S1 Ep140: Season 1: Marketing strategy with Selina Donnelly from HSA Growth

0:16So welcome to the SEMO Marketing Podcast Podcast. This is being live streamed on LinkedIn and also on TikTok up here as well. So Selena, you're being live streamed everywhere. And this is going to be the first of a different format for these episodes. And I've roped in my good friend Selena, which we'll talk to her in a second. But what we're going to do is we're going to try and help Selena build a marketing plan. live as we talk here. So Selena and I have known each other for a long time. She's been to a lot of our events. She now runs a business called HSA Growth. So let's get that out of the way.

1:02Welcome to the show, Selena Donnelly. How are you? I'm good. Thank you. And thank you for having me. My pleasure. Tell me what HSA Growth do first up because that's obviously... So we are a finance brokerage, similar to how a mortgage broker works, but with more of a focus on the commercial side. So what that means is I love working with business owners, small business owners, medium business owners, and I work similar to how a mortgage broker works when you're looking for a home loan, but I help people with business finance. So it's a big world out there. There's a lot of lenders and not everyone really knows where to go when their business needs money.

1:39So that's what I'm here for. Fair enough. Okay. so before we talk about the sort of marketing side of your business let's talk about your background because it's not like you um decided to go into finance last week you've been involved with sort of finance one way or another for for i was going to say a long time but i don't want to you don't want to give my age away yes and i don't want to reveal that to people because you obviously look you look a lot younger than you are anyway you've been doing this for a while haven't you? Yes, I have. So yeah, I started my career in banking, kind of just on a whim, needed a job, got a job in the bank, fell in love with it, fell in love with the ability to be able to help people in ways that they weren't confident with, that I could become confident with, and then provide solutions for them.

2:27So I started my career in retail, doing home loans, very quickly learned that the self-employed side of it is much more exciting. Business owners are amazing because they always have these incredible ideas. Most business owners are highly skilled at what their business is. But when it comes to finance or running the other side of it, they need support, they need help. And it can be really difficult when your business needs something to help it grow and not really knowing where to go or having the time to do that. So I worked as a commercial banker between Westpac and ANZ for say 15 years and I loved it.

3:05I thought it was great but I really just started to feel like I was hitting a point in my career where I was providing my customers with what the bank thought the solution was rather than what the client needed. So commercial brokers aren't as common as mortgage brokers and it's a tough world out there. But what became more apparent and more important for me was being able to help my customers as what they need rather than what the bank's product is offering. So the more I looked into it, the more I realized there were multiple lenders available and that a lot of my business owners were time for.

3:40So I decided to start HSA Growth because I didn't want to just be a finance company. I wanted to be a partner in a small business to help them grow when it comes to the finance side. So I work alongside business owners that are either in that growth phase or wanting to acquire or wanting to just completely revamp or buy equipment and I help them do the finance they can keep doing what they do best right and HSA growth is how old today two years just over two years okay how time flies when you and is it still just you do you have staff yet we know we have we have some really amazing good I didn't do it on purpose I swear but I have ended up with quite a few women working around me and yeah look it's I don't I don't think of the girls and staff I think of them as partners as well so they've come in because they wanted to learn finance or they were intrigued by what I was doing and it's an opportunity for them to learn something different grow and then support me in my endeavors and crazy ideas okay that sounds lots of fun and and so I guess probably obviously the first question I want to ask is when you go out on your own there's this, you know, everyone sits there and goes, wouldn't it be great to own your own business and things like that?

4:56But at the end of the day, it's a little bit daunting. Would that be a fair, would that be a fair assessment? Absolutely. I think, I mean, it's a probably a nice thing to share here would be, I have my daughter, which most people know, but she's now 20 and the timing isn't by accident. So I started the business when Hannah turned 18 because I was a single mum for most of her life. Having that secure income, which I'm sure most people feel like just having that security was more important to me. So when she turned 18, I finally had the courage to take the leap. And I switched off out of my house now, go and get your own job.

5:33Let's face it. She's still a hundred percent of financial burden and still lives with me, which I'm totally okay with. However, I don't feel that same amount of pressure. So I had that courage and look, it's, it's worked out really well for me. I should have done it years ago, which I'm sure everyone says but yeah divine timing that's the uh that's the quote is when's the best time to start a business you know 10 years ago or today you know you know those are you know those are the only two options so okay so look you you obviously went into this though I I'm guessing with a network of contacts that's obviously where we met through through networking events you you knew people you knew enough people to potentially start having conversations was that was it was is that a fair assumption that you that sort of yes it is daunting going out on your own but when you've done the the sort of prep work and built a network of people around you that you can lean on I guess that makes it a little bit easier yeah and I think that was definitely my thought process and I everyone kept saying to me like you know so many people you've worked so hard in this industry you'll be fine but it's never really as simple as that because even for the first 12 months, I lacked somewhat confidence.

