On today’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer, Darren talks to Neil Simpson and James Crawley, the powerhouses behind the KiN Awesome brand.
Neil, a man of many talents, has enjoyed careers in seemingly every aspect of the creative industry. A published author, award-winning filmmaker and once-professional dancer, Neil has since retired from performing, and now brings his decades of experience to help business owners thrive.
James’s background is equally varied – once helping to run a successful burger business alongside ex-convicts in Canary Wharf, he went on to work inside prisons across the North of England. Now, James uses his empathetic approach to business by helping install a glowing confidence in others.
Neil and James first met at MMU in Manchester. Their differing talents, unique backgrounds and shared love of puns allowed them to combine their skills and form the successful business coaching company, KiN Awesome. They now help business owners across the nation to build up self-belief with tailored workshops, coaching and a bit of borrowed confidence.
You can connect with Neil and James here:
Website: https://kinawesome.co.uk/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kin-awesome-uk/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KiNawesomeUK/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kinawesomeuk/
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
It’s last century pre- internet [ __ ] many people sell hope and call it strategy the top would take ages to open and it was like building drama building drama building drama drama and we just help people feel a lot more capable in the short term they kind of borrow Confidence from us in the
Short term until they can build it for themselves on today’s engaging markete here I’ve got not one but two guests I’ve got Neil Simpson and James Crawley from kin awesome uh yeah you heard that correct kin awesome it’s it’s a play on words obviously as if I was going to say
[ __ ] awesome at the start of oh damn it I’ve said [ __ ] awes never mind from Ken awesome yeah yeah yeah and they help people with their with their marketing funnily enough so we’ve actually got a guest that talks about marketing I don’t know what’s going on it’s like we’ve gone full circle and
We’re actually fulfilling our brief for the first time in history so I’m going to be talking to these two guys about what they do how they do it why they do it and why James actually started working with young offenders and Salin Burgers to bankers and thought that the
Young offenders were the offenders and not the bankers who knows um so let’s find out from the both of them I’ve got to start with your your brand name it it’s the obvious place to start kin awesome what what what prompted you to come up with that and and would did you
Have any reservations that well some people are not going to like it okay so the the kin awesome thing it’s like it’s kind of a joke that’s got a little bit out of handly um the our company’s called kin right be as in because we believe kind
Of uh business good business is just about um it’s about a series of relationships relationship with your own products and services the relationship with your customers your suppliers your the kind of wider World your audience and most importantly the relationship you have with yourself so we call the
Business ping and then [ __ ] that we are thought how can we put a little bit of a joke in this so we were like when we thinking about a URL like kin wasn’t available because company America have that and we however in awesome which is like we’re kind of located kind of close
To Bolton and it’s like you awesome so we kind we picked the URL now everybody calls us kin awesome so it it uh yeah kind of it’s kind of um got a little bit out of hand and it’s and people either love it which is brilliant because there
Are people yeah or they go oh that’s a bit naughty and you go yeah if you think that’s a bit naughty you’re probably not going to like the rest of it that goes along with us so it’s a really good kind of um PR detector yeah it’s a yeah it’s one of
Those one of those kind of things where you know when you make a stupid ass decision and you’re like oh that’ll be funny and then you then you realize you have to like live with it you got to live with it yeah yeah yeah and it’s
Great people people we get a lot of really positive feedback by as Conor James is saying people who are um people who are kind of our people and as I suppose that that’s really good marketing because it weeds out the [ __ ] and the really picky kind of
Well I could you can’t do that because it’s to it’s not professional a [ __ ] professional I am the outspoken en enemy of professional and it what it does is it kind of filters people out far away yeah so that only the people who kind of get us and our kind of values because
We’re not for everybody nor should we be uh and so we get yeah better quality of lead really so I take it when you get the uh the LinkedIn police saying things like you can’t be posting that on LinkedIn it’s a sort of thing that should be on Facebook it’s not business
It’s not corporate it’s not professional you’re also [ __ ] them as well where does business live Darren well who who who runs a b who who runs a business you run a business right people R bus exactly business is people it ain’t it ain’t the the bricks and
Mortar it ain’t the website it ain’t the it’s it’s the people and it’s like when well how I’m a B2B business [ __ ] off you’re not a B2B business what you do is you you work with sales managers who are people or you work with Chief ex de who
Are people or lollipop people or chefs they’re all people and this whole kind of B2B business bollocks it’s it’s it’s last century pre- internet [ __ ] yeah where the we we just broadcast our nonsense as much as possible get the message out there which is the most damaging phrase in marketing let’s just
Get the message out there I.E let’s throw [ __ ] at the wall and see what sticks it’s nonsense because it’s business is about people it’s not B to C anymore or B2B it’s P to P person to person and the more you can kind of bake that in the more likely you are to
Become successful and as you say if if you piss people off then they’re not your tribe anyway so yeah [ __ ] them good riddens exactly so what what prompted you to start this business because you both come from very different and weird backgrounds his is weirder than mine I
Don’t know you you you decided that selling burgers to Bankers wasn’t Criminal enough so then worked in prisons no no you sold the burgers to Bankers with people who had been in prison oh right so who were the real criminals the people in prison or the
Bankers I mean now we all know it’s the bankers but at the time yeah it was these kids were definitely uh stealing scooters when I wasn’t looking and up to all sorts of no good in West London um they were lovely kids but like proper um
Yeah chavs I suppose would be the word we use back then it was you know kind of couldn’t turn early Ro men now James you old bugger yeah exactly yeah all that kind of stuff um yeah they were lovely to me because you know I was trying to help
Them and you know giving them time in in a music studio and um you know making t-shirts but yeah we had we had a burger band there was a a guy in Devon who had this grass-fed beef that was astounding it was like I had a couple of stakes
