William Wang 23:47
So we stay away from links and, and images as much as possible. We do have sequences where it works really, really well. So for example, when we decode the mouse for ourselves, I like to push the boundaries, I like to be a little bit cheeky. And I'll put gifts in there and all this kind of fun stuff, but only on you know, the third or the fourth, or the fifth email in that sequence. The first and the second, we want to maximize the amount delivery. So we minimize the links and images because they tend to get flagged sometimes if you've got too many, they'll get flagged by, by but by your spam bots or servers and things like that, and you won't get into inboxes. But But the third email if it hasn't gone through already, why not try it?
Umar Hameed 24:27
So even on the first second email, do you have to have at least one link to get them to where you want to send them, right?
William Wang 24:34
No, so so we don't so when we do emails, my general is generally my primary objective is to get a reply. So to get a reply to Yep, sure. I like to get what you're talking about, you know, if it's a lead magnet, for example, or short, I've got 10 minutes. I'm happy to have a chat with the team. I don't really like to send people off from the emails because it's harder to track what they do afterwards. So I tend to go straight for the reply from the email.
Umar Hameed 25:01
And so you'd basically ask them, hey, just let us know what you'd like to do kind of thing at the end. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Brilliant. The second thing you were talking about was, you know, building that database. And then certainly advertising on LinkedIn, Google, Facebook. So talk to me about LinkedIn advertising. How effective is that? And what's the strategy to best use it?
William Wang 25:25
Sure. So LinkedIn is expensive on the front end. And what I mean by that is, for example, if we're running a campaign, and we're testing Facebook versus LinkedIn, if we're getting a lead for $3 to $5, on Facebook, it'll be triple to five times the amount on LinkedIn. So we will probably pay between $9 to $25, or $30, for the same lead, not the same lead, I should say, for a lead on LinkedIn. But the lead quality on LinkedIn is generally a little bit better than liquidly, and Facebook. And we verify that by having sales teams behind it. So one of the most important things that we do is we've we're actually building out a sales team that would help our clients booking meetings. And what we're finding is, when we call the leads from Facebook, most of the time they don't pick up or you know, sometimes like, I don't remember, like who are you. Whereas on LinkedIn, we get a higher response rate, a high pick up rate, a higher Conversation rate. So even though you're paying more, the lead quality tends to be a little bit better on LinkedIn ads. Obviously, this is for for b2b, if it's B2C, stick with Facebook, Facebook is still by far and large, you know, where you should be focusing a lot of your budget. But at the same time, you know, I'm kind of platform a channel agnostic, I go with the intention is I don't really care. If I'm not tied to face, we're not married to the idea, we've got to be Facebook, we've got to be LinkedIn, it's like, where is your audience? Let's find your audience. Even if it's not on LinkedIn, or Facebook, what newspapers are reading? What websites are the browser, can we go and place a native ad on a website, I literally just go where I know our people are. And that's where we did advertising.
Umar Hameed 27:04
Brilliant. So one of the things I look for is a phrase or that's global. So one of the phrases that's global is to go different renditions of this, which is the cobblers son has no shoes. Have you heard of this? I have. So you guys are, you know, experts in marketing? So how do you become true to yourselves, and you actually practice what you preach? Because it's so easy to focus on your clients and not focus on yourself? So how do you balance that?
