The Marketing Advice Every Business Needs with Dan Kelsall | Backed by Funding Circle

0:00Dan Kelsall:We're done at all. We're not recording, are we? This episode is brought to you by Funding Circle. Business finance that backs you. Dan, we have a meeting. Welcome to the podcast. Big open question. Who are you and what problem do you solve? So who am I? I'm just a bloke who does what he wants. And that's basically it. I had an agency for a while. It was quite successful. Sold it to a fat man for some peanuts. Went out freelancing, and now I'm using time and cash to do bits and pieces and try different things and see what happens. But mostly marketing. So I work with, I don't know, it's a name drop, Ladbrokes, KFC, Hugh, you know, and all the way down to like you know one-man bands or the rest of it but but i do i tend to be on the kind of uh controversial offensive sometimes uh polarizing side of advertising the market nice so let's get into the first polarizing topic yeah what should business owners understand about cash flow um well if you haven't got any you're fucked first one um but Cash flow is the most important thing ever.

1:28Dan Kelsall:In my opinion, people are too quick to spend. So, offended. A lot of market agencies, for instance, they're told that you should have three months cash flow in your bank and anything else you should be reinvesting. And I think that's fucking horse shit. We all know you can have three bad months. So, they're firing people and it's horrible. So, I think your first couple of years, his first two, three years, should be concentrated on building up as much cash in the bank as possible for any business. Because the way that you operate when you've got a bit of a safety net in the bank is entirely different to the panicked operation you have when you're desperate.

2:12Dan Kelsall:I just think it's a really silly game people play. And they think, well, I've got this cash. I had a guy on there who got a little community that we run with, Lewis Kemp, and I had a guy on there saying he'd made his first 20 grand in the bankers agency and we were thinking should we keep it or what should we spend it on and I'm like 20 grand is fucking nothing man what are you doing don't spend it keep it there because you might have because this is especially at the minute people ain't got money so the market's up and down up and down you have two or three bad mums you've got kids I'm not going to feed them I just think people are a little bit silly with money and you know why because the internet's telling us we have to scale really fast we have to grow really fast you have to hire really fast you have to you don't like some of the biggest brands and the best businesses in the world were built over the course of decades people just need to slow down a bit and and and do things right at the right time and only invest when it's spare cash you know like gambling i'm familiar you only only really bet the money that you got the minute you start betting money that isn't supposed to be back because it's your mortgage you're in trouble oh god oh no what have you done screwed one more spin one more spin what advice would you give somebody if they're considering borrowing money for the business depends what you need it for and depends what the terms are not against borrowing money I think there's a lot of markets out there that require a hell of a lot of money so you know whether it's investment or whether you're because investment is still borrowing money by the way people think it's people think it's money free off someone you know I never think of it back oh you're raising big investment man that's your money fucking not good luck like trying to go and buy a house with it or something so so for me it's um it depends on on on the business it depends on what it is you're doing if you're trying to launch an expensive product you're going to need some money from somewhere right but it needs to be on the right terms it needs to be you you you you could get fucked on interest your entire business you could build the best business ever you get this great loan out you get fucked on interest for the next 10 years and the business ends up being half what it could have been so you just got to be really careful i'm not against borrowing money everyone borrows money nowadays you have to the world the world survives on klan i don't it yeah exactly it's kind of so do what you want just make sure you're not fucking yourself in the ass with it read the read the contracts properly because a lot of small print in this stuff if um let's say you you met someone i'm sure you meet loads of people like this i've got a business idea but they're serious they're actually going to start it tomorrow's my first day what's the first thing they should do um well you should test the market so product market fit is the most important part of any business because if there ain't a product market fit you can have the best sales team there we go you can have the average market team and you can and you can you can put that product out to market and it can be all shiny and the best brand blah blah blah but there's no demand for it or there's little demand for it um you have to the biggest thing that people should do and this is what i try and do with different products and i did this before i started offended i had loads i made i had vastly i launched a vaseline company organic vaseline that i made in my bath that was um uh called war bomb good name always i was always good marketing product was shit right so so and but i i used to take a product i need to make these products for as cheap as i could and i used to try and test on the market and see what the response was like you know are we people willing to buy them what's the profit margins like earlier is it is it something that's viable at scale and if it's not then you don't go forward with it and a lot of people don't do that they get a great idea and they take it to the family and a mum goes oh you know that's a fucking great idea why are you you should you should go with that i'll give you my uh my pension and then and then and then they do all this stuff around this product and they've not tested it with a customer so without testing it with a customer even with a small pocket of your customer how have you any idea how your customers going to act with it.

