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- [00:01]
A
Hello and welcome to the Bald Ambition podcast. I'm your bald host, Mookie Spitz, and I'm thrilled to have the founder of Tech Torque on the pod today, Mr. Matthew Wyatt. Wyatt with an H. That's right.
- [00:17]
B
We spent the extra money, got the H. That's good.
- [00:21]
A
Is it, is it like quiet, quiet?
- [00:24]
B
That's Wyatt, all right.
- [00:26]
A
It's a whole quiet quiet.
- [00:29]
B
That's right.
- [00:31]
A
So hopefully you're not quiet today because we can't wait to hear about what you're doing for SaaS companies in terms of boosting their sales potential. I've had several guests doing, doing sales. They're plugging in AI, they're plugging in the tech. Sounds like you're twerking with the tech. And I'd love to hear what you do, how you're different and how you're moving the needle because I know SaaS companies are having a hard time right now. Take a look at the US Stock Exchange. Woo. What a ride for Salesforce.
- [01:07]
B
Getting brutalized.
- [01:08]
A
Aren't they having a crisis? They're, they're struggling because agentic AI technology. There's a fear that the bots are going to be doing this work for companies and bye bye subscription model. So let us have it. Matthew, what the hell is going on?
- [01:29]
B
Well, first of all, thank you for having me on the Bold Ambition podcast. I'm almost there. Like it's, I've, I, I'm very, very close. Like this is all just, you know, smoke and mirrors at the moment.
- [01:41]
A
It's all relative. Matthew, when you, when you got a baseline at zero, then a little bit of fuzz, like what you have now. And if, if you're on audio, I'll give you the picture of a little, a little crop top there. And if you're on video, it becomes instantaneously self evident that Matthew's got an edge.
- [02:01]
B
That's right. Just a slight one. Well, look, you know, when it comes to just thinking, I've been thinking about this whole issue when it comes to SaaS and SaaS businesses getting, getting hit by the stock market. You know, the stock market is not really a great barometer of business success because really it's about sentiment. So. But I'm not an analyst. I, I don't even play one on tv, so I can't really speak very intelligently about it. What I do know is that is the fact that comes to selling and marketing, when it comes to growing a business today, really, the, the key factor is no longer features. Features are no longer a feature. In the sale and I speak with a lot of clients, we're just about to release this feature, do that, that, that upgrade this API, whatever it might be. And at the end of the day, they're still going to be competing against outcomes for clients. And so they're competing for outcomes for clients, but also what they're. What? Large businesses are not going to be trusting their most important data or data. Sorry for my Australian accent. It's. I've only been in America for about nine months, but, you know, so they're not going to. They're not going to trust their most important data to something that was vibe coded over the weekend with more security holes you could drive a truck through. So the two key factors that SaaS businesses still have is the fact that they have got trust and the fact they've got distribution. And those two factors together will continue to see those businesses succeed. Obviously, the lower end of the market who don't really want to pay the 80 or $100 a month, they're not going to pay it. But corporate, anything above $20 million is not going to be chucking Salesforce out to get some vibe coded thing that can get from Claude. It's just not going to happen at the moment now Salesforce is trying to keep up. Obviously they're doing headless stuff. They're really trying to drive it forward. It's. I think it's a. I think the media are really good at radicalizing people. And so really it depends on how you want to. Which side of the political divide, financial divide, business divide. Whatever way you want to sit there is they find themselves in a situation where they're just going to be. It's a good headline. Right. So it sells newspapers.
- [04:15]
A
I agree with you. Can I add a third to that? Which is experience within the vertical.
- [04:21]
B
Oh, man.
- [04:22]
A
So you mentioned distribution as being a factor and coupled with that, there's expertise. You need to know the business environment. You need to know your clients. It's a client relationship business. It's not just plugging in the box to your point. So I agree with you. I think it's a little bit hyped. The hysteria has been a little bit heavy and the whiplash shows because stock prices are going back to more or less where they were.
- [04:50]
B
Yeah, that's right. And look, you know, I can grow my own tomatoes. I don't. I go to Wegmans and buy them. So much like AI, you can build your own bots and it can do all of these things. But you know what? There's professionals out there that can do the job probably more effectively at a better price point. You know, I, I found myself caught up in the excitement. I got myself an account with Lovable. I have a product that I use and I've been paying three or four hundred dollars a month for, for about a year and a half. I thought, you know what, this is not that smart, so I can do this myself. And so I got myself a $50 a month subscription. Then I needed the API, which is $200 a month. Then I needed this thing over here, which was another $85 a month. Then I needed to actually learn how to deploy things through Jerusalem and this and that. And I found myself spending days and days on building this thing to save myself $300. And it made no sense. So really I did, I think products like lovable and base 44 and those sort of products are going to find themselves while still continuing to gain new clients. They will burn existing clients just as quickly because you can't, you're not going to be able to deploy at scale. And I've been. I started my first tech business in 1999.
- [06:04]
A
That's the Yahoo. The Yahoo.com era.
- [06:07]
B
I started in the dot com era absolutely. And I loved it. I surfed that way for a while and we were living in Australia at the time and I was in an industry that wasn't terribly affected by the, by the bust. So we, we kept surfing that wave for many years. So really it's it the, the trust that you can build with a client base and then deliver over and over and over because recalcitrants is a factor when it comes to business and recalc. So, so really it's, it's also when I'm dealing with large corporates and I'm helping my clients sell to large corporates, it's very rarely about better, faster, cheaper. It's, it's, it's almost. Actually, I'm going to say it's has for a business, if you're selling to a business over $50 million revenue or higher. If you're selling, if you're selling to a government agency, city council, any of that type of stuff, it's no longer about better, faster, cheaper. It's about looking good and covering your ass. I'm sorry to, to be close to swearing there because the people making the purchasing decisions are not, they're not playing with really their own money. The people making purchasing decisions are worried about their career and they're worried about what the board's going to Say if it blows up. And, and Mookie, you and I are old enough now to remember that we used to. There used to be a saying, you, nobody gets fired for buying IBM, right?
