30:6 What to avoid in Facebook groups

Lee Matthew Jackson: Welcome to another conversation today with me, Mr. Lee Matthew Jackson and Nick Gulic. How are you today?

Nick Gulic: I’m doing great.

Lee Matthew Jackson: I would like people to find out a little bit about yourself, mate. I know you’re from Cre8iv Click. Folks, you’ve got to check out their website it’s absolutely hilarious. Go to cre8iv.click and then scroll down to the pictures of the who we are section and you will be nicely surprised if you just stare lovingly into Nick’s eyes on that photograph. You’ll get a nice little surprise, a smile in the mind. So I’m not going to spoil it for you, but check the show notes for the link and go and check out Nick and Igor’s picture I just think it’s hilarious. I’m just looking at it right now. Anyway, with that said Nick, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Nick Gulic: I’m from Sydney, Australia. My name is Nick Gulic, I am one half of the ownership of an agency called Cre8iv Click, which we discussed. My favourite drink is water. My least favourite drink is something I tried in the UK called Vimto.

Lee Matthew Jackson: What about your favourite colour as well, mate? We usually ask that one.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Okay. My favourite colour is blue.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Nice. And I like how your accent kind of ends everything and it’s almost sounds like you’re asking a question. So I’m going to ask you a question. Can you just jump in the time machine with me that can just tell me about how you got A into business and then how creative clique got started. I always find that is a fascinating subject to cover.

Nick Gulic: My first business was actually a consulting practise. I’d been working for an accounting firm, doing their BDM, grew them quite large, became general manager and hit a point where I just wants to do my own thing and was having a lot of clients ask for advice around marketing and sales. That’s because it’s what I was doing at the place I was at. So I decided to do my thing and did that for awhile and launched a side business doing websites one day, which ended up actually becoming the main business which was quite fun. Cre8iv Click was born when I met my now business partner. We had sort of known each other in the local area, he is a very experienced web developer and designer. We got on quite well, decided to do a few projects together and ended up joining forces, which led us to Cre8iv Click as it is today.

Lee Matthew Jackson: We’ve known each other for quite a while now and you were telling me that one of the reasons why you actually started your business in web development was simply because you were trying to find web designers for your clients and not being successful. Can you just kind of share some horror stories from that time?

Nick Gulic: Yeah, so I had referred a lady I met through networking and she supposedly helped the client with his website and I mean he’d had a pretty bad one to begin with and she replaced it with what was essentially a template and had forgotten a couple of key things around that template. Such as changing the page titles from the template title to the title of the site. Yeah, that was pretty bad. He was wondering why he’s rankings were tanking. Ah, just things like really poor design, very slow performance, just little things that you sit there and go, how are these people charging money for this? Which I thought, I can do something better. I used to build websites when I was like 15 so, you know, it’s gotta be easier than it was back then because back then you had to use the notepad.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Showing your age now mate.

Nick Gulic: Yeah. I mean, you know, then picked up WordPress and the first site was like, just took a template and put a client’s content in, didn’t charge them much and that looked okay. Then found page builders and ended up using Beaver Builder, which is quite good. Then I actually went back into coding and you know, custom design again. So that’s what we primarily do now at Cre8iv Click.

Lee Matthew Jackson: So if you were going to describe your ideal client, this is a common question I think most agencies struggle with. Do you guys have a real handle on your ideal client and the ideal projects that you would do for those guys?

Nick Gulic: Yeah, look, it’s actually been evolving quite a bit. Back when we first started it was small businesses that really want something a bit better than the norm. Where are we on now, today, It’s usually clients who, they’ve had a bunch of sites in the past. They usually spending some money on marketing, often not getting anywhere. Some of the critical parts are, they are very good at what they do. We only really work with people that we feel comfortable promoting because we don’t want to do bad things out there. Often the best clients we’ve had have been people who tried to do something different in their industry. So trying to make some sort of change that really resonates with us because that’s kind of part of our mission as well to raise standards and improve things.

Lee Matthew Jackson: You guys also do a lot of branding?

