3 top tips from Alex Morris
1. Get your message in your offer into one sentence
If you need a very generic way of doing that, it is: I help (people) to achieve (desire), without (pain). So who do you help? How do you help them get there, and then what’s the objection they often give you? Such as in the weight loss space, I help new mums lose the baby belly, even if they’re getting no sleep every night, or even if they can’t get themselves to the gym. That ‘even if’ is one that’s really, really important for people.
2. Launch quickly, then invest the time in testing
So if you’re in a paid ad, or even an organic space, the faster you get your ads or message out there, the quicker you learn. The more money you spend on your budget, the faster you’ll learn what does work and what doesn’t. So most of my job is not actually writing copy, it’s testing ads, seeing what is effective turning audiences on and off. But I can’t do that until we’ve actually put something out there. So stop being perfect, make it look great but if you spent two months to launch something, and then you launch it, you’re actually seven weeks behind the learnings you could have got if you launch that thing in the first week. So launch quickly and spend your time testing.
3. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes
When you’re putting out an offer think about how much are you really asking some people to download this thing or to click onto this offer. Because if you’re going for people who are corporate and busy, don’t give them something that’s going to take away their time, give them something that’s going to give them more time back. Really think about how much you’re asking your people. If you think you’re asking too much. Pull it back, put another step at the top of your funnel there, which is going to be a really cool, easy way of just getting people into your network because once they’re in, then they can see the value, then all the content you’re posting becomes relevant. But just don’t dive to the bottom of that funnel and assume people are ready to buy and don’t assume people care who you are yet. Just get them in the network and give them your best over and over again because they’ll come back.
Head to Alex’s website:
https://www.tothemoondigital.com.au/
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, business, clients, coach, sweet spot, marketing, building, professional services, offer, work, podcast, bit, invest, space, spend, realise, lead magnet, called, put, coaching
SPEAKERS
Alex Morris, Debra Chantry-Taylor
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:12
Welcome to another episode of Better Business, Better Life. I’m your host, Debra Chantry-Taylor. I’m passionate about helping entrepreneurs and their leadership teams get what they want out of business and life. On the show, I invite successful business owners and expert speakers to share their successes. They are open and honest about the highs and lows of business and also life as a business owner. We want to share those learnings with you to inspire you, but also to help you avoid some of the common mistakes. My hope is that you take something from each of these short episodes that you can put into action to help you get what you want, not only out of your business, but also your life. So good morning, and welcome to another episode of Better Business, Better Life. Today I am joined by Alex Morris, who is a digital marketer, a digital marketing consultant, a business owner and also a loving father. Welcome, Alex.
Alex Morris 00:33
Hello, Deb. Nice to see you.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:35
Lovely to see you too. Now you’ve got a business called To The Moon Digital do you just want to give us a little bit of an overview of what that does?
Alex Morris 00:42
Yeah, yeah, we are a digital marketing agency we do done-for-you marketing and marketing consulting, for coaches, and consultants, anyone who really is in that space where they want appointments with people. So we’re in that sort of online coaching space where you’ve got your health coaches and your business coaches, but we also are moving quite organically into a lot of more professional services, a bit more white collar stuff. And also, we’re starting out some programmes for the beginners as well, people who need to get into marketing their own online business in that coaching or service space, but really, they don’t really know where to start. So we’re, we’re trying to be across all, you know, levels of that demographic.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 01:28
Fantastic. So we’re gonna do a little bit today about what you need to do as a professional service business owner and how you can actually maximise that. Before we get started, I always like to ask for professional and a personal best for my guests just so that we can see the you know, the man behind the voice.
Alex Morris 01:43
Sure. Professional, you know, I’ve been in the, I was in the coaching space myself for about six or seven years before going into full time marketing. And I learned to do the marketing through that coaching thing. About two years ago, I found out that we were having not one but two babies. And so I thought, Okay, I can’t do the cooking demos, because I was in nutrition, I can’t do the cooking demos, I can’t visit gyms. I can’t be doing the webinars and or the late night, team calls and everything, how can I work on my computer full time. So that’s what got me into the digital marketing full time, space. And honestly, I think personal and professional best, I have some big numbers to flash around like, you know, the clients who have gone and banked a million dollars off of one campaign, but they’re not the people who I resonate with the most, because there are people who just work all day, every day and love it. I am much more of a lifestyle guy. I’m a family guy. And so for me, I really love when I get to hang out with people like one of my clients who literally struggled to pay me a $500 deposit. And then during that pandemic, he ended up managing to support his family, his growing family of four, through his seminar business that he ran completely online with the help of our marketing. So that was really, really cool to see, you know, the transformation of a young dad who was really in the weeds and then managed to actually pull it together for his family, his partner lost her job. And with our help, and as a team, we we put food on the table for him. So that was great.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 03:27
Awesome. Yeah. Hey, look, I’m on the same page. I think that much as I love business, I genuinely love what I do. It’s not about working every hour that God said. It’s about having a life outside of that as well.