- [07:31]
A
Yeah, but look what happened to IBM
- [07:34]
B
eventually, but none of those people got fired for buying it. And so really, you know, so when you, so when you're selling, you need to demonstrate that even if so, because, okay, for example, a Toyota. Nobody's going to get fired for buying a Toyota because. Because there's so much evidence that a Toyota is going to last forever. It's going to last so long, it's going to be resold in the Middle east and then be used over there. So it's going to be, it's going to be. You're going to have this car forever until you actually decide to sell it. It's not going to break on you. So what that means is that nobody's going to get. So if you have a product or service that you've got so much evidence out there in the marketplace that demonstrates that you're an excellent choice, even if it blows up, it's no longer the product or service, it's, oh, well, that's an anomaly. And that's where the trust comes in.
- [08:19]
A
I'm aligned. I think that the hype and hysteria, by definition was overblown. I agree with you that the SaaS companies aren't going away and can be replaced by a bunch of vibe coders in a garage. And I think that the client relationship and expertise within each respective vertical is what really carries the day. So you could vibe code the hell out of something and from a technical vantage point to your point, it could potentially increase efficiency, cut costs and do everything the SaaS more or less does. But what you're losing is that expertise. You're losing the accountability and you're losing the client relationship. So this AI transformation is not only technical and it's contingent on disruption having an impact on staff, on management. These are human beings in a very human environment and you can't just flip the switch and expect the bots to do everything correct. SaaS is here to stay one way or another.
- [09:19]
B
Yeah, but, but I'm not a Luddite at all. I am the sort of person that looks at the market and look, tries to look over the hill a little bit. And, you know, I've grown my business, but I haven't needed to bring on any new staff in the last year or so because I am taking bits and pieces of the production of, you know, in my business. And production in my clients businesses and I no longer have to employ, I don't have to employ new people for every new client. I have the existing high skill people who can manage multiple clients and I, and I have built AI inside my business that can perform the activities that I might have done in the past that would take me away from new client acquisition. So whilst I have neither, I have not downsized anybody or I've removed any roles, I've just not increased any roles because I've become more efficient.
- [10:09]
A
Yeah, scalability is one of the benefits. And to your point, it's a hybrid approach. You understand the client, you understand the business, you understand what's going on. You provide that consultative relationship. It's not features, it's the benefits, it's the relationship. And then you take advantage of the technology without rejecting it or selling your soul to it. So let's be specific. We've been talking in the abstract and I think we're trending with all the lines that make sense and our listeners and viewers are likely familiar with this. But what do you bring at tech torque to differentiate your value proposition and integrate this hybridized approach that you're talking about?
- [10:52]
B
Well, simply put, I've been in the seat of my clients. That's really the part that I have lived in. I started my first tech business at 22, grew that to a reasonable level of success and have sold that off and built more. Sold that off, took a year off to live in Bali in Indonesia and then came back and I've been asked and I was just, I was sort of brought back to help a friend out to fix their sales team because I was, because their sales team was lagging and I found a little niche in doing that. And then I started to realize that people really didn't want the sales piece of what I was selling in Australia, what they wanted. People think they need sale, they think they need marketing help, they actually need selling help. So marketing is the airplane. If you've got kids out there listening, you know, you have to make the airplane noise, you feed them their vegetables. Marketing is the airplane noise I make to feed them sales. So you know, come for the, come for the leads and stay for the actual education how to close a deal. So, so we help our clients. So typically we help software and technology businesses sell more to the right people and we live at that strategy level. Doesn't, you know, I don't talk about, we deploy, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Facebook ads and we deploy, you know, Google and whatever other Activities that might occur has to be within the context of the customer. You know, I've got a customer who is one of the very largest ERP providers, enterprise resource planning providers in Australia. I've got another one who's an investment bank in New York. I've got another one. You know, I'm across all these different businesses and what's interesting about that is that there are some similarities in the differences. There's similarities because sales and business is not a B2B or a B2C exercise. It's a H to H. It's a human to human. Businesses don't buy things, people buy things. And so that's why marketing still works. Why Marketing is not math. There is a function of marketing that is math. There's a function of selling that is math. But at the end of the day it's still a human buying something to extend their career or achieve a KPI.
- [13:02]
A
Let's get tactical for a second because I understand your strategy, but what exactly do you do? Because you're describing a multi channel or digital strategy for a company with ad buys, with content strategy, with channel affinity and all that. That sounds like media to me. And then I've had guests who supervise and better manage actual sales forces, you know, human to human. As you mentioned, using AI to help manage better profile salespeople, that kind of thing. So can you, can you describe your, your tactics so we better understand your strategy? Where do you fit in this mix of sales? Sales booster shot for, for B2B.
- [13:54]
B
Got it. Okay. So essentially my customers are at a point in inflection point. I'll tell you about my customers, then you'll get some more context around this. So my customers in A, my best customers are ones that have just achieved a certain level of success. A couple of million dollars worth of revenue they've sold to friends and family and referrals. And they recognize it's now time to put the foot down on their sales and marketing activity. Typically if you're selling SaaS in many, in any vertical. For the last decade I've worked across, you know, what warehouse, everything.
- [14:25]
A
These are SaaS folks. And you're helping SaaS companies better connect with their clients, correct?
- [14:34]
B
That's right.
- [14:34]
A
So it's very much a B2B.
- [14:37]
B
Yes.
- [14:37]
A
And it's a sophisticated consultative B2B because you've got these software as a service providers and you're hooking them up with the right company in the right way to plug into their model.