That he through my way and they were amazing but he he tricked out this this burger B and said look we’ll just give it to you you guys go and run it and sell Burgers so yeah yeah we rocked up in Canary Warf and we’re selling 101 pound Burgers which is probably about
The average price now but this was this is about 15 years ago so it was we were making a fairly decent markup on that and we were doing it in a way that every shift had like a gang of them working together so if they were stealing they
Were stealing off each other not off us there was kind of a profit share system going so it was the only way to keep them on is that you’re stealing from each other so there’s absolutely no point so we had very very little of that
Um it was it was the only thing to try to like curve their natural tenden is to try and screw the man but like look that’s the man let’s let’s try and sell as many burgers as we can to get there but but the the canary Warf guys loved
It you know they they were thinking I’m giving back my my my lunch money to these these young kids yeah it’s good fun and then yeah from there went went to go and work in prisons itself which was even more Bonk because some of the
Stories I can tell you about some of the stuff they go to there is hilarious Brewing Hooch in they it was a brand new prison so they made these chairs that were all Hollow plastic chairs so you can’t really beat someone with a hollow chair it doesn’t really have any he to
It but these guys realized you could drill a hole in the top of it and Brew Hooch in the bottom of them um until one of them exploded and it was it was it sounded like a bum had gone off and there was just this disgusting smelling
Fruit juice that had gone all over the landing yeah really good fun working prisons but that was about again trying to help these guys see Enterprise starting a business as a way to get out of that kind of revolving door of unemployment and thevery and back in
Prison again um the coloring between the lines thing though isn’t it is that you know kind of their kind of many people end up in the criminal justice system because they are innately entrepreneurial just a little bit outside the lines yeah it’s one of those kind of harnessing things where
You just kind of going look you you you know how to make this thing work but it’s just a question of making it work so you don’t get arrested yeah exactly they get all the principles they get supply and demand they get like chain of command they understand like advertising
Marke yeah all of it yeah exactly surge pricing they get all of it chasing down invoices and debt that’s important as well indeed yeah mental arithmetics really really key yeah so did did you get any successes with those did you get anyone actually come out and become
Successful legally uh well in terms of businesses yeah loads um there was a guy who um came from what we were doing um who’ had some experience of kind of working at height and then went to go and get some contracts working with um the railway lines so he was getting
Cruis together doing all the trimming of all the trees down the railway lines he got some really good contracts off the back of that so yeah there’s some really really good success stories um you know there’s a guy from hm pasties have you heard of those um based up in Bolton or
Or Blackburn one of those Northern towns um so yeah so he looked at kind of the stuff that Gordon Ramsey was doing with the bad boy Baker stuff so they make they hand make pastes sausage rolls that kind of stuff we did an event yesterday and they C for that and it’s brilliant
Stuff like really really good like amazing pastry feelings are brilliant and it’s all about getting X offenders back um on the straight and hour after after being in prison using their skills so the only it’s the only event I’ve ever been at where the the catering got
A Round of Applause by the by the attendees it was astonishing so the name hm pasties that’s actually handmade pasties but also hmp exactly yeah yeah really good branding exactly that’s beautiful and at the same time Neil you were you were a performer and comedian and a filmmaker I believe
Uh arguably still am I think if you look at our content um so I have to say now that I’m very clear about being a um Prof professional performer professional filmmaker comedian yeah an unprofessional comedian I’m I I have had many attempts at um being professionally funny uh I can
Be accidentally funny or contenti funny but yeah rubbish comedian so the I I was a believe it or not a professional dancer for for for quite some time um got injured out and then the only other skill I had was being able to get people
To turn up to shows so I kind of as all marketers that’s a heck of a skill especially for contemporary dance where the global audience is about six people so so if you can sell contemporary dce to people you can sell sell anything to anybody and yeah the
Only skill I had so I started like all marketers I fell into marketing and um early adopter with kind of social media 2005 2008 and then kind of Spun into marketing which spun into helping other people do marketing which spun into um some interesting projects around the Northwest helping creative and digital people
Um helping creative and digital people understand that the marketing bit of your business business isn’t selling out or evil because I had I kind of came from a creative background and um helped them kind of change the nomenclature of things from kind of evil marketing to audience development and all of that
Kind of stuff and uh uh kind of got involved in the kind of Enterprise development thing through a uh project called creative Lancer which we were based um down the entirety of the of the Northwest helping kind of Crea digital companies um profit more from their own IP rather than this
Is way back 200 five so quite some time ago now and we were just helping people with great ideas like profit from that and build build links and build more of a kind of community outside the Manchester area because Manchester is the London of the Northwest everything kind get sucked
Into to Manchester so what we were doing is like kind of build in kind of infrastructure to help people uh get more of um you know get more out of their own ideas was very exciting project and then that kind of Spun into a load of other European funded projects
About Enterprise development and that kind of thing so yeah from performer to kind of helping businesses has been uh one serendipitous accident after another and do you miss the um the purity of the performing in the dance um I’m a very physical presenter it’s the best way of
Describing this the um when we kind of work with people and kind of present our audiences and things both James and I have uh the principle that if you can entertain people as well as inform them then they tend to pay more attention yeah the last thing you need is somebody
Standing at the front of a room in front of bullet pointed PowerPoints pointing to the what you’ve got on the screen and going and saying what you’re reading yeah what you’ve already read exactly right so we we have a kind of a much more um collaborative um conversational approach
We use the power of reflection a lot because most most businesses they know what they need to do they just need to stop looking on the internet for hacks tips and tips and tricks from gurus and all of that kind of stuff because everybody knows all you