Lee Matthew Jackson: Yes, we do. That’s more Igor’s department. I usually come up with the ideas, but he does all the actual, well him and the team, they do all the design work associated with it.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Well me and you, we kind of rock around the internet in the same circles. I personally use Facebook for example to help me generate leads but also to help give back to the community. So obviously the Agency Trailblazer Facebook group exists, but I’m also in an awful lot of other groups as well because A, I can give back to the community. Also I’ve made loads of amazing friends in all of these groups as well and in fact, this is how you and me met up in a Facebook group. Can you share with us why, why are you rocking round all of these Facebook groups yourself personally and then I want to talk about Facebook groups in general.

Nick Gulic: Sure. Well look, I’m actually not in that many. So I tend to stay in groups where I feel that there’s a good vibe and people kind of more like me, not as many, let’s say people starting out in business and things like that. I’m looking to hang with people that can kind of give me a vibe and give me kind of the buzz too to keep going with what I’m doing. Also people that I can give advice to as well. So because there’s lessons that I’ve learned and things I’ve picked up over the years to. There is the occasional lead that comes through from that. Often when people have very complex stuff that they’re working on maybe we might get it, but I generally don’t pitch services at all. It’s more just a place to hang out and socialise. My favourite groups are you guys, WP Elevation and the Web Design and Branding community that Mor Cohen runs.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Before we continue that, I’d just like to talk about some of these groups as well. Now, something that me and Nick have often spoken about and being frustrated with, there’s a lot of the internet marketing that’s going on around us right now. So that’s a lot of sleazy messaging in your face all the time through Facebook re-targeting, trying to pitch you and sell you systems and processes that are apparently gonna make you millions, etc. That in itself really frustrates us. Certainly as well being in a lot of Facebook groups myself, I found that a lot of people are trying to apply that kind of ethos to their interactions inside of Facebook groups and we’re gonna talk about some of those types of people that we should probably be avoiding in our groups and that’s going to be for educational value.

Lee Matthew Jackson: But let me just highlight two of the groups that have just been mentioned. The first one, WP Elevation. Troy and the team have spent years creating amazing content to teach businesses; agency owners, WordPress consultants, how to run really successful businesses, how to increase their rights so that they can be a profitable and stable company, etc. You’ve then got Mor as well who runs an amazing group and an amazing design course where she is teaching people proper design skills. So if you’re say a developer who needs to learn design because you’re not happy with what you can output, you can do great code but terrible design. Then again, she is putting out immense value and both Troy and Mor are two people that I trust implicitly that are passionate about the community and both run really great groups and hopefully people feel the same way as well about Agency Trailblazer. But I do think it’s really important that when we are online and we’re listening to people, that we listen to the right people. We listen to the people who at the very heart of it are that to help what do you think mate?

Nick Gulic: I agree wholeheartedly. All three groups that I mentioned have people who run those groups that really know what they’re doing, are very experienced and people that I would hang out with as much as I can. So yourself included, Troy and Mor all are experts in their respective fields. So definitely worth being there and listening to those people.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Absolutely and what we will do in this episode is link to a few other awesome Facebook groups that you can go ahead and check out. Now, I did a blog post a little while ago about Facebook groups and the important thing that I said was that you should probably choose and do what Nick’s done. Just choose a few to be a part of rather than being part of many. I had to do a cull probably a year or two ago cause I was a member of hundreds of groups and it was just taking up so much of my time. I was seeing something that triggered me and I was having to jump in on that conversation and give my two pence worth, or I was answering ridiculous questions and just getting myself stuck in this kind of Facebook group, black hole that I couldn’t get out of. So what I did was purged, removed myself from tonnes of groups, I think perhaps potentially upset a few people cause they took it personally. But, it was something that I needed to do for myself and Nick’s got it right. He’s a part of a few groups and then he provides tonnes of value in those groups and I believe as well also gets tonnes of value out especially say from the WP Elevation group yourself, you’ve got a lot of history in there as well, haven’t you buddy?

