Allan Dib on Fixing Your Message Before You Spend a Cent

Kirsten Scott0:00
Look guys, we're here with Allan Dib this morning. He is a serial entrepreneur, the author of The One Page Marketing Plan, and now Lean Marketing. Um, he's built multiple businesses from the ground up, including one that made the BRW 100 Fast List, which is wild. Um, and he now spends his time helping business owners through all the chaos of scaling and growing their business. Um, so without further ado, Allan, I think let's jump in.

Boa host0:27
Let's do it.

Kirsten Scott0:28
So for those who might not know your story, but what inspired you to start, write the One Page Marketing Plan and simplify something so many people overcomplicate?

Allan Dib0:37
Yeah, so early in my first business, I knew I needed a business plan, right? And so I hired this consultant to help me. We spent months and months putting it together. It was like a 75-page document. And, you know, guess what I did with that, right? Shoved it in the top drawer of my desk, never saw it again till we were moving offices. And I'm like, I dusted it off and I'm like, bloody hell, wasted all that money and time with this phoney baloney consultant. And I didn't have an actual practical plan. So when I started consulting, when I started helping people with their marketing, I wanted them to have a plan because a plan is a good idea if you're doing anything difficult, complex. You know, if you're building a house, you're going to have an architectural plan. You're not going to just start building random things. So, and of course, I got pushback too hard. Too difficult, need to hire a consultant, don't know what to do. And so I created the One Page Marketing Plan as a process where they could easily put together a marketing plan. And it really took off, people loved it. And then I wrote a book around it just to get it out to a much bigger audience.

Kirsten Scott1:42
Yeah, sorry, I'll just pop that person on mute, Laura. No, I agree, like I think you can't just like throw bricks and everything all together. You need to start from like the bottom and then work through.

Allan Dib1:55
Yeah, so many people just do what I call random active marketing. Uh, let's launch a website, let's do some Instagram, let's do some ads or whatever, and there's no strategy behind it. So they do random stuff and they get random results. Unsurprisingly.

Kirsten Scott2:09
100%. Yeah. And it's really hard to measure your success and growth. Yeah. Um, okay. So let's start with the foundation. Why is choosing the right niche so crucial? And what are the biggest signs a business hasn't nailed theirs yet?

Allan Dib2:21
So, um, a lot of times I'll ask people, 'What is your target market? Who are you serving?' And they're like, 'Oh, I'm an accountant, I'm a butcher, baker, candlestick maker, whatever. Everyone is my target market,' right? And it feels logical in the beginning to want to really widen the net because you feel like, 'Hey, if I widen the net, I'll get more clients.' And it's really counterintuitive and everything in you will be wanting to widen that net, more products, more services and things like that. And what I've found, it's very counterintuitive. Intuitive for a lot of entrepreneurs, but the more niche you are, the more specific you are, the more targeted you're going to be, the more people are going to say, hey, I want that. And really, you can target your ideal target market. And that doesn't mean you can't take somebody on outside of your niche. It just means how are we going to focus our limited resources, our time, money, and energy? Who are we going to actively go after in our marketing? Who are we going to run ads for? Who are we going to create content for? Who are we going to target with our messaging? So if we're very clear about that, we're going to have a much, much higher chance of success than if we're just like, hey, we do accounting for everybody, right?

Kirsten Scott3:37
So yeah, maybe it's like accounting for small business owners or like something a little bit more niche.

Allan Dib3:42
Well, I saw a guy, he's really dominating. He says he's the crypto accountant. So if you're into crypto, whatever.

Kirsten Scott3:49
And I love that.

Allan Dib3:50
And really there's nothing that different with accounting for crypto. It's still either a capital gain or income or whatever else. But if you're in crypto and you're like looking for an accountant, well, the crypto accountant, that's for me, right?

Kirsten Scott4:03
Yeah, it's kind of a bit of like a slang to it as well. Totally. I love that. So it kind of leads us into the next question. You often say when you market to everyone, you upmarket to no one. Yeah. How can a business owner get clear on who their ideal customer is?

Allan Dib4:15
Yeah, so one of the things that we run a marketing accelerator, and one of the very first things we get people to do is interview their customer base because we often talk about really getting into the mind of the target market. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? What are they fearing? What are their dreams, desires, and goals?

Kirsten Scott4:34
It's always like the psych behind it.

Boa host4:36
Absolutely.