Have to do is find win and keep customers and then kind of note down the numbers most bit of feedback we get from anyone who first time they come to see a certain event or or any kind of work was going yeah I wasn’t really going to come
This morning I thought it was going to be [ __ ] and it really wasn’t go well that’s high praise thanks yeah one one of my favorite bits of from a collabor collaborator at one of the kind of local authorities we work with like we’d had a meeting with him he’s like yeah you’re
Not bellend I thought you were going to be but you’re not which was really nice I’m not sure it’s as positive as as he thought it was but yeah most of what we do is helping people point out the obvious to people in kind of marketing
Terms um we when we’re doing kind of like more skills based Workshop like if you’re doing kind of paid ads or working on kind of platforms we always start off with what works on you you know what I mean because generally most most kind of businesses are chasing around people from their own
Is demographic you know what I mean so then we kind of go oh but how do I get the best out of Facebook ads and it’s like okay what Facebook ads work on you and they’re like well I don’t click on them and it’s like well should you
Really be doing them if if that’s that’s the kind of thing that that you avoid why are you expecting everybody else to be different and one of the kind of main issues with the whole of the marketing industry is is that many people sell hope and call it strategy so it’s
Like oh all you have to to do is 20 minutes a day do these kind of low effort ads and all of a sudden your funnel will be filled with uh your phun will be filled with kind of people who are kicking down your door to buy and it’s like
Bollocks absolute nonsense because people uh weirdly people are um not very variable if you know what I mean generally most people I know we all like to think we’re all kind of delicate little snowflakes but Mo most people are kind of weirdly predictable you know what I mean this is why we do
Segmentation and we do all of the kind of other stuff is because if you’re that kind of person generally You can predict the behavior and if some don’t work on you it’s not going to work on your your audience you know so that’s where we
Start off I I do like that quite often I’ll look at our own Facebook ads or our own social media posts and I think would I click on that am I interested in that and if I’m not then it’s not right because when you’re putting an ad
Together it’s very easy to get lost in your own process and think yeah it needs that it needs that it needs that that’s going to work I’m going to get loads of results but only when you see it yourself in your own feed you think you
Know no yeah yeah and this is the thing is that well the reason um the whole kind of kin thing and the relationship with ourselves is that um I think people think it’s different for everybody else but not for them and what you’re saying about what it work on me is a really
Really great question in terms of um why are you doing it why why are you thinking that it’s different is it because somebody on the internet who was trying to tell you something created a pain within you then agitated it and then offered you a really convenient sounding solution for money and then
You’re starting to doubt what you know just because of some Rando off the internet right now people have enough information information is free ubiquitous everywhere and yeah it doesn’t cost anything so if you’re putting ads together or you’re putting content together why are you making about the information right because you work in
Marketing I work in marketing that kind of thing the um if you think about what we need to be talking about as business owners we need to be talking about our customers right we need to be talking about our customers and what they find important what their problems are and how they see
Themselves in the language of them about their lives with stuff that they find important not hi let me tell you about our fstep plan to do such and such which is great because I’m trying to tell you how great it is so you’ll buy my [ __ ]
Right yeah right and this is the this is is the reason why kind of your question is really important is that would it would it work on me and if you’re talking about you then your customers are listening about them right marketing is just dating right same princip same
Principles apply it’s just dating right Darren if you were going on a date with me and James right right open your mind real wide and I’m not saying it’s not going to happen play car right so the if you if you’re on a date with at James
Night and we sit you down and we taking you somewhere swish because well that kind of that kind of goes like like a booth at weather spoons I refuse to set foot in spoons but that’s another Fridays we’ll go that far with you yeah there’s a there’s a wimpy and
Birkin head we could take you to I know right talk about going back in time so um if we you go on a date with me and we just spend the entire time talking about us and we’re like let us tell you how how great we were yesterday
Then we’re going to tell you how great we’re being right now and then for Desert we’re going to tell you how great we’re going to be tomorrow how long would it take you how long would it take you to get bored of that it wouldn’t be quick it wouldn’t be
Yeah it would be long sorry it wouldn’t be long exactly you’d instantaneously I’m bored with that time to move on then why do we do our Marketing in the same way yeah these these are all the as I’ve had previously here’s all of our products and services
And why they’re boss and then this is what we’re going to do tomorrow which is going to be amazing marketing is simply dating if business is a collection of if business is a relationship which it is for all the reasons I said before then the beginning bit of that is is is
Dating and the same rules apply we’ve got to tell you oh you look nice you’ve kind of got a nice pair of earrings tell me where where you bought that clo if I make it about you who doesn’t like talking about themselves yeah yeah it’s it’s pretty basic that isn’t it you know
Talk about yourself nobody’s interested talk about the other person and they’re going to like talking to you I saw a a presentation yesterday at a BNI I got to be careful that I don’t land somebody in this now um it was a somewhere I’m not normally a member of I went to visit
This and it was it was it was a travel agent so it’s obviously a very visual very inspiring very motivational thing it should be an easy presentation to do and every slide was a white background with Black Bullet pointed text on it as he went through the entire history of
Where he used to work and what he used to do and how the franchise of the travel agency works and how different things he used to sell over the years works and right at the very end he still hadn’t mentioned anything about the kind of destinations and holidays and
Experiences that he’s created or can create for you and it was the most boring ass dull son of a [ __ ] presentation I’ve ever heard and coming back to what you mentioned Neil about making your presentations entertaining why do some people like that do such [ __ ] presentations why does
It exist couple of reasons really and one that’s what they’ve seen right is ignorance um oh what’s that saying never never attribute something to um evil that you can contribute to ignorance right it’s not it’s not deliberate right like most people just do what they know