Nick Gulic: Yeah, yeah. Look I’ve done the course. It’s a great course you know, get on well with the coaches there as well and Troy. I’ve met a lot of the people that I’m connected with now. I’ve actually met through that group. So, that’s one of the main reasons why I actually had had a Facebook account at all cause I’m not really a big Facebook guy.

Lee Matthew Jackson: So today folks, what we would love to do is from our infinite wisdom is talk a little bit more about rocking around Facebook groups and what we should probably be looking out for. First of all, I believe that being a part of a Facebook group is really important for any business owner because you are hanging out with people, with peers in your community and it’s great to make friends. It’s great to not feel alone and it’s great to be able to help each other out. On the flip side, as I was alluding to earlier, Facebook groups can also suck you in and you can get involved in drama. You can get involved in huge lengthy conversations and you can find all of your time is being zapped by different types of characters that we would like to warn you against. Now this part of the episode is not meant to besmirch anybody’s name or to make anyone feel bad about themselves or to start any arguments. What we want to do is simply point out some of the types of either people or questions that we should be avoiding as business owners so that we can focus on giving the most value to these groups and getting the most value from these groups and then getting on with our day to day business. Does that sound good to you, Nick?

Nick Gulic: That sounds very good.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Good cause I don’t want to upset people. If you get upset, then probably tell me in the Facebook group and then we can all have a big Barney. So Nick, could you share with us the very first type of personal question that you think people should avoid and why within a Facebook group?

Nick Gulic: Okay, well there’s a personality, right and it’s the kind of person I call them the what is Google person? Alright, so, so they, they’re the people that ask really basic questions and you can find the answer in two seconds if they just Googled it. Sometimes, actually often it’s unrelated to the topic of the group itself. The main reason why I avoid these people is because they’re in any group you’re in. There’s a whole lot of people who can answer that question. You don’t need to. Often if you get short and you tell them, well why don’t you just look this up online? Then people are going to think you’re rude and they’re gonna get offended and things like that. So it’s easier not to engage.

Lee Matthew Jackson: 100% agree and I was joking with Nick that there’s this website, let me Google that for you, that you can use and put it in a link. But it’s kind of assay passive aggressive and it’s going to upset them. Again, it’s gonna make you look a bit of a douche, I think to other people and you probably don’t want to have that, what’s the word?

Nick Gulic: Black mark on your name.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Yes. You don’t want to have a black mark on your name. There you go. No, that’s good. This list by the way, Nick has worked really hard on, we’ve had some good conversations and some giggles about some of the posts that we’ve experienced of a similar variety. But number one is what is this Google you speak of? Try to avoid those sorts of topics. What’s our next one buddy?

Nick Gulic: Okay, so well look at, firstly need to say that surprisingly this list wasn’t that hard to come up with. So I spent probably about five minutes one night in looking at the groups posts and filled it out. So, okay. Well I’ve probably got a few things. Okay, so he next person, is the face Palm. So these are the kind of person, they join a group and within five minutes they’re posting something that is basically an ad for themselves. Usually they’ll get ridiculed. Well they always get kicked in band. Um, usually they’ll get ridiculed before that and I’ve never actually seen any of these people post something that looks good or is actually of quality.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Now I’ve got to admit, I am one of those people who then begins the ridicule and the admin of my own group and then I’ll tend to go down that rabbit hole of ridiculing that person for at least 20 minutes before I’ll eventually close and ban and then I feel a little bit bad about that. So I’m trying not to go down that rabbit hole myself. We do tend to see those and if you see those, I think as community members we should be reporting. So I’ve often seen those say someone will post something in Mor’s group, I’ll instantly report it to Mor cause I want her to be aware that somebody is trying to use her hard work and her dedication to the community, to advertise their own wears. Like you said, a lot of the time the wares aren’t actually that good. A lot of people trying to advertise tools that look terrible etc or lifetime deals or trying to get extra money for affiliate deals they’re a part of etc. Now we’re coming up to my favourite sounding cause it sounds really cool. You call them the Desperado. Can you tell us a little bit more about their Desperado and why we should be avoiding those conversations?