Allan Dib4:37
It really is. And a lot of times business owners guess with that stuff. They're like, you know, I think they want this. I think they want that. And A key cornerstone of our accelerator is we do not guess. We want to find out, and we find out with doing client interviews and really going deep and understanding what, why clients buy. And I don't think we've ever had an instance where the person is not surprised by the real reason people buy. People are like, yeah, people buy from me because I'm an amazing accountant, or I'm a really good lawyer, or I provide really good customer service. And then we interview their clients and we find out Well, actually, no, they buy because of this other thing, right? And it's stuff that they may never have even thought of. And you know, like when I think of in my business career, I've changed accountants maybe 3 or 4 times and it's never been because the next guy was a better accountant. It's never been because, you know, they're all working with the same tax code. They've got the same bag of tricks for legally minimising tax or whatever. It's because The dude's more responsive or he's more proactive. He returns my calls and emails in a timely manner, whatever it is. So it's not the accounting stuff. So I often say that's doing the common things uncommonly well.

Kirsten Scott5:51
Yeah, I love that. Okay, so what are your go-to ways for understanding your audience deeply beyond the demographics?

Allan Dib5:58
Yeah, so this is where we want to, we want to start with client interviews. Like I said, we want to really go deep, ask questions below the surface, but there's 3 places that I've found where we get really amazing data. So number one is from your sales team. If you're doing sales yourself, you should be absolutely recording all the calls. Now it's super easy to review transcripts with AI. So what are the most common sales questions that come up? So really nailing those down. The second place is from customer service, from your help desk. What are the most common complaints? What are the most common things where that people are either getting wrong or asking for help or whatever? And we really want to capture verbatim. What are the exact words and phrases that are using rather than paraphrasing and adding our own jargon. So if someone uses a particular phrase a particular way, that's what we want to use back in their marketing because remember the whole goal of our marketing is for someone to see our message and say, "Oh, that's for me. I'm interested in that." So there are a couple of places that we go to and then of course the third place is client interviews, really understanding at a deep level why someone is buying, what's triggering them to buy. And a lot of the times, question like, um, what, uh, what almost made you not buy? What were, you know, so that's a really good question. That'll bring up a lot of the objections that people have. They were like, well, I thought it was going to be expensive, or I thought it was going to take a lot of time. I wasn't sure if it was going to work for my industry or my type of business. So getting in there and really understanding what some of those objections are and then using those objections in your content and in your message.

Kirsten Scott7:40
Yeah, I love that as well because it's kind of like if you're thinking it and you see it in front of you, they're like, oh, it's like they're reading my mind. I don't have to actually ask the question.

Allan Dib7:48
Exactly. And you can't do that if you're general. If you're all things to all people, no one's ever going to have that effect where, oh wow, that's for me.

Kirsten Scott7:55
Exactly. Yeah. Now guys, just a reminder, if you have any questions for Alan throughout the chat, just pop them in the messaging and Laura will send them through to me. So crafting a copy that converts is an art. What's your secret to writing words down that actually drive action?

Allan Dib8:10
Yeah, so there's a few things. So you always want to be clear rather than clever. So many times I see people who try to be overly clever with their copy. They're using a weird play on words or some industry jargon. Yeah, totally. My go-to is, look, could my 12-year-old niece or nephew understand this, right? So, and whatever you do, whether you're a rocket scientist or a butcher, baker, candlestick maker, whatever, a 12-year-old should be able to explain what you do. And so your copy really needs to be clear. So remove crazy jargon, remove stuff about, uh, you know, your awards and things like that, and really focus on what is the actual problem you solve, who you solve it for, and then what's the action that you want them to take. So what's the next physical visible step that you want them to take? Do you want them to download something? Do you want them to reply to an email? Do you want them to call your office? Whatever's relevant. Tell them what to do because a lot of times they want—

Kirsten Scott9:11
everyone wants the answers, like they want to be told what to do.

Allan Dib9:14
Exactly, exactly. Your job is to lead your tribe and your audience. So as a leader, tell them, look, I want you to click here, I want you to do this next after you receive the email, do this, that, and the other. So people kind of hesitate that I want to be pushy and things like that. If you dial up your marketing to an 11, it's probably about a 5 in reality.

Kirsten Scott9:36
Exactly, yeah, I love that. It's great advice. So can you share a real-life example example where a small tweak in marketing copy made a big, big impact on results?

Allan Dib9:43
Yeah, I mean, so many different examples, but I remember once we were working with a doctor who specialised in, uh, basically reducing pain naturally. And initially when we were starting to work with him, his website was all about him, how qualified he was, what an amazing doctor, how many years he'd been in business, and all of that. And patients really don't care about that much, right? So they're in pain.

Kirsten Scott10:09
They're like, just heal me.