William Wang 27:36
This is such a great question. And it's actually top of mind for me right now. Because we're at the stage where we've grown very much through word of mouth very much for organic and very much for the principle of, you know, that phrase when we just haven't done any of your own marketing, but we're at the point where, you know, if we want to scale, if we want to keep growing, we have to focus on that. So that's been my, that's my full attention over the past couple of weeks. So I'll go into what we're doing in terms of our strategies, right. And I think what we're, what we've got planned will probably help us to double this year, quite easily. So my thinking around this marking, given what I've seen from clients, and everyone else who work with is that simplicity always wins. Simplicity and value in frequency equals scale. So what I mean by that is, we're not doing fancy stuff for ourselves, we're not building all these funnels and stuff like that, it's just not what I want to do. We've got one funnel that we've built. And what it does is, we've got a value on the front end, which I'm going to be putting up some email templates that people can download. So if if you're in b2b space, go to those email templates. And then you'll see a page, the next page will be, hey, thank you so much, here's some extra resources. Right, so I'm gonna give them webinars that we've done in the past. Other resources, you know, conversations I've had develop people which which are interesting. And at the very end, it's like, if you want to have a conversation, here's my calendar going back in, but I don't push that heavily. Because, you know, the grocery that we've got, we've got a certain capacity, we can't take on 50 clients a month, because we just kind of handle that we've so we've, I've actually purposely slow play this. So for me, it's an exercise in, in database building. So every single month now, when they're on my email list, every single week, they're gonna get an email from me, which is entertaining and educational, right, good mix of both. We were going to run a webinar to our list only every single month, so we're not going to try and advertise outside of our list. Literally, this webinar is for the email list for my social media following and that's it. And every once in a while, every month, I'll have an email that goes out and says, Do you want me to work on your emails? We've got X number of capacity this month. If so, come have come through and have conversation with me. So that's my entire marketing plan. We're gonna do cold emails as well. Oh, but obviously cold emails with the purpose of building that same email list and driving value building relationships and just having a long term view of how we're going to grow. I don't want a million conversations tomorrow, I want a million conversations spread over the next three to four years.
Umar Hameed 30:15
Brilliant. So as you build that out, what are your thoughts on Facebook groups? Because there's a whole movement of, you know, build your pond, stalk your pond and fish in your pond? Thoughts on that?
William Wang 30:29
No, I think it's a nice to have. When it comes to marketing tactics, what's working now? I've seen everything work. So you'll never hear me say, oh, that just doesn't work. Because someone out there made it work. I think it always comes down to who your audience are, how they like to consume, what platforms are on? And is it worth doing in terms of effort versus reward? So for myself, we're purposely not going to have a Facebook group. Because I know that the clients we're working with, you know, people who own 10, 20, 50, 100 million dollar businesses, they're not likely to be on Facebook every single day. Right? Great. So so I'd rather not go through and spend the time and effort doing that. Because I just don't think the return is going to be there for us. And I don't want to have to have a full time team member managing content, managing engagement, that group, because the people we're working with just aren't going to be Oh, yeah, let's jump into the group and pump each other up. They're already like, they think they just need extra help extra guidance in like, here's how you tune your marketing. So for me, it's not worth doing. But that being said, I've seen clients we've worked with, or we've built Facebook groups, for them. It's been phenomenal. So it really comes back to do my people. Will my people use something like this? Can I? You know, can I build upon from my fish? I don't know, it's a weird way of saying it. But Will my audience appreciate this? And if so, honestly, you know, what is it worth doing. And I think there's a matrix out there, because the ice matrix, which is I don't remember that I stands for now, that's our impact complexity. This is where the bad weather stands for. But us, essentially, you look at the impact this actions going to have on your business, how complex is going to be how expense, I think expensive, expensive, or difficult it's going to be to do, and then you give them a number and you can read it. So I'll recommend doing that for every single tactic you're thinking of. And for me, Facebook groups, we fought about it, but it just doesn't make sense in terms of the impact it has on the business.
Umar Hameed 32:32
Brilliant. So I liked the strategy of you know, building the database giving value. It's challenging not to put a link in because it's almost like a compulsion that we always do that. But I think doing the first two to just add value, and see if they self volunteer to come in. So you've been doing your business for how long?
William Wang 32:51
So I think this is we just took over our sixth year, I think April is when I officially gave my notice and went full time. So this is key number six for us.
Umar Hameed 33:01
Brilliant. So if this will went back six and a half years ago, to younger will getting ready to start his business in six months. What one piece of advice would you give young Well, that would actually make that journey easier?
