Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.
Verbatim text
Lee:
Welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast, the podcast for web designers and design agencies, exploring the world of WordPress and online business. And now your host, Lee Jackson.
Lee:
Welcome to episode number 102 of the WP Innovator Podcast. You know, I was just thinking, I do these introductions, and I remember really, really early on when I first launched this podcast, feeling a little bit embarrassed in front of Larissa doing these intros. And yet here we are. She sat right next to me, working away, not judging me. I don’t think you’re judging me, are you?
Larissa:
No, she’s no. And hopefully she’s seen a bit of an improvement because we’re a hundred episodes in. So you’d think I’d be getting better at this. I hope I’m getting better at this. What do you think?
Lee:
Let me know. There’s a Facebook group. It’s a good place to talk. It’s over on WPInnovator.com forward slash group. Breathe. On today’s show, we’ve got my mate, Johnny Jensen. He is a ex-client of mine and not ex because he hated me, but just simply because we used to provide services for them and then they needed different services. That’s all cool. But it’s a brilliant episode because he is talking about digital marketers and the fact that there are not enough digital marketers out there. This is a space that all of you amazing WP Innovator listeners should and could be getting into to generate income, to add massive value to your clients. So this is a brilliant episode. I just know you’re going to enjoy it. So before I go, can I just ask you one favor, head on over to WPInnovator.com forward slash YouTube. That is our new YouTube channel. Please subscribe, find a video that resonates with you, pop a comment in there and then share the crap out of it. I really, really appreciate that. We need to get those subs numbers up. I want to get as much exposure as we possibly can to the WP Innovator brand so that we can grow this group, et cetera, et cetera. Lots of reasons, insert reasons here, whatever reason you want. All right, guys, sit back, relax, enjoy the show and please keep your arms and legs in the vehicle at all times. Thank you.
Lee:
You are joining a conversation today with me, your host, Lee Jackson and Mr. Johnny Jensen. Mate, how are you today?
Johnny:
I’m good, Lee. Great to be joining you here this morning. I’m in the UK. Autumn’s here and I’m actually looking forward to the end of the year.
Lee:
Well, yeah, the end of the year is the best time of year because it’s Christmas.
Johnny:
Well, yeah, I’m a big fan of Christmas too. Yeah, definitely.
Lee:
This is why you and me get on so well, I believe. Before we talk about Christmas, let me just let people know who you are. Johnny is a very good friend of mine, one of my very early clients back in the day as well, years ago when me and Johnny both had a full head of hair. I believe Johnny had red curly hair back then, like wavy. Anyway, and Johnny is a digital business coach and the founder of the inbound marketing agency, Alive and Social. Mate, Christmas, let’s just quickly talk about Christmas. How early should one play Christmas music? I think I need to know this.
Johnny:
Oh, well, in terms of White Christmas, I can happily sing along to that any time of year. But yeah, I think it gets you in the mood really. Post-Halloween, it’s got to be post-Halloween.
Lee:
Oh,
I think I broke that rule. We’ve been playing it for like a month already. And about a month ago, my wife’s like, I’ve got something really great for dessert. I’m like, oh yeah, yeah, okay, okay. Lo and behold, she brings out a mince pie warmed up with ice cream. There was a tear in my eye.
Johnny:
Yeah, well, don’t save turkey for Christmas.
Lee:
That’s true. I have bought my daughter’s first Christmas present though, so there’s a good indicator.
Johnny:
Yeah, well, that’s not necessarily being Christmassy though, is it? That’s just being clever and forward thinking and a planner. Maybe that represents you and your whole life. Have you always been a planner? Have you?
Lee:
No, but I could have a whole conversation with you about Christmas. But yeah, buy early, save the stress, watch other people frantically run around like maniacs and just instead of being stressed about it, enjoy the subject.
Johnny:
This is brilliant. So the first takeaway from this marketing podcast is buy your Christmas presents early and avoid the rush. Genius. All right, well, obviously me and you are actually a little bit older than we look. Clearly we both look in our early 20s. And if you don’t believe me, guys, just head on over to the podcast show notes, you’ll see a picture of this handsome young man. But rumor has it, you’ve been rocking around the internet since the late 90s. How about you tell us a little bit of your history of your experience of the internet? Or as they used to call it internet without the the. Or in America, AOL.
Johnny:
It’s a great story, actually. And one, to some degree, I’m proud of really. I’ve been involved in the internet really since the earliest times. In marketing agencies, I came out of university and managed to get a job in marketing agencies. I thought, you know, AI was good at it, but I thought it was going to be fun. I didn’t realize how much hard work and low pay it was going to be. But during that experience, I was on secondment in Amsterdam. And bearing in mind, the internet previously had been something you had to book a time in a slot. Like you had to go to a book in the research room, book a time in the slot, and then go and sit there whilst it went, eeeh, eeeh. I really didn’t get it at all. But then whilst in Amsterdam, I was launching the Nissan Almeera, and I was giving the brochure wear and all the, you know, offline stuff to this agency called Razorfish. And whilst sitting with those guys, it blew my mind. I was like, oh my gosh, I get it. I get this thing is going to change the world.