Alex Morris 03:38
Yeah, it depends what you’re into, I suppose. Yeah, you’ve got to figure that out. And for me, there were some times pre-family where I thought, okay, I can work it all day, every day. And I could I used to be in hospitality, it’s very long hours. And that was kind of like, you know, my badge of honour was really hard worker. Yeah, but our priorities change. And I’m really supportive of however people want to do it if they’re, if they want to grind and hustle, good for them. If they’re more into wearing shorts and going to the beach, then they’re a bit more like me.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:12
Excellent. Okay. So I want to talk about what this means for professional services, consultants, that kind of people what I mean, the whole digital marketing space has changed a lot. Can you give us a little bit of an insight into what’s changed and why it’s important?
Alex Morris 04:30
Well, you know, it’s, it’s become a digital world, which is goes without saying, but I think the first thing we do when we look for a company these days is really check out their socials, more so than a website. I think a lot of people have become the face of their own business. It’s pretty rare in this coaching space for someone to call themselves To The Moon Digital, you know, it’s people just brand themselves as themselves and consult since and professional coaches, business coaches, leadership, everyone is their own brand. And so because there’s so many options and so much competition out there, I feel like you really need to be using digital marketing, both paid and organic and creating that digital brand for yourself where people can instantly find out what they need to about you and trust you. And that doesn’t mean you have to be posting, you know, your life on Instagram and being an influencer, that sort of thing, vlogging every moment of the day, but if people can find your service, finding your consulting business, or wherever you are, and see a face behind the business, see a brand behind the face and see that you’re a trustworthy guy or gal, then it’s becoming an increasingly important thing. And it’s definitely overtaken any face to face, businesses, any handshakes, especially the last two years, you know, having the digital landscape behind you is more important than ever.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 06:00
Yeah. And I think it’s, you know, you’re absolutely right, people do business with people. And so you can have the flash company website that talks about what you do, but in actual fact, they want to know who it is they’re actually working with, and what that person is like, and they are gonna look you up and sort of see, hey, what is this person? You know, do they have any presence? Who are they? What are they doing? So yeah, it’s very important, not not just for your, not just for your main person, but I think also people within the business as well. So I work with a lot professional services, businesses, and you know, sure, you’ve got the founder, who is the kind of the, the main guy or girl in the, in the leader of the business, but at the same time, they’ve got a whole team behind him, people like knowing who it is they’re actually dealing with.
Alex Morris 06:41
Yeah, and you see that with, you know, the rise of YouTube podcasts. In rather than polished television, you know, it’s the same as media, people are really into that unpolished version of people where we can see a little window into someone’s life, as much as they choose to show us, they can see the mistakes, you mess up the intro of this podcast. And I think if, if that was was me, I’d absolutely be posting the stuff up, because that’s kind of on my brand. I’m definitely not perfect. And so the business space has become a lot more authentic, I think, and people can sniff out a BS artist these days. And you can use marketing to do both, you can use your marketing to pretend or to show who you really are. And I think people are slowly moving towards wanting to work with the people who are just themselves. Yeah,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 07:39
Tt’s really interesting. I, I’ve been brought up British and so we had that, there’s a real, two parts to me, one of them is that, you know, we just swear naturally in Britain, look at Four Weddings and a Funeral, the opening scene as got fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck and so it sort of starts off. And so that’s how we brought up in the English society. But I have parents who are actually really, really strict and wouldn’t allow me to swear and so for many, many years, even though if you meet me in person, I swear like a trooper I never actually swear on social media because I thought, but I can’t it’s not the right thing to do. And under the first time, I actually said fucking on a social media post. And it’s probably one of the most commented on posts I’ve ever had, because it was actually just me being me for a change. And, yeah,
Alex Morris 08:20
100% I was holding back a little bit. I will, I’m English as well. I grew up in, I grew up in Nottingham, and then
Debra Chantry-Taylor 08:26
I went to University of Nottingham.