Allan Dib10:11
Exactly, exactly. So we changed his copy and his main message to, hey, pain changes everything. And that's something someone in pain can relate to that. I used to be able to play with my kids, but I can't now because of pain. I used to be able to do sports, I can't now because of pain. So pain changes everything. And so that entered the conversation going on in the mind of the prospect. And then then now we've got their attention and then we can, of course, it's important to talk about that you're qualified, that you'll be able to help people, but—

Kirsten Scott10:43
That comes after.

Allan Dib10:44
That comes after.

Boa host10:45
Yeah.

Allan Dib10:45
You know, people wanna know that you understand them, that you understand where they're at, and then we can talk about the other stuff down the track and figure out, you know, are we a good fit and all those sorts of things. But what I want people to do is really enter the conversation going on in the mind of a prospect. So what pain are they experiencing, whether it's literal pain or metaphorical pain in another way? What's the pain point that you solve, and really talk to that in your copy.

Kirsten Scott11:11
Yeah, I love that. And just going back to that as well, that's why it's also important to like focus on the niche, because if you're just like promoting yourself as a doctor rather than like the Pain Doctor, yeah, they could go anywhere. Like they don't really know what you do.

Boa host11:23
Totally.

Kirsten Scott11:24
Yeah, I love that. Um, okay, so many founders struggle with consistency, starting strong but losing momentum. How can business owners create a simple repeatable marketing rhythm?

Allan Dib11:34
Yeah, so what I found— so to use terminology from Gino Wickman, wrote a book called Traction, a lot of people will know that, and he has a system called EOS. Long storey short, he talks about two types of people in a business. There's visionaries and there's integrators. And most entrepreneurs tend to be visionaries. Visionaries are like, you have an idea, you have 5 ideas a day, you're really attracted to novelty. And I'm like that, right? So I mean, I've got a list of business ideas and projects and things like that that I wouldn't through in 10 lifetimes, right? So, and every, every day I add to that list and I get excited by the new stuff. The stuff entrepreneurs are really bad at are just the systems stuff, the boring stuff that you do daily.

Kirsten Scott12:19
And actually scale your business.

Boa host12:21
Exactly.

Allan Dib12:21
The stuff that actually works. So you need someone in your business that's going to be focused on that. And I used to try and force a square peg into a round hole where I used to say, no, look, you've got to do this. You've just got to get it done and whatever. It doesn't work. You know, it'll work once, twice, 3 times. You get bored, you get busy, something more exciting comes up. Bottom of the barrel. Bottom of the barrel.

Kirsten Scott12:42
Yeah.

Allan Dib12:42
I'll get to it later. And of course you, you never get to it. So you need someone in the business that's driving the bus, that's doing the daily, weekly, monthly boring stuff. And you know, I found almost in any activity in life, whether it's building wealth, whether it's health, whether it's finances or whatever, most of the results come from the daily, weekly boring stuff, right? So, built, building a good body, right? That's just lifting weights. It's doing the boring stuff over and over. Uh, from a marketing perspective, it's sending the newsletter, it's creating the content, it's doing the stuff. And like I said, most entrepreneurs, they're like excited by it once, twice, three times, and then they get bored of it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So what I say to people now is don't focus on your weaknesses. Double down on your strengths. Work mostly in your genius zone and get somebody else whose genius zone is operational stuff. There are people who just love that stuff. They love coming in every day, checking the box, doing the thing, doing the operational thing, and, and going home. So someone's got to wake up in the morning, be thinking about, okay, how do we get leads into the business today? And the following the process and getting that done. So you really need that role.

Kirsten Scott13:56
Totally. I couldn't agree more. Um, so you've worked with thousands of businesses. What are the most common marketing mistakes you see and how can people avoid them?

Allan Dib14:04
Yeah, there's a few. So number one is not understand— from a mindset perspective, not understanding the importance of marketing. You know, I used to, in my first business, I was like, man, I'm so good at the technical stuff, clients are going to come rolling in, right? And you know, it's great to be a good technician at whatever you do, whether, you know, whatever, whatever you do, whether you're in IT, whether in your, your finance or whatever, that'll retain clients. But before client retention, we need to be thinking about client acquisition. So the big reframe for me was, I'm not an IT guy, I'm a marketer of IT services. So that was an important mindset shift.

Kirsten Scott14:45
And what helped you get, was it through that coach that you used?