- [14:50]
B
That's right. Often it's actually software with A service. So it's not just buy the thing, you know, so go online. That's right. So Matthew Wyatt was with Quiet. That's right. So it's very. None of my clients are this, are the sort of client that you can just go on and buy their thing for 99amonth, click a button, put your credit card details through. But that's, that's not the world I live in. I live in the world where you know, we're selling like my clients are selling to governments or corporates. And they're, they're a small team. They've got a real solution that solves a genuine problem. They've typically come from industry. They go, you know what, I'm going to go out and try to attack and approach these types of businesses. How do I, how do I look at the sky, the skyscraper and go, I need the person on the 32nd floor of that building. How do I do that? And that's the bit that I come in. Okay, so I will, so I will, you know, talking super tactical.
- [15:45]
A
Right.
- [15:45]
B
Let's get right down to it. You know, we'll take over there. We will help them post useful thought leadership content. Doesn't sound very, doesn't sound very brilliant. But we'll do that piece. We'll also generate leads. We'll, we'll put the advertising in through LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever it might be. We'll sit there and make sure that there is a sales process thought all the way through. Because marketing occurring in a bubble does one thing which is generate leads. But unless you actually can sell and then expand, so land and expand type of strategy when it comes to these types of businesses, we need to. And then also breaking down the sales process. So typically I will actually tell a sale a customer. So if there's any software or technology businesses out there and you sell a large thing, a large product or service, see if you can break that down into a smaller constituent pieces and sell pieces of the product. Sell pieces of the consulting as a pre consulting piece. Because selling software is difficult. It requires getting it past the chain.
- [16:44]
A
Tip of the spear.
- [16:44]
B
That's it. Tip of this. Exactly. So how you do that these days is by selling a piece of consulting. Because people will buy consulting significantly at significantly higher rates and they will buy software because software requires the IT guys and girls to get involved. They need to change advisory. They've got to get all this thing and the business changes.
- [17:01]
A
It's a huge pain in the ass switcheroo. And then consulting, well, you know, I need this tweaked or that. And then, you know, you get in the door, you show you're smart, you show you understand their business, and then you upsell.
- [17:14]
B
Correct. And you become a vendor. Look, you know, we, I was working with a company selling a mining software solution and they hadn't, they couldn't make this, they couldn't break through because there were so many people. There was 20 or 30 people in the whole process that could say no and one or two people that can say yes. So what we did is we just went ahead and, you know, all of these people had need to believe before they all turn their keys at the same time. So we went and did a piece of consulting. We found out that a person on site could spend about $30,000 on consulting. So guess how much our consulting was. 29,500.
- [17:50]
A
And an astonishing coincidence.
- [17:53]
B
An astonishing coincidence.
- [17:54]
A
Right.
- [17:55]
B
And so what that meant is that we could then go out on site and it wasn't necessarily, you know, doing the intricate discovery of all of their systems. Of course we knew how to do that because the customer had been doing that for 25 years. The real issue was the hearts and minds program because Barry in distribution, the last time they tried to put something in, took it, flung the iPad to the side and picked up his clipboard again, said, this works, this never crashes. Nobody can hack this. And so that's what stopped this stops a million dollar sale many times is there's, there's Barry's and Joanne's in there and Michael's over here to go. You know what, screw you guys. I'm just going to go ahead and keep doing my work. My job is I'm hitting my KPIs, everybody else can get nicked.
- [18:38]
A
So your tip of the spear sounds like a consultancy driven discovery kind of session. So do you look under the hood, you spend some time?
- [18:48]
B
Yep. It's a paid service. It is, essentially. So we name it, we brand it, we put a brochure around it and we sell that. And so when a person says, hey, will it plug into my, this API? Does it come in blue? Will it talk? Does it do it in Spanish? You know, how many Portuguese whatever it is, these questions create the bog you down. And technical people are masters of the universe when it comes to asking really niche technical questions.
- [19:18]
A
That's how their brains are wired. They're there, they go from the bottom up. That's how, that's how they, that's what makes them good coders. Good, good, good technical people. And it's the exact Opposite of strategic thinking, which is you look at the entire chessboard, you know how all the pieces move, you know the rules of the game, and then you set it loose for a while to see how it, how it simmers. Folks don't, don't operate that way. It's like line 36 has a recursion. What are we going to do about it?
- [19:52]
B
Yeah, 100. And that's why we. That's why it's dangerous to wade into those waters, because there'll always be a smarter person on the other side of the table who's got more industry experience, more knowledge of their own business than you will ever will until you're a vendor. So you don't. You say you don't sell them the. You sell them the outcome, and then the technical cancer is. Well, that's a great question, Joanne. We'll discover that and we'll make a decision together during our scoping discovery process.
- [20:21]
A
And you're hunting for pain points. So what a lot of clients don't realize is really the mess that they're actually in. And then once you look under the hood, it exposes challenges that they themselves didn't even think about. And the art of consultative selling is to have that conversation, listen, extract the pain points and then craft a solution of which what you're proposing isn't a sell. You're not convincing them to buy something they don't want, but you're building a sense of urgency and inevitability. So they're like, yes, I have to have that because now I know what a mess we're in.
- [21:01]
B
Very rarely do people realize that they're victims of Stockholm syndrome when it comes to their own systems and procedures and processes inside their business. They go, well, that's how we've always done it, and it must be the right way, because that's how we've always done it. Well, somebody made that up years ago using an Excel spreadsheet.
- [21:18]
A
Yeah. Another guest described it as. There's. There's been. There's. Every company has this. There's the employee who's been there 10, 15 years, and they've been jerry rigging with masking tape and nylon, the integration. And there's APIs flapping in the wind, and they have a big gargantuan spaghetti bowl mess, and this person knows everything and they're fixing it. And that's the exact opposite of what you want in terms of integration, scalability, interoperability, fixes, and just redesigning things from the ground up to make it.
- [21:54]
B
Make more Sense those people are typically got two or three assistants now because. And what happens is they, you know, often they get paid more because they're now managing people they're desperately needed.
- [22:06]
A
Peter. Principled to do even more damage than they've been doing in their prior role.