6:11Dan Kelsall:How are you going to have any idea on, because what you don't want to do is spend a load of money and then realise you've got to make 10 iterations on the product. Because it might be too late, you might have any money left to do the iterations. Pension's gone. Pension's gone. And she's going to be living in a tent. Oh God. The ideas fest. Not again. Other tents are available. So she dies of the cold. Of the cold, yeah. Keep it light. Keep it light. Keep it a bit light. My mum's dead. You're not coming back. There are obviously loads and loads of entrepreneurs, business owners, founders. If we gave you a megaphone and you had access to all there is today, what's the one piece of advice you'd want to, what's the one piece of business advice you'd want to pass on to everyone?

7:01Dan Kelsall:So the world, the business world, the world in general, marketing, if you listen to everybody on the internet, including me, everyone talks in absolutes. The world doesn't work in absolutes. And the world's a lot more balanced, more of a balanced place than we are led to believe, right? So there is never, ever any one way to do things. Never. But one thing that you will probably fail on and more likely to fail on is if you go out there and try and replicate what someone else has already done because you just become a poor man's version of what they do, right? So the one question I always ask clients, I start with them, is I say, what is everyone else doing in the market?

7:43Dan Kelsall:And then we don't do that. And if you start from that starting point, you've got two options. Either you find the gold, or it's a bag of shit and that's why no one's done it. Could you give us maybe like, when you say like, you look at what the market's doing and then you don't do that. Could you give us, I think I've seen some of your stuff online, it's brilliant. But could you give us like an example of that in like reality? Yeah, well, as an example, right, if you've got a really, as a front market point of view, if you go out and your market is all happy, clappy, positive, positive, everything's the best thing ever, this is how we market, let's be really professional, and then you think to yourself, well, you know what, I'm going to do the opposite of that, I'm going to swear, I'm going to point out the negatives, I'm going to tell it how it really is, I'm going to drop my kex on some videos, that might be too far, but it's not been done.

8:30Dan Kelsall:There might be a real reason why it's not been done, but that shouldn't stop you trying it. because that's where, like we're, people are attracted to originality and they're attracted to things that are unexpected. That's where genius comes from. It's unexpected. You don't, wow, how did they come up with that? You ain't going to do that copying someone else. Yeah. Brain's going now. Yeah. You want to drop your kexes, don't you? I want to drop my kexes. It's a bit cold. What about, there's a lot of stuff that you see trending business advice that people just give out all the time like do this do this simple five-step formula and everything will be solved what do you see that you think if you see that advice ignore it yeah um what's trending be authentic that's bullshit isn't it that's a load of shit everyone says just be authentic your brand has to be authentic like authenticity is bollocks none of us are authentic we all wear masks in different rooms different massive different rooms different people uh you know if you got an insight into my entire authentic mind it would be a disaster i've never saw anything um what you should be trying to do is be relatable so relatability over authenticity your audience um there are elements of your personality of the things you like that will relate to your audience and you should try to build a brand voice around those it's not authentic it might be a tiny bit authentic to a part of yourself because we all like to you know we we find a lot more fun in the things that feel like they're us like we're being ourselves um but it's about being related to your target audience like i always give the example of like you read shoe dog by phil knight like um knight started off as a as a as a team of overweight accountants that's what they were you know there's one or two runners in there but one was disabled the other one wasn't very good so they weren't athletes if they'd been completely authentic and written like them and built a brand around them it'd be a it'd be a brand for overweight dads with beans down the top.

10:29Dan Kelsall:Do you know what I mean? It wouldn't be the brand it is, but they had to find a relatable voice in the market. So relatability every time over authenticity. Essentially, when you've got a business, you're trying to attract people, the right people to your product to buy your products. You don't do that for authenticity. That's why when people post pictures of their tea and here's my cat, and they wonder why they don't get any leads. What about the car minutes too? That might work. Yeah, there you go.

10:59You've worked with some brilliant businesses. You've worked with some brilliant people. What do you think is the most underrated skill when it comes to business?