Allan Dib14:48
Yeah, I had a mentor at the time and he's like, Alan, people don't find out how good you are until they buy. Before they buy, they only know how good your marketing is. So, and he said a phrase that's just stuck with me. He said, the best marketer wins every time. So it's not the best IT guy. It's not the best lawyer. It's the best marketer of those services. So, and you can be pissed off about that or you can just accept that as reality. But it is true. I mean, we've seen that in all sorts of industries. And I mean, the iPod was not the first iPod. It was not the first MP3 player. It was not the best one, but it was the best marketed. It had a super clear message. 1,000 songs in your pocket. A 12-year-old can understand that, right? So it's not the best product. It's not the best service. It's the best known product, the best known service. So your job as an entrepreneur is to be be a marketer of the thing that you do, not the technician of what you do. So that, that was an important mindset shift. The second thing is being really problem-focused rather than solution-focused. So many people fall in love with their business and their solution and their product, and they want to be all positive, but it's not the reality. Yeah, yeah. So we really need to talk to the pain points that our clients are having and speak to that in their— in our copy, in our messaging, and all the things that we're doing, and take them on that journey to solving rather than talking about how awesome we are. You know, it's kind of like, I mean, we've all been to, to a party or gathering or whatever where we're stuck with that person who's just talking about themselves all the time. It's pretty old.

Kirsten Scott16:21
Looking for the other drink.

Allan Dib16:22
Yeah, totally. Totally. You really need to go to the bathroom super quick, right? And so from a marketing perspective, that's what a lot of people are doing. They're just talking about themselves, how awesome they are, how long they've been in business, and then— and no one cares. It's falling flat. And that's why a lot of times the message isn't connecting with the audience.

Kirsten Scott16:40
Yeah, I love that. Um, so in today's world of short attention spans— I'm definitely guilty of that— um, and endless ads, what actually cuts through the noise and gets people to pay attention?

Allan Dib16:49
Yeah, so a lot of people say people have short attention spans, and that's actually not true. I mean, we watch Joe Rogan podcast for 3 hours. There's Tim Ferriss, um, there's all sorts of content. You binge watch Netflix for hours and hours. So people don't have short attention spans, they have short boredom spans. So if you bore people with your marketing, if it's not catching their attention, well, people have a tonne of options. So you scroll Instagram, it's a boring reel, boom, next, next, next. So it's not a short attention span, it's a short boredom span. So we've gotta, we've gotta start by capturing attention. I say entertaining and people are like, oh, but you know, I do something really serious, I'm in finance or whatever. By entertaining, I don't mean necessarily funny or you have to be a clown or anything like that. Yeah, but you have to capture attention. You have to be like, oh wow, what's, what's that? You know, some, some piece of novelty or something that's going to capture people's attention and get them to take the next physical, visible action that you want to take. So, um, don't ever think that people have a short attention span. They have a short boredom span. And if they're not paying attention to your thing, it's probably boring.

Kirsten Scott18:02
Yeah, I've never thought of it like that. That's actually brilliant. Um, for a small business, a solopreneur with a limited budget and time, where should they focus their marketing energy first?

Allan Dib18:12
So first, and this is one of the things that we work with people on very, very early on, because if you get this wrong, everything else is gonna fall flat. So, uh, we work on messaging. So how do we get a message that is understood, that people take action on? And as I, I talked a little bit about this earlier, but a lot of what we do from a marketing perspective is amplification. So we are amplifying our message, we're getting our message to more and more people. So that we get more reach, so that we get, you know, responses and everything like that. But here's the thing, if you're a bad singer and I'm a terrible singer, if you give me a microphone and an amplifier, that makes things worse, not better, right? Now I'm just a loud bad singer.

Kirsten Scott18:54
Yeah, you have poor neighbors.

Boa host18:56
Exactly.

Allan Dib18:57
And so that's what a lot of people are doing from a marketing perspective. They've got a message that isn't converting with 10 people, so they amplify it, they run ads, and now it's not converting with 100 people, and then they run more ads and it's not converting with 1,000 people. So if you're getting worse, it's just getting worse and worse because— exactly, exactly. It's costing you money, right? Because you're running ads and you're like, ads don't work for me, ads don't work in my business or my industry or whatever. No, it's your message that isn't cutting through. So that's one of the first things we want to work on. What's a message that's actually going to cut through, that's going to work with your audience, that gets people to raise their hand and say, hey, that's interesting, tell me more about that, I want to know more. It gets the click, it gets the opt-in, it gets the call, whatever it is. So If you don't get that right, you know, getting your message right is something I call foundational. And foundational is just a fancy way of saying if you fuck this up, you're fucked, right? So, yeah. So you've really got to get that right. Your target market and your messaging, if you— you've got to get those right because all the other stuff, all the tactics, the tricks, the SEO hacks, the pay-per-click ads, all of that, that's all going to fall flat if your messaging sucks and if your targeting is wrong.

Kirsten Scott20:09
Yeah. Because then, like you said, it's just like exploding it and making it bigger than what it what it is. Exactly.

Boa host20:13
Yeah. Exactly.

Kirsten Scott20:14
Okay. So market is changing. So AI, automation, data, you touched on that briefly before. How can businesses stay effective without getting overwhelmed by the latest tools and trends?