6:49So I think that came across to my clients. I believe it's only been the last 12 months that I've 100 % known I can do this. And I think that's starting to rub off. So it's coming back tenfold. No matter what, no matter how many connections you have or how many people you know, there's still always that it's something new and you're still finding your feet. And the same as like I feel for my clients is you're good at what you do, I still had to run a business. I still had to think about marketing. I still had to do all these things that are not my forte as well as doing finance for people. So running a business means you're putting on four or five hats rather than just doing what you're good at.

7:24So that, that definitely was difficult for the first 12 months. What was the, what's the scariest part of doing it on your, on your own in terms of where you suddenly went, shit, I'm out of my depth here. my i believe i think the scariest part is knowing what to prioritize so you need to prioritize doing the deals to get the income but then you also need to prioritize the business development side or the marketing side or the you know the meeting the lenders side so i know what's happening in the market but five of those six things don't produce income so it's really hard to to work out what's more important and when I worked at the bank all I needed to do was write the loans so I think that's something I didn't really consider before I started the business and that's probably what I find hard is working out what hat to put on in the morning and did you did you do the classic thing when you're starting a business which the first year you'll just take any fucking customer I you know I don't care who they are you know if there's some revenue in it if there's a bit of profit in it I'll have them I'll sign them absolutely you and even against your better of judgment you take people that you knew you shouldn't I was so confident when I was in the bank like I knew what a deal was I was so comfortable to turn a client away if it was going to be work where I wasn't going to get any success from because I knew the next deal would be coming in the door but when it's your own business it's completely different and not even just that and there'll be people who know me that are going to laugh because when I first started I was very firm on I will only be doing commercial finance that's what I do I'm only going to be doing small business finance and everyone kept saying to me no no you'll do home loans because you'll need the income and I was like absolutely not I do home loans I do quite a lot of them and I enjoy it now so yeah you have to you have to take what you can get and you have to build the relationship so you can get that next deal yeah yeah yeah it's scary so all right so let's sort of step back day one um you know you've got a network of people and I think that's probably you know marketing lesson number one is that if you can move into a new job with a with a a transitionary network contacts things like that did you what did you do did you just kind of they obviously all knew you were starting your own business but what did you have any restrictions of trade or what did you would you just pick up the phone and call them all or how did that how did you go yeah it's a lot of back to the basics i think some of the the really good structure i learned from working in a bank is do make 10 calls before 10 a.m so right okay and i kind of stuck with that and it's interesting because when you're in a payyg job and you have these mark these markers you have to hit and your manager's watching you you hate it but i went straight into the business following the exact same structure because that's what built my success so and I didn't just call like potential business owners I would call potential referral partners I would take people out to lunch I would do all the things I did as a business development manager in a bank or a finance company into my business but it was different because you I think to a certain degree I underestimated having a well-established brand sitting behind my name in finance you're asking people for their financials you're asking them for their ID asking for very, very personal information.

10:42And say I have a Westpac or ANZ brand sitting behind me, that's a little bit different to, hey, here's my new company. Can I please have all your personal information? So that was a barrier I had to overcome. And I think it came more from my own confidence in doing that as well. But, yeah, and I think coming from that, that's why internal referrals or word of mouth is so important because you're instantly trusted if someone said, hey, Selena helped me give her a call rather than you randomly cold calling or them coming to you through, you know, maybe a lead generation. Yeah. So let's, let's sort of, let's just sort of go into that a little bit more.

11:20So word of mouth networking, is it still, that's, that's still a core part of your business now? Is it, you know, how many, how many of your, how many of your maybe referrals or how much business do you think comes in via somebody saying, hey, you need to give Selena a call? I think 80 % of it. Okay. Yeah. And so my, my next question to you, which is one of those curve balls when I, when I hear that, because when I, when I sort of do mentoring for, you know, the Queensland government, you get all these people going, you know, my business was born out of referrals and word of mouth and all those kinds of things.