Right and the the thing is is that most people have a very poor understanding of marketing because the only understanding of marketing that is visible to them is advertising right so what they do is they try and recreate what they’ve seen in their own words okay and all for a
Second reason what he’s done that for is uh he she they what they’ve done that for is um because they think the more they explain about themselves the more they like you’re going to like them right so I mean the that’s just um yeah it’s just kind of naivity I
Think and I think part of the challenge in marketing is getting over that fact that not everybody’s going to like you so what he’s going like this is all I’ve done before look if I explain to you my history then you will you’ll kind of
Value me right now and then we can build a relationship it’s like going on a date and talking about yourself same thing yeah they’re looking for credibility I think from basically s there that they’re trying to say is look take me serious as a as a travel agent I’m
Guessing they’re probably quite new to it so they’re going so instead of going look you can do all these things and painting a picture and talking about cocktails in the beach and things that they should have been doing instead of just going oh no but I am really serious
And this business is really serious you really should take it seriously when nobody wants a serious discussion about travel they want to hear about they want the they want the exactly they want they want bumes on the beach and yeah stealth Futures not feature right this is this is the key thing with
Marketing is that when you understand your punter um client whatever you want to call them then when you understand them properly you can you can paint them a better future and then the features don’t matter right if I had something in my pocket Darren that for every one
Pound you spent with me you would get two pounds back would you buy it I think probably yes exactly right I haven’t told you how it works you don’t care you just like like the results of that sound amazing I have a bit right I’ll have a
Bit that it’s about the Futures what do they get what’s the how does it how does it fit with their desired narrative about themselves how what what future are you kind of going look this could be yours a bit like uh like um you know
When they do the prize bit on game shows when they go here’s what you could win and they’re like imagine yourself speeding on a I’m going to go a bit Bullseye at the minute cuz I’m old but imagine speeding on a speedboat around such nobody can use a speedboat but the
Idea of a speedboat is better than owning a speedboat yes that that kind of and here entertain all of your friends with this fantastic ivory handled knife set and they’re just trying to get you Ivory is bad let’s just say that so that um that whole kind of thing of that painting a
Future is where all marketing should be sell the destination not the bridge or the road or whatever so yeah and this is a very very common problem is that that people are trying to build likability in the wrong way you know if you you know CH de’s work about the the laws of
Influence no you know there’s kind of um seven laws of influence right and this is back by over 60 years of Science and he wrote a book in 1985 which is the kind of uh nerdy marketer kind of Bible around you know marketing is influence right it’s getting people to do things
It’s not it’s about action not eyeballs yep I can look at your thing but if I don’t do anything then your marketing is uh less than optimal let’s be kind and so Chini kind of outlined his kind of um did uh did a big meta study of how
We can create influence and one of them is Authority one of them is reciprocity you’ve probably heard the words but kind of wer wear the science one of’s um Authority reciprocity likeability um internal consistency and unless you are putting your effort into creating one of these one of the
Influence triggers then your marketing ain’t going to work and that science and I I’m we’re in a kind of position now where access to the tools of marketing you know kind of social channels all that kind of stuff are much more democratic yeah in terms of you know
Anyone with a phone can go I’m a marketing consultant and go look I can do your social for you and here’s all and you know within your phone is contained video production audio production access to the channels edit all that kind of stuff that is really really cheap and what what that’s doing
Is flooding the market with people who aren’t kind of backed by you know kind of science-driven techniques like how do you create dopamine triggers how do you um use the triggers of influence how do you um use all the other kind of stuff that science says works and what you do
Is you get all of these kind of influences you just produce vast quantities of content and 2% of it works this is why a lot of influencer marketing doesn’t have the Tails ringing at the other end they’re very good at just being visible they’re not so they’re not so good at the conversion
Either hard or soft into into money which is you know what we’re all after Sur so why did you two actually start doing what you’re doing now how do you mean well when you met up I believe it was uh University of Manchester wasn’t it uh mmu met they’re different but yeah well
It’s all the same to me City United it’s all the same um yeah yeah they’re both [ __ ] I’m from Newcastle Football comes in two colors black and white black and white so when you met up what made you decide that yeah I’m going to work with
This guy this guy that looks like he fits on the the front of a a guess Who board what made you think I want to work with him Richard I’ve been told several times I look like Richard classic um sorry no no it’s fine uh it took us about three
And a half years we worked together for quite a long time for the first kind of six months of us working together we didn’t really speak to each other um it was only after it only after yeah only after about three years we realized what had happened was that both of us were
Waiting for the other person to do something or say something so we were both just reflecting each other’s Behavior just complete blankness both waiting for somebody to do something and we we both just kind of just circled each other like like an endless pair of dogs sniffing each as bums and that that
Took probably about six that picture yeah seriously let’s let’s take a moment to appreciate that image yeah exactly Thanks James like two sausage dogs in like a a never ending cycle wearing waste coats and so we worked together so um yeah we were both delivering on the same project
Um but we just didn’t really we just kind of got on with it all and then started sharing an office and realized we both got a pretty dark sense of humor um and we’re sharing office with a a woman in her mid 60s probably Jane who
Was also who had the same kind of humor and it was just you know St that you can’t really repeat in in a recorded medium um and then we just started getting more and more into what we were delivering so we’re delivering a kind of European contract um doing business
Support stuff and we realized that this kind of relationshipy stuff was we did anyway but we started to play with it and experiment with it and turn it up a little bit more and realized that we were getting some really really good results you know we were it’s quite