Nick Gulic: Okay, so the Desperado. They’re mysterious the desperado, you don’t see them often. The only time you really see them is when someone mentions a job they’re working on. And the reason why you see them is because they’re offering to help with that job or to outsource the job to me, I’ll help you.

Lee Matthew Jackson: It’s tough as well when people do try and bid on jobs and aren’t really offering the value, a lot of it’ll just be PM me, PM me, PM me, etc. So they’re literally a part of the group to only get business and you know, I guess it’s a good enough tactic. But it’s certainly not something that would wash with me. For me, I’m very much about building up relationships and adding value. So I’ll post some content that’s helpful or I will reply to somebody’s question. I’ll even often offer to answer some basic questions for free to help them along the way and they might then circle back with me later and give me some extra business on the back of that, maybe to do something that they need to do. But the very quick, you know, Hey, I can do this, here are my rates, etc. Just strikes like you said, of kind of that desperation. It doesn’t really work very well for them, but it also can end up creating a job board feel to a group. Again, I think that’s, that’s something for a group that posts specifically job opportunities, not for a group where you’re hanging out with your peers and trying to support each other. If somebody posts a question we should be offering to help them not pitching them straight away.

Nick Gulic: Yeah. Look I had one, in the WP Elevation group where she had an opportunity for quite a large website. But there was some SEO elements that she wasn’t sure of and so I actually went and like and helped out and no charge. I put her through SEM rush, which is an SEO tool. Did a bit of a site audit for her, gave us some recommendations and encouraged her to beat on the site. You know, because I think you should I think should get it. I hope she did cause she did a big post about hitting her revenue targets. I’m assuming she landed the job, which would be nice.

Lee Matthew Jackson: That’s awesome. Now, I would warn against doing too much of that as well. Cause you can go down the rabbit hole can’t you?

Nick Gulic: Oh I have in the past. You get people asking questions. When you’re giving advice and they ask more questions, you give more advice and you end up spending half an hour just in a, in a comment thread and then they ask you in private more about it. Sometimes they don’t mind doing it if they could people. If I’m not overly busy, I don’t mind spending a little bit of time with them, but I’ve had times when it’s you’re losing an hour of your day on someone, which is just not really acceptable.

Lee Matthew Jackson: That’s a very good point. So helping is great. Just making sure that you’re not, you’re not being taken advantage of. Often people don’t realise they’re taking advantage either. So just setting some boundaries is always a good thing. The next one is the TLDR and I’ve got to admit, I didn’t read this one, [drum sound].

Nick Gulic: That’s great. That’s a good one. I see exactly what you did there. That’s fantastic. So look the TLDR, these guys, for some reason, they never actually seem to read the questions that you asked. I don’t know why or it could be they’re just, they don’t know what the answer is, but their ego will not let them not answer it. They have to answer. So they usually say whatever’s like, sounds really popular, if you mentioned something about, I mean like I see the worst one for me is I always see people say, Oh, gravity forms can do that.

Lee Matthew Jackson: I write that a lot mate. Cause it really can.

Nick Gulic: It can do a lot. I’m aware, but often, I feel like the person didn’t actually read the question at all. They just said that or you know, Oh, have you tried teamwork projects? Sometimes it’s like it’s not appropriate, it’s incorrect. You can tell they just didn’t read it or they just saying what they see. Everyone else says all the time. So yeah, they make me laugh. They’re not overly dangerous or anything, they’re just the people who maybe don’t quite know as much and you want to be very wary about taking advice from them.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Now we talked about helping people and our fifth type of person’s life poster is the helper. Tell us a little bit more about the helper because I see these a lot.

Nick Gulic: Yes, this is probably the most common. This is one of the more well dangerous if you’re inexperienced people. So their helper will often post helpful tips usually targeted towards real beginners and it’s something that is meant to be helpful. It will solve some sort of business problem or help them achieve something that they may not know how to achieve. It often reads a lot like a LinkedIn post, so every sentence is own line. They are interested a lot of emojis and it comes across as very pitchy. These guys will often have some sort of call to action, whether it’s like a link or whether it’s like, Oh, if you need help with this, PM me. Often really the tips are super entry level, sometimes because the person has just looked at themselves. Sometimes just because that’s all they can really talk about. That’s all they know. I think we’ve called this stealth spam before.