11:58And I go, you know, Hey, that's great. but what happens when that stops or what happens when that slows down because the danger of building a business and and you're you're 80 so we'll talk about the other 20 in a minute right yeah the other 80 but the the danger is is that you become dependent on other people referring you you also become the key the sole income earner right so the way i see that as well and I work with businesses in this space is you don't want your income to be reliant on you as the owner because what if you want to take a step back or you want to bring in your business needs to be able to bring in leads that don't rely on you bringing them in and you see it all the time you have massive companies who make a lot of money but if they stepped out the business wouldn't be there anymore so I'm very conscious of that and marketing has been like a very important thing to me for that reason because I know your branding has to be recognizable it has to be out there it has to be done right and it has to be done professionally so yeah it's definitely something I'm conscious of it's in considerations at the moment whether my next recruit is a BDM he's just on the road going out and building those relationships but it's that balance of when do you spend money to make money and where do you put it it's it's the big decisions that I never had to make on my own before yeah yeah it's it's interesting because again I've been working with a small law firm in the last couple of weeks where the principal is not necessarily not necessarily the the one that they're all gravitating to because that business is actually built on seo which is a again another conversation but the problem is when you're a small law firm and you're the principal your reputation completely relies on you um the reputation is yours so if you screw something up and you screw the reputation up that's you know and from a law firm that that can be you know that can be very destructive yeah so what was happening with with with her was that everyone wanted to talk to her like the first the first calls that were coming in going you know i want to talk to a lawyer and so she was the roadblock she was the roadblock at the start which means like because she could only sort of see a certain amount of people she was the roadblock at the end because all the jobs needed to be signed off by her so she needed they needed her approval and whilst that approval might only take 15 minutes it was you know it was her getting backed up and getting jobs backed up which meant that if jobs were getting backed up invoices weren't going out correct so you know I think it's really important to have a somebody like yourself as a leader in the company who can sell you know and again I've known you for a long time if you put you in front of a client you know you probably talk shit for 55 minutes and about whatever it that you're talking about and then five minutes of business and you'll get their signature on the bottom of contract because that's how you are, right?

14:51And that's not a bad thing. That's a really good thing because it means that you can build rapport with the client. But when 80 % of that business is reliant on you, your job obviously now in the next year, two years, is to get that 80 % down to 70%, down to 60%, down to 50 % and eventually zero. Yeah. So let's talk about the other 20 % because, you know, networking is important and we might come back to that in a minute, but that other 20%, where do you think that's coming from? Do you know where that's coming from? Yeah, look, there was a lot of social media posting when I first started, which I did have someone that was doing it for me.

15:30We kind of slowed down on that because I got busy. So again, it's that. That's going to be, that's right. That's a red cross against your name. slowing down in your marketing when you're getting busy is the worst thing that you can do it's like as soon as you see a fire it's like oh go yeah let's just watch the fire for a bit and warm our hands you go no fucking fucking chuck petrol on it selena keep going yeah i know but i don't have time so yeah look that was probably the space i needed to engage some some assistance but again it's that deciding do i focus on the the portion of the business that's going to bring in the money or do I focus on other portions?

16:07So that is the biggest challenge I find. And when I get caught up, if I do have a really big deal sitting on my desk, because commercial, again, is different to mortgage broking, I'm working on one at the moment that's$8 million. It could take me six months, but a home loan would only take six to eight weeks. So it's bigger, there's more work, there's bigger reward, but it takes a lot longer. And when you're consumed in something like that, you've got a customer that needs to be updated regularly it needs to be a priority you need to follow the lenders up every single day so yeah marketing or you know thinking about what my next social media posts becomes the bottom of the run unfortunately okay so social media where else do you see it um email we do a lot of email marketing i have a telemarketer as well so somebody yep so all right let's just talk about those two things email marketing how big's the database i have a I have a couple of sources of how I've gotten that database.

17:03But, yeah, I probably – my database is probably up to 10 ,000 if I wanted to. So I work between 1 ,500 to 5 ,000 so not to overwhelm and then get a feel for what works. But, again, I'm not a marketing person, so there's a lot of work that needs to go into that as well. Yeah. So you could be – I mean, again, that's a good – that's a healthy – that's a healthy number of people. Yeah. Is that coming through sort of a third-party supplier, or provider or things like that. So yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, but that seems to be relatively common in the finance world is that, you know, that that's how these things work.

17:39Okay. So, so email marketing, what was the other one you said? Telemarketer. Telemarketing. Okay. So tell me, tell me about that. So that's, is that somebody just picking up the phone, calling, calling people on your behalf, right? Okay. And explain to me what they're saying on the phone, because telemarketing gets a very, it's a really bad rap, but we've all had this thing where people call us up and we just go, just fuck off, will you? I don't want to talk to you. I'm the worst for it. That's why when it was suggested to me, I was like, oh, okay. But he's great. He's Australian, just to bias that.

18:14But yeah, he does approximately six hours of calling a week. And out of that, I get maybe two to three appointments scheduled. So he brings a lot of people. That's a really low, but that's how it works in telemarketing. None of the deals, none of the leads he's provided have turned into an actual transaction yet, but that's how finance works. So he builds rapport and trust with them around what my business does. A lot of them will be like, look, you know what, I don't have any immediate finance needs, but I'd love to still talk to Selena. So then I book a Teams of that and we just have a little face-to-face, build some rapport, explain what I offer, maybe point out some gaps they might have in their cash flow or other things in their business that they could potentially need help with, chuck them into a database and keep them all.