- [22:12]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And you know what, You've just got to find those people and help them understand that they'll actually be better off and they'll look better at the end of the day if they're able to implement your solution.
- [22:23]
A
The big offering that you're doing is a consultative discovery session to look under the hood and create a relationship with the client. So one of the central themes of this podcast is consultative selling. And that's the essence of what you're doing to the point you made earlier. It's the opposite of a commodity. Commodity is transactionable, disposable, led by features, maybe a few advantages, and you don't really care about the client much. And it's usually driven based on price.
- [22:52]
B
That's right.
- [22:52]
A
I want it cheaper, faster, better. Let's go. And consulting is the exact opposite. It's time consuming, you go in deep, it's expensive, but it's proportionally much more valuable, which is you're extracting real insights about the business. And most importantly to your point, once you build trust, create the relationship, see what's under the hood, then you have a unique perspective in terms of providing a custom solution that could bring about the most benefit and that you're ideally suited for. So just like you had the miracle happen where you have a budget of 30k for the, for the session, you hit it at 29, 5, all of a sudden you expose issues that your Tech Torque solution is ideally suited to fix.
- [23:37]
B
Perfect. Exactly. Would you like a job? Sounds like you nailed it.
- [23:43]
A
Can you describe to me this in operation and now that we've set it up downstream, can you share maybe a case study or an example of how you've delivered and then the benefits that have come to the lucky customer of Tech Torque.
- [24:01]
B
Obviously, every customer and every client have their own needs and wants and desires. So I'll stay with that customer I was speaking about earlier in the mining sector. So we were selling, it was a million dollar a year product selling to the largest companies in the world, the largest mining company in the world, and the largest, what do you call it, distribution company, sorry, trading company in the world. So giant organizations with massive multiple layers and multiple billions of dollars. And so what we did is we recognized that client wasn't really selling many and they weren't selling any in the last couple of years before I got there. I was brought in to have a look at their sales and marketing process and realized that they needed to stop being the smartest guys in the room. The problem is the greatest challenge that a lot of technical people have is they are the smartest guys in the room by, by, by a long, by a long way and which is intimidating for clients. And also the smartest guys in the room rarely have the ability the, the, the time or the crayons to explain it to them to their customers. And so they needed somebody with, you know, what is as smart as them, that's me, to be able to take their, take their brilliance and distill it through their messaging and their marketing and their communication and, and then present it back to clients in the format in which they did so just to wrap that little case study up. They hadn't made a sale in about three years before I got there. They were living very, very well on the recurring revenue from their existing businesses. Absolutely. They were crushing. It just been really clear about that. And then by the time I'd left after a couple of years, they had sold six new mine sites which are all hundreds of million tens of millions of dollars each in recurring revenue over time and all the contracts renegotiated. So really it's about stepping into the client's shoes, understanding exactly what they need and then delivering that back into the market. So often, often my clients very rarely have the, they have incredible technical capabilities so they can manage other technical people. I've seen some of my clients stand in rooms, the whiteboard and explain to their technical team. And I'm sitting there just half understanding it, not even half, maybe a quarter understanding it. But I'm there for the, I'm there for the knowledge transfer, watching these guys map stuff out incredibly complex things on a whiteboard and go, this person is absolutely in their flow. They're perfectly designed to teach this technical stuff to this technically people, these technically brilliant people. But you put them in front of a client and that communication doesn't work.
- [26:32]
A
It often backfires horribly. What's interesting about your approach is it's meta. So you're, you're a sales expert from a consultative vantage point. We just talked about that. And you use your sales expertise to get your, your clients. Once you get your clients, in a sense, you're teaching that same mojo to them so they can get their clients 100%. I like that trajectory. So what people often mix up is again, features first and technical People are feature driven, they're all in the code, swimming around. And what's obvious to them is a complete chaotic disaster to a decision maker ultimately on the executive team, because they don't know how that stuff works and they don't care. What they want is when you plug in whatever it is, I look at it as a black box. Here comes my tech stuff. Plug in that it, and all of a sudden the lights are on and it's a Christmas tree and I'm getting, getting the business that I want. They do not care. And I think that's very hard for a lot of technical people to understand. They need to sell in their benefit. But at the end of the day, most executive decision makers, even chief technical officers, the CTOs, maybe, maybe, maybe they'll get it. But their concern is, to your point earlier, the corner office, they need to keep their boss happy who's the CEO. And if it's lost, and if it's lost in translation, the deal's not going to happen.
- [28:18]
B
I was speaking to a client today and they said, what would you do? I said, first of all, I've known your business now for 45 minutes. It's ridiculous for me to make any type of recommendation that you couldn't find on ChatGPT. Yeah, first of all, let's start with that. So, but really what we have to recognize is that the way you enter a business is rarely how you're going to exit the business. When I say exit, you're going to win the sale because you might get in through procurement or you, sorry, you might get in through warehousing because they got a warehousing issue. But how does warehousing issue that your solution can solve, where does that warehousing issue show up for the next layer up at maybe at the technical level or at the logistics level or at the financial level or at the CEO level because every one of those experience that same problem differently. So the CEO is interested in market share and reputation. The CFO is being told to do more with less. And CFOs probably got his eyes on the prize being CEO. And then the CTO is being told to, you know, make sure I don't hear about any problems and I'm not that interested anymore. And so every type of communication, you can't hand the same document to the warehouse guy or girl and expect that document to survive the relay race of being handed one person to the next, all the way up to the decision maker or procurement or the CEO. It depends on the business and how it's structured to buy things for them to go, oh, I get it, I'm excited.