Johnny:
And so when I came back to the UK, I spoke to my boss and I said, I needed to work on an account that is in this thing called the internet. And he was like, I don’t really know what that’s about, but we have been asked to pitch for a company called Lycos. And we won the pitch. And I just buzzed off it. I was, I was, we created this everyday bingo product. In fact, there’s a company called Tombola, which you’ll see the TV ads on online for now. They got online bingo. And they were the company we worked with. And the guy, Phil Cronin, he ran all the daily scratch card competitions and promos for The Sun. And so he turned it online. So we made this online scratch card. And the game was, could we get people off the street onto this thing called the internet? And when I told my dad I’d taken this job, I’d left a big TBWA tequila agency in London. And, um, I’m not sure if we swear on your podcast, but he said, okay, um, as if anyone’s going to book a fucking holiday on a computer. And, and that basically summed up what people thought I was doing basically.
Johnny:
But it was, it was crazy days and literally were on the street, handing out flyers, trying to get people onto the, onto the internet. It was Boo.com and, um, um, and Books Online. And we were competing with Yahoo and MSN and even to a certain degree, AOL. And one of my tasks was I looked after this thing called Tripod, which was, you could have a web, you could have your own page and talk about your hobby. Hello, blogging. Um, I mean, it was just crazy. And so I spent three and a half years on the web and, and it was just brilliant breaking ground. Like, could we have a million contacts? Could I send them an email? Oh, well, we don’t know how to do that. Literally, like I said, we don’t know how to do that. So I went and found an email company and said, if, if I let you sell advertising in this email, can I email my users? And they were like, yeah, we can do that. Um, and, uh, early vouchers. I ran a promo in a pub where you could take a voucher in and hand in and get a beer. It was just, it was crazy. The sales team would shout down, I’ve just sold a million banners to British Airways. And then the content team would shout back, we don’t have a travel section. They would sit there and make one. So, so, you know, gosh, it sounds like the Wild West of the internet, isn’t it? It was 99 into 91, 92. Um, sorry, into 91, uh, the, uh, you know, Y2K and the, the world was going to end 2001, 2002. And then when I saw this thing called the mobile and the mobile internet, I thought, wow, when this is in everyone’s pocket. And so I jumped ship from Lycos, spent four years at Bon Joino UK making, um, value-added services, revenue, subscription, loyalty programs for O2, Vodafone, really understanding the power of data and selling content. Um, and that, you know, ultimately that led to four years in mobile, a little dabble with my own company and mobile content. But then as we were discussing before this, uh, before you pressed record, I had a little dabble in an e-learning company, which, uh, which took, which, which caused a pivot and brought me to where I’m at today.
Lee:
That’s insane. Can we just talk about Tripod for a second? Because I just, whilst you, whilst you’re talking, I thought, I’ve got to see if my account still exists. It’s still freaking well exists from 1999, I think. No, I think I signed up in 98 or 99. And I just actually just searched for tripod.com. I just found Tripod. It still exists. Tripod.lycos.co.uk. And it allowed me to log in. I don’t know how my actual original site, I can’t find in there at all. That’s a shame. It looks like they must’ve like just kept the accounts, but like shifted people over to a new system. But I kept like one of my first ever websites was built on Tripod. It was kind of why I let out a gasp when you said it. I was like, Oh my gosh, that was my first foray into HTML and Tripod back then was, um, I can’t remember if we had a builder necessarily, but it at least had an area where you could add HTML. It was almost like an online file manager FTP. And I think it was something like PCW16ers.tripod.co.uk or something like that. Oh my gosh.
Johnny:
Lee’s having a little key cross.
Lee:
Elaine. Chucking code jargon at me. That’s back when I had to upload, you know, so it was connecting with the telephone. We had, oh, mate, this is insane. I ran up a 400-pound phone bill, yeah, until we realized there was the way of dialing up for free on FreeServe. So we switched over to FreeServe after I gave my mum and dad a panic attack.
Johnny:
Well, 400 pounds back then, probably like 1,200 pounds now.
Lee:
Yeah, ridiculous. Oh my gosh, it was insane. I was in so much trouble. Oh, I can tell you loads of stuff. It was great. We went to events all dressed up in green with green wigs on, taking pictures of people and saying, this picture will be available on your own Tripod page. And they were like, what are you talking about? Stop stalking me. Not bad though, guys. If you head on over to tripod.lycos.co.uk, you can get your disk space of 20 megabytes and 1 gigabyte bandwidth. This is not an affiliate link. Clearly.
Lee:
So what happened then at this e-learning experience?
Johnny:
It was an interesting stuff was going on in my life, which is another whole podcast in itself. But I found myself needing a job and living in Brighton. And there’s a company there called Epic, which is an e-learning company still around. And certainly back in the day was one of the most well-known, but very traditional company, even though I had a digital outlook. And I’ve managed to get myself the job as the marketing director, manager, some kind of, you know, around the area. But I was in board meetings and I didn’t realize that actually a large part of my job was being a traditional marketing manager. I needed to feed leads into the sales team so they could actually ring them up and sell them traditionally. But with my digital hat on, I was looking at their website. There was no lead gen. There was no content. It was the email marketing was awful. And so I was kind of head down in that direction, which wasn’t really giving them what they wanted from me. So it was a bit of a bumpy ride.
Johnny:
They said, right, OK, then, well, you give us a presentation on what you think should happen. And then, you know, we’ll take it from there. So I prepared this whole, you know, half hour talk. Put me in the front of the room. I’m in my element. OK, so it was in no way that I was concerned about this. Gave the talk. It was all about how blogging was, you know, driving traffic, raising profile, you know, leading people to you, which you could then convert to a lead. It was shortening the sales process. It was empowering your sales team to sell quicker and at a higher value. It was like this is, you know, you’re not going to say no to this. You’re going to get what I’m talking about. And the sales director, let’s call him Tracy. That was his name. Lent back on his chair and said, well, I guess that’s the end of blogging as a business tool.