Emotional some of the stuff that we do with people we kind of the the support that we were giving on that program was essentially a personal growth program disguises a business course so we were doing a huge amount of reflective stuff doing a huge amount of work with people
And we’re seeing them for kind of seven or eight sessions spread out over kind of three months so we really got to know everybody and spending full days with people so um we were seeing some some ridiculously good results from people and people just kind of making massive
Change to their lives we we’ we’ve kind of shephered people through half a dozen divorces a load of businesses shutting down and starting up new ones you know we still have regular contact with people that we worked with five or six years ago we’re going to a 50th birthday
Next weekend of someone that we met kind of you know four years ago delivering kind of business support to them so then about kind of four years in we kind of thought you know this is really good and we’re getting excellent feedback from people um why don’t we try and do this
For ourselves and not be um Shackled I was trying to think of a word that wasn’t too bad Shackled by universities uh you know they’re not a massive fan of swearing and and some of the more loose stuff that we want to do with it so we thought well let’s try and
Do it for ourselves um and found a contract that was that was doing something great in Manchester we’ll just we’ll go for that and if we get it we’ll we’ll start the business and then yeah the first one we did bang let’s go we got ourselves a
Nice little little bit of money come through so let’s let’s crack on so I think the the main change is we kind of replanned everything we had a kind of existing version of contract we replanned any and that’s when we kind of really opened up and I think
The the thing that we’ve kind of realized overtly that many businesses don’t and this kind of reflects all of your business processes is that business is an intensely personal thing right it’s not the there’s all of these kind of holdovers from people watching Mad Men and listen
Kind of you know all of the kind of Gordon gecko greed is good all this kind of stuff like with the Advent of the internet business is now about people ra as well as structures it’s about the people within the business and if you want to and this is going to become ever
More important um with the Advent of AI and all of the kind of machine stuff that’s coming is that about you Darren but I’m not sure I can ever really bond with a machine yeah um it’s it’s about people and creating that kind of connection and this is why we kind of
Say you know about their relationships you need to connect with your own products and services with your team with your suppliers with your customers and with yourself and I think the whole um oh it’s it’s not personal it’s only business is the most inaccurate sentence you can possibly say because if you
Think about the brands you like you’re not like oh I really love the building oh I really right you make a personal connection as a one human with the experience that you get from using that product yeah it’s emotive yeah and it 100% business is all
Emotion these days right and this is the thing that when you’ve got um like Brands like McDonald’s kind of branding themselves about relationships and cocaa branding themselves about um dodgy relationships watching bloke strip off while they’re cleaning windows that’s not a business that’s a personal thing
That’s a human thing and the more we can make business about Humanity the better which is why it it has to be a personto person thing which makes it emotional and that when we kind of replanned our project we were thinking okay where does this emotionality begin and you have to
Build your business From the Inside Out have to it’s it’s about people you need to be present one of the uh where was I yesterday um I was oh it was a conversation I was having the other day online where the people T it was a LinkedIn live one of these
Audio recorder things and they were kind of saying well how can I automate my marketing so I don’t have to pay any attention to it and it’s like that’s exactly the wrong thing to do because if you’re trying to automate it and make it less effic what you’re saying is my
Customers aren’t valuable and I don’t want to deal with people and they’ll go somewhere else because we like like this connection with people and that’s what makes that’s what makes Great Moments and that’s what you should be creating for your customers is astonishing moments one of my favorite
Bits in kind of business history is um have you ever owned an iPhone Darren I have one right here yeah I bought my first iPhone in 2008 right and the the amazing thing about um the iPhone was the box I me right I mean the iPhone was amazing IED
It felt like a pebble you could turn it over in your hands it was amazing but the the one of the best moments was they used to have this really super tall box I’m not I don’t use iPhones these days but they had the super tall box so when
You were trying to get it out of the box you had to hold it and the it would the top would take ages to open and it was like building drama building drama building drama building drama and that and they they’d plann that it wasn’t an accident most of the
Box was just space but they thought I want it I want it I want it and they really thought about the moment they were creating for their for their customers where they’re kind of like building that that drama drama and the reveal and as a as a business we need to
Be really clear all a brand is is a promise of an experience for your customer right so you need to know what the experience is that you’re creating we use a three-word exercise but how would you describe your business in three words not really [ __ ] great but
You know kind of um we are uh generally um direct challenging useful with a kind of side order of funny that’s and everything we do is kind is that right so we have to be that’s what we do in terms of how our marketing is created how we deliver our sessions how
We deliver our coaching how we deliver all of that kind how we deliver our kind of accountability community that we deliver and it’s every single thing we do is direct useful challenging and funny right so then all businesses need to do for everything they need to do your
Brand needs to run through everything that you do like a like the word Blackpool runs through a stick of rock right wherever you snap it it’s the same word with the same flavor in the same way and that kind of stuff and what what kind of many
Businesses need to reflect on is what experience are you creating now Apple had done that and they thought from the very get-go from opening the box before you’ve even touched the phone we’re going to build some magic and drama and fabulousness in it because that’s that’s where they were at the
Time they were going we’ve got the future in a box and it’s it’s this phone that will change your life and they they thought about the experience that they were delivering from before you had the phone all businesses and this is where small businesses have a massive uh
Agility benefit over of a larger businesses is because they can pivot and they can change and they can amend and iterate and what the the advice I would give any business at the moment is in a in a world where your competition is global right what we