Lee Matthew Jackson: We have called it stealth spam. I don’t know whether this person would also class as a helper, but there’s someone who’s also asking for help. I see this happen and this is has happened in our group a couple of times recently where people are asking a question that they clearly should know the answer to. Asking for other people’s opinion on it and then also kind of doing a soft pitch at the end of that saying that they are an internet marketer and that famous line if you need any help PM me.

Nick Gulic: I see people doing course research after they’ve already finished their course.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Oh, that’s a clever one I might have to start doing that.

Nick Gulic: Yeah. It happens. I’ve some actually people I really like do that as well and I get the purpose of it. I mean, I don’t like it. I think it’s kind of a bit like, unless you’re going to go turn around and redo your entire course when they tell you something that doesn’t agree with what you’ve already done, it’s not the most honest thing in the world.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Well I think as well, a lot of these helpful tips for, you know, for beginners or just these helpful tips in general are very often unsolicited. So we will say when you’re part of a Facebook group, one of the best ways to build up relationships is to help people. But you want to be helping people who are asking for help. So if someone has posted they need some advice on the best form builder plugin and obviously I’m then going to say Gravity Forms can do that. Someone’s actually asking for some help. You can then offer them some help and if you do have a resource that’s also helpful, there’s actually no reason you can’t post a blog posts or I did a video on that. I’ve often said, here’s my YouTube video on how to price your out. Here’s to how to work out your hourly rate. Here’s my podcast on how to price your hourly rate or whatever it is. So that’s totally fine, but it’s when I think people ask are clearly trying to drive traffic, trying to build up that pixel so that can re target later or even just pitch and sell and it’s just a random, Hey, here’s a load of help for something no one asked for and also here’s my blog post all about it and you know, PM me and if anyone likes it, they might even get a direct message. I’ve had that if I’ve liked something just to see what happens to test it. I’ve then had a PM message within a few minutes afterwards as well saying, Hey, we noticed you liked the comment, what did you think of the article? You know, and trying to take me down some kind of a scripted conversation right?

Nick Gulic: Or they tag you. You like it and they tag you just to get some more visibility. That’s less about the groups and that’s more public. I’ve seen people doing that as well.

Lee Matthew Jackson: So we have our next one and that is the jerk. Tell us about the jerk please.

Nick Gulic: The jerk. Okay. Look. It’s the worst name ever. I’m not trying to be, I’m not insulting. I don’t, I’m not trying to be insulting, but yeah, I’ve got some my friends that we call each other jerk and it’s more of a joke, but look, okay. They are a bit of a jerk, right? So they’re the people who tend to post content or make contents that are really, shall we say inappropriate. So the majority, majority of reasonable people won’t appreciate it. So, and I’m not talking about believing in something different. Like, you know, what Page Builder you like or something like that. I’m talking about things related to sexism or racism, that kind of nonsense that any normal person disagree with. Definitely sexism is a big one that you see still, because I think with racism everyone’s like, Oh wow, that’s the worst thing ever you know, political, your avoid that generally. But with sexism, I think there’s a lot of specifically guys actually that still think that it’s not the biggest thing in the world and they get really shocked when you call them out on it. Or they, they say it’s political correctness gone wrong and things like that, but they can’t seem to see that this is something very inappropriate that you shouldn’t be saying, especially in a professional Facebook group. So yeah, those people I tend just to unfollow very quickly on block them, try not to engage because they’ll get you fired up and then you lose a lot of time to negativity and to anger and frustration. So it’s just not worth it.