Johnny:
And somehow or other, he’d taken completely the wrong, the opposite way. And your head in hands moment for you or.
Johnny:
No, I realized my days there were numbered and they were about a week later. But it also just made me realize that here was a company that was actually successful, that had good people, had a good product. In fact, had a whole process that worked like from sales to delivery to customer satisfaction. But the front door that had worked for so long was now creaking on its hinges and probably wouldn’t be used as much as it had been in the past. Because all around them was these young upstarts who were basically who were using the Internet effectively. And so I could see that this was this. You know, I was aware of the digital gap and aware going back to the comment my dad made about what the Internet really was, that there was still so many companies who just didn’t get it. And even when I look at my social circle, you know, I’d love more of my friends to be clients. I think I would. But they still kind of like, yeah, well, we’ll just see. We’ll do this. And the danger is, you know, whether it’s Woolworths or Blockbusters or Thomas Cook, you know, the examples, the graveyard of companies, well-known ones that are there to be seen. Look in the States. I mean, if you look on the Internet for like Macy’s or JCPenney or these huge retail companies, they’re just like graveyards. Yes.
Johnny:
And full kudos to John Lewis for, you know, and latterly, Marks and Spencers maybe. But John Lewis are a beacon of what can and should be done about having a digital culture and integrating the web into your business rather than try and plug it into alongside as, oh, yeah, well, we’ve got a digital person. We’ll see them sometime in the next quarter. You know, it needs to be integrated into business. And so what I’m leading towards here is that my the structure of Live and Social and my work is very much I wanted to help these businesses at a board level, at an MD level. You know, and classically, my my clients are sort of lifestyle owner managed 500K to 5 million, depending on the sector. You know, recruitment is normally up to sort of 10 million size companies. But these are these are traditionally or classically owner managed, got a good team, good product. But they now get into a stage where they can’t scale effectively because they can’t keep increasing their costs. They need to be more intelligent about how they grow the business. And and digital is still just a big gray area that increasingly has become like the emperor’s new clothes. How’s the word? How’s the Internet for you?
Lee:
Oh, it’s very good. It’s very good. Very, very nice. Do you like my outfit?
Johnny:
Yes, I love it. You look wonderful. Actually, they haven’t got a clue that they’re completely naked.
Lee:
I think one thing I’ve seen very common, commonly as well, is that people actually get promoted within a business to the digital marketer. But they used to be the person who did the photocopying and they’ve slowly worked their way through a business and companies, larger companies. And I’ve actually witnessed this within a company. I will not mention any names because that would just be mean. But, you know, I’ve seen people who clearly have no real digital experience being promoted into positions of marketing, head of marketing, etc., because a company feels like they need to fill that position, but they don’t know who or how to fill that position. So they just select whoever seems the most keenest and has worked for the company the longest and pop them in that position. And then it’s the blind leading the blind.
Johnny:
Yeah. And the thing is, Lee, you’re exactly right. And it’s worse than that. OK, because inside most company cultures, you know, inside most company structures, there comes a point where you have to promote someone. OK, someone knocks on your door and says, can I have a promotion? In marketing agencies, you see even more often someone’s been there for two years. You are a junior account manager for two years. Then you’re a senior account manager for two years and your account manager for two years. Then you’re, you know, if you stay with the company long enough, you should be an account director by 10 years. So this whole kind of mirage, because the line manager or the boss, the person who’s making the decision doesn’t have a digital background, they’re in no position to critique that person for the role. So they think, but they then give the person this job. What they often will do is not actually change their current job, just bolt it on top.
Johnny:
So now this person is overworked and underperforming. Which is incredibly stressful. If the culture around them isn’t geared to support them, so now they’re feeling really isolated as well. They go to someone and say, oh, can you write a blog? Oh no, I’m too busy. I’m too busy. Oh, could you, could you, can we do a, I’ve read this thing called a webinar. Could someone help me like any level of it? Or I’m going to put a live chat on our website. Oh no, no, we can’t, we couldn’t, we couldn’t possibly do that. You know, they’re just abandoned. And you could take a previously successful person, marketing manager, although without digital skills, how successful can they really be? But, you know, but ultimately they will, they will eat, they will stress out and leave, resign. If on the off chance they were actually quite skilled, if they’re working inside a company that doesn’t have the culture to support them, once they’re given the role and the remit to be more digital, if they get stuck getting quite good at it, they’d actually become more frustrated with the culture that’s around them, but also at the same time start to get noticed by other companies where there’s such an insane demand for digital marketers right now, they will get headhunted or move. Then it leaves a vacuum where you’ve got an undigital business that was doing some digital that they’re now trying to recruit someone to take on. It’s a house of cards.
And when I talk about it in presentations or talk about it in, you know, to new clients, it’s a downward spiral. And unless, but because it just sucks the life out of a business, you end up with abandoned social media channels, intermittent emails, a blog that’s got nothing on it apart from some press release about the MD getting a new car. It, you know, it’s a downward spiral, but the very opposite is true when a company decides to actually be a digitally fit business to take on digital as a core practice, it’s an upward spiral.