William Wang 33:16
That's a good question. I might cheat and go to because the first thing I would say for myself. And this might not apply for founders and business owners who are already in business. But the first thing I would say is just to stain your corporate job a little bit longer. So I came from corporate IT hated my job was looking for any way to get out and, you know, jumped a little bit too early, I think I could have cut two or three years off the path to where we are. Now, if I just gritting my teeth and go for another six to 12 months, that would have been a lot faster, because I would have made better decisions had more money to reinvest into the business and grown up a lot faster that way. So I think number one advice, so just bear with it for another six months, and just you know, just grit your teeth get through it. And that's going to have an exponentially great effect going into the future. Okay. I think the second piece of advice I would have, and this is something that I did well anyway, but I think it just reemphasize something that worked. Well. It's just building that work, and just talk to people, not with the idea of selling to people. But just the idea that everything right, the more you can learn about a market or an industry, the more marketing industry that you talk to and see, the more ideas you get, and the more ideas you get, the more opportunities that come your way. And opportunities eventually leak dollars. So I think very early on, I went too far down the path of I was chiropractors, I worked with this group, just because that's what the courses were teaching. Whereas if I just taken time and just you know, given myself another six months, and just said look, I don't know where Can we've but let me go and see who I actually genuinely like talking to, and then go and figure out what problems they've got, and then build a problem for that audience set, that would have been a much more effective way of doing that.
Umar Hameed 35:13
And she Thank you very much for sharing that. Because that also shows like a vulnerability of okay, I didn't know what I was doing. And it kind of comes back to this evil word called patience, which is like, so important, it's so hard to do. Because in my psychology, it's like, Okay, we're gonna do this, okay, done enough thinking, let's start executing. And oftentimes, it's gone down a path that's been, you know, somewhat successful, but nowhere close to the effort that was put into it. And having that patience to really figure out where do we fit in? Who can we help the most would have served us better. And I think, dear viewers, and listeners, take this advice. And even if you're in a business right now, before you go down the path, treading water for a little while and rethinking the business, the good example was that Facebook question I asked, is like, you know, what's the effort versus reward equation? And is that going to justify it, because you can get seduced by the act of doing, the act of doing gives you the illusion of accomplishment, and accomplishment in business is how much money you make for the shareholders?
William Wang 36:20
Yeah, I would also add to that, in mind, I'll say, I think, the best entrepreneurs and business owners, I know, they figured out a way to balance that, because I'll be a little bit careful about going too much the other side as well, because we I'm sure we both know, people who are great thinkers, and they think and they think they think, and then five years passes, and all that done thought and they haven't taken action. One of my great friends and client of ours, you know, they've got an amazing business. They help people outsource and you know, they, their brand is amazing. BPO 1000s of client, you know, all that kind of stuff. One of the catchphrases which has made a massive impact on me, is massive, imperfect action. Because, you know, for me, I also learn confidence, I was a massive introvert, I needed that doing right, putting myself out there talking to the people, I needed to do that, before I did thinking time because if I didn't take the action, I would have scared myself. So I think it's a balance that you've got to find. But now there's I've gone too much the other way, where our front idea like, Hey, Tim, I'm executing this and it's done in my team, like, Oh, my God, bro, shut up. So it's almost about striking. But like, at a certain stage, I think for me at the very beginning, if I know what I know, now, it's easy to say Have patience and do this. But at the same time looking back on it, I think I needed to take the massive imperfect action to have the confidence to do something with so a book that I really that's really helped me understand this it's it's a book called The Road Less stupid by by Keith Cunningham, who was a billing there went bankrupt in building software to billionaire so you know that he didn't flunk it. And it's all premises the idea of taking thinking time. So for me, it's like, I want to be able to do a thinking time session every single day. But off the back of the thinking, I have to take action like I can't just think and then Oh, congratulations. But myself and backward thinking No, you've got to take action off the back of your thinking and take action into something. Even if it's imperfect, like don't let perfect be the enemy of great. That's that's something else that you know, the balance between those two things, I think is where you'll find success.