Lee Matthew Jackson: This is kind of not related, but I do the same on TikTok. So TikTok is this amazing app where people do these short clips and they’ll often they’re very funny, but now and again someone will be talking about something that I believe is either sexist or racist or just not nice and it will come up in this kind of for you thread randomly. I don’t know how their algorithm works. So I just use the block button so that I don’t ever have to see that person’s content again. If that works for you in a Facebook group, if you’re seeing people that are just being inappropriate, obviously report that person. But then also for your own sanity if it’s upset you don’t engage in, you don’t have to engage, sorry in a big argument with that person, especially if they have a name for always being like that, you can just simply block them so that you’re not wasting tonnes of time on social media having massive arguments. I’m one of those people make who get super emotional. If I engage in one of these arguments, I get super emotional about it and then I get anxious about it and feel bad. Just all sorts and it ruins my entire afternoon.

Nick Gulic: Then you ask your Australian friends for advice and then you have to go back and apologise to the person.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Oh I did that once. I was a real douche the other day and sent someone a message cause I got all angry about something that was all in my head and then I had to go speak to James Rose who helped me off my high horse and then I’d go sent an apology. So I can be at the jerk by the way, just so you know.

Nick Gulic: Yeah. It’s okay. It happens right? It happens.

Lee Matthew Jackson: That’s the thing, you get sucked in don’t you to all sorts of comments and people sending you messages. Cause I was kind of getting jerky messages as well and it was just, was not helping. So when you start to listen to these sorts of voices, it can really affect you. So we mean jerk in the nicest possible way.

Nick Gulic: Yeah, that’s right.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Or we don’t.

Nick Gulic: I don’t think we do. I think we’re lying here.

Lee Matthew Jackson: No, we don’t. We’re trying to not offend people. You know, if you see someone, you know, being sexist, being racist, you know, whatever it is, call it out with the people who run that group. Try not to engage if it’s not going to help, especially if that person is clearly somebody who ain’t gonna change their mind.

Nick Gulic: Just in case. Right. If you’re listening to this and it sounds like things that you hear people telling you that what you’re saying is inappropriate and you’re the one thinking that, Oh, they are being sensitive and it’s political correctness. Just for sec stop and have a look at it and just think like, if this was someone else looking at it, will they have a point, if someone else said this, um, is there any, any way that I could get offended? Even if you can’t, if someone was going to get offended by this, just because it’s not offensive to you doesn’t mean it’s not offensive.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Yeah. To other people. That’s true and that’s where I’ve been caught out a lot. You know, I’ve said things and have offended people without realising it. I’ve thought it’s banter or a joke and then I’ve then had a private message from someone saying I really didn’t appreciate that. In fact I’ve have people leave our group because of things I’ve said and they’ve sent me a message and then never spoken to me again and I’ve sent like a hundred apology emails and they still wouldn’t talk to me. I’m really not a bad person, but I was accidentally a jerk because I didn’t think something through. Okay, folks so that was a tough one and we are coming in to land for the last one, which is the authority. Set the scene. Who is the authority?

Nick Gulic: Okay. So these are the most dangerous online. So these people, they position themselves as being super successful or on their way to super successful. They act very arrogant, they are very smug in a lot of the interactions that, they know everything so they’ll always comment on everything. Often it’s in a way that requires you to ask a followup question to get the full story. That’s the dangerous part. If you fall for that bait, if you ask them a question, they’ll often try to move the conversation to private message. So they’ll say, Oh, yeah, PM me and I’ll give you more details or I’ll help you. Or something like that. Now there’s a two part of there, right? So they’re asking you to PM them. So you’re the one approaching them. So they’re in a position of power rather than them approaching you. It may go that way and may not. Then what happens is in that PM, what do you think’s going to happen? They’re gonna pitch you something. They’re gonna try to say look here’s my calendar book a coaching session, or something like that. They might try to tell a story first or whatever, or here’s a programme that helps with that. Often you can tell these people, they don’t really ask clarifying questions before giving advice. The other part of it is if they’re not comfortable giving you giving their answers publicly, realistically think about it. Why wouldn’t you just answer on the comment, you know, add, add the comment that helps. It’s going to help a lot of people and if you really know what you’re doing, it’s going to make you look really good to a lot of people. If you have to go private number one, it’s funny that person. So the only reason why anyone would actually do that is if they’re going to pitch.

