Steve Simpson is the author of two books on how to change the cultre of a business. In this weeks episode however, we don't talk about culture, we talk about how Steve has successfully packaged his ideas into a powerful and proprietary system that has seen him win some long-term corporate clients. We also explore how he has been able to so effectively scale what he teaches and how you can do the same. 

00:00:01:21 - 00:01:38:06

Paul: There are a few keys to building a great business. The first is to identify a need in a marketplace to see something that gets your attention to start to wonder why something is a certain way and start to explore whether there could be a better way to do things. Once you identify that there is then you have to be able to package that idea that information that knowledge into a system a process a model that people will want to follow. That's why I've invited my guests today Steve Simpson onto the show to share some of the insights that came from growing his business. An author of two books including a culture turned and Cracking the Corporate Culture Code. Steve developed his own proprietary system that he calls UGRs unwritten ground rules a formula and a structure for changing the culture of businesses. Now I asked Steve to come on and share some insights not about how to change the culture of a business but how he arrived at his own proprietary system how he developed it and how he's packaged and position that in the marketplace and successfully attracted some of the biggest brands in the world to use his system to transform their cultures inside their businesses. Now I learned so much from this conversation with Steve. He's a exceptional entrepreneur and a great thinker and I know that you're going to get a lot of value from listening to the insights that came from Steve's journey into building the business that he has. So let's dive into that conversation with Steve. But first here's the intro.

00:01:49:08 - 00:02:04:16

Warick: Welcome to the Marketers Club Podcast the show all about helping you work smarter earn more and accelerate your success. And now here's your host Paul McCarthy.

00:02:07:09 - 00:03:13:16

Paul: Hello everyone and welcome to the show. Welcome to Episode 9 of the Marketers Club Podcast I am your host Paul McCarthy and I am here to help you market your talent so you can earn what you worth and ultimately make more of a difference in the world. Now one of the things I'm talking to entrepreneurs a lot about these days is really how they become a category of one how you start to really separate yourself from the pack and someone who's done that exceptionally well. Is today's guest Steve Simpson. He has developed his own proprietary language and system for helping organisations with culture and has really positioned himself as a category of one expert. So while there's lots of people out there that might talk about culture Steve's unique approach has helped him to win some of the biggest brands in the world. So I do want to keep you waiting any longer I want to dive into this conversation with Steve and share some of the amazing insights about how you can start to really develop your business. Let's get into it. So hi Steve welcome to the markets club podcast. Thanks for making the time to have a chat today.

00:03:14:08 - 00:03:15:17

Steve: Thanks Paul it's great to be with you.

00:03:15:23 - 00:03:36:27

Paul: I've been fortunate enough to know you for a long time I've watched you grow brilliant business so I was keen to get you on and talk about your journey. But maybe we can start by giving the audience who maybe not familiar with Steve Simpson's a little bit of a background of what you where you've come from and how you've arrived that the business that you've got today.

00:03:37:06 - 00:05:52:15

Steve: Yeah. Okay Paul happy to do that. I began my working life as a teacher and studied a master's degree at the University of Alberta when I came back that that studying going overseas essentially for the first time really unsettled me. Just opened my eyes to different ways of doing things and the fact there was a different world outside of Australia. And I came back and went into head office of the education department and spent five years there in in Western Australia and met a guy who had similar ideas to me and we started up a business which didn't last long but that prompted me then to go out on my own and initially I was focusing in the area of customer service because it just continued to perplex me as to why so many organisations give ordinary customer service. So that's where I'd focus to start off with. And after some time working in that domain I realised that I was having an impact in some places and not others. So put some thought into that to work out why. And I realised that it was the culture of the workplaces that I was working with. That was a real primary determinant of whether that organisation was going to take up the ideas that always offering and run with them or whether they just be polite but after a walk away blocked them and not do anything about it. So I focused from that point onwards more and more on culture trying to understand what culture means to people and helping them strategically improve their culture and that's why I spent most of the last 30 years so my business now is essentially speaking at conferences and I mostly speak on workplace culture through my unwritten ground rules or utilise concept. Sometimes I speak on customer service but less and less so. So I speak at conferences and my business model is that that is an entry point because once people see me present and learn about my concepts and my approach some of the audience will then say can you work with us. And so that's an entry point into more in-depth work with organisations of all types and persuasions mostly medium and larger sized organisation.

00:05:52:16 - 00:06:51:17

Paul: And I'm interested in saving I guess exploring the growth of the business and what you've done. I think you know the you know many of the people listening to to this show will be small business owners having consultancies or practices they may not have large teams they may have some staff or at least some the eyes and things that they're they're bouncing work out too but not have massive teams so they themselves may not be focused on needing to develop culture but I'm interested in really exploring with you the growth of your business. So you mean you are one of the world's leading sort of authorities on workplace culture and customer service and your system your UGL system is your proprietary tool for doing that so maybe we can start there in terms of how or what was the process for you in terms of discovering that coming up with your own proprietary system for the way of helping organisations to to measure culture and development.