Alex Morris 08:27
There you go, I left when I was 11. So you know, it doesn’t really count. But um, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then I was a chef for 12 years. And so that’s definitely a swearing environment, then you come into business and you think, Okay, I’ve got to act differently. And I see myself doing it. I see myself hopping into a video or a podcast and putting on a different t shirt and thinking, why don’t I just do that? Yeah, that is bizarre. I mean, I was wearing a singlet this morning. So it’s a little level of respect there for you and your audience. But um, but you know, I mean, have to be yourself and in the marketing space, no matter how much you just want to share your wins in that white collar or whatever environment you’re in. I think that’s going to be one of my biggest messages for 2022 is people to really stop trying to polish everything they do, look as, give yourself as much authority as possible, whilst being who you truly are on the internet.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 09:25
So what about remember, I mean, I’ve been very, very fortunate. I have done a lot of TV work. I’ve done a lot of video before. So I got over, you know, being worried about being on video being on camera or talking into a podcast, but for some people, it’s really scary, right? It’s up there with public speaking. Like imagine putting my best self video out of myself or imagine putting out anything that isn’t polished. What would you say to them in terms of how could they start? How do they get over that?
Alex Morris 09:53
I have a really favourite quote that I love. I have no idea who said it is you’ll stop caring what people think about you, when you realise how seldom they do. And this is super important on social media, because there’s two kinds of people, there’s people who will sit and pour of every word in there, you know, every Instagram posts and edit everything perfectly. And then they’ll sit and freak out before every Facebook Live, they do, and then they’ll post it. And then they’ll get three people watch it. And then the same thing. On my end, I think we post about 22 pieces of content a day across every platform. And, you know, we don’t get that much engagement on some of them. On some of them, we get nothing. But it’s disappeared, people see it, and it’s gone. And so I think we’re in a beautiful space with public speaking and presenting online is that you can practice all you want, and you’re never really going to dampen your public image too much if you fuck up, because most people aren’t watching at the beginning. And then the better you get, the more people are watching, the less they care about your stuff. That’s because they’re there for a reason. So I think it’s actually we’ve got a window with our phones to be a presenter, professional presenter, and all we got to do is start and just realise that, you know, your ego, and your fear is gonna have no effect on this. No one’s watching in the beginning. And that is a beautiful thing to remember. Well, I’m well aware that, you know, I’m absolutely not an influencer yet, or anything. But I’ve been doing, you know, presenting for seven or eight years now. And it’s, you get better the more you do it. But at the beginning, don’t worry about it because people are scrolling and scrolling quickly.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 11:48
And I think also, one of the things I found more so on LinkedIn, because that’s where most of my sort of activity has been in the business world. But you know, people, you get zero engagement, no comments, no likes, you think what was the point? And then all of a sudden, you suddenly get somebody come back to you? And they’ll say, Oh, I’ve been following you for ages. Commenting, how can we receive anything, I actually had a client who literally I hadn’t heard from, I bought an old Porsche from him seven years ago. And I’d heard nothing from him was connected on LinkedIn, never commented never, never liked nothing. And all sudden, they get this email out of the blue. Look, I’ve been following you. I’ve seen you know, an EOS implementer. I’d love to have a chat to you about putting EOS into my business. I was like, hold on a second, seven years apart. I haven’t heard anything from you. And yet there you are in the background, obviously, you know, seeing something. So it’s, it’s not a short term game. And it’s also you know, people are watching you if they’re not commenting.
Alex Morris 12:39
That’s a very good point. I probably sound a little bit cynical on my end, but I, I’m doing it from the most optimistic spaces to don’t worry about it, because other people aren’t. But absolutely, you’re right, you will have fans without even knowing. And, you know, while some people give out their likes, and their comments very generously, other people do not they will watch and consume. And, you know, just because they’re not tapping your heart react doesn’t mean that they don’t think you’re fantastic. And you’re not inspiring people. So, you know, you never you never know who’s watching, as well as the absolute other side to what I just said.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 13:17
Yeah, cool. Okay, so when you work with with clients, you know, how do you get started? How do you actually start working with it? What do you do? What’s the process?