- [29:36]
A
Exactly. So you need a different pitch for different targets. And one of the biggest mistakes made in tech is they're giving specification documents to decision makers who have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
- [29:53]
B
Yep. Last time they wrote a line of code might have been 10 years ago if they're a CTO. And so they're going to pick out the bit that they think they know of and remember, you know, I've spoken to clients as well, who they go, I said, how do you identify, how do you see yourself in the marketplace? How do you represent yourself? And they sort of looked each other and bit of chat, chat and went, oh, we're problem solvers. And so cool. What does a problem solver need to. Need to survive? And they looked at each other and said, well, if you're a problem solver, what do you need? What do you desperately need? Problems. Right. So. So then everything you, everything I hear back from you, everything you're saying, you're going to, you're going to hear what I say, you're going to intelligently break it down and find the problem. And so this is why selling is difficult when in a technical situation. But you can certainly get through that if you have a same side of the desk sort of positioning, well, let's approach this problem together rather than let's problem this, approach this problem adversarially. But then, of course, you need to also then point your energies, both you and your champion, towards the next layer up in management. And then. And the purse strings.
- [31:03]
A
Yeah, you bring up a terrific point that if you're selling based on features, the old example is if your face is facing one way, then your ass is facing the other, then you're naturally going to raise a tsunami of objections that you otherwise never would. If you turn around, stop showing your ass to the decision maker, turn around, look at it through the lens of what they expect, how they interpret the situation, and you're going to avoid the roadblocks and the landmines that usually come up when you're selling. Not understanding what the decision maker or even the influencer even wants from you.
- [31:46]
B
Absolutely. Well, there's stages in which people buy things, even today, and they translate to every stage. So step one, lie to the salesperson. What does that sound like in a lot of situations? No, thanks, we've already got one, or no thanks, just looking, you know, go to the shops with you, with your wife or with I go to the Shops with my wife. No, thanks, Just looking, you know. How can I help you today? No, thanks, just looking. That's crap. I hate that we're looking for this. We want this in this size and color and that. Of course, the experience of shopping is different for me and my wife. I go to buy something, she goes to shop.
- [32:18]
A
So archetypal there, Matthew.
- [32:20]
B
That's right, yeah. So step one, lot of the salesperson second step is to get as much information as possible about every part, point, speed, feed, everything. And that's called get free Consulting. Tell me everything. So I don't need to buy anything from you.
- [32:35]
A
Right.
- [32:36]
B
Tell me so much that I can find one hole in your story, which means I don't have to think too hard and buy your product because nobody's sitting around going, gee whiz, I really hope I get to spend the next six months implementing a new product. Nobody wants that. And so the third step is lie to the salesperson again. What does that sound like? Send me a proposal. You know, I just. Yeah, I'll send me a proposal, I'll put it to management, all that sort of stuff. And I was speaking with a client just the other day who was saying, you know, why are we selling what. We're sending out proposals, but we're not closing deals. And there's. There's only two reasons you send out proposals, not closing deals. First, you're selling the proposal. So you, you know, you've done your pitch, you've not really got much feedback. You go, can I send you a proposal? The person says, yes. And really the yes is, thank goodness I can get off the phone now. Or they're not feeling the pain. It's low pain. Or you're selling the proposal. It's the only two reasons you don't make a sale. So we need to change those, how we. How those operate. Too much detail in the proposal. Too much, too much. Too many areas in which an area could be. You know, I don't like that. I don't want that. I don't. I've already got some of these. Because if you get into tactics, that's why in my advisory, I don't talk about sales. I don't. Sorry, I don't talk about Facebook leads, or I don't talk about doing content because, yeah, well, with Facebook, I can get an agency with. With content, I can get Chachi PT to write me some crappy articles, which we're all enjoying on LinkedIn at the moment, I'm sure, you know, and everywhere else. And everywhere else. So it's all of that. And then, of course, to finish that off is. The fourth part is to hide from the salesperson. So the four stages of a sale. Happy will buy. And once you understand how people buy, then you can. Then you can short circuit that by. With. With scripting, with practice, with structure, with process.
- [34:25]
A
Let's talk about scripting in terms of content strategy. Now, the old school method is big sale, 20% off today. Make your move. The consultative approach is based on listening, building up pain points, and creating the relationship that way. So when you're advising your clients about anything from, let's say, a LinkedIn or Facebook ad or content, or you're even scripting salespeople in terms of their engagement, how do you look at that trajectory that you just outlined through content? Do you have opportunities at that tip of the spear to. To not just highlight endgame like, you know, here's the typical thing is that you roll into a used car lot and your fresh meat, and then the salesman comes out old school and say, hey, buddy, check this out. It's an AM FM radio, leather bucket seats, and a 325 Hemi. Come on, test drive. And what you're doing and what you're espousing is, how are you? Is it for you? Are you married? Are you a single guy? Do you want a roadster to, you know, get feisty? Or do you want to go to the corner and pick up a gallon of milk for your wife? I mean, you're creating a relationship. So when you're advocating what you're advocating, how does it layer out? Or what's that continuity of content strategy that ties into the phased approach that you just described.
- [36:03]
B
Not a single one of my clients has been worse off because of them going more and more narrow into a niche, or a niche, as you say over here.
- [36:10]
A
Niche is so American, isn't it? Niche. It's French, right? I mean, I'm a dumb American, and
- [36:16]
B
there's no T in there. I mean, it's not like. It's not like glitch or bitch. It's niche. It's got an E, which accentuates the vowel in the middle. But anyway, let's not get into. Yeah, it's so welcome.
- [36:31]
A
Welcome to America.
- [36:32]
B
I'm loving it.
- [36:33]
A
You know what people make fun of the Aussies for? You know, for your action and for Crocodile Dundee and all that stuff. And as Americans, we lose sight of that. The whole world makes fun of us.