00:06:52:01 - 00:08:52:17

Steve: When I was in the education department in Western Australia so this is 84 through 89 so I would have been late 20s early 30s my math is correct and that's can that age itself. I was at an age that the age group where you bulletproof Paul is what I'm trying to get at. And I was in education apartment and I had a a regional director came up to me and say Steve could you facilitate five sessions one month apart for school administrators and without even knowing what topics I was facilitating for these conversations for school administrators. I said yes because you're bullet proof right now. It turned out the third or fourth one of these. The topic was workplace culture or corporate culture and when it was my time to prepare for this. I went back to the books that I had read having done a master's degree at the University of Alberta. What I read Paul was just so complex so philosophical so theoretical that I thought to myself I'm not going to present this back to people because it's too academic. It's just not tangible it's not practical. So in some way I came up with the idea of running manual so you know there's no process for this. It was just my own thinking. I came up with the concept of unwritten ground rules which I abbreviated to Utah's which I defined as people's perceptions of this is the way we do things here and here. That's not a new definition that's been around for a while. But the notion of beauty as in all the content that sits behind that was mine and I reflected on the unwritten ground rules that I had encountered as a young school teacher entering the workplace essentially for the first time I've done part time jobs before then but teaching was my first full time job so when I presented to the audience of School Administrators at that point I realised I was actually onto something because I real examples of beauty are at our meetings it isn't worth complaining because we know nothing will get done.

00:08:53:03 - 00:11:17:26

Steve: The only time anyone gets spoken to by the boss is when something is wrong and so on these dry their behaviour but they're seldom if ever talked about openly and I put it to people that it is your UDRs that are your culture. It's a simple to understand as that and to change the culture we need to change the UDRs. So first we need to understand the cars and then we're in a position to be able to change those we need to change. And by the way for an organisation that's growing I think it's essential to identify the kind of culture that's necessary for that business to be successful and to fight for that. But that's another matter. When I presented this to this group of school administrators I knew at the time I was really onto something because I got a reaction from the audience which was either leaning forward with piqued interest or people almost physically turning their back on me because it was too confronting. Now obviously the first time I did it I did an ordinary job at it. I kept working at it and refining it to a point where you know I'd got it where I think I can make it really interesting for people. I can guarantee it's fresh and new and practical and valuable for people. So I mean that's how the concept originated and for many years all I did was I was being a presenter I was being a presenter presenting the concept to anyone who would invite me to do a workshop or conference presentation and that lasted for many years and that process was useful for me because I think in constantly presenting to different audiences in different contexts who had different cultures. I was able to get better and better at delivering the content and making an interesting refreshing practical and so on. So that was really beneficial for me to master if you like or as much as I could master delivering my content and helping people more or less delivering content but helping facilitate people's learning and I think that distinction is really important because I wanted. I wanted people to walk out thinking how good was that and I can't wait to try and use this. So I wanted to facilitate learning peak people's interests and make a difference in these organisations. I dunno if I should pause there Paul because I mean that's that's the origins of me creating the concept.

00:11:18:02 - 00:11:27:12

Paul: When did you stop being paid as a teacher and start your own business where you get where you had to generate your income off your own back?

00:11:28:07 - 00:12:29:28

Steve: When I met my this mate of mine in the education department in West Australia we started up a business. He quit first and then I got a year or two later quit and that was the scariest moment of my life. I was married at the time and when I was I was saying goodbye to our fortnightly salary which is in a public service jobs. So essentially you couldn't get sacked right. So I was saying goodbye to that and to be honest Paul scared hell out but there's nothing like necessity pushing motivation and you know just most people who are listening to this will know that you know they've left a secure job to start your own business. So so that motivation is vitally important. But I think being strategic in our thinking is just as important because you know what I don't know the statistics statistics are that most small businesses go out of business pretty soon after they've been created. You know better than me Paul.

00:12:30:18 - 00:12:53:20

Paul: Yes. That's all unfortunately too true that they do go very quickly and that's one of the reasons I was so keen to chat to you because you are a great strategic thinker and and you've built a tremendous business. I mean some of your clients are sort of household brands and names that people would know people like Kmart. I mean how long have you worked with Kmart now. How long was that relationship?