Alex Morris 13:26
It’ll sound cliche, dead, but we go through, you know, who’s your target market, you know, what are their problems, their pains, their desires, and then we dig in really far into that. So I send people our sort of Foundations document, and I always say to clients, I’ve got this after, you know, after month one, I’ve got this covered, but the first month is a lot of work from you, because I don’t know your business, I need to learn how to write copy, like a 27 year old woman, you know, or like a 54 year old financial advisor. And as a 30 year old ex chef, now digital marketer and vegetable addict, I need to, I don’t know how to do those things without knowing your market really well. So the first thing is to figure that out. And we some people know that straightaway. And some people need a lot of help with that. And what I often say to a coach or a consultant is who do you help them? What do you help them with? Yeah, and if they can’t answer that question in one sentence, then there’s work to be done. Because you need that offer. You need that brand, you know, often on a LinkedIn profile, you’ll see below someone’s profile picture, leadership coach, and then I help X to achieve y. And everyone needs to have that if they don’t know that, then we’ll work on that straightaway. How do we make your offer really concise? How do we make your branding concise, even if you do have a broad spectrum of things you can do and people you can help? We’ve got to start On one of them, because when you’re marketing, and your message has to be, you know, an inch wide and a mile deep, not a mile wide and an inch deep, you know, so we kind of have to side with someone. If you’re a business coach, your leadership coach, and I work with every business, it’s like, again, that’s awesome. And I’m sure you can help them. But which market? Are you having the best access with? Who do you find you? You’d like to work with the most? Let’s focus on them. What do they want? What do so I had a business coach, who I’m working with now. And he does he helps all sorts of people. But he loves working with the construction industry and tradies and builders. So we dove deep on builders, what do builders want? What are they struggling with? Right now? There’s labour shortages. There’s lumber shortages, there’s all sorts of shit going on in the building world. So what’s going to be a resource and an offer that will grab their attention? And that’s where we always start? What does the market want? And let’s just hone in on one thing before we then expand over the coming months.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 16:05
Perfect. I think it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because I think it’s Jim Collins who said that, if you get really, really strong on your sweet spot, or that he uses the whole hedgehog concept thing, then you’ll actually never die of starvation because there is plenty of business out there. But unfortunately, as humans, we tend to go like I can do everything. Because you can do everything doesn’t mean that that is your, your sweet spot, your ideal clients. So we’re sort of thinking EOS, we say to people, hey, look, you know, we know that you can help all these things. But what is the real, you know, the ideal client that you want to work with?
Alex Morris 16:35
Yes, that shiny object syndrome, isn’t it that we all have as entrepreneurs, it’s all Oh, what if I went and helped restaurants or whatever, we wouldn’t help them terrible business model at the moment. But you know, maybe I could do this, maybe I could do that. And you got to put those blinkers on. And in marketing, it’s very, very similar. Because whether you’re, you don’t want to diversify your budget too much your time too much, your audience your message, you really want to hone in on one thing, and some of the most successful people out there, you’ve never heard of, because they’re not in your demographic. I mean, I’m interviewing a guy later on, called the bucket list guy. And I’ve never heard of him, but he’s got a huge following with people, and I’m just not in his demographic. And, and so I’m super interested. And we find that a lot in the coaching space, people who do a really well, there’s that you only need 1000 true fans vibe. And you can get there by having a pretty focus, message, demographic and offer and then you can dive deep. And once you’ve, you know, made that predictable and scalable. You know, try something else out, never leave something on the table.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 17:43
And I also think I mean, I know when we talk about the various clients, we talk about the marketing strategy, and we define that, you know, that really sweet spot for the clients, it means that you’re targeting them, it doesn’t mean you have to say no to somebody who doesn’t mean that exact thing. But it means you have the choice. And it means that you are focusing your energy and your efforts towards that rather than trying to, you know, reach, like you said, a huge, wide audience and wasting time budget money effort now. Okay, so we’ve got the ideal client, we’ve got the target person, we’ve dived quite deep on what their pains and things are, what else, what happens next.