Umar Hameed 38:38
Brilliant. Will, what makes you happy?
William Wang 38:44
I think for me, it's it's it's a question I'm trying to figure out as well. Because in business, there's moments where, obviously, I'll wake up and I'm like, Let's burn this the ground. I don't want to do this for another day. But then on some days, I wake up and go, How did I get like, This is amazing. You know, it's unreal, like I'm living my dream life. I think for me, happiness is being able to move forward and seeing progress. And being able to do the things that I'm good at. Not necessarily the things that I enjoy, but the things that I'm good at. And also finding things that I'm not good at in seeing improvement. Nice. So yeah, I mean, it's a great question, because, you know, it's something that I've kind of not struggle with, but I've grappled with in my mind internally for the past year or so, especially as we've hit this level of success where, you know, it's like, we live I live an extraordinary life. But what am I trying to do, like, what's the point of doubling the business? So it's something that I've been I've been grappling with, and I think it is progress. I think it's a journey enjoying the journey, not worrying about the numbers, but just surrounding myself with good people doing great work for them. I'm just seeing the progress in things that I'm good at, and also that I'm not good at, I guess my answer.
Umar Hameed 40:05
Brilliant. So one of the areas of focus for me is this is that ultimately, at the end of the day, it's, the more authentic you are as a human being, the more powerful you are in the world. The problem is, most people don't know who they are, what their purpose is, and why they here and all those fundamental things that we take for. It's not that important to one day, I'll figure it out. But I think what happens is, when you uncover your purpose in life, it gives you a direction, and you can put a goal on that direction. And then every fiber of your being attacks that goal. Even if there's a crap day, you feel superb, because you're doing what you're meant to do. The second thing is our deepest values, and more importantly, the criteria that our heart and mind uses to validate whether we're actually fulfilling those values or not. Knowing that gives you a rock solid foundation that allows you to get the grit you need to keep on going. So you got purpose gives you direction, and motivation, values gives you the grit to keep going, then it's fundamentally finding those mental blocks that stops you from executing, finding and removing those. And then the last step is really igniting the passion within and realizing how can I get into my optimal mode. And the reason you can do it faster is you know, where you're heading, you know, where the goal is, you know, your integrity, and you know, all the fears and limitations are gone. And this is how you get a good executive and make them like a frickin beast is not through external stuff. It's all internal. And I think that's one of the journeys that entrepreneurs and leaders need to go through. And once they do that there's a business before and the business after that transformation. And it doesn't need to take a long time to do that. Any thoughts, comments on that kind of hypothesis?