Boa host20:24
Yeah.

Allan Dib20:25
So a lot of times people are saying, oh, great. We've got AI tools. Now we're going to automate all of our marketing. And there's definitely tools that can help you do a lot of the heavy lifting now, which is great. But again, if you don't have the fundamentals right, it's just gonna suck. And we're seeing a lot of AI slop. I mean, you go on LinkedIn, it's just like a sea of AI. Oh, you can spot it from a mile away. Yeah, totally, totally. So the way I wanna use tools is intelligently is I want your authentic voice. I want a powerful message that's really gonna cut through. And then we're gonna use these tools to make it better, faster, cheaper, where you might have needed 10 people in your marketing team to really make an impact. Now you could do it with 1 or 2., but we've still got the fundamentals. We've got a message that converts. We've got our targeting really tight. We've got a process that works. A lot of people talk about automation and AI and all of that. Well, they're trying to automate something that they don't know how to do. Like, you need the process. What's the process that someone's going to follow? We were talking about systems a little bit earlier, and a system is basically a checklist, a process of how to get something done. And mostly in the past it was done mostly by people. You know, a person would follow a checklist, get the process done. Now people do some of the checklist and we can get machine to do some of the checklist, right? We've got AI tools that will, can do a lot of the heavy lifting and gets things done faster, better, cheaper, but it's not a replacement for getting the fundamentals right. Yeah, human touch.

Kirsten Scott22:04
Totally.

Boa host22:04
Yeah.

Kirsten Scott22:04
And I think that's like a big conversation at the moment. Like human touch will never, and human taste, you know, Yeah, we'll never replace, um, AI will never replace that. So yeah, now just a reminder, guys, we're shortly about to move into the Q&A, so send, um, your questions in the chat. So finally, if you could give one piece of advice to every business owner on here about marketing and how to do that smarter, what would it be?

Allan Dib22:28
So it's that mindset shift. Become a marketer of the thing that you do and really work on your fundamentals first. Let's not not just start randomly digging a foundation, randomly laying bricks or whatever. Let's get the architectural blueprint down first, which is something that you would do if you're doing any kind of complex project. And let's face it, marketing can be really complex. So let's figure out the fundamentals. Let's figure out your target market. Let's get your messaging really tight. Let's figure out your media. Once you've got that, great, let's go crazy with the tactics and the tools and all of those sorts of things. But don't do random acts of marketing because you're just going to get random results.

Kirsten Scott23:06
Totally. I have a question. So if you have two niches, for example, like you have a lawn mowing business and you have like a pool business, would you have to do separate marketing for each of those just so you could hone in on those niches? Or even though it's got the same business name, like how would you approach that?

Allan Dib23:23
So the way I approach that is I ask, is it a separate segment or is it a separate target market? So like, you know, pool maintenance and lawn. That would be just probably two separate segments or two separate products of the same business. So we've probably got the same target market. We've got a homeowner, we've got someone who wants maintenance done for them. So we can have a very similar message because whether it's lawn or pool, we can talk about, you know, saving them time, getting a quality job done, all of that sort of thing. Whereas if you had pool maintenance and shoes, right?

Kirsten Scott23:58
Yeah.

Allan Dib23:58
I mean, that's two completely different markets, right? Yeah.

Kirsten Scott24:01
I mean, unless you're doing the pool maintenance in your shoes, then that would work.

Boa host24:05
True.

Allan Dib24:05
So, so the question is, is it just a different product or a segment, or is it a completely different target market? So, and in that case, we would do two separate things if it's completely different target markets, or if it's just a different product or a different segment, we might just tweak the messaging slightly for each.

Kirsten Scott24:23
Yeah, because it's interesting, right? We have a lot of e-commerce businesses in our community and they obviously sell a range of products and it's hard to know if you focus on one product in particular, but again, if it's your target market, it might be wellbeing, I guess that's where the focus would be. Yeah, guys, we're going to move into the Q&A. I've got a couple of questions here, but don't feel scared to pop anything in the chat. So the first one is Jeff Gordon, if you'd like to ask your question.

Allan Dib24:49
Hey Jeff. Thanks, Melanie, I really appreciate all your expertise. I just want to know, how do you utilise and maximise AI in your marketing business?

Boa host25:02
Yeah.