Alex Morris 18:16
We work pretty pretty primarily on social media. So Facebook and Instagram, but we’re moving more into LinkedIn as well this year as we get more professional services clients. But the first thing we always do is we come up with, you know, a sort of a lead magnet for people lead magnet being your classic bait for your audience is and I always find myself coming back to that fishing analogy that your clients are fish, but they’re, you know, they kind of are they put food on the table, you bring them in, and they and they become an asset to you and your business and your family. So we come up with some sort of lead magnet. So let’s use the building example. The builder, we need to grab attention for people from the internet who have no idea who we are. And what we need to do when we’re picking this kind of campaign we’re going to go for is really think about risk. And the risk is not for us as the business owner putting the money out to pay for the ads, it’s for the prospect clicking on the ad, how much risk are they taking by opting in to your resource or your lead magnet and you see all the time you know, sort of beginners and you know people up in that more advanced section as well saying book a 60 minute strategy session with me. And for someone who doesn’t you know if if Tony Robbins said book a free session with me, he get a lot of them, you know, but for someone you know, you don’t know, to risk spending 60 minutes of your precious time. We’re all so busy on the phone with someone you don’t know possibility of human conflict and interaction and potentially being pushed, you know, invited to buy something that is very, very risky for someone, we start at the top end of that, which is what’s a non committal resource that we can give to the world, that’s going to let us know this person’s, you know, in our wheelhouse, get them into that, you know, net, but not, you know, scare them to the point where they’re not going to do it. And so that comes in, where you put out an ebook, or a template or a webinar, or you know, all that kind of thing, where you’re grabbing an email address, maybe grabbing your phone number, and you’re just bringing someone into your network for the building construction coach. He’s a numbers whiz accounting whiz so we put together like a cash flow template spreadsheet for builders, where they can put in everything or their numbers from the last job, and then see, okay, this was my costs, here’s my profit, and then what to do with that profit, to actually keep cash flow in the business. builders were having issues because they’re really great at what they did. They’re craftsmen, they’re experts, but when it comes to the business side of it, so many of them don’t scale because of that. So when we find a business owner who clicks on our resource, and they download it, we know that they they want what we can help them with. So the first thing is we do that and we go fishing a little bit with that. And we go really grassroots, we put out a sort of a lead magnet advert people can click on we think, you know, are we getting a good cost per click, if this, you know, cost you as much money to have someone putting their email address or their phone number to download this resource. If they’re flowing in nice and quickly, we know this is good offer, we know that this is helpful, people want it and then we’ll worry about building the backend, the email retargeting the landing pages and funnels, what we don’t do is go in and spend three months building a huge campaign spending 10 grand and three months launch it, and then wait for it to you know, you know, work or flop, we do it the other way around, we kind of agile or lean. Yeah, we test the waters first with something very simple. And my clients will literally sit down and ring the phone numbers they get. And I’m like, this is outbound. This is scary, but we’re going to do it. And we’re going to find out who these people are, if they’re great. We said, Okay, this is fantastic. Let’s expand upon this offer. Let’s move people further down the funnel, and we’ll build a landing page. We’ll put some testimonials on there some branding. And then once people have taken that first offer, which is low commitment, low risk for them, we might move them into something that might take them 25 minutes, like watching your training or filling in a questionnaire. And then after you know, either on the third page of your landing page funnel, or during an email sequence or whatever, we will invite people to come in for a session with you for a phone call. Let them build their trust in their own time. And then eventually, there’s no better feeling than wake up in the morning with someone has booked into your calendar because they’ve absorbed your content. And that’s the goal. Really. Yeah. And that’s the goal, really. So yeah, we start at the top of the funnel every time no matter who you are, I need to figure out what brings your audience in. So then we can speak to that and build the trust.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 23:15
It’s really interesting. I actually did videos many years ago when I first started coaching, kind of 10-11 years ago, and it was all just around having people feel like they already know you when they actually meet you for the first time. Because it’s always really scary meeting some of the first time you want to have a podcast guest coming was like oh my goodness, who am I gonna meet? What are they gonna be like? Well, I like them. And so the whole point of the video was this more to get them that so by the time they actually got to speak to you, they felt like they already knew who you were. And I thought that was a really interesting learning because it definitely worked. People said I you know, yeah, I feel like I know you already.
Alex Morris 23:51
Yeah, and that’s the the shift that we’re getting a lot these days as well is that, um, when we’re talking about being authentic and showing yourself on camera and in your marketing, we need to speak in our own voices these days. It’s an email that comes and looks like it’s from a company covered in branding and headers and clickable things. They go straight into the junk and they go straight to art. No, I’m getting sold to push it over there. What most of my clients are doing, we’re writing, you know, black and white, you know, four or five line emails from Chris from Debra. And really just speaking in our own voice being authentic and yeah, building that trust and when they hop on the phone with you or one of your team. They know who you are, and that’s half the sale done. Yeah.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 24:42
Okay. So can you share with us some of the challenges that you’ve had and how you’ve overcome them for clients?