Do is less important than how we do it and how we do it is our brand and nothing that you put into the public domain shouldn’t be deliberate I’ll rephrase that everything thing we put into the public domain should be should be deliberate we should go okay if if
Our brand is um entertaining then it should be about entertainment if it is about conveying Authority then you know every everything needs to add up to this and this is what many businesses don’t quite understand is that nothing is irrelevant right everything means everything everything that’s visible
Either adds to a it’s either fuel or ition for your message it either adds to it or it takes it away there’s no middle ground there’s no it’ll do because humans are judgy bastards right we’re very very judgy they are we’re [ __ ] massively judgy people listen this are
Judging what kind of human I am and being dazzled by James’s good looks clearly so what H what happens is um we do we we do an exercise in in when we kind of Coach people and do workshops and and we use two different hairdressers right and it’s like a
Picture of a hairdresser from the outside can’t even see in the building one hairdresser is like a neighborhood hairdresser right and the other one is like a city center kind of swishy where footballers go kind of thing you know what I mean and we get them to go tell
Us who goes there what the experience is like what the haircuts like what the price is like from a single image and they feel really comfortable in doing that because humans are judgy bastards so everything you put out into into the public domain is important there’s no just just get it out there
Which is yeah makes me want to stab things from people what what what you were saying about Apple then as well I mean it comes back to what you mentioned earlier about the the future pacing when Apple released the iPod they didn’t say it’s an MP3 player it’s got 8 gig of
Memory it it has you know touch controls or any [ __ ] like that that’s Zoom did it’s it’s 10,000 songs in your in your pocket the future that you have imagine not having to carry 15 CDs around with you right but all of the kind of the
Data driven kind of it does this is so that was what Zoom did any got anyone got a Microsoft Zoom these days no no no nobody has and this is the thing Futures not features man nobody cares most people don’t care whether your product is um built by an Enchanted Pixies left-handed
Gingers kind of morally ambiguous unicorns right they don’t care they just want the outome right and you find um a lot of businesses trying to emphasize pointless detail you know ah we we we use everything we only make it with our left hand we only they’re trying to
Create novelty and distinctiveness by by misunderstanding that it’s not about them it’s about what the punter gets it’s about the experience and what I mean You’ mentioned a few already but what are the main mistakes you think businesses are making with their they listen to idiots pretty much sums it up you they
They listen yeah they listen to idiots and I’ll qualify this in a minute right they listen to they listen to idiots uh they and they don’t listen to themselves that’s is fundamentally the the thing we kind of started this conversation off with with this little but
Um what the reason why we do what we do is that business help intelligence and training is is not really transferable right what is useful for your business at the stage you are with the person you are with the market you you have with all the things about your
Business what’s useful for your business is probably not as useful for ours or is more useful right it’s different right so what happens is you you get the you get people listening to uh people making sweeping statements like all you need to do is here is the simple thing right I
Will fix your business it’s basically the comfortable lie versus the uncomfortable truth right so what happen the internet is all about I’m an expert here’s the thing the 20 minutes a day will make you rich powerful more attractive and smell like lemons whatever it is and all businesses are
Different right all business owners are different even within our business even though James and I seem to share a brain for most people outside the business we are very different we see things differently and respond very very differently so if James needs some help with something he needs different help
To what I do because we’re different right and this is the this is the main mistake that most people make with their businesses they they’re looking for simple answers to complex problems and when they find a simple answer they think oh that’s simple it must work you’ve been in business a while
Darren 14 years in Gage web how simple is your business and how easy exactly you’re like nah and yet this is the thing is that people cont spend most of their time sweeping the internet for the next simple hack easy fix just click this button just wave
This flag just this simple stuff and people need to stop stop searching Center themselves and become more sensitive to their own understandings that that’s that’s why we’ve got we’ve got a courses website that we have um it’s called online learning academy and there’s a particular course on there
About how you can earn money as a a writer on the internet before chat GPT came in which is kind of got people thinking it’s even easier than it was before good but of all the people that have downloaded that course it’s got practical Assessments in it and then a
Final completion at the end where they send something in to be marked I think it’s had something like 60 70 downloads people have paid for this course two people have actually gone through and completed it because everybody wants the success of being a writer and getting paid to write on the internet nobody
Wants to put in the work they just want the wave of magic wand as you say and it’s suddenly there I’ve been listening to a really interesting um series of audio recordings by LeBron James right the a because I love his voice it’s like velvet he’s absolutely sounds amazing
But what he’s saying is is Talent is Never Enough right desire is Never Enough it’s not what your idea is it’s what you build right and buildings happen over time time and building’s about it it’s it’s about habit it’s about consistent effort it’s about um it’s it’s about what we what we do
Rather than what we know and this is kind of we run a thing called kin Siders because we love a pun clearly and what what we realized is that we worked with like kind of um between a pair of us and stuff we did for for for mmu and ches we worked with
About 650 businesses over five years so it was a really great kind of study kind of experimental set and we found the same thing people come on the course and they go this is the most amazing thing I’m gonna I’m going to change forever and it’s going to be fantastic and even
Though we what we what we do is we kind of supported them through like CH doing actions through the course and kind of CH change Behavior which is why it was kind of so long and then even though we kind of spent time building them full of kind of confidence and clarity and
Momentum and all that kind of stuff but 80% of the people who came on the on on the courses they just went from doing growing their business to business as usual when they when they didn’t have that kind of impetus encouragement and structure behind them and so this is why