19:01And is that database that you're calling coming from the same source as your email list? Or like, how are you finding these people to call? From just Apollo AI. Right. So yeah, so you're using like some sort of data enrichment or data mining tool. Okay. I mean, I use a team in India, actually. Wow. Yeah. And sort of go away and get them to populate. You know, I'll say, hey, give me every business owner in a particular postcode. Yeah. And they'll go and do that for me. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, there's AI tools that do that. There's little Indian teams that do that. You know, you can find the right people to do that.

19:44Okay. So, all right. So you've got your outbound sales. I mean, they're effectively outbound sales calls or outbound marketing calls, whichever one you want to call them, really. What are they saying? What's the pitch? Well, I've not actually heard him talk, but the feedback I get is really positive. They think he's great, really easy to talk to. But I think it's along the lines of, you know, Selena's a finance broker. She helps business owners with finance. You know, where's your business at? Do you need some help? I think he sells it more like a wholesome, like an all-round pitch of, you know, not just there to make money off a deal.

20:23She doesn't charge you anything. She does a review. And if she can help, she charges the lender. So it's that not trying to scam you or get money out of you. We're just trying to see if we can help you, essentially. So my piece of advice with that would be I think what you're doing is completely right. But I would perhaps get him to call a couple of people you know, some friends or something like that, and get them to give you some feedback. By all means, tell him that you're calling, that he's calling. Yeah, so they're prepared for the, yeah. A spy or something like that. But just say, I want to understand, I want to get feedback.

20:56I'm not being critical of what you're doing, but I want to understand what you're saying. Because everything can be improved, right? Yeah. Totally, totally. I mean, we've got a girl in New South Wales called Kate, who we literally started working with two, three weeks ago. And we're going to start doing, I think next week, something like 500 ,000 calls or something for her over the course of you know maybe a couple of weeks and she's done two lots of calls for us and I and I kind of sat there yesterday and went when I talked to her she seemed lovely we talk on video she's in New South Wales but I'm like I really need her I really need to get her to call some people that I know like so what I'm going to do next week is go Kate here's three people you've got the script I want you to test the script out on these three people and they will be willing to listen to you but they're also going to be critical of your capacity to present to them yeah yeah so that's great that's a great idea yeah yeah I think that's you know because if that can work yeah I mean look you're completely right with what you said earlier on about the emails is that is that the the conversion rate can be really really low but if you're doing it consistently in two or three new leads a week totaling that up over 50 weeks of the year is like this makes a warmer database right if you receive an email from someone that you've never spoken to you're more likely to just unsubscribe or delete it but if you know they've had that conversation with the caller and then i've had a team's meeting with them and they're getting those warm follow-up emails and then a finance need pops up they want a new car or they need some cash flow i feel like then i'm hoping they'd be more likely to pick up the phone and call me so here would be my suggestion for you because where are all these people where are you where are you targeting them are they all in brisbane are they all around we've done has been queensland because i thought that was you know the easiest way and basically we just we filtered it down to like people in certain industries so importing exporting manufacturing that sort of thing just to try and give the caller more of a focus directors owners founders share like that sort of thing so we're hopefully targeting business owners but this yeah but from what I'm getting, the success rate's pretty good.

23:06Yeah. So you said, here's the challenge that I would see from a balanced perspective. And I have to say, I'm going through this same, I was going to call it a moral conundrum. It's conundrum. It's not particularly moral, but it's a business conundrum, right? The question for me is what you said, do I put a business development manager on for, let's say 70, 80K a year plus bonuses, et cetera, et cetera, a superannuation which is going up to 12 percent in a few months time or whatever right so you sit there and then plus they're going to want a car and you've got to pay for the petrol and the insurance and mileage and then i have to do performance reviews which i hate you can subcontract that out to an hr yeah external hr person that's the easiest way to do that but or do you sit there and go because throw that all together right and you go that could be 10 grand a month right at least okay my challenge to you would be what if you got your database out and you sat and went all right well here's my top 50 prospects in a particular postcode right and you did something that cost ten thousand dollars to put them all in a room with you right i would say i would say to you knowing you and your personality and i'm not saying it like like you're a party booze hound or anything like that because because we don't we don't want that recorded we don't want that we don't want that on my reputation no um not at all but my my point being is that if i if you put and maybe 50 is too many because you can't get around to 50 right yeah but if if i put you in a room with 20 key prospects and you sat there and went okay well i'm gonna i'm gonna do something with them i'm gonna buy them lunch i'm gonna face the face yeah whatever it is right so maybe you put them in a room with 20 maybe maybe not even 20 key prospects so let's say 15 key prospects yeah five existing customers who you know really well that will talk about how great selena is right yeah see i'm not marketing i just wouldn't have even thought of that yeah then a couple of your team members as well yeah right because again back to one of your early points is you don't want everyone coming to the business just because of you you want you know maybe you've got a couple of senior team members that you think okay well they need to start building their own customer database things like that yeah and and and you put those people all in a room and go hey i'm gonna feed you a really nice meal and i'm gonna get you some nice wine and we're gonna have a great time and i'm not getting up you know maybe you get up and make a powerpoint presentation with five slides in it yeah right and maybe there's another educational element to it so maybe you're bringing along someone who's you know lenders would be interested in that as well if there's a particular lender that suits that network of clients that would be brilliant because they have a solution sitting in front of them and it's also you get to learn something at the same time yeah it's just it's a case of doing it with with discipline because you have to make these people turn up which is hard because you've got to drag them out the office kicking and screaming right yeah so you know that's that's number that's challenge number one you know and if they well as you know i've done events with me they all fucking cancel like within the you know 25 even when you make them pay they still cancel so there's some logistical challenges there right so that that's but they're solvable logistical challenges it sounds like you know you've got people within the business you could sit there and go hey let's find a decent restaurant someone nice that we can do this we could do that yeah it's it's all doable those kind of things i think the trick that people miss is that at the end of it when the you know when it's all done and dusted and let's say you did this on a thursday lunchtime or a friday lunchtime whatever is monday morning you've then got to do your 10 phone calls yeah and pick up to everyone who went to the event maybe the tuesday or the wednesday go hey selena thank you so much for coming along to the event it was lovely to see you can you and i catch up for a coffee next week Yeah.