Johnny:
And as you develop these skills, it’s like doing press-ups. OK, how’d you get fit? I’m sorry. How’d you, how’d you get healthy? Well, you eat right and you exercise, but if you take two overweight people and one of them says, I just don’t know where to start. I don’t know if it’s going to work. I’ve tried it before. I did have a coach, but it didn’t really work out. I joined a gym, but it was too stressful. You know, you could change the word fitness, gym, coach for digital, email, web, blog. The other person just gets on with it and says, you know what? I’m going to do 10 press-ups a day. Slowly but surely their mindset starts to shift, you know, where they go, oh, that email was quite easy to do. Oh, that Facebook page was quite easy to set up. Yeah. Well, I’ve got people in the business doing some blogs and it’s actually working. You can’t shortcut that first six months or that first 12 months, but as you develop those skills, the growth is exponential. It’s like Moore’s law for our geeky listeners. OK, but so your competitors can’t catch up. You can’t write a hundred blogs over the space of a month. You can’t get your sales team excited about what digital does for them when they get leads that are actually motivated, ready to buy and you know what pages on your website have been to. So if you don’t start, you’re never going to grow.
Johnny:
So in terms of this upward spiral that I was talking about, you get excitement and enthusiasm in the team. You get people, you look for your digital champions, you do a digital skills audit, you create strong digital leadership. So now the business has a plan that everyone’s excited about and understands. Then as you start to do it, things become a little bit more efficient. Sales teams become a little bit more, close a few more deals. The marketing team is able to say, yeah, our web traffic’s gone up. Yeah, I’ve created this many leads. They feel excited. The MD gets to talk about it in a way that’s confident and different. So they stand out from the competition. The customers start to experience this new level of service that where they feel like they’re actually getting their heard and listened to and they’re getting product at the time they need it. So their satisfaction goes up and they start to refer people. The industry hears about it. And so good talent starts to come to your business rather than leave it. It’s an upward spiral that creates a momentum that is a competitive advantage and an asset that can’t be caught up. And you can hear how excited I’m getting, OK?
Lee:
Mate, I feel like playing dramatic music in the background, by the way. This is brilliant. It builds up as it builds up. Keep going, though. This is gold.
Johnny:
But this is digital competence, OK? There was a Capgemini report in 2012. I mean, it’s going back that far. And it’s called The Digital Advantage: Why Digital Businesses Win in Every Industry. And it simply is this point. And obviously, you know, as younger people are coming into the workforce, they’re going to look for companies that they can fit into, that feels like, oh, yeah, this is good. You know, I don’t mind not answering emails at whatever time they pop onto my phone. But I do think that I’ll probably come to work about half nine, two or three mornings a week so I can take my kid to school. You know, there’s flexibility that’s available to a digital business that good talent wants to be part of. And when you don’t have it, and this is the crazy thing about all these digital marketing and digital director jobs that are out there, is that anyone worth their salt would be on a hiding to nothing to take a job in a company that wasn’t on this digital journey.
Johnny:
And so what they’ll end up doing, this is where I go back to the Emperor’s New Clothes thing, they’ll end up hiring someone who says, I’m really good at digital. But the thing is, anyone can say they’re good at digital. Because we’ve grown up with it. We’ve had it for 20 years. But what does that really mean? Like, what does it really mean? Oh, yeah, I’ve sent a few emails from my last company. Oh, yeah, I looked after the website. Yeah. Well, we had an agency that did most of it. If you spin that the right way, you can win that job.
Lee:
It’s true. I could spin anything. I remember getting a job, you know, just by other people were involved. I just project managed. I didn’t actually do any of the digital aspects of it. And I remember nearly getting a job myself. Sorry, carry on.
Johnny:
There is not enough digital talent out there to fill all the digital jobs that are available at the moment. And the other thing is that the likelihood is, oh, here’s the classic one. Here’s the classic one I saw this week. They want a digital director in their business. OK, so it starts at the top strategy and lead the business and, you know, the things that you would associate with a director role. But then as you get down to the bottom, it says things like skilled in managing social media communities and a good working knowledge of HTML. So they’re like, for our Little Britain fans, you know, they want to sing the theme tune, write the theme tune, play the music. Like, it’s like what you want this 50, you know, don’t even talk to me about what money they’re expecting to pay some of these people. Usually 15K or lower, isn’t it? Something ridiculous.
Lee:
Yeah, I’ve had conversations with companies. But that’s okay. So what’s the solution to this problem?
Johnny:
The solution to this problem is that your business has to go on a digital journey, really. What you’re aiming towards is having a digital leader. You want someone in your business that can lead that side of the company. Now, it can be the MD or the CEO if they’ve got that mindset about them. If they’re listening to this and they’re realizing, I’m not that person. I don’t have that person in my business. But going out and choosing one right now is going to be risky. I would say, yes, it is. Because to hire a good one is going to cost about, depending on if you’re in London or not, somewhere between 50 and 80K. Genuinely. To get a…
Lee:
Yeah, pounds, pounds.
Johnny:
Yeah. And actually in America, I think wages are slightly higher or certainly…
Lee:
I think they are. Yeah.