We set kin Siders which is basically um it’s it’s not a knowhow course it’s a Doh how course right most people have enough information if they don’t they can find it on the internet fantastic what they don’t have is a level of personal accountability to themselves right which
Is okay I said I was going to do this um here’s how I’m going to do it because what we realize is that most most business owners need two different kinds of uh support okay you need and we call it uh it’s um Challenge and nurturing right so it’s kind of like
Carrot and stick you need two different kinds of support right you need one kind of support which is like don’t worry Darren you’ve got it they’re all bastards they’ll understand in the end and everybody will realize you’re right at at some point and you’re doing really
Well and giving you the pump up right being your friend nurturing you as a as a human kind of going okay you’re a person in this business this is how this is how you need to kind of grow as a human and I’ve got you don’t worry right carrot stuff
And on the other side you’ve got the stick stuff which is Darren you said you were going to do this you said you were going to focus on finding X said customers you said you’re going to do blah blah blah blah blah right and then
Where is it you said by when and just a stick kind of keeping your accountability St all business owners need both right all business owners need both and yet uh uh and they can’t be the same person right for obvious reasons right because the gear change for that
Human to go from don’t worry down You’ got it to where the hell is it it’s too much of a shift right so they have to be different different people and there can’t be a partner it cannot be a life partner or a significant other we see so many female
Entrepreneurs with hypocritical Partners who are just trying to protect them what are you doing that for it’s rubish I wouldn’t do like that it’s like okay so we set up kin Siders to help people get out of their own way generally and kind of do more of what they know and feel
Great doing it and it’s kind of like structure through the week where we have accountability calls and we help people just kind of focus on what’s and we also give them the The Strokes that they need uh James tends to be James is nicer than
I am by quite a country mile so you’re the bad cop then uh I I yes I bring the difficult I bring the challenge and the difficult questions James seems to have a spider sense of from a distance being able to kind of sense when people are struggling with
Something and’ll just you’ll call them out of the ballue like how the hell do you know this and and it’s magical so what we do this is why we set insiders is that that kind of support and most of it is just trust your own judgment back
To my original point about listening to idiots there are no simple answers in business you don’t need any more information you just need more sensitivity one of one of the big points that we really kind of helping with is kind of validation so we work with a lot
Of women especially when we’ve gone kind of second and third careers um and coaches really suffer from this as well they they really need that external validation so they always want go and get that next certificate there’s always another bit of paper that’s going to make them feel much better about going
And doing so going and speak to those big clients that they really want some of them are ex bluechip employees themselves they’ve worked for these big companies they know exactly how they work they seem to think that this is next bit of paper is going to give them
That feeling of of satisfaction knowing they can do the job rather than just knowing that they’ve got the skills in nightly so we do a lot about kind of you know why do you think you need this who do you think is validation is going to
Who do you need that from how’s it going to work for you you spend quite a lot of time working on um a lot of that they used to be called softer skills but you know they’re just kind of really entrenched bits about who you are that
Um you know things to do with self criticality and selft talk and and confidence and we just help people feel a lot more capable in the shortterm they kind of borrow Confidence from us in the short term until they can build it for themselves that’s interesting I I
Actually know a a female business owner who is what she calls herself a course addict yeah and she will go for these qualific a over and over again and we we a couple of us have told her you know you need to stop this you’ve got enough
Now and she is I think she told me last week she’s booked on another one is it inherently a bad thing if someone does that if they do love a course and love learning it’s not a problem to do that kind of stuff but you just need to be
Really honest about yourself about why you’re doing it you get the same people that will go to four or five networking events a week but actually don’t get any business out of it so you’re not really networking you’re socializing with people that aren’t your friends um as long as you’re honest about what
That is I haven’t got a problem with it get out of the house do what you need to do if it makes you feel good about yourself and the same with the courses really because some people go on courses for all sorts of reasons we’ve had people come on our courses to poach
Clients we had a we had a builder who out of 12 people within six months had done building work for 10 of them go for it mate like if that’s made your business better and you weren’t disrupted in the class haven’t got a problem with it at all um but I think
She’s a course addict because she hasn’t found the one that’s actually giving her what she needs that’s fundamentally what that is she’s she’s looking for something external there’s a reason why she’s doing it and she hasn’t found one that’s giving her that so I mean if you want to point her our
Way I bet I bet she stops going I think the thing is that I mentioned this before is that um most people think it’s around knowing better will improve things magic words yeah exactly what we call it kind of yeah magic word thinking is that just just tell me the easy way
Tell me the best way there is no easy there is no best it is what you do it’s not what you know and there’s this kind of uh we learn it in school in the fact that all we need is more information we’ll get better exams and then we’ll have a better
Life it’s provably uh provably fallacious the fact that you know and this is why people who are um not often the best students at school do the best in business is because they’re not that invested in information they’ve gone and done the hustling gone and done the the doing
They’ve G and this is what we were kind of talking about about the the um ex offenders that Ken James used to work with is that they’ve got the no how they’re just getting the dooh how wrong so they just need to kind of refine what
They do and this is It’s common across most business people as that most people know how to run a business right if you ask them not about your business if you would just if you were giving advice to other people what would you tell other
People to do then they will tell you in great detail what you need to do to run a business whether that’s marketing sale all that kind of stuff because they know what they do is they they look away from the important bits because they start they’ve got this kind of little voice in