27:10Right? And then you're in. And then they've met you in a social environment. They're willing to meet you for coffee. Yeah. You know, and even if they're not signing a, yes, I want to work with you today. No, it's relationships. You're on their radar six months' time or nine months' time. And I think the key to that, the second part of that, and again, it's something I learned in banking, was even if these particular people that you've now built some rapport with don't have an immediate need, ask them. They know someone else who runs a business. Business owners know business owners. when you're talking to your friends if they need finance give them my card like yeah it's that it's that next step of asking for a referral which i think i do well because that's kind of what was ingrained into me yeah yeah yeah absolutely so look that's that that's the challenge that i see i go do i put you know 50 ceos in a room and and offer them something um do i spend 10 grand a month on a business development manager and to me I go look give me an hour in front of 50 CEOs yeah but again then the challenge for me is that I then question my own follow-up yeah right so what I've done is get myself a VA and Jess and I'll say to Jess call these calls yeah call them all for me yeah the week after I've met them let's organize a time to yeah so and i'm similar in that sense i need to do that side because you're good you've got to know what you're good at you've got to know what you're not good at and one of the girls that works with me she says it all the time you're not good at the admin just go out and talk to people and i love her honesty i i was going to say exactly the same thing the one of the greatest revelations that you can make in business is to accept how shit you are at certain things and employ people who are good at what you're not good at that's the best way to do it yeah i i've said many times in the last two years if i'm left i if i'm left involved at any point in the in the production of a podcast for example if i'm left at any point to organize anything it won't happen the only thing i'm good at is being on the podcast yeah yeah right and maybe doing some initial outreach emails to people that i know like yourself and going hey can he be on my podcast but even when someone says yeah I'd love to I go right other Jess sort that out for me yeah here's here's the details can you fix that yeah sort this yeah go away sort that out I've done the I've done the deal you go and sort it out so the moment this is done you know this gets downloaded it gets sent to someone overseas they do all the editing they put lots of graphics on it etc etc and then it comes back and then Jess posts it everywhere so i'm not involved anywhere right wow the only thing i'm then involved with is making sure i post it on my own linkedin profile yeah and i can probably handle that you know yeah hopefully so yeah so it's it's that that interesting thing about where you acknowledge your own ineptness and and and i would probably say a lot of business owners are very inept at a lot of things yep and if they're left to their own devices things will go completely pear-shaped but it's why you exist in your business and it's why I in my business and if we all just say hey I'm a really good engineer can you do the finance side that's why that's why I had the idea of the partnerships with businesses like it's we need to we need to all do what we're really good at so so look I think I think I think what you're doing from a marketing perspective you know it's ticking a lot of boxes you're doing all the right stuff I think your email list is a great opportunity obviously you You know, but again, email, I think consistency trumps creativity.