Alex Morris 24:49
Yeah, absolutely. One of them is when a product or a service really isn’t that sexy? You know what when, you know, some, it’s really easy to get a lot of downloads when you’ve got a client, like my old client, Bianca, who was, I know, she was like 42. And she was this ripped, she was a shrink wrapped, you know, incredible looking fitness nutrition coach and put out a photo of her, download this book. And you can look like me hundreds of plates and everything of that really easy to get quantity and get people in a conversation with you. Because they all want that. When I have clients who have something, you know, equally impactful, but a little less clickable, such as mental well being or reducing burnout. That’s a longer journey. And that’s something where you really got to be sensitive on the front end of what’s gonna get people clicking, how do we find the right demographic and really understanding that if you don’t have such a high P and in demand service, you’ve kind of got destroyed to be a little more patient with it. And notice that while a fitness coach, or someone who’s promising money in Lamborghinis, and pools is gonna get hundreds and 1000s of clicks and people onto their email lists and stuff like that, a very small percentage of them will be the right person to actually invest and work with you. Whereas if you’re going for an offer, that is admittedly going to be more niche, a little less broad or a little less shiny and sexy, then, except that you’re going to get less engagement, but the people who do engage will be more of the right client for you. And so I think the biggest challenge with a lot of my clients is that patience and making decisions logically rather than emotionally, if something isn’t working the way they expected on day dot. And often, that’s because they’ve compared it to how someone else’s ads our performing. And that’s why it’s kind of my job to help people to realise that, if we’re hitting certain numbers, if we’re getting leads, in a certain cost and phone numbers, this, you can still be very profitable with this business, you’re not flooded in appointments, you’re not flooded in clicks, and likes and downloads. But when you get someone on the phone, you know, they’ve come through a pretty specific path to get there. And so if you’re confident in your ability to sell, if you have fewer people come through, it’s just quality over quantity. And that does happen, you do see both styles of marketers in the people who were quantity and get shitloads of downloads and leaves, their issue is often going to be digging through and finding the right people to sell to. And that’s why we use funnels to kind of bring them down. And then on the flip side, people with a really impactful service, I’m working with a starting work with a company who work with building managers and strata managers, that’s tough to make a really cool video about on Facebook, but once they get on the phone with one of them, then they’re probably going to be in their in their wheelhouse and someone who can they can really help. So yeah, patience, and just never compare yourself to other people and how their results have happened because we’re all in our own race.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 28:25
These are a bit like the long term, long tail search term on Google as well, if people are putting in quite specific things, you know, that they’re actually looking to purchase, as opposed to just doing some general research about what’s out there. Cool. Okay. Um, so I’m a little bit interested I’ve got to ask this. It’s got nothing to do with what we normally talk about, is that but you’re a chef. I was a chef for a couple years as well over in the UK. Yeah. And what have you brought from your chefing days into business?
Alex Morris 28:51
I think a few things that’s a really interesting question. By the way, Deb, no one’s actually asked me that. But um, one is going to be I think I’m relatively good with pressure. Yeah, because a lot of cooking as I never understood why it’s such a high pressure environment because it’s not life and death, it’s lunch. It’s a high pressure environment and I can you know, I can deal with things going wrong. And also is given me a good a good backbone to not take shit from people. I think that’s another thing as well is a lot of people early on in business. You really want to please clients but in a kitchen environment, everyone’s shouting at each other and kind of what’s said during service stays during service and so someone’s called you a fucking asshole during service because you dropped some asparagus or you know, throwing a set of tongues at your head and I worked in fine dining restaurants, this is all happened to me. Yeah, then you really learned that one that, that doesn’t matter so much. If that happens, it’s just business really, and to having that happen to me when I was younger, I, I won’t let people talk down to me anymore. Which is, which is a good thing in a service based business because some people do really get on their high horse a bit. The other thing I’ve probably learned is that there’s a very fine balance between speed and quality, right. And I’ve worked in places which are fine dining, seven or eight course degustations preening over every plate. And then I’ve worked in places where you are slinging out omelettes, you know, every four minutes. And you see people in the marketing space, there’s kind of two people, two kinds of people. I’ve found. There’s marketers who will spend three months and then deliver you this enormous big product. And then there’s people who will be like, done the next day. And it’s a bit of a hack job. Yeah. And so I think an attention to detail, but being able to, you know, execute things quickly is a good one in the sense. Now another thing Deb, I think just hospitality is I think it makes you a better person. I think dealing with the public dealing with people. And, you know, learning to work in an environment that isn’t air conditioned with fluorescent lights, and, you know, set our long breaks and switch. Yeah, HR departments and all that kind of thing. I think that I would definitely get my daughters work in hospitality just to whip them into shape. Because I think it’s just a work ethic thing. I think it makes you a, nothing against anyone who hasn’t done it, but I just find myself to have more resilience than a lot of people I’ve met who perhaps have taken a more traditional route in life. But, but I don’t want to sound like I’m a big shot, because I’m absolutely not. But um, I think it’s a really, really great industry to get into early and then leave early as well.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 32:12
Yeah kills you at the end. And so my next question is around, you know, you’ve gone from being a one man band as a coach, and now sort of building up a little business yourself, what have been your biggest learnings in that part?