Lee Matthew Jackson: I’ve been on the end of a lot of PMs as well, by the way cause I’ll often fall this, that someone, I’ll say something, they’ll say, no, I disagree based on my experience and I have generated X amount of money by doing this, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then kind of leaving it hanging and then I’ll then be like, Oh, well come on, you know, that’s, that can’t be the full story or whatever I’ve said. They will then be like well PM me or they’ll PM me, they’ll take it offline, for whatever reason etc. I’ve certainly found that frustrating because then it becomes a text argument and I’m on my messenger, which is also going to notify me on my phone, which I find really irritating. I’d rather actually be within the realms of Facebook, like you said, so everybody can see it and everybody can learn from it as well. I think you can often spot an authority, can’t you? A quote unquote or authority because they’ll very often be quite braggy, won’t they, with regards to how they talk. It might be kind of an unsolicited brag as it were in comments, or it’s just an unsolicited bragging posts. There is nothing wrong about being proud of what you do and I don’t think we do brag enough. I think maybe we should be a bit more proud of what we do, but in the right context, not just throwing numbers at people or whatever that’s going to be for the sake of trying to boost your position so that you can then make the pitch with the people that kind of get sucked into those conversations.

Nick Gulic: Usually these guys crossover a little bit with the helper, except they’re a bit more cluey. These people have a bit more of an idea. They’re a bit more stealthy. They’ve taken some sort of training, some sort of course. Often they just rip a lot of the course content from someone else so they steal course content and use that course content for themselves. So I’m putting air quotes, so you can’t see them, but imagine air quotes on ‘their clients’. So look, I’ve had this happen to me and people have done, I’ve actually had them where they, there was no conversation. They actually agree with something I had said on a post and then they messaged me and started asking very leading questions around feast or famine and I just cut them off and said, look I get the feeling that you’re trying to pitch me and I really don’t appreciate it. Please don’t. It’s like, Oh no, no, no, I wasn’t going to do that. But then I heard that they had pitched probably about 10 different people. So yeah, they didn’t last long in that group. But it happens, it happens quite a bit.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Now we’ve kind of talked about the sorts of people and or conversations that we should avoid inside of a Facebook group. So let me reiterate that what I said earlier. Number one, Facebook groups are, I believe, really important so that we have that social interaction so that we can build up those really important relationships as well as being able to help other people out. Facebook groups are a great place. What we’ve done today is kind of highlighted seven, either types of posts or types of people that we should probably be trying to avoid. I think what we should do with this may is kind of caveat this with how can we tell when people are more genuine. So maybe we can try and unpack this one together. We’re not planned this, but how do you spot the signs with someone when they are more genuine? How can you tell somebody is genuine? How do you even know I’m a nice guy? Cause you say I’m a nice guy, but how do you know I could actually be just leading you down the garden path mate. I might be just trying to pitch your membership. Actually you’re already a member.

Nick Gulic: I am a member and you didn’t even pitch me. So there are some things people do write offers, obviously helping people help. For me, I look for people who seem to know what they’re talking about, without being the person that tells me they know what they’re talking about. So anyone who’s saying that they’re an expert in something, they know they whatever, not always, but often will not be someone who actually does know that much. So people who like one of the things that you do is you will always answer people’s questions and you answer quite cleverly and you will reference the fact that this is how we’ve done this in the past. So you’re using your own experience, rather than just giving you answers. You also ask a lot of clarifying questions and that’s a really important one, you know, because if someone says, Hey, what’s the best, you know, how do I do X? Or should I use blue green on my website? It’s like, well, okay, someone’s gonna say, yeah, you should use blue. It’s like, well, hang on. Who are your clients? You know, what kind of clients you’re trying to attract? Tell me more about the brand and you know, what you’re trying to represent. So you have to ask a lot of questions before you can give an answer and that’s one of the things you learn if you actually go into a professional coaching course, a professional one, you will learn that you don’t give answers as a coach. You ask questions and you lead people to an answer and so when you see people trying to tell you all the time, that’s generally not necessarily, bad, but it could be that maybe they don’t really know that much or maybe they’re just giving you their limited experience. So that’s probably a big one. What do you think Lee?