30:50So making sure that that email is going out. Which I lack on, yeah. And even the social media side, like I said, that's dropped off completely because I don't have the time. And in all honesty, the girls I have, they create great, like create creativity. They need me for the content. And if I don't have time to give them that information, it doesn't happen. So I guess probably then the next thing is then have you experimented anywhere in terms of other digital advertising? advertising have you I mean again you're a finance you know I know fuck all about finance you don't know much about marketing so my question to you would be when people say to you hey because you probably get all the emails going hey you should have an SEO strategy or you should yeah let me bring your website number one I get it every day yeah it's it's it's hellish it's hellish yeah but do you do you have you looked at any of those have you had that okay so you know I I think there is to me there is a couple of opportunities for you that doesn't involve you sinking huge amounts of cash right and again I would be going business development or marketing advertising that right so I go first things first I think with a with a massive database like you have remarketing so that anyone that's coming on to google or to facebook or meta whatever sees your adverts because they recognize the email is just brand awareness, brand awareness, brand awareness.

32:14Yeah, and you're so out of my realm of expertise or understanding now. But yes, it happens to me. If I look at something, when I log into my computer, it pops up somewhere else. So, yeah. And so you've got those paid ads and I would go, yeah, definitely be sort of looking at that, right? The other thing is search engine optimization. And I go, it's coming through a weird time at the moment because AI is becoming so prevalent. and people are asking chat gpt and all those others so people are going who's the best finance broker in brisbane to and yeah i do it yeah well yeah and and you want to make sure that he somehow you go how the fuck do i get chat gp to tell them it's me yeah you know and what's happening is chat gpt and chat cheap gpt and largely the other platforms are all pulling data off google and you know all the other yeah like i find it's review driven i've noticed a little bit yeah there's ways and means of not necessarily gaming it because no they don't like you gaming it but there's ways and means of encouraging the AI to say this anyway my point being is and again taking it all the way back to the law firm that I sort of mentioned earlier on is um she's been running for four years now I think this week alone on one day and this is the challenge she's been facing uh she received 15 inquiries wow from doing literally literally cannot handle the volume of work coming up which is an amazing position that everyone would like to be in right her is hers is very seo driven yeah and it's been four years in the making and this is the thing i think with seo is that people sign up to these you know 600 bucks a month or 800 bucks a month or whatever thinking they're going to get a result in the first month or second month and those kind of i think there's a lot of stuff that you could probably do within the existing framework of your business to go okay I'm going to start doing some stuff here now yeah with the view that in three to four years time I'm I've got 10 leads a week the website itself is generating me 10 leads a week yeah and you go does that how does that then sit with a business development person you go what if I did this the challenge is SEO is such a long game yeah yeah and I think I think from my experience in the past, I've spoken to marketing firms about it and they're like, yep, just give me your credit card.

34:37We'll set it up. They don't explain how or why. And because I'm so big on explaining how and why in my business, that doesn't sit right with me. I'm like, I'm not giving you money unless I can see a result. What's my ROI? And, yeah, and instead of explaining it like you just did, that it can be a three - to four-year turnaround. And we're going to be making sure all the things are done in the background. I'm not going to be comfortable otherwise. so one of the one of my consultants teams whatever you want to call them they don't they don't work for me they're all consultants she's the ex head of co for american express oh wow so you need to talk to her because she knows finance and she knows finance correct that's the exact market i'd like to be yeah absolutely amazing so but just she's so knowledgeable and so helpful and that's all she's done that's that's core skill set and she operates in a couple of ways where she's like hey look give me access to your website i'll start making some changes on pages you know and just again she's down in sydney it's an australian-based person she's got the credentials that she's worked for a bigger company you've got an option of spending money on something like that or someone like that or some dodgy seo webs some dodgy seo company that have just emailed you out of the blue and you've no idea where they're yeah it's a no-brainer for me really it's like as to which one you would pick so yeah i agree so all right so let's just sort of winding this up so i think there's i think there's a lot of stuff you're doing really well obviously i think there's some gaps there i think we've we've spoken about and things you could do better i'm still on the fence about a business development manager for someone like you i actually don't think it's a bad idea it's you know it's it's a cost thing and of course how quickly are they going to get results and yeah i would probably argue if you do it you want to do it like in the next couple of months because you don't want to be doing it in october because i'd imagine your industry dies a little bit in december yes yeah yeah yeah so you don't want to be carrying a business development cost over those two months of the year without income in the pipeline without them having already produced income in the first you know you know the first eight months of the year or something so i think that's that's one factor to think about and and then i guess probably from a brand perspective i would probably argue it's just about making more people aware of who you are yeah which there's so many things that you could do but like i mean do you highlight the rest of the team much on you know in anything we did when we were like you know on top of it but again everything's kind of dropped off there's such an opportunity there because we do attend events.

37:16We do go to things. We are a part of other industry community events. But, yeah, we don't do it enough. Yeah. I need someone that can do that side of it for me because that's not my forte. I like finance. That's not strictly true. You don't mind a glass of wine in a lunch. I like networking, yeah. Yeah, but, no, you're right. I mean, and that's the challenge as well. So, you know, going all the way back to the start, that networking thing where you go, oh, if I have to go to another networking, boring networking thing, I'm going to stab myself in the head. I just, you don't want to do that. But that's when I then go create your own.