Alex Morris 32:27
Investing in training is huge, and annoying and frustrating and expensive. And hardly ever seems worth it until it’s done the job you want it to do. So I hire young people I hire people in their kind of like early 20s to help them to learn when they do it. You know, I work with people in the Philippines, and I’ll be transparent. I’ve got kind of VAs and freelancers in the Philippines, which is a financial decision. You know, wages here in Australia are really high, these people are super skilled and super hard working. But it can be really, really frustrating to be explaining a job to someone that you could do in half the time and you explain it three or four times and still not perfect. And then a client notices a fuckup that, you know, your assistant has made because this link isn’t working properly. And one thing that’s taught me is that I definitely need to, you know, pay even more attention when there’s other people, having a team doesn’t mean you can slack off and allow them to do everything. It means you have to be across stuff even more, and everything falls on your shoulders, you got to be that leader take ownership of someone who, who makes stuff up on your behalf. But also, when you do reach that sweet spot when someone can do the jobs that you’ve been investing time money training to do. It opens up whole new windows for your business. So I’ve got all my social media is now managed by my social media manager who we invested heaps of time in me teaching him to write better copy, to edit graphics to source, podcast guests and edit video. And that’s probably, you know, 15 hours a week gone now out of my schedule to go and grow so
Debra Chantry-Taylor 34:15
And you can spend that time doing the stuff that you’re really good at, which I’m assuming is probably something better than social media.
Alex Morris 34:23
Well, yeah, I’ve actually my income has dropped a little and then plateaued since I brought on a team. Yeah. But now I see the way we’re starting this year. The skills they’ve both got the potential is there to grow exponentially now, because I spent three months of not doing everything myself and you know, having a bit of a tough time sometimes going over things again and again with someone who maybe told me they could do something but they can’t. What was was quite difficult what took a, you know, a small income hit. But now, I feel like I can take on new sorts of clients, I can spend my time learning new things, because a lot of our business is taken care of, without me even need to check in on it. And so it’s been very, very rewarding. And I think financially the, the rewards will come massively this year,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 35:24
Without a doubt, I always say to people, you know, you’ve got to be ready to bring people on board before you’re ready for them. And then you have to be prepared to invest in them. But, but also, you know, except that they’re never gonna do it the way that you expect it done. So you know, 80% is good enough. And if you can get to 80%, then just imagine that stuff is gone from your plate. And suddenly life becomes a whole lot easier because you’re doing the stuff that you love.
Alex Morris 35:45
That’s totally right. And for me, honestly, this year, my next hire is going to be an appointment setter. So I’m going to call my leads and have a chat with them and put them into my calendar, because I had a really successful ad campaign going a few, you know, a few months back, and I just had leads sitting there, because I’ve got two young babies, and from about 4pm every day, I’m just elbow deep in bolognese, and nappies and baths. And that goes about 7pm. And that’s a really sweet spot to catch people for a quick phone call. And I was spending money in wasting it on leads. So yes, it allows me to go and grow my business. But it also allows me to, you know, design the lifestyle I want, which right now is how can I invest a lot of time in watching my daughter’s grow up? Perfect.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 36:35
Hey, look, we’re running short of time. It’s so easy to just chat all afternoon. Sorry. No, that’s cool. I’m enjoying it, absolutely enjoying it. But I want to make sure that we actually leave with some tips for the listeners, you just give us three top tips. They could be things that you have helped people with, it could be books, tools, whatever it might be, just tell me what are your three top tips?