Allan Dib25:03
So my team and I, we, we spent a very long time really putting together standard operating procedures. So for example, for our podcast, how do we book a guest in for a podcast? How do we get the raw footage over? How do we edit it? How do we publish it? How do we do all of those things? And now with the AI tools and automation, we've now got the process. So some of those things can now be automated. And there are tools like, for example, we used to have to manually edit multiple camera feeds coming in and switch to the active person. And it would just take hours and hours for an editor to do that. Now there are tools like Descript, which automatically detect, hey, here's an active speaker, switch the camera to him. As soon as the other guy comes, it switches to them. And so it probably reduced editing time by like 80%. It didn't completely remove it because still needed the human touch to make sure it's doing it right, but it massively reduced the workload for editing an episode. So this is what we look for. What are some tools that can do some of the heavy lifting without kind of just creating random slop, which is what we see with a lot of AI tools where it's just like, hey, write me a LinkedIn post about such and such, and it's obviously going to produce a crappy output. So with AI, there's 3 things that you really need to get a quality result. You've got to have very, very clear instructions. On what you want it to do. You need to give it the goal. What, what do I want this? So for example, you might say, I want you to write a 300-word LinkedIn post on, and give it very detailed instructions. The goal of the post is to get people to click and go to my landing page. And the third one that people really get wrong is context. You want to dump a whole bunch of context and say, here are 20 different LinkedIn articles I've written in the past. Mimic this kind of style. You're going to get a much, much better result than if you just do a like a one-sentence prompt, and it's gonna— it's not gonna be perfect by any means, but it's gonna be way, way better. My pleasure.

Kirsten Scott27:14
And always cheque your facts, because one thing I'm noticing, I will prompt and do all my things, and then I'm like, oh, is this factually correct? And it's like, no, it isn't. I'm like, why would you tell me that? And then you have to go like another route to get the right answer.

Allan Dib27:26
Yeah, totally.

Kirsten Scott27:27
Um, okay, so Roderick.

Allan Dib27:29
Hey, Roderick.

Kirsten Scott27:32
If we've got you, there he is. Hey, I'm from Melbourne.

Boa host27:39
Yeah, I have a question.

Kirsten Scott27:40
Sure.

Boa host27:41
I understand that there's no silver bullet in the marketing, right? You're gonna have to spend on the marketing for all the channels. Yeah. But say like if we start a new business today and then we have, we only have like enough to do like one or two channels, which channels should I focus on? Yeah.

Allan Dib27:59
So I would, first of all, I wouldn't focus on two channels. I would focus on one. I wrote the book Lean Marketing here, and it was partially in response to whenever I looked at the best marketers in the world, they did one or two things, but at a really, really deep level. They were not on all the platforms, all the, you know, posting kind of mediocre content to everything. I want you to think about it this way. Like imagine you have 10 units of energy and you do, like we've all got finite energy. If you direct them in 10 different directions, you can make 1 unit of progress in each direction, whereas if you focus them in 1 direction, you can make 10 units of progress in that direction. So I would urge you to kind of really dominate 1 piece of media or 1 channel first before adding others because you're going to go deeper, you're going to get a better result. And like, I'll give you an example from my own business. I mean, we've been doing this for like 5 or 6 years. Pretty much the only channels I've focused on to date have been book and email list, and we really dominate those. Like, I've sold a million books now. Our email list is super responsive and we generate most of our revenue. And only just now, Dana here, who's behind the scenes, we literally hired him like last week, and now we're focusing on YouTube, on Instagram, and things like that after after years of really dominating the other channels. So I would find the channel that your clients are on, and you know, clients are probably on most channels these days. Um, and then the second thing is, what could you do for like the next 5 years consistently? Like, what do you enjoy? Are you a good speaker? Maybe, maybe it's a podcast. Do you love being on camera? Maybe it's a YouTube channel. Do you love writing? Maybe it's a book or an email list or LinkedIn posts or whatever. What's something that you could consistently. And then what's the modality you love to work on? Like, for example, for myself, I love writing. So for me, it was email list and it was book. That's where I started because, you know, I can write all day long. I love it. It's my natural modality. For other people, they're like, I'm not a writer. I just love, I've got the gift of the gab. I'll talk on camera or talk on a podcast or whatever. So find the modality that you can show up very consistently in. And where your clients are and just really dominate that.

Kirsten Scott30:25
Yeah, I think that's really good advice because like you said, you've obviously dominated in the book space. Now that you're kind of moving that over to like social media, Instagram, like it's like it translates. So almost your community knows who you are before you even land there.

Allan Dib30:38
Yeah, totally.

Kirsten Scott30:40
Awesome. Was that helpful, Roderick? Awesome.

Allan Dib30:44
Thanks, Roderick.

Kirsten Scott30:44
Uh, so Nick Gulick.

Allan Dib30:47
Hey, Nick.

Boa host30:49
Um, so my question is, you've got the market, it's always evolving, you know, people are getting familiarity messaging, tactics spread, the messages has all been seen before, and your competitors sometimes adopt the stuff that you've been saying. So how do you come up with a clear USP or clear messaging when everything's kind of done and all the stuff that used to be the standout no longer is the standout. Yeah.