37:49Yes. I love that idea, to be honest. Create the things that you like to do and that you want to do and bring along the people that, you know, you want to convince to work with you. And I think that's one of those ones where they then see the real brand, the real who you are. Yeah. it's the fine line between presenting your brand and your company versus presenting selena yes yeah i think obviously what you need to make sure you're doing is presenting the brand yep i 100 agree because that is a big mistake i see so many successful businesses make and and i see how it affects them you know at the end of their tenure or when they're ready to sell it can have a detrimental effect on that end price yeah and i'll tell you what's a funny thing is i do some stuff with the wealth management company um based in south brisbane and they've actually funnily enough they've gone they went the wrong way they went so far in the other direction because it's led by three women and again you should hopefully you'll meet them soon um but it's led by three women there's other not other people running other parts of the business but the women are what I would what I would call they just they've got such great personalities they're so engaging and fun and knowledgeable about their marketplace right and when I sort of walked in there six months ago I looked at the brand and just went god this brand is depressing it's another it's another financial yeah it's another financial you know wealth management company of which there's fucking so many of them out there you know and largely probably the same with finance right yeah it's it's men in gray suits selling to men in gray suits yep you know that sort of thing and one of the things we've tried to do which might be an interesting thing for you as well is to go how do we how do we bring our personality out a bit more yeah you know the personality is selena but also the personality of the whole team you you said it's there's it's it's women you know yeah you don't alienate too many people you don't alienate male customers but at the same time yeah you you guys there's probably a personality within your organization would that be fair to say that there's a sort of distinct personality oh yeah there's not one distinct personality and i think that's the powerful thing right like there's this like this we would bring people in for who they are not to make them the same as us so you want that dynamic fun environment but then also people who are really good at the things they do and they can bring that to the team or to the yeah to the to the to the day to the attitude so i encourage all the girls to to speak up if they don't agree with something say it out loud even if it sounds aggressive i'd rather hear it bring it all to the table let's talk about everything let's let's bring out who you are yeah so that that's the thing i would then go we talk about content and production you know social media content we talk about you know meta ads and search engine all of these things and events as well right so all of these things need to be done with an underlining current of who you are as a brand and a company yeah because if you're just sitting there going i'm just going to regurgitate the same things that other finance companies are regurgitating you know but yeah that's not why i did this yeah no absolutely absolutely so you know so i'd be going let's try and define that personality you know yes we have multiple personalities here but let's try and define it as a as a company and then let's make sure that everything we do is goes out there and then is really is really helping people understand who they're dealing with and the brand they're dealing with and again i i sit i saw i had this conversation last week again with someone else and he was saying he started off with this brand that he thought was funky and cool and they did these things and they did this and they said this and all this stuff but as he got bigger and bigger and tried to be all things to more people all things to all people all of a sudden they kept pulling these kind of quirky quirky personality parts of the brand out and throwing them away yeah he said now i've just got this boring brand he said yeah we don't do anything fun we don't communicate in a fun way we don't have any personality we're just a functional marketplace and that's money in versus right like why you're doing it you've got to kind of yeah yeah i see what you're saying you i want to find my balance as to why and then also be able to help people like it's yeah yeah i mean again another law firm i've been working with on the gold coast that their three principles have been very much insistent on a common brand and it's really served them well.

42:38It's really, the brand is identifiable. You know, they look so much better. They look so much different to other law firms, but different without appearing shit. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? That's the wrong part. Without appearing scary. Like for me, a lawyer is like a dentist. Yeah, well, these guys are family lawyers as well. So it's even worse. You know, they've got to really appeal to, you know, families and they've got to appear friendly. All right, look, last question for you today. What's the long-term plan? Do you see yourself doing this forever until you retire, until you eliminate the burden of a 22-year-old or 20-year-old?

43:22She's telling me she's at uni for eight years, so it could be a while. Yeah, she sounds like a freeloader, Selina. I like it. She better be good. No, I guess that's a really good question because I ask a lot of my business owners that. So it's interesting that I'm struggling to answer it. I don't know. I think for me, I have no immediate plans for it to ever end. I don't really see retirement for myself. But yeah, at this, like for me, it would be to create a really strong business that would be saleable one day. But right now, it's my career. It's what I enjoy. And yeah, making my career something that I own, that I have the power to build as big as I want.