- [36:46]
B
Look, you know, it's. It's a great place as long as you don't watch the news. And I've been here now for nine months and I think I'm more positive about America than a lot of Americans are. I have, I'm a member of some clubs here in town and I live in Princeton, New Jersey now, and I'm a member of some clubs here. And people ask me and I said, well, what's been your experience? I said, look, it's been fantastic. From day one, everybody's been so nice, so easy to get along with. I ask a question, they answer it. It's almost in the first couple of months being here, people would go out of their way to help. They were just so open and friendly. And I think Americans as a whole are fantastic people. Certainly very, very friendly. And you know, of course, dealing with any large, you know, trying to get a Social Security number is hilarious. You know, as a, as a 50 year old man walking into Social Security for the first time, that's, that's an amazing experience of people who are, you
- [37:44]
A
know, you are male and Caucasian, so you, you have, you have an advantage, at least currently, I think that's right.
- [37:51]
B
You know, I, I have joked to a friend of mine and said, you know, when will it, when will it be? A white male born in Australia, privately school educated. When will it be my time?
- [38:02]
A
You know, terrific Louis CK skit where he goes, look at me, I'm a fat, balding white guy. It's been great, it's been great forever and you know, sooner or later we're going to get our ass kicked and we deserve it, but until then, it's gonna be great.
- [38:27]
B
That's it. Well, you know, my boys are playing sport at a very reasonably high level now here in the States and you know, they get to meet everybody, you know, in elite sport. It's a, it's, it's fascinating and, and you know, I, I just think that America is such an incredible meritocracy. There's so much opportunity here, it doesn't matter. You could work. Okay, the whole machine, and this is, the whole machine is set up like a lot of countries, but the whole machine really is angled towards the top 10%. Everybody else is getting screwed, but if you're, if you, but the good thing is there's no barriers. Okay? Once again, this is my, as the young people might say, my privilege might be showing, but I don't believe there are really any barriers. If you're willing to put the work in, work your ass off and add value and exchange value for money, then there's no Barriers to getting to that 10%. Like, I've got clients in from other countries who have a class system so baked deep that doesn't matter how hard you work. Whereas the. Whereas here, as far as I can see, and of course, I'm always open to being. Having a conversation about that. It just seems to be there's so much opportunity here to do whatever you want to do and make it love,
- [39:43]
A
love your perspective as Americans, due to the headlines, we're getting. We're getting all negative and defeatist, and this country sucks. And yet the lifeblood of this country, even in terms of our polarized politics, we're like, we're bold. We fight it out. We're a little bit irrational in ways, but to your exact point, the meritocracy still shines. And it's really our differentiator. Just. Just go for it. Try it. Wake up in the morning and go for it. And you have the perspective of. Of being from another country, literally the antipodes. Your. Your sky is the opposite of ours, and your seasons are the opposite of ours.
- [40:26]
B
That's it. Your moon is upside down. When I look at it, you're from an alien place.
- [40:32]
A
But that perspective is very important. And Americans lose sight of our distinct ability and willingness and enthusiasm to just go out there, kick ass, take names, and there's no guarantee of success, but you got a shot.
- [40:50]
B
You got a shot.
- [40:52]
A
And that's. That's great. To me, that's America. I'm the first generation American. My parents are Hungarian.
- [40:58]
B
Okay.
- [40:58]
A
And they fled the cauldron of World War II by way of Venezuela. I was conceived in Venezuela, so I'm technically an anchor baby. I was born just barely in Chicago, and I grew up not speaking English. So this is kind of. I'm a stranger in a strange land here, at least instinctively. And I have that feeling, too, that anything's possible here. Just go for it.
- [41:23]
B
Really is. Yeah, go for it. And I was actually speaking of American and American sport and the opportunities here. I was saying to a friend today, I'm absolutely blown away that because Australia has a reputation for being very good at sport, you know, when. At the Olympics, you know, we. We're up there. Rugby, of course.
- [41:41]
A
Rugby, mofos.
- [41:43]
B
Yeah, that's it. So we're. We're pretty good at sport. You know, we. We've had a number of world titles across a lot of sports. And the. What I'm blown away is that if Australia put the amount of money, time, energy and effort and focus into sport that America does, let Me put it, flip it over. I'm blown away. Australia has any chance at sport because of the amount of support, money, focus and energy that goes into sport in America. My son rose and is, was in a pretty good team in Australia for the school and he rode twice a week and then on the weekend had a regatta and the season went for seven weeks. And so they really rode for about maybe 12, maybe 12 weeks a year and they did two practices a week. Here he rose, he rows three hours a day, six days a week. No, no, no. Seasons off. 12 months a year now. Is he better? Absolutely. But there's no Australian 15 year old rowing at that level, at that level of dedication. So I'm so in Australia. Winning a gold medal in rowing is bizarre to me now that I've seen what how America does it versus how the rest of the world does it. You know, there's a mechanical industrial complex there, of course. You know, also that goes well. There is a, there's a financial benefit there. The coaches have got to get paid, the sheds have got to get paid. So there's, it's like it's a machine that needs to feed itself so therefore it needs to continue to be fed.
- [43:19]
A
Detractors will say we're pouring hundreds of millions of dollars just into sports because it's got ticket sales and media. But let's say you're into chess. Americans love their chess too. Is it broadcast nationally and is it a ticket, five grand, you know, for the box seats? No, but we have the critical mass and enthusiasm and this competitive streak that pick almost anything that you're into. America is the land of opportunity. Become a chess Grandmaster, go on OnlyFans and make a few bucks, whatever suits your fancy. I have that libertarian streak in me too, which is just go for it. The only person stopping you is you. And unlike frankly a lot of Europe which is still recovering From World War II, frankly the mentality of self victimization mentality that capitalism is evil and it's self destructive and self defeating.
- [44:25]
B
It's that baked in class system that is deeply ingrained. Right. So, oh well, I'm a, you know, I'm a tradesperson, so I'll always be a tradesperson and so my kids can grow up to be tradespeople and hopefully their kids will be tradespeople. And funnily enough, although into the age of AI tradespeople will be the. Well, tradespeople in Australia have been rich for, for a long time anyway, so tradespeople in Australia have been, you know, they're the Ones with a yacht and. And it's because we don't really. Because Australia is mainly resources. Right. So Australia builds on real estate and. And there's friends of mine who are tradies or tradespeople trading. There you go. That's an Australianism. They are doing real well. They're doing really well. So that's not going to ever get taken. Well, it's going to be a long time before that's taken by AI.