Johnny:
So it’s going to be way over 100K. Exactly, yeah. But then that business isn’t a digital business. It doesn’t have a digital culture. So that when you go back and try and justify this role, the justification isn’t there. You looked at it like a madman. Plus, who wants to put their balls on the line like that? I’m going to hire this person for 100K and they’re going to turn my business around. Or they’re going to take us into the next century or whatever. So really, the journey that has to happen really. And this isn’t just about a pitch for myself. But it is about finding someone who can be that digital leader in your business, who can take you on that journey and create the space for that digital champion to come in. And quite honestly, getting that job description right is important because there is someone out there, probably a younger person, probably late 20s to early 30s, who’s a second jobber, who wants some responsibility, who does have the digital competence, but perhaps doesn’t have the strategic skill and agility to actually take on that role and build a team. So you’ve got to, and particularly if you want loyalty and you want someone who knows the business, do take them at that younger age, but give them a job description that makes sense and don’t overstress them, i.e. give them a mentor, give them a line manager. And then as you support that person, as you help them choose the right tools and the right agency, then you can slowly start to increase that person’s responsibility and jettison or certainly push that digital advisor, that digital coach further out to a less day-to-day involvement.
Lee:
This is incredible. One thing, though, that’s kind of boggling my mind a little bit is trying to actually understand or work out. You said bring a company into this century. I mean, they’re already 17 years late. How are companies even surviving nowadays? Because I do everything online. I buy everything online. I am influenced. All of my purchasing decisions are influenced online. Are somehow these older companies without digital still surviving because of maybe an older client base maybe that is dying out? I’m trying to work out how people are surviving.
Johnny:
It’s twofold. You mentioned older company. The older company, depending on the size, of course, they’ll have some level of reputation. They’ve got some legacy clients. If you’ve got a traditional business, like an accountancy firm, legal practice, even dentists to some degree, although the dentist industry is obviously racing into the digital, using digital very well. But those companies, it actually takes quite a lot to lose a client. You’ve really got to mess up. And when there’s a great deal of trust required to actually make a decision there, the referrals for that business can still work quite well.
Johnny:
So traditional companies, they’ve got a good product, good people, good reputation. The danger is that the number of leads they’re getting is probably going down and they’re harder to come by. It’s probably slightly harder to close those deals. It takes longer. And that, of course, is costly. Also, what’s happening is that their number of referrals will be going down. Or even if the number of referrals stays high, the number of referrals they close will be going down. Why? Because when you get a referral, you probably ask for two or three recommendations and you go out and do the research. Where to do the research? You do it online.
Johnny:
And so the company that’s doing it good, you’ll go into their lead funnel, you’ll get a nice email, you’ll get a welcome series, you’ll get a checklist, you’ll get some sort of added value content that helps you develop a level of trust for that company and choose them. So the traditional company that’s not doing it is in danger because, and obviously we don’t have a visual here, but it’s like a triangle upside down, okay? They’ve got this strong base, but it’s at the top and it’s getting eroded on the side. So now it gets smaller and smaller down to that point.
Johnny:
The young company that’s not doing digital well will classically have exploded out of nowhere with a great product and a strong sales team, you know, driven by the passion of their MD or their founder, okay? And so what they’ve done is that they’ve done something in their market that made a difference that was disruptive. But now they’re looking to scale and recruitment’s a classic example here, okay? Because it’s a traditional business model, but you can just, you can do something in the recruitment space if you’ve got the right contacts and good people. But then when you want to scale past a certain number of employees, if you can’t get a consistent number of leads and if you can’t consistently close people as quick as possible, or the revenue that’s right, then your business can’t scale and grow.
Johnny:
So these are the two problems, the traditional problem and the new business problem. And in both of them, they will fail or simply get acquired for a value that’s lower than what they’re worth if they don’t go on this digital journey.
Lee:
That’s phenomenal. It’s true. And excuse me, I’ve experienced that as well in past businesses as well. Did something disruptive. It was exciting. There was a huge, huge amount of growth. But then because there was no kind of online digital strategy, leads were still coming in through the old-fashioned word of mouth way. They were getting harder and harder to convert those leads. And our perceived value, therefore, was also dropping in the eyes of these leads, which meant our own perception of ourselves was dropping as well. And we were lowering our prices, etc. And they were dark times a few years ago. I’ve mentioned it a few times, you know, where previous agency was a struggle. And we didn’t have a digital plan. And I’m now sat here. And this is episode, I think, 102. And, you know, when you were saying earlier, like, get started and keep creating content. We’re two years in now. And we’ve got so much freaking content. It’s ridiculous. But, you know, we didn’t just do it all in one go. We’ve taken our time doing it step by step, just like the guy trying to lose weight. And we now generate leads. We have people coming in all the time through the content that we’ve created. So, guys, what Johnny is saying is not horse manure. It’s actually true. And we’re living it. And we understand that creating valuable content and having some sort of strategic way of bringing leads in and being able to convert them. It’s absolutely essential. We only get business this way now. We do get some word of mouth still from previous clients. But all of our new business is coming in through digital.
Johnny:
Yeah. And notice what you just did, Lee. You just described the downward spiral. And then you described the upward spiral. Exactly. And you, as the business owner, were stressed and unhappy in the downward spiral. Yep. And now you’re positive and enthusiastic and excited in the upward spiral. And instinctively, humans can smell that. Yeah. You know, we can smell fear. We’re not actually aware of it anymore. We just have this sense that that’s not the right decision. And you go and choose someone else. But if the person that’s pitching you or the person you go to meet is stressed, frightened, and unhappy, you instinctively think, I don’t think I want to work with them for some reason. Yeah. But, you know, there is an answer. And, you know, it’s not hard to find. You know, Google, you know, ZMOT, I don’t know if you’ve spoken about ZMOT, zero moment of truth, you know, will help a business leader understand how the internet works. If that person’s ever bought a car or holiday, hello, dad, or some kind of business, you know, a holiday’s good. Because instinctively, you go on TripAdvisor, you look at a bunch of different options, you check prices, you ask anyone if they’ve been there. And before you know it, you’ve used the internet to make your purchase decision. Now go on your own company’s website and challenge it. Say, can I get that level of knowledge and information and trust out of my business?