44:01I think the important thing for that, the way to answer that business, I think there is only one way to answer that business with anyone who has got a, an ounce of, you know, business common sense is that I'm building a business to sell it. Right. And I say that with, with the sort of point of saying, we don't have to sell it. Right. you need to build a business that can be sold correct because anything could happen in terms of you know your health your you know family all those kind of things if there is a point when you sit there and go do you know what i need to pull the plug on the business i need to take myself out of it i can cash in there's two million dollars if i sold it tomorrow yeah and i'm gone you know mortgage paid off superannuation done i can you know whatever it is but i think everything you do should be sitting there going how do i sell this business or how do i make this attractive enough that someone's going to walk in and go hey we'll give you six times earnings or eight times i don't know otherwise you're just you're essentially working to pay yourself a wage and that's not the reason you've created a job yeah correct you've created yourself a job with extra headaches yeah yeah yeah and with the worst boss in the world yeah that's what i always say I've started myself a job with the worst boss in the world.

45:19Yeah, you don't get to have holidays ever. But there's those five stages, and I've got a sort of little infographic on that, but it's like, you know, job. I think it goes something like job, job with staff, job with more staff, job with more staff and profit, and then business. Yeah. Right? So the first four stages are still job, job, job, job, right? Yes, I've now got staff and yes, I'm now making profit. But unless you can extract yourself out of it, you still just have a job. Correct. Yeah. Once you've got more staff and profit, you sit there and go, okay, how do I now turn that in to a business that I'm not?

45:59Can I make profit without being in the business? That's the question. And that's how I was going to get it. Who's making the profit now? Is it me or is it the staff? Correct. Because if 80 % of it is still you, you've still got a job. yeah if 10 of it is you you've got a business yes you can extract yourself out you could potentially take a 10 drop in revenue and you can sit there and go hey i'm now this i'm now the i've got a retirement fund a much better one chair person of the board and i now come in for a half a day meeting once a month exactly that's there you go there's my goals yeah so that's what i just it i i often then say now model that out so go and look at what that looks like over there and then work your steps back yeah because if you can do that you can then because if you look at that you look at it how do i get to there from here you can't see the path well you need those full functional abilities right like yeah even just having this conversation with you i i knew the gaps were there you might can start to see where the little things i need to work on now so I can focus on other things.

47:04I mean, we did it on Wednesday. It's Friday today we're recording this, but I did it on Wednesday. My business partner and I, and we had another guy, Michael, sitting in for two hours with the both of us. And Michael doesn't know our business, not intimately anyway. He understands what we do because he has a background in advertising and marketing and recruitment. But he just sat and asked us questions. Yeah. Just make you think. Yeah. And we're both sitting there. He goes, right, what do you think, Matt? And what do you think, Simon? And sometimes we're both in complete agreement. Sometimes we're often this dichotomy of opinion.

47:39But it really then brings you back to go, okay, what do you need to be doing to achieve what it is you guys want to achieve? And we're very much about, hey, we'd like to sell the business. Yeah, but that's when your branding needs to be right from the start. And if SEO works and if my brand is strong, that's sellable. That's something someone's going to want to take ownership of. Absolutely. And even if it isn't sellable, the next question you have to ask yourself is, if you opened your business in Sydney tomorrow, how would it go? Would it? Yeah. And if you're saying 80 % of that, your business is referrals or people that know you, you can guarantee that if you put this business in Sydney next week, it just nothing would happen.

48:27It wouldn't work now because I'd need to be there and start from scratch again. But that's not how I want the business to function. Yeah. Or you then have to employ someone that you sit there and go, well, I'm going to have to put them in Sydney. But if they're going to be a principal, why are they going to do it for me? Why wouldn't they just do it for themselves? Correct. If they're good enough to do that, they should have their own business. They should have their own business. Yeah. So you end up in this kind of horrible, vicious cycle of going, fuck, how am I going to open something in Sydney?

48:53And then you have these conversations about licensing and whatever. On a complete side note there, I would say if you're going to go into a new territory, you need to be starting thinking about that territory 12 months in advance. And you need to be starting to create demand there. And even brand awareness. Brand awareness, demand. And you do have to get on a plane. It's not like the UK where you could drive between London and Birmingham. You've got to get on a plane. You've got to go to Sydney. and then what you do is you grow it in Sydney in that with that painful backwards and forwards you know you going backwards and forwards all the time but then you need to be able to go but I'm comfortable now that I can leave Brisbane yeah alone yeah I don't need to be it can still run like the sales aren't going to drop off here because I'm down there yeah that's right yeah there's a lot of work to do there is a lot of work to do but again I testimony to the again the law firm I mentioned earlier on, she's been doing it for four years.

49:51And now is the time when I'm sort of saying to her, right, now we've got to get you out of the business. We've got to extract you from this part. And the key thing isn't extracting her overnight from one part, from all of the business. It's extracting her from all parts of it, right? Let's take you out of that part first. Now let's take you out of that part. And let's take you out of that part, right? And now she may then reassess and use her time elsewhere to do the things that she's good at. Or she might just go, actually, you know what? I'm going to take Friday afternoons off now. She might want to go play golf.