Lee Matthew Jackson: For me it’s just if someone has fun in the comments and does a bit of banter. So you, me, Matt, other people like that all get on really well because we like to just have a good laugh and a joke as well. So we’ve developed a friendship and we know more about each beyond what’s posted in the Facebook group because we’ve ended up jumping on calls with each other. I might have pinged you saying I’m feeling really down or I’ll ping Matt or Paul there’s all these people that a lot of people actually know in our community and I’ll just ping someone saying I’m having a down day and we’ll just jump on the phone and have a great conversation, completely non-work-related etc. So that’s another way that I’ve been able to out more about people and be able to know, like, and trust them because I’m taking these friendships beyond just the comments thread.

Nick Gulic: I’m going to add as well. Actually, I just thought it’s, this is really silly, right? But if you think about the people that you think are intelligent, often they say things that you agree with, right? Cause if someone disagrees with everything you believe, you don’t actually think they’re intelligent. So I mean, it’s a bit bias, but if people will say things, um, they give answers in a thread that not everyone is giving, but it’s something that I agree with. I usually think that, Oh, they, they know something. They’re like, that’s someone who knows something. They know that, they understand that they, they actually get it because they’ve gone a bit further than what everyone else is saying. But it’s something that I also believe, and I mean, that’s really arrogant because it’s like, well look how smart I am. People who think like me are really smart, but it’s something that I think internally we can’t help, right? If someone says something that you completely disagree with you’re not gonna think that they’re intelligent, you’re not gonna think that there’s someone you want to hang out with the talk to that much. I usually try to seek out people that say things I disagree with. Okay. So not silly things I disagree with, but things that are maybe a different point of view, I quite like that because that can lead to really good learning experiences, for one or the other. Generally the people that agree with you that or that you agree with that say things that you agree with and think, yeah that’s pretty clever. Obviously you’re gonna like them more.

Lee Matthew Jackson: You’re absolutely right mate. So I think the biggest thing that we can take from all of this is Facebook groups are there to help us build relationships. Life can be really lonely as an agency owner, even if you have a team of 50 people, it’s lonely at the top. I’ve heard that, that comment, you know, it is you, a lot of the book will stop with you. So having that support network is really, really important. So therefore being able to know what sort of people and what sort of conversations to avoid is also really important. We hope that through this, this has helped you spot those types of posts that are just a rabbit hole that you don’t need to waste your time with, get upset about and get stressed about. Again, I hope we’ve also helped you find ways of finding people in these groups that you can really connect with and build up some good long lasting friendships. Again, we’re gonna put some links in the show notes of a whole load of groups that we know, like, and love with people who run them, that we know care about their community. So we’ll share those and the blog posts that I did as well. Don’t forget as well to check out Nick’s website. It’s cre8iv.click that’s with an eight. Again, the link will be in the show notes and please scroll down to who we are because I’ve basically been looking this GIF now for the last 14 minutes and it’s hilarious still. So I’m sure you’ll enjoy that and your welcome. So Nick, thank you so much for your time. You are a legend and I’ll see you in the Facebook group.

Nick Gulic: Thanks. Thanks for having me and I just want to add that I’ve been listening to your podcast from before I even started my web business. So while I was at business coach yep. When you were WP Innovator. You’re actually the first podcast I listened to about the web space and the only one that’s actually stayed the entire time in my subscribe list.

Lee Matthew Jackson: That’s insane I did not know you’ve been listening for that long.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Oh, yeah, yeah. It was before you change the name. I remember listening to episode 100, definitely one of the most valuable podcasts I’ve heard in the industry.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Wow. Thanks man. We’ll probably get a bit emotional. Love you mate.

Nick Gulic: Love you too.

Lee Matthew Jackson: Ah, I have a good one. Bye bye.