Allan Dib31:19
So Nicole, I'll answer your question in two parts. So, um, business owners and entrepreneurs often get into the trap of focusing too much, uh, on their competitors. So your competitors are not your competitors. Your biggest competitors are probably the client either doing nothing or doing it themselves. Um, I often say businesses don't die of murder, they die of starvation most often, right? So, um, so I wouldn't obsess about competitors. I mean, obviously be aware of them. The second thing is almost everything is becoming a commodity because of automation. It's becoming easier to launch a product, it's becoming, uh, easier to do things. You used to have a big technical advantage if you knew how to do the thing. Now that technical advantage is eroding away. It's still, still there. So one of One of the things I often tell people is now feels like, it feels like 2007 or 2008 for SEO, but for personal brand. So building a personal brand around what you do, super, super powerful. And I think we're really early on. So there's a big opportunity to build your own personal brand. And again, choose the platform or modality that, you know, you can show up in regularly. But, and we've seen that, like we've seen, like Elon Musk has a much bigger brand than Tesla does. Richard Branson has a much bigger brand than Virgin. When we think of Apple, we think of it as Steve Jobs' company, right? So that personal brand, because the other stuff like air travel or cars or, you know, computers or phones, they're all commodities really. So it's the personal brand that's going to be the big differentiator and people follow people. And the other, the other thing, the other big shift that we're seeing is we, it used to be social media and social media used to be used to be like the friends you followed, the celebrities you followed and stuff like that. Now it's shifting to interest media. Like the, you don't need to follow anyone. The algorithm now knows what you're interested in and it'll show you the, the stuff that you're interested in. So what you want to do is produce content that your audience is interested in and you will show up for them. So if you're not boring, if you're showing up as a real person, as a personal brand, brand, you're going to have a big, big advantage over your competitors because almost no one is doing that.

Kirsten Scott33:46
Yeah, because what do they say? Your content needs to be aspirational, educational, entertaining. Like, it has to hit one of those or a couple of the pillars. Yeah, yeah. And even like books, whatever media you're using.

Boa host33:58
Totally.

Kirsten Scott33:58
Yeah, awesome. Uh, Marie.

Allan Dib34:02
Hey, Marie.

Kirsten Scott34:06
There she is. Um, so I— this is really interesting. I'm a couples and family therapist, and I have— my product is helping people have better relationships. Yeah, but my audience is other therapists who want upskill and help with their files, and each one has a separate podcast. Yep. But I finally just get— I get lost in, like, people say, what do you do? And I'm like, training and, and therapy And I really struggle because they're so incoming, but then feels like they're two separate audiences.

Allan Dib34:36
Yeah, they definitely are two separate audiences. So, um, first of all, um, all of us have, like, think about it this way. If we all exported all of our customer base into an Excel spreadsheet, like, let's say, and I recommend that you actually do this exercise. So go into your, either your accounting system or your CRM system, export all of the clients that you've worked with over the last 5 or 10 years or whatever. And then sort them from best client to worst client. And by best, I don't mean paid you the most money. It's like they were— maybe it's a combination— they were really profitable work with, they paid you on time, and they were fun to work with. Like, when you saw a call on your phone coming in from them, you're like, oh, awesome, I'm going to answer the phone. Versus at the bottom of your list are going to be the people who complain all the time, who paid late, who always want to speak to the CEO, who's just a pain in the ass to work with, um, always arguing about the price and things like that. And you get a call from them and you'll think, oh, fuck, like, not this guy. Like, uh, and we've all had one. Yeah, totally, totally. We've all had those. And so you're going to see commonalities of people at that top of the list.

Boa host35:46
You get—

Allan Dib35:47
yeah, and they're the ones we want to focus on. Like, I, I totally understand, uh, taking on revenue because you need the money, you need the revenue. That's fine, I, I get that. But who do we really want to focus in on, and who do want as our ideal client. So we want to focus our marketing and our message on both of them. Now, you've got a couple of segments there. So you, you run couples therapy and then you do training, Train the Trainer. So they may be different messages, but there'll probably be one that you enjoy more, that's more profitable, that's got a bigger future for you. And so I'm not saying don't do the other thing, but I'm saying double down on the one thing that you know you can really dominate and that's in your genius zone and that will mean a better business in the future. And keep the other one going, that's fine. I'm not saying give it up, but really focus. Focus is such a powerful thing. In our coaching program, one of the things that we often do that's surprising to people. People expect us to add things like to run a campaign, to do this other thing. Most of the time what we're doing is subtraction. We're like, you know, these 5 things that you're doing, they're probably not gonna give you a good return and we're gonna subtract them. So many times the big wins in business and life come from subtraction, not addition. We're always looking for the new thing to add, the new thing to do. A lot of times it's actually removing stuff that's kind of dead weight or not going to take you anywhere. Kind of, you know, like taking the—

Boa host37:25
taking the—

Allan Dib37:25
yeah, simplifying, taking the knife out of the toddler's hands and so they don't hurt themselves. And, and yeah, just really focusing on, on the 2 or 3 things that are going to make the biggest difference.