William Wang 41:51
Wow, really deep. That's, you know, I haven't thought about it like that before. That's really interesting way of looking at it. And I think it's, it's a good framework for for processing this. Because to be honest, I think, to me so far, and it's something I'm going to have to think about going into the future as we start hiring executives and building out our entire leadership team. It's things like that, right? What's going to drive the rest of leadership team, because it's a lot easier when it's your business. Right? Because obviously, if you don't, if you lose motivation, you stop paying yourself, that's a painful thing. Whereas when you start hiring executives, and a leadership team is a little bit different. They've got a paycheck. How do you get that and beyond? So that's a framework I'm going to have to add, I really liked the framework that that you've got, and I think I'm going to steal that in it. And that that that for me as the owner. I mean, I think for my mindset, it's, it's kind of like this, and it's a bit of a needless kind of approach, right? And I just look at him go, Look, I don't know what the hell happens after I died after he passed away. I think nothing because I've been that alive before. And I don't remember it. So you know, who the hell knows. But we've got one life. And for me, this one life is so precious, and I want to be spend the life doing stuff. And you know, people talk about legacy, but men's stuff legacy, like, who's going to remember what the hell I've done? My grandkids, like no one, right? There's people who've been, you know, absolutely change the world. And all that happens is people talk about them passing. Like, who cares? So for me, I didn't care about legacy beyond having awesome kids raising them, right? Swing the right time equality with them. And then obviously, by extension when I had them grandkids, but that's the extent of legacy that I care about. So if I didn't care about legacy beyond the next two generations, then for me, it's like, well, what, but knowing that I fit this one life and one shot to do some freaking amazing things. Well, then why wouldn't I have the best I've ever right? Why wouldn't I fly first class everywhere? Why wouldn't I go to explore the entire world? Well, when they network and hang on people that I love, and who are doing cool things in her driven, they motivate me and want me to be better. So for me, it's just kind of like, you know, to motivate myself, it's all about maximizing this one opportunity, one shot that we've been given, that's fleeting, and that's, you know, every second that's going by it's one second less that we've got in this existence. So why wouldn't I want to jam packet for the coolest stuff that I can do with the mags and people I can surround myself with and just enjoy the ride. So for me, that's my motivation. And you know, to do that, obviously, you need money. So the money is a means to an end. It's a means to being able to network with the coolest people being able to, you know, spend, take my family to cool experiences. And so for me, I can tie the business and the sales and all of that back to the ultimate goal of, hey, I want to go and take my family to the Maldives this year. and do these experiences while we're there? What does that look like? So let's go and build that into my plans for the business this year.
Umar Hameed 45:07
Brilliant. So as you build your company out, let me give you some advice on how to do that. Yes, please. Ultimately, at the end of the day, what happens is you've got a company, it's fairly successful, and then you're growing it, and then the consultants come in. And then it's like, okay, what are the values that we want for this company? And how do we define who we are, and you can go all across the world in companies and go in boardrooms, and you'll see on the wall, we are dedicated to the betterment of the environment, or employees and our customers with some of the BS like that. And what we really need to do is to get the essence of the owner, what are the core values that are important to that human being, and map those out to the company, because then that person can be the authentic role model, as opposed to trying to be something they're not, the criteria that they use for the values ends up what we reward our employees on. So if it is going above and beyond, and an employee does that for a customer, the stories that we capture become the folklore of the company, and they take a concept and make it real. And the last thing I'll share with you is people will do more for each other than they'll do for you the boss, if only we get the right belief system and the culture in the organization. And the best way to think about that is a simple piece of paper. I remember an experiment that we did when I was in elementary school, we got a magnet, put it down, put a piece of paper on top of it, and we sprinkled iron filings on the piece of paper. And soon as they hit the paper, they moved to the lines. So those aren't filings are the behaviors and the attitudes of your employees. The paper is the company that you've built. And the magnet underneath is the culture that drives it. And what happens is if we don't have the right culture, but we get a consultant that comes in and says, Okay, stop doing this behavior when take this art and filing and move it over here, this is what we're doing now. And it's a better way that soon as you let go, it slides back to where it used to be. So what we fundamentally need to do as owners of companies, is realize that we're in the belief business, how do we identify the limiting beliefs in the organization? And how do we transform those, and if we get the magnet, right, then we attract people to our company that go, You know what, I'm never going to leave this place. Because I've found home. And it's not about the owner, it's about each other. And growing something freaking awesome. And when you do that, it allows you to focus on the three most important things that you should be focusing on. The first one is, what it does is you should be focused on kick ass amazing vision, which I know you got in spades to is building a kick ass amazing culture that people will die to work at. And three is long term shareholder value. And at some point, you need to step up to that position, and get out of the day to day operations. And you can only do that when everybody else is committed, and behaving in the way that they want. And I'll get off my sermon, because I've got passion around. Because I think it's important that we realize it's our personal beliefs and our organizational beliefs that build kickass amazing companies.