Their head going are you sure oh I remember that time when he was six when you properly [ __ ] up and this kind of like super negative kind of challenging voice in the head and they think that what they know isn’t right because they have doubts about it get out and do it
Experiment what that lady’s doing is learning and not doing and this is kind of where we put the traction is kind of helping people have a bit more faith in themselves they borrow our belief in them basically is that they kind of borrow because we believe we know
Everyone can can get whatever they want out if they just get out of their own way so we believe 100% in them and people who work with us tend to borrow our belief in themselves to apply what they know and get more of what they want yeah they’re so scared of making
Mistakes they’re so scared of looking silly to other people especially if they you know we work a lot of people that are doing it for a second or thir third career and they’re terrified of going online and people seeing them with their with their new little business and
They’re going to look down on them or and it’s all just in their own heads no one cares no one’s looking at you they’re all busy with their own thing and they’re so paranoid about getting it wrong they want to know the exact best thing to do before they make a single
Step they want to know what’s the best time of day I should be posting how many posts should I make a day all this stuff it doesn’t matter just just post just get on with it get better at it because you’re going to be crap when you start
Anyway and just and just keep moving in the right direction One Foot In Front of the other consistently and you’ll get there just don’t stop it’s like running a marathon just don’t stop just keep going it doesn’t matter how how how fast you do it how long it takes it doesn’t
Have to be perfect it doesn’t have to go in a straight line of that you can have good B good days and bad days but just don’t stop doing it and that’s the people that we see the most successful the ones that don’t ever stop they
Always come back to us and say that thing you told me to do brilliant worked really really well now what do we do this bit okay well where do you want to go next what do you want to get out a bit and we can help do you know about
That yeah yeah exactly I mean the it this notion of mistakes is a really important one and I think you have to go through the quantity to get to the Quality whatever you’re doing right and I think a lot of people um a lot of kind
Of uh we tend to work with kind of people in the first five years of business right before they know like with people like you you’ve got experience I mean how many mistakes have you made in your business to oh loads and some of them quite serious yes some
Of them pretty bad yeah yeah did you die though uh no not yet not yet exactly right and this is the thing is that people don’t think I’ve killed anyone either well we can’t talk about that but the people at the start they’re so used
To having a job where you’ve got to fit in you’ve got to make no mistakes you’ve got to like reduce risk at all possible things that when they do shift to a second or third career they don’t realize that having a job is fitting in but having a business is standing out
Right and so that’s that’s why they’re looking for best that’s why they’re looking for certainty in effect and what what we help them see and this is the same if you’re going to run a marketing campaign if you’re going to do anything get your mistakes out of the way while
Your audience is small right iterate just talk more be more public take a little bit more risk and then you build a support structure so you can mitigate the impact of those mistakes rather than try and make no mistakes because one of the there there’s a really lovely bit
Where people throw off the shackles when they make a mistake and they realize wow actually not that much happened yep lost a customer lost you know we put in a a tender for a massive work recently didn’t get it and then we both got a little bit sad about it and then you
Know I’m I’m slowly realizing well nothing actually changed other than my feelings about things so great let’s go and do some some more stuff and this is where the for everybody in business you need you need to nurture that little bit of Rebel spirit inside you where you’re
Just going to go I’m just going to experiment with stuff one of one of our kind of Core Concepts is we see ourselves as explorers not experts right and I think if you run your business run it as a series of experiments and always have a bunkers
One kind of bubbling away at the side always have something nuts going on so you kind of go I don’t know whether it’s going to work it’s a bit mental but let’s let’s go at it and the it’s the crazy stuff the stuff that’s really distinctive that people really buy into
Usually but you have to you have to kind of do that managed risk thing around not business as usual we kind of see it is business growth tasks versus business’s usual tasks and generally because we’re humans and we like routine we tend to ER towards business as usual tasks and what
We do is we we kind of bring our support structure around to help people focus on Tiny things usually which are going to help grow their business and it’s not just make sales calls it’s about applying your own innate creativity W do you know I I don’t think
I’ve done a podcast which has had quite so many quotable moments in it it’s almost like I work in marketing Daren almost like you work in marketing it it it’s almost like you know you say this stuff in front of a room full of people maybe from a stage I don’t know I
Know it’s incredible but sadly we we are just about out of time which is which is devastating because I I could I could do this all day quite frankly um so before we before we wrap up if there’s someone listening to this that thinks my God
That those two guys have just said stuff that’s going to change my life what is the best way for for people to get into contact with you uh our website if you come to all the information and further like kind of detail and a little bit more about what
We do because you know as usual with business we only just kind of scratch the surface you’ll you’ll see some very attractive pictures of James and I as well which is always a good thing um if you go to our kind of um website which is all the ws. kin awesome K awesome
Doco UK uh and we’re on all the socials K awesome UK come and yeah just have a look join the mail on list because we share some interesting uh things on there well you can kind of you can kind of um get us on LinkedIn we’ve got a company page or you
Can get uh Neil Simpson or James Crawley link up with us we love to connect with people and um we’re doing some interesting video series on LinkedIn yesterday we were talking about um how people get wasp wrong uh and that they deserve a little bit more sympathy than misunderstood yeah wasps are misunderstood
Misunderstood wasps okay yeah yeah yeah and we turned that into a little bit of a business lesson so who want that I’m definitely check definitely to check that out Cliff Hanger for next time Darren thank you so much for having us it’s been an absolute pleasure yeah
Really good fun oh brilliant thank you very much guys I’ve loved it hey w w