- [45:16]
A
And that's the irony. The original conception of robotics, the Andrew Yang crowd felt that the lower echelon worker would be hit first and they didn't anticipate the agentic technology. And it looks like the white collar coders are the first to bite it. And it's paradoxical but very, very interesting.
- [45:39]
B
Yeah, if you move, as Elon said, if you move atoms around, you've got a better chance.
- [45:44]
A
A very tweetable line. Now we're on AI and I want to get your thoughts on that. We're all blinded by the bullshit right now. Almost everyone. And it oscillates from. If someone builds it, then everyone dies. One extreme to AI is a fad and it's meaningless and it's hyped by all the companies just to get a trillion dollars in data centers. Now the truth, as usual, is in between and oscillating.
- [46:13]
B
Two things can be correct at the same time.
- [46:15]
A
Exactly. Sometimes three or four. Actually, I ask you this just because you're working in a market, especially with SaaS where there's so much uncertainty and no one is really feels like they're standing on firm ground like they used to. So how do you negotiate with or how do you handle a potential customer where they themselves are utterly confused by all this and asphyxiated to the point where they're paralyzed. It's like I can't make a decision because everything's influx. I don't know whether I need that to your earlier point vibe code my Slack channel or. Or just double down on my salesforce commitment because they're the only people I can trust. How do you negotiate this world of such swirl disruption, chaos and uncertainty?
- [47:17]
B
The same way that my coach would coach my son's basketball team is if it's all falling to bits, go back to basics, get your fitness up, pass the ball, run a play. So what does that look like in business terms? What is true? What is true, not what do we think is going to be what is true. What is true is we have clients who are getting value and funnily enough, in the times in which I've had tough times in business and anybody says they don't are an anomaly or lying.
- [47:45]
A
Everyone thinks the career is this meteoric rise. It's that old chart. And when it's really like, that's right.
- [47:52]
B
Even the richest man in the world, I've quoted it twice now. Even the richest man in the world says having a business is like, you know, chewing glass and staring into the abyss.
- [48:00]
A
Had those moments, some of us last night.
- [48:03]
B
Yeah. So what is true? So we got looking for what is true. And if you're adding value. So how I used to get out of those funks is I would actually call my best clients and say, how you going? And typically though, it's how you enjoying the product? And they would tell you, and you go, oh, so. And so, just so I can understand, what were the two or three things going on in your business that you. That was happening before we engaged and how has it changed now and how would you like it to continue to look like in the future? Well, if you do that, there's your new marketing campaign right there. That's your conversation you're going to have with your next client. So, oh, you're in logistics and you do refrigerated transport in the Midwest. Cool. I'm just going to call all the refrigerated logistics companies in the Midwest and say, hey, I know that you're dealing with this. So how do you deal with it? Look, I'm not a psychologist by any stretch of the imagination. I have, you know, I sort of, you know, grit my teeth and push through because it really, I think Tom Brady said it. Actually, I won't say, I won't swear, but he said, f your feelings. You know, get on with it.
- [49:10]
A
Mira. Guess F bombed on one of my podcasts. And then I noticed Apple podcast of all of them. I got this explicit rating on bald ambition. I was like, like, what the. And then I, I actually contacted customer service. It's like, we don't talk sexuality. There's nothing. I was like, oh, we, we looked at this transcript. There's F bombs in there. I go, you gotta be kidding me. I'm explicit because someone said. And they're like, yeah. And then I say, well, what if, you know, I, I stopped saying on my podcast? And they're like, that's too late, buddy. You're already explicit. So, so go ahead. Your feelings from feelings.
- [49:51]
B
So remember, remember back in the 90s that they had the explicit. The warning, the parental warning on CDs. So then, so then Albums used to come out with that printed on it because that became a badge of honor because that's what people wanted. So now you're cool. Now you're part of the cool kids. Like all the cool kids are swearing.
- [50:11]
A
I'm the explicit podcast that you're right. Maybe I'm getting listeners too. They have like a bald fetish or something and they see it.
- [50:21]
B
That's funny. Yeah, very good. So go back to what's true. Have a conversation with your best clients and then, then really it's, it's. Try not to look too far into the future. Do too. Don't too much. Do too much sort of crystal ball gazing. What's the next thing that can be done? What's the correct next move? And it might be a small next move, but that's those little next. So I've got this green highlighter in my hand, right? This is going to sound like, this is going to sound like a really non technical way of approaching task management. But I have a list of things to do every day and then I get. And I highlight them off my list and I go. And every time I highlight them I get up and do a little dance, which is ridiculous, which is a dumb thing to do. But you move my. Move my body and they go. I have just rewarded myself for choosing a webinar title for next month. You know, and so do the small things because you continually execute on the small things and the big things will look after themselves.
- [51:17]
A
I think that's terrific. Especially these days where there's a natural human tendency to freak out and go to extremes. Something is just mildly broken or inconvenient. I have a 19 year old, my son and he's my roommate. As I help him get through flight school, he's learning how to be a pilot. I'm so proud. He's doing great.
- [51:38]
B
Very cool.
- [51:38]
A
But, but I see him, I see him like this like every five minutes, every ten minutes he makes these earth shattering existential decisions. And then he comes in and he makes an announcement. I'm going to quit my job. I'm going to get a new job. I'm going to change flight schools. I don't know about this flying thing. I'm going to die. I'm going to commit 120% and I want to be a pilot in two weeks. And sometimes minute to minute, he's, he's flaring and there's a tendency to the point we're making right now that when you have a lot of disruption in business, there are knee Jerk reactions to the latest headline, the latest news. And you feel that if you don't make radical change or if you don't do something crazy, then you're going to be left behind. And then there's another whiplash to that, which is I'm paralyzed and I can't do anything because this is all overwhelming. To your great point, what's your to do list for today? And the issues that you have, which have been probably endemic to your organization for a decade, are dying to be solved and explore the lowest of low hanging fruit that do not demand a complete infrastructure overhaul and start fixing things and crawl, walk, run. And this is about Stephen covey, business advice 101. But it's true. It's, it's a cliche, but it's true. And it's a cliche because it's true and it's true. So just do it. Which is don't freak out and figure it out.