Kirsten Scott37:37
I'm loving the analogies this morning. I'm like, got all these notes.

Boa host37:40
It's awesome.

Kirsten Scott37:42
Oh, awesome. Thanks, Marie. Um, and Kaj, Kajay.

Boa host37:47
Hi, I'm Kajay. Yeah, actually, like, for my business, Romy, actually, I have like 1 or 2 clients in each segment. It takes an adjustment there. So actually, the restaurant, restaurant, and the HTR, NDS, and LinkedIn. So like, how many actually the minimum customers I need to have in order to truly understand the niche and go with that? Because like, it's scattered now.

Allan Dib38:14
Yeah, so you want statistically significant information. Like, I mean, if one person says something, I mean, sure, pay attention to that, but I wouldn't change the business around that. So a good— I mean, it depends on the business. So you want a reasonable sample when you're asking questions. But I thought so.

Kirsten Scott38:38
Maybe did you want to explain a little bit about your business? It might help give a little bit more context. Next.

Boa host38:44
This is actually like HR and payrolls. There we actually have a rostering, time capturing, and like invoicing tools, budgeting that you run in the back office. So here I have like the customers from the roster, like the restaurants where actually they make the weekly rosters and then they plan the staffs and then they run the time capturing and then they do the payroll for for them. So that's one operation. The another one is actually like NDIS providers. They actually roster the staff against their clients, and then they do the, uh, like the servicing, and then they do the payroll same way, and then they actually like claim that Type C from the government because this is a government-funded programs. So this way, actually, like the different, different sectors, but actually the co-op thing is same He says actually like a cameraman in the group.

Allan Dib39:41
I'm going to give you like a little shortcut to what people buy. So you're talking about features, you're talking about benefits, you're talking about it does rostering, it does this thing, it does the other thing. And that's fine. That's, but that's a discussion for later. People buy really 3 things: time, money, status. And most of the time, in fact, status is probably the top one. And you might think, no, look, I do software, they really make a logical decision and all of that sort of thing. It's almost never the case. Like, if you keep asking why, you're going to get to the true reason. So someone's like, oh, why are you looking for rostering software? Oh, I need an efficient way to roster my staff or whatever. Okay, why do you need an efficient way to roster my staff? Well, you know, it's taking me a lot of time to do it. I'm spending 3 I was on a Saturday trying to get people on.

Boa host40:35
Okay.

Allan Dib40:36
And why are you trying to reduce the time? Well, that way I can spend my time on more profitable stuff. And why are you trying to generate more profit in the business? Well, I want to live an amazing lifestyle. I want to provide for my family. I want to do all of those sorts of things. So we want to keep asking why until we get to the real reason. And sometimes it comes from observation, not necessarily even just from interviews. So what's the deeper message? What's the time, money, or status thing that they're gonna get from buying your product? Are they gonna look good to their boss if they're, if you are super efficient at rostering? The shortcut to success. The shortcut to success.

Boa host41:17
Yeah.

Kirsten Scott41:18
Yeah.

Allan Dib41:18
I'm gonna look amazing to my boss. I might get a promotion, I might get a pay rise, I might get a whatever. If you are the business owner, it's gonna reduce your time, it's gonna help you make more profit in the business. So where are, where are those time, money, status elements in the product or service that you do? That's going to be the messaging that will cut through much more than features or benefits, or it does rostering, or it does time management or whatever.

Kirsten Scott41:46
Awesome. Well, Alan, that was amazing. No wonder you've gotten two leading books on the same self-assess. I've got a few notes here myself. Look guys, you can, where can they purchase your books?

Allan Dib41:58
Yeah, anywhere books are sold, Amazon, all the bookstores. So Lean Marketing, One Page Marketing Plan. Yeah, and I'd love to connect with anyone who, yeah.

Kirsten Scott42:09
Yeah, I definitely recommend it. Both Dan and I have read his books a couple of times and it just makes it so easy for you and so like implementable into your business. But thank you so much for this morning. It was great to see you all. And don't forget to cheque it out on the video content library if you want to rewatch watch it. So, we'll see you all soon. Bye for now. Thank you.

Boa host42:27
See ya.