Lee:
Here’s something funny. I worked with a guy a couple of years back now, but he’d never been onto his own website and bought something.
Johnny:
Oh, right.
Lee:
And I sat with him and did it and he said, this is a nightmare. Well, as you’ve just said all this, I’m thinking, you know what, I made my site look super pretty, but actually I’m thinking about it right now. I don’t know if it’s necessarily that easy for people to even access all the podcast episodes and everything else like that. I’m thinking, oh, crap. I need to go and look at what I’m doing.
Johnny:
Well, I could talk about ours, about agencies and design agencies. You know, the first question that any business needs to ask a prospective web agency or pick up the phone and book a meeting with your current website company is say, right, I want a meeting about results. I want you to tell me how many results I’m getting from the work you’re doing me. I want to know when’s it going up. When did it go up? When did it go down? Teach me how to get better results from what you’re doing for me, from my website, from my social media, from whatever it is that that agency that says we’re digital is doing for you. Challenge them on it. Show me the results.
Johnny:
Yeah, because most agencies, they’ll design you something pretty or tick a few social media boxes, but they’re wearing their emperor’s new clothes as well. They don’t, you know, most agencies that say we do it all don’t have the money to do it all. Because if you went and hired a skilled person in each of those areas, in SEO, in web design, in social media, in marketing automation, in lead generation, in content, we talked already about how much those people cost. You know, you’re talking about, you know, in an agency world, someone with the right level of experience to head up that team in perhaps a smaller size agency, you’re still going to be looking to pay that person 45k a year, probably. I mean, ideally, you’re looking at a minimum of 500k turnover just to have a team of people that can do everything. And then some, obviously, for profit and growth, et cetera.
Lee:
Yeah.
Johnny:
Yeah. But the MD, you know, the marketing director, marketing manager decides that it’s going to be a nightmare to work with lots of individual companies. So they go and pick the agency that says we do everything. Well, don’t get me started about some agency owners. You know, they were traditional agencies and then they realized they had to do digital. But what they’ve done is they’ve taken their traditional agency model and tried to apply it to the web, which is all about, you know, here’s a presentation about something that looks pretty. It’s garbage. It’s absolute garbage.
Lee:
Yeah. And also, though, I mean, a lot of agencies feel that they do still have to try and project everything as well and give people like the full solution. You know, so when they present something looking pretty, they’ll also then throw in all of the standard and we’re going to do this print run campaign and we’re going to do this email campaign and we’re going to do. And then they just reel off a list of things that they feel they have to offer as part of it. But again, without the results behind it, it’s just a case of here is a checklist of where we’re full service. Therefore, we need to fully service this particular project. And I may be saying event launch. And here are all the checkboxes we have to take. I mean, there’s obviously there’s value in doing all of those things. But without being without doing those with the right expertise and the right reasons and for being results driven, they are I guess they’re just noise, aren’t they? They’re just things that people are doing.
Johnny:
Yeah. To be a full service agency without the strategy, which.
Lee:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly that. And that’s to all those. If there’s any agency bosses out there at the moment gnashing their teeth, of course, there are good agencies. But we really love you all because agencies listen to this show. Every agency that listens to this show is a switched on, brilliant, strategic agency. I’m just telling you.
Johnny:
Well, I get that. And you know what? One of the big challenges putting my agency hat on, one of the big challenges is having a client who hasn’t got a clue what you’re doing for them.
Lee:
Mate. Oh, no, don’t. Oh, I’m going to cry now.
Johnny:
Yeah. No. Carry on. I’ll just I’ll just go on mute and cry for a bit.
Johnny:
Yes. I experienced this a lot. And so agencies out there and this is where agencies aren’t necessarily geared up is agencies need their clients to be better clients. And they need to have digitally fit clients, digitally competent clients. They need their clients to have digital champions and leaders inside their business. And so, you know, if an agency is set up to have that person, it’s a good it’s a good investment to make. But as we’ve just talked about, that person to have the right level of experiences would would be a strategic position in an agency. And then would you want to have them full time? So, you know, I’m leaning towards you could work with Johnny Jensen. But however you went and solved this problem, you need to have digitally fit clients so that they can buy from you better so they can appreciate your work. And ultimately, good clients stay longer and buy more. But agencies, you know, just just decide where your skill sets lie, you know, and be upfront about it. You know, you can be a competent SEO service provider, but you don’t have to say we’re an SEO specialist. You know, maybe you’d get an SEO specialist in to do to do a really focused piece of work. And then, you know, then you do the more day to day SEO without trying to create this illusion that you’re SEO experts or or UX experts or something.