Alex Morris 36:55
Get your message in your offer into one sentence. And if you need a very generic way of doing that, it is I help (people) to achieve (desire), without in (pain). So who do you help? How do you help them get there, and then what’s the objection they often give you, such as in the weight loss space, I help new moms lose the baby belly, even if they’re getting no sleep every night, or even if they can’t get themselves to the gym, that even if is one that’s really, really important for people. Two would be launch things quickly, and then invest the time in testing rather than building. So if you’re in a paid ad, or even an organic space, the faster you get your ads or message out there, the quicker you learn, the more money you spend on your budget, the faster you’ll learn what does work and what doesn’t. So most of my job is not actually writing copy, it’s testing ads, seeing what is effective turning audiences on and off. But I can’t do that until we’ve actually put something out there. So stop being perfect, make it as, make it look great but like we said before, if you spent two months to launch something, and then you launch it, you’re actually you know, seven weeks behind the learnings you could have got if you launch that thing in the first week. So launch quickly and spend your time testing. And third I think that risk thing is really, really big. Think about think, you know, put yourself in your audience’s shoes when you’re putting out an offer. And think about, you know, how much are you really asking some people to download this thing or to click onto this offer. Because if you’re going for people who are corporate and busy, don’t give them something that’s going to take away their time, give them something that’s going to give them more time back. Really think about how much you’re asking your people. And if you think you’re asking too much. Pull it back, put another step at the top of your funnel there, which is going to be a really cool, easy way of just getting people into your network because once they’re in, then they can see the value, then all the content you’re posting becomes relevant. But just don’t dive to the bottom of that funnel and assume people are ready to buy and don’t assume people care who you are yet. Just you know, get them in the network and give them your best over and over again because they’ll come back.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 39:38
Love it absolutely perfect. One of the things that I always say to my clients is that you know, you should be doing the stuff that you really love and you’re really great at, the rest of the stuff you should be delegating and elevating yourself up to that unique God given ability. So on that basis, I would say you know, for most of my clients, don’t do this stuff yourself. Go find somebody like Alex who can actually help you with it, because that’s gonna take away all the pain. So if they want to talk to you, I know you’ve got two lots of programmes one is done for you, where you literally do the whole thing, obviously, what they have to have some input into it, but you will actually sort the whole programme and the other part is more coaching and consulting for those who want to do it themselves. Is that right?
Alex Morris 40:16
Yeah. And that really depends on you know, where you’re at? What skills do you have? What’s your budget? I do have people, you know, with higher budgets, who still just want to do consulting, because they love implementing things themselves. Yeah. And I do have some people who, you know, maybe time is a massive issue for them. So they’re happy to go backwards a bit financially, to then get that leverage out of the way. So that’s the kind of thing we’d figure out during a discussion. And yeah, just seeing where you’re at in your business. Right.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 40:45
So how do they get in contact with you, Alex?
Alex Morris 40:48
To the Moon Digital is what we’re at on Facebook and Instagram, Alexander Morris, on LinkedIn, and I’ve got a podcast I’d love to get you on at some point as well Deb, called Coaches to the Moon. Coaches to the Moon podcast is, we’re about 40 episodes in right now. I’m quite proud of it. And that’s a cool listen as well, you know, I’m not trying to just plug people to come work with me, I’d love people to go listen to that one. And we’re very similar kind of a question and answer format. Let’s give some value. So that’s on Spotify, it’s on Apple’s, it’s on Anchor, it’s on YouTube. I’m trying to be omnipresent everywhere, under that guise of To The Moon Digital.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 41:29
Okay, so To the Moon Digital on your Facebook, Instagram, Alexander Morris, on LinkedIn, and then we’ve got Coaches to the Moon podcasts. Brilliant. Love, love to chatting to you. I’m sure we’ll talk a whole lot more. I really appreciate your time. Thank you for coming in and joining us.
Alex Morris 41:44
I absolutely can’t wait to talk to you some more depth. It’s been a real pleasure. And yeah, send them off to the elephant and to the whole country of New Zealand for me.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 41:52
Will do thank you very much. Thanks, Alex.
Thanks again for joining us on Better Business, Better Life with me, your host Debra Chantry-Taylor. If you enjoy what you heard, then please subscribe to this podcast and let us help you to get what you want out of business and life. Each week we release a new short episode which will give a success story and three takeouts to put into action immediately. These will help you take your business from good to great. The podcast is also supported by free resources, templates and useful tools, which you can find at DebraChantry-Taylor.com. I am a trained entrepreneur, leadership and business coach, a professional EOS implementer and an established business owner myself. I work with established businesses to help them get what they want. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to have a chat about how I might be to help you. Or if you’d like to join me as a guest on this podcast. Thanks again to NZ audio editors for producing this podcast. See you on the next episode.
Debra Chantry-Taylor
Professional EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner
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