11:09Dan Kelsall:What's the most underrated skill? She's going to laugh because I don't have this. Patience. Patience 100%. Some of the smartest, the most successful business owners that I know are the most patient. they don't rush nothing's a rush decision so whether it's funding because you get all these people who are in absolutes who say don't get funding don't get investment don't do this you shouldn't do that you shouldn't do that it's all absolutes one thing is not right for another person one thing that's right for one person is not right for another person but the best people I know the one thing that they tend to have in common is they are really fucking patient and they don't rush and they do things right and they test this before they spend any money they test and they wait and they see what the rules of that test are and they get data back and then they go, yeah, that looks like a position to move forward into.

12:00Dan Kelsall:That one doesn't. Whereas the people who rush and spend, they've got to do this and I've got to have as many followers as that guy and I've got to have as many staff as this guy. They're the people that fucking end up with no business in a few years. So would you say that's the difference then between the people who, you know, we all say our business is like, I'm going to make some mad exit in a few years. Is that the difference between the people who get to that exit and the people who don't or is it something else i think so yeah i mean i don't think some of the people who are the only only people i know who've ever made a big exit like a really big exit were the people who weren't expecting to make a big exit yeah they were like all these people who go oh yeah well i'm gearing my business up for a sale like i'm gonna i'm doing all the right things i've got this business coaching here and i'm paying him fucking five grand a month to come in and show me how to make my business saleable um those people never sell and i thought they just you know i mean it's just the business dies eventually whereas the people who all the people who i knew had big exits like you know i worked with one um who did uh did did a big exit and and he um threw his market and got on this big client this big client was um owned a similar business to his and was trying to take over more of that market looked at what he was doing it was like this is fucking ace and just one day sent him an email five like five o 'clock on a friday what buy your business for eight mil wow and he was just like two and a half years old wow but he wasn't expecting he wasn't planning on the thing he was just building the business he was just yeah but he's just trying to do it in the right way and the opportunity came whereas i just think people try to everyone's social media's fucked us because everyone's trying to force everything that is rather than just going and again she'll laugh at me again because i sometimes i don't sit in the moment but sitting in the moment and going you know what i've got to build this i'm building this i'm doing these things right and if i keep doing these things right maybe these opportunities will come instead of trying to shoe on into this and getting you you know kept wick down for a sale that you were you know a lot less than you thought yeah the long game um and then dan i've loved this the final question so if i'm excited to see where you go with this because there are many different ways but like if i wanted to give some advice to people that are looking to win their first client, what's the first thing they should be doing?

14:15Dan Kelsall:Well, you need to know what your first client looks like. So you need to know who you're selling to or have an idea of it. And then the best way to do it, I mean, I'm a marketer, right? So I could sit here and say, ah, well, if you just put out a lot of content and wait for your first inbound, it depends on the market. I'm a marketer, so I could display marketing and then people come and buy marketing off me. It's really easy. Yeah, sales, sales. If someone's selling a product, it could be that funnel and the amount of touch points you need to get someone over the line if you're selling a fucking 30 grand product it could be a lot of touch points where you get more line right and if you're going out and you're waiting on the content game or the ad game or you know building a brand game then this could take fucking years so outbound's the best best way of doing it um and reaching out to those initial customers with a with a compelling offer is is the best way to do it and then what you're going to find then is you might not get your first sale because what you might do is the people you thought were your customers might come back and go well i don't like that and i like this and that might be of interest and we'll use these already which will give you a lot of insight and then you can tweet that that thing to that customer profile or you might message out all those customers and they all go that's a bag of shit and you realize you know what this product's a bag of shit so maybe we've either got our customer wrong or we you know you'd be amazed what the amount of people who i do as a guy i can't remember what his name was and he's come around to all these networking dudes when i was i i had an app business early early on i got funding for an app business and then they invested this bit up a mountain and then they all went to but they um never came back but the um uh there was a guy when i used to go to his networking dudes trying to sell that app and he used to walk around in this really bright white hoodie with this logo on it it's for a sas platform that he hadn't launched yet and then three years later i turned to a networking dude he turned up and he still aren't fucking launched no way god so he's very good at going talking about it and having this big idea and developing this piece of software but he just couldn't three years later he still wasn't fucking reaching out and asking the people the only thing that matters in business is can you get some money in the bank yeah you're going to go business so it's just really odd and you find that a lot people are shit scared of going here's my products what do you think of it and that's the only way you're going to get enough feedback to know whether it's right for the market.

16:35Dan Kelsall:Yeah. And get your first customer. Dan, I've loved this. Thank you so, so much for joining us. Thanks, mate. Cheers, Dad. This episode is brought to you by Funding Circle. To find out how you can get fast, fair, and hassle-free finance for your business, visit FundingCircle.com.