William Wang 48:20
You know, that's, that's awesome. And I think by by chance, I've I've had luck moving to having the first two. So just to touch on that point, we do have in our offices, when we used to have the office and everyone used to go in on the wall as you go in our slogan was do good shit for good companies and good people. And so that was the premise of everything, that we only work with people with great products that change the world. And we go out of our way to dedicate ourselves to our clients, because they're doing cool stuff. And so our impact is the impact we have on these businesses. And we help them Yeah, so we're exponentially having a great impact in the world by helping these great companies. Right. So sorry for the swearing, we're just trailing company. So swearing is part of our DNA, but what's up imposters so it's just like it whenever anyone came in, it was just like, do good stuff. For for great comfort, like do good stuff for good companies. And I think that's our motto. And you know, I think my team, I've been lucky to have amazing team members, we literally have not had anyone fun, voluntarily leave the company in more than three years. Because we're so dedicated to the work that and we see the work with doing having such a big impact in the world. But the last bit is definitely where it's missing. With with, you know, the shareholders coming in and being able to extract myself from all of that, but hey, we're working on that. But I think your framework, I love your frameworks in my like there's so cool. So we're going to take the one that we you know, around vision, I'm going to take the one around grant, you know, the company vision, the culture and the shareholders and stuff are going to be something that we adapt in the near future.
Umar Hameed 49:55
Brilliant just before we part company. What is one mind hack? you'd like to share with our viewers, listeners that would allow them to be more productive, more efficient, happier, get better dates, whatever it is.
William Wang 50:08
Oh, I think knowing where you're at in the journey and what you need to motivate you. So what I mean by that is, when I was strapped, like we struggled in the business for so long, like two and a half years, we, you know, barely made the payments on the house, all that kind of stuff. When I was going through that I drove the crappiest car, couldn't afford the, you know, or do any of that kind of stuff. So every time I hopped into my car, I imagined myself driving a brand new Porsche, right, I'd imagine my mind getting in the car of the seat belt. You know, every time I had to fly economy on the cheapest airlines, I imagined, I was in business class on the top airline in Australia, I put myself into the mental headspace where I was already successful. That was my little hack. And I used to go out and during the day, and just pretend like I've been given free rein to hang out and hang out at the beach because I was free. But pretend like my business works so well that I get to do this. Nice. So that was, yeah, when I was struggling, that really helped me get through a lot of the dark times. In my mind, knowing that I had shaved already what was the working towards it, it was just a matter of time catching me up to where it was. Funnily enough, now that I've gone in, you know, proportions, and all this kind of stuff, traveling business class. For me, my mental hack now is peace of mind, and not having mental baggage. So for me, it's actually offloading all the stuff that I fought used to be cool. And going back to just the simple guy that I don't care where I live, I don't care if it gets dented, or if someone a kid. It's like, I don't need that I've gone for the fancy stuff, I had my Flex, let's get rid of it. And getting back to just like an ordinary Toyota that I can just live anywhere I get sad or whatever and take surfing and just not even care about. So that's my So it went from having possessions now for me, it's like minimalism, and just being free to to have experiences. It's my mental metadata right now. So I think it depends on where you are in the journey.
Umar Hameed 52:08
Absolutely. I think had you not dream the big dreams to get what you wanted to get. If you went you know, I just wanted to good work, there's a good chance you would not have made it at the same level of success. So you use that carrot to get you where you needed to go and now you don't need it. So you can go and build the next phase which is more about being rather than doing will, that delightful conversation. 55 minutes went by like that, my friend and hopefully this is the first of many conversations.
William Wang 52:36
This has been so fun. Thank you so much for having me on. This has been amazing. I've learned so much from from you just in this conversation as well. So selfishly, thank you so much.
Umar Hameed 52:50
If you enjoyed this episode, please go to iTunes and leave a five-star rating. And if you're looking for more tools, go to my website at nolimitsselling.com. I've got a free mind training course there, that's going to teach you some insights from the world of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and that is the fastest way to get better results.