Lee:
There is there is a fear of missing out, though. And I remember this back in our old agency. We we did try and do everything. And when I started Angle Crown and what was Lee Jackson Dev back in the day, you’ll remember this. And you remember the one thing that I ever did. Well, two things I did, which was build WordPress themes and plugins. And that’s exactly what we did for you guys as well. Four or five years ago now. But I was so scared and just doing that one thing. And many clients would then come to us and say, oh, we’ve got a Magenta project. Is it Magenta? Magento? You know, that e-commerce platform. Or there’s a Joomla project coming in. The old Lee was just like I was having to fight the old Lee who was wanting to say yes because people were waving a check at me. You know, and I was thinking I was also thinking, well, maybe I could get a freelancer and manage that freelancer as well, which is the mistake I used to make at the old agency because I was trying to manage something on something that I didn’t understand anyway. And it was just always turned into a nightmare. But, yeah, so for the last four years, it’s been a real difficult exercise in just doing those two things that we do well and not getting involved in anything else. And actually, I’m very thankful to the WP Innovator group because we’ve now been able to network and create a great community of other people where I can actually – I actually know loads of real SEO specialists now in the community or people who know Joomla as well. And I can then hand over people in those directions. But it’s actually very difficult and there is that fear of missing out inside of you, isn’t there?
Johnny:
And that’s the important thing for business leaders to realize is if you go out and connect yourself with digitally competent people, people who didn’t just choose this as a bolt-on service to keep their business going, like this is something that – the word passion gets thrown around perhaps a little bit too much. But, you know, in this digital world we live in, in terms of like business services, it’s easy for people to be passionate about Facebook advertising or SEO or UX or WordPress plugins and, you know, because it’s what they do day in, day out. And they get a kick out of being good at it and recognized in their industry and being trusted advisors. So when – and they have the confidence to say, yeah, we just do that. But we know some awesome people that do that other stuff that you need. So rather than giving yourself extra work, you know, really the extra work comes in finding those good people to start with. But tapping into their network, you should be able to get the specialist, you know, support that you need to really make your business thrive and buzz.
Johnny:
And also, you know, an encouragement to those business leaders is be coachable. Find that person that you trust and let them input into your business. Because, you know, just to bring up a subject we mentioned before we press record again, it’s to be able to disassociate the word marketing from digital marketing. Because this is a core part of your business now. Nowhere else in your business, you know, you wouldn’t let – you wouldn’t ask the account – you know, if you had an account, what they called a finance director. If you had a finance director, you wouldn’t say, oh, could you – depending on the size of the business, of course. But, you know, could you just – could you post all the – could you take all the posts to the post office at the end of the day as well? Because that’s got a few invoices and stuff in there as well. So that’s finance as well. And then if you could just chase up a few people that haven’t paid their bills, brilliant. And then on Friday, if you could actually present to the board about the, you know, about the share and stock options that we’re going to offer staff over the next 10 years, that would be great as well. Like – and by the way, that’s only half your job. The other half of your job is driving the, you know, the flipping – holding the sales team accountable for their expenditure. Like, you wouldn’t do it, but for some reason, business – too many business leaders think about this as their digital marketing. It’s like just something we can chuck down to someone else and bolt on. The reason why that happens is that they associate the word marketing with digital marketing. And marketing was always something that you could cut costs on. It’s, you know, it’s just Christmas parties and summer trade shows. You know, times are tight. We don’t need it. Or times are good. Let’s do an ad campaign. An hours a day helps you work, rest, and play. They think about it in those terms rather than this is a core part of how we do business. It’s a core part of how we recruit. It’s a core part of how our team work together internally and how they service their customer externally. It’s a core part of how we attract – raise our profile and attract business. Because we do it well, our marketing team is efficient, and they give a lot of hot leads to our sales team, so we close them more quickly and make more money. Like, when you talk about it like that as a process, as a core part of the efficiency and success of your business, then hopefully that word marketing just starts to fade into the background, and you can actually start to have a conversation about, yeah, let’s talk about how we do digital right in our business.
Lee:
I love it. Let’s talk about how we do digital right. There’s been like about 18 one-liners throughout this podcast from you today that I’m thinking, oh, that would have made a great title. Oh, no, that will make a great title. One of them is become a digital leader. Well, actually, yeah, there’s a lot of T-shirts in this as well. We could actually just – are you interested? So let’s diversify.
Lee:
Now, you did mention about coaching, and one of the reasons that we’ve succeeded in Angle Crown is that there have been people who have mentored me over the last few years. I’ve made sure I’ve reached out. I’ve asked for help. I’ve had calls. I’ve been accountable to people. I’ve been part of networks as well of peers where, again, we’ve helped each other kind of understand our own businesses, unpack what we’re doing, set goals, and all of those sorts of things. And I understand that you yourself are a mentor, that people can reach out to you. So how can people connect with you, and how can you help them?
Johnny:
Yeah, thank you, Lee. So my methodology is called Digital Business Power. And rather than throw the latest tips, tricks, tools, and, you know, the sorts of stuff you get here at conferences that just bamboozle people and stress them out even more, we’ve got to get, you know, down to doing the important things right. And so I created this methodology, Digital Business Power. Now, I can work one-on-one with a company to actually implement that across the business. So, you know, we’ve talked about some of the key points today, you know, the culture, the strategy, having a contacts and content plan, deciding on a day-to-day basis how we’re going to implement that. We call it conversation. How are we going to use social media and lead gen and email marketing to actually build these leads and customers? And then into the growth stage of online advertising and reporting. So we’re feeding business information back into the company. You know, that’s Digital Business Power. One-on-one, we work together. I have three times a year we run the Digital Business Power event, which is a two-day event where we go over these, you know, these seven core areas and leave a company empowered to actually put these practices into place. And then Live and Social is my inbound marketing agency in the background. You know, we do what we do well, like we’ve just spoken about. And that helps our clients, you know, avoid going into overwhelm. So content creation, setting up email, setting up lead gen funnels, on Facebook advertising, really connecting the content to the desired audience and turning it into leads and sales. And, you know, the usual outposts, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, it’s all johnnyjensen.com. That’s J-O-N-N-I-E-J-E-N-S-E-N. Same, johnnyjensen.com is my digital business coach website. And liveandsocial.com is the agency. And one thing I do say, Lee, is people are always welcome to give me a call, you know. I will. I’ll tell you when it’s time to pay, you know. But if someone’s got a problem they need some input with, they can book a discovery call with me, a free discovery call with me. And I’ll gladly help people work out what the next step is they need to take to be a digitally fit and successful company.