- [53:15]
B
Absolutely. So it is, it is. So it's, it's easy to be, to feel overwhelmed by the options. And then if you just, if you did you just go, you know what, let's go talk to my team. Go have a conversation with a real human. Don't, don't look at your phone. Certainly don't check your email or just
- [53:37]
A
like don't ask Claude or ask Clog after you talk to your own people.
- [53:42]
B
That's it. Yeah, have a conversation because, because the, the answers are inside the brains of the people that you already work with. I found that, you know, when I've had my businesses, you know, we had 70 staff at one stage, that's a lot of people that, that are all thinking about the same problems and trying to move the business forward. And when I realized that in my mid-20s, that actually I can, I can engage. I read the Jack Welsh book. There's a story.
- [54:06]
A
Jack Welsh, the legendary CEO, he was the Satya Nadella of the prior generation. I think that's the best way to characterize. Jack.
- [54:15]
B
Jack, that's right. So he, he was the, he was the captain of the ship when it was the largest company in the world.
- [54:21]
A
Yes. Old, old school. That's when an energy company and energy and manufacturing, literally to your point, atoms moving, electrons moving. This is pre, pre digital. Right. Isn't it astonishing to think.
- [54:34]
B
And I'm, I'm very old and I've read a lot of books, so. Yeah, no, I love it.
- [54:40]
A
I'm old as hell too.
- [54:44]
B
So. Yeah, so what he was saying is, you know, he had a rising, rising Speech and really, you know, grabbed everybody's attention. And the foreman came up and said, Look, Mr. Welsh, you've had my hands for 20 years and today you've got my brain. And the factory turned and the factory completely changed how it was operating simply because the people were cared about and the people, the individuals inside the organization. There's a lot of smart people inside every organization. If they just spend a little bit of time talking with their own people and going, what can we, you know, what do you think? Not, not the directive of we're doing this. It's always good to have this, but within the framework of our values and mission vision, values. What do you think and how would you like to contribute? That's a powerful conversation to have with people.
- [55:27]
A
It goes, I guess, full circle with our conversation. It goes beyond and within and without the specifications documentation. So in order for software to operate, you need to be buttoned up and you need to be very detail conscious. And AI, machine learning, deep learning, intelligence in nanoseconds can do what an army of engineers used to be able to do. Yay. But that's not going to save you. That's like having a silver cross and a clove of garlic in a desk drawer in Transylvania. The vampires are still going to get you, and those vampires are your own broken business processes and one's own unwillingness or incapacity to listen to one's own people and to listen to one's own customers. AI is not a solution unless you first make that human connection and rely on your own intuition and guts to move things forward. And going back to what you were saying about what differentiates this country, it has to do with the heart and soul and the intentionality of wanting to succeed. And that's, there's, that's not in any line of code, at least not yet. AI, regardless of sophistication, is an autocorrect feature. It ain't gonna save you. It's. It'll help you, but you first have to, have to get yourself shored up.
- [56:55]
B
That's right. And, and people. Yeah. The challenge with AI is it, it does help people do dumb stuff faster.
- [57:01]
A
Yeah.
- [57:01]
B
So you just gotta figure out if the, if you're doing the right stuff or you're doing dumb stuff. I, you know, there's been too many times in which people have said, oh, we're just gonna, you know, sal volume game. Well, if you're doing volume. If you're doing volume of dumb stuff, you're just gonna do a lot of dumb stuff. So it's it helps you get more
- [57:17]
A
efficient about doing inefficient things.
- [57:19]
B
That's right. Very efficient. Dumb stuff.
- [57:22]
A
All right, Matthew, I want to sincerely thank you for making time on the Bald Ambition podcast. Like comment share. I will put links in the description to reach out to Matthew. At Techtorque, they give a consultative session. Tip of the spear.
- [57:42]
B
That's right.
- [57:43]
A
Click that link to check out your own business and look at what's under the hood and begin the conversation to shorten up and heighten your efficiencies the smart way.
- [57:56]
B
Appreciate it. Thank you very much.
- [57:57]
A
All right. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. And welcome to America, sir.
- [58:04]
B
I appreciate it. I feel very welcomed.
- [58:06]
A
Going to Australia is on my bucket list. I've actually never been down there. I've been to Southeast Asia, so the closest I got is that. But I've always wanted to go down there, hang out. When I was traveling in Europe in my youth, I hitchhiked and I had the Eurail pass and every other person was in was in Ozzy.
- [58:25]
B
We are everywhere.
- [58:26]
A
We are everywhere. They were just talking about that joy de vivre, you know, just stopping in the city, getting a job, working, saving money, and then traveling for two, three months. And then stopping in another city, working and traveling, and they were gone for 18 months, two years. And then they would go back home, refuel, and then come back out exploring. It's really cool.
- [58:50]
B
Yeah. And then, you know, and the reason we're in America is no good reason. We were walking around New York two years ago when you know what? Why don't we live here one day?
- [58:58]
A
Why not?
- [59:00]
B
And then we said, well, yeah, why not?
- [59:01]
A
See, that is cool. That is cool. No AI can do that. At least not yet.
- [59:07]
B
Not yet. At least not yet. That's right.
- [59:09]
A
Yeah. You can start a company AAI Aussie
- [59:12]
B
AI rather than says, what do you want to do today?
- [59:17]
A
Yeah, come on, mate. All right. Good night. Thank you so much. Take care.
- [59:23]
B
That's a pleasure. Talk to you later. Bye for now.