Lee:
Awesome. And also, I believe you’ve got an event coming up in Chicago?
Johnny:
Yes. Well, we’ve just been playing around. It’s the next round of Digital Business Power. We’ve got events in London. And there’s one penciled in for Chicago as well. I have a lot of family in Chicago. And one of my goals is the other part of me. I’m a qualified firewall constructor. And so I was sort of around the empowerment subject. And one of my goals is to see my family more in Chicago. Oh, brilliant. And so to have this – so to have Johnny Jensen and Digital Business Power in Chicago is important to me. And so, yes, Digital Business Power in Chicago is coming up. It’s probably going to be in January. That’s what it’s looking like now.
Lee:
Okay. Well, guys, if you are interested in meeting up with Johnny in Chicago as well, we know there’s quite a lot of U.S. listeners on this podcast. I think about 70% of the listenership is the U.S.
Johnny:
Ah, well, even better. There we go. So if you’ve listened to everything that Johnny said and been jealous that we have him over here in England, then go ahead. Head on over to liveandsocial.com and hit that register now button on the intent the digital business power and show your interest for a Chicago event. That would be pretty damn awesome. I think I’d like to come to that as well, mate. Chicago is one of my favorite cities in the planet.
Johnny:
You are helping me on my goals list, Lee. Thank you. I love the windy city. I’ll be sure to let my Auntie Barbara know who to thank.
Lee:
Bless you. All right, buddy. Well, love to you and to your Auntie Barbara and have an amazing day, mate.
Johnny:
Yeah, Lee, and thank you for everything you do. I really want to acknowledge you for the journey you’ve been on and the success that you’ve created for yourself. From the day one we worked together, you stood out as a guy that was up front, was passionate about what you do. And it’s exciting to see your continued growth. And to have this conversation today, it’s very easy to work with you. And I’m sure everyone that does would testify that as well.
Lee:
Mate, that’s brilliant. That’s so going on the website right now. Thanks, buddy. Have a good one.
Johnny:
Take care. Cheers, Lee. Bye.
Lee:
And that wraps up episode number 102. So next week in episode 103, you’re going to meet Jack Fleckney, who is a client of ours. And we’ve worked with him to build a multi-site interface for his future franchise. But we’re not necessarily going to be talking about that. We’re actually going to talk about his journey into business and the sorts of things that he’s been doing online. He actually runs a CrossFit gym. And it’s a real fascinating story. So less about WordPress, et cetera, but more about starting a business from scratch and building something up. And obviously, he’s looking to franchise and grow his business. So it’s a real fascinating journey. We’re also going to be getting him on again in the near future to talk about lifestyle, fitness, and health. Because it’s something that all of us as agency owners kind of need to do. Because I sit on my butt most of the days, don’t do any exercise and eat really rich food. And that’s probably a bad idea because my middle is missing the obligatory six-pack. I do have a six-pack, though, in the fridge cooling for me. That’s pretty cool. But that’s not a good thing. All right. So that’s next week, episode 103. You can probably tell I’ve had quite a lot of coffee. We’ll see you next week.
Lee:
Oh, don’t forget, the Facebook group, wpinnovator.com forward slash group. That’d be a cool new tune, wouldn’t it? If we had WP Innovator and we make up a new acapella style music, you know?
Larissa:
Not like, not that one. But then you could beatbox, Larissa. It’s like, I can’t beatbox, but I’m sure you can. And then I would, like, do some sort of dad-style rap. Yeah?
Lee: I could just think, you know, like, there was an old man called Lee who ran a podcast, you see? And then you could do that.
Lee:
Yeah, yeah. And then maybe I could get my moment. I could get the tambourine. Yeah, it’s kind of like a…
Lee:
And then maybe my brother. Brother’s pretty good on drums. And then we need some instruments, don’t we? So we could get a keyboard.
Lee
Uh-huh. Keyboard and play the keyboard. Or maybe we could download a backing track or something. But I think we should definitely create some sort of intro music that we’ve… I mean, we’re in episode 100. That’s the sort of thing you do now, isn’t it?
Lee:
Yeah, yeah. I’m excited by this idea. Oh, look, we’re still recording. So if anyone wants to get involved, let’s make something. Why the hell not? Why don’t we collaborate? Oh, it’s a collab. You know, like the pizza guy. Collaboration, that is so freaking funny. Yeah, let’s do a collaboration, guys. Let’s collab. I’m trying to be cool right now. I’m wearing a cap. Come on, I can be cool.
Larissa:
Yeah.
Lee:
All right, anyway. Get in touch if you want to collaborate. That’s going to be wicked. I should probably stop recording now. I’m going to stop recording. See you in episode 103. Love you. That got weird, didn’t it?
Lee:
Yeah, see you later, mate. Bye.