00:12:53:21 - 00:14:34:26

Steve: Well that's that's stopped now. But that went over an eight year period from pretty soon the time that they see the new CEO at the time Guy Russo took over. I don't know if people are aware of this but Kmart literally had lost money for 10 years in a row literally Wesfarmers purchased it gave Guy Russo the best leader I've ever met three years to turn the business and look at it now it has totally transformed. They make half a billion dollars profit but just as important Paul is the culture transformation that's taking place in that business because their culture can only be described as toxic when Guy took it over. Stores would bring into head office as it was then called and phones would ring out. There was internal warfare like you've never seen before. It was a toxic culture and came I used my concept of UGRs is the vehicle to understand and transform their culture and it's a culture now as magnificent where people have immense pride in saying they work for Kmart. I mean it's become a cult I think. So yeah I mean that well that was just great to be part of because as an independent and not autonomous you'd be able to relate to this I think to Paul as an independent. The downside to being an independent is the potential loneliness that comes from not being part of a team you know by definition you're not part of a team but Kmart was such a good leadership group to work with and our guy as I say was it's the best letter I've ever met I felt part of that team on many many occasions and felt the joy that they experienced in transforming their business and it was a wonderful experience wonderful.

00:14:35:27 - 00:15:37:01

Paul: And you know it's a credit to you in terms of the work that you do and how you played a role in helping them to do that. But let's let's step back. I mean so we talking about a business that's been able to impact you know a multinational company and there's many other examples of companies that you've worked with but coming back to you know as I've left teaching you've jumped into doing this you've been getting out you're doing some some talks. So where did. In terms of getting a clarity for yourself of the business model that you wanted of the sort of business what you were looking for. Talk to me a little bit about that journey of trying to find the way you wanted to deliver this and get this message out because you are by nature a teacher you talking about facilitating learning you want people to really be able to embrace this idea and take it on and let them really change the whole trajectory of their their businesses and their lives through this this practice. So what was it. What was that journey in terms of figuring out the sort of business that you wanted to have.

00:15:37:20 - 00:17:44:15

Steve: There were two sources that drove me to create the model I've got now. One was reading a book and it's the best business book I've ever read personally by Alan Weiss New York based Alan Weiss book called value based fees. And I won't do it justice in summarising its content but there are a couple of key elements to that book that really rang true to me. Alan Weiss says that while we're writing about our half daily or daily fees we are merely glorified plumbers and that's not to put down a plumber who might be listening but because there is a point to this. But while we're worrying about our hourly or daily or half daily fees we are merely glorified plumbers. And his point was that when a plumber under the traditional mode of charging is sick then he or she cannot earn it earn any money. Now that apply to me because when I was sick and I never was heaven forbid but if I was sick then I couldn't earn money. And so he's thesis is that we have got to think about how we can move away from time based fees and have confidence and authority to say there is value we are bringing you and we are going to charge you accordingly. And I your well across this Paul I know that I know that many of the people you've worked with you've presented this notion to them that it's a dangerous position to be in trust to merely be charging based on time. So that was one major force that had a big impact on me. The other was through an association I met an industry association that is I met a gentleman by the name of Stef Duplessis who's based in Johannesburg in Africa. And Steph and I sort of got to know each other on a superficial level and unbeknownst to me Steph was organising for a group of gold mining senior executives based in Africa to do a study tour in Australia and he organised for this.

00:18:15:25 - 00:20:32:21

Steve: And when they got back I got a phone call from Steph and Steph said to me and by the way Steph and I didn't really know each other well at all at that point Steph said to me what the hell have you done to these guys. And I said What are you talking about. He says since they've come back all they've talked about is UGRs and by the way you're coming back to South Africa now because they want to do more work with you. And by the way Steph said have you sold a licence for UGRs because I want to buy one. And so as it transpired I went back to not didn't go back and went to South Africa for the first time work with these mining guys Steve. Steph saw me present and said That's it. I want to purchase a license from you which forced me to create a license set up for this where Steph was the deliverer of my intellectual property and I got commission based on that. So that was step number one working towards value based fees licensing to another independent. So Stefan I became close friends as a result of that. In fact now we're best mates and we got the opportunity to present to another mining group in Johannesburg. So this was the top 20 people including the CEO we had them for two days and Steph and I on this occasion good Steph had done his work done a fair bit of work on UGRs with his clients. Stefan I presented jointly to these 20 senior executives at the end of two days. They said we want to roll this out across our employees in three countries Ghana and South Africa and Australia. And by the way we got 40000 employees and they said to us can you do this. And of course Stefan I said yes of course we can. And then we left it in the car and said what what are we going to do. How do we do this. Now that was a godsend for us because we then realised we went through a series of questions where we are two selves well for us to maximise the benefits for this company. What would the ideal delivery be. And we agreed that it the ideal delivery would be Steph and I presenting to groups of staff and we realised that was totally impractical to many employees.

00:21:07:00 - 00:24:14:26

Steve: What could we provide those people those people that will call culture champions what could we provide them to make it is fail proof as we possibly could. So it was on that basis that we created a whole raft of resources that we would provide them with if they didn't feel confident in delivering material to other employees because they then become mini versions of us but they're in-house if they don't have the skills to do that. Is there anything we could provide them to help make it fail proof. And so we created a raft of videos PowerPoint slides and other resources that they could use where they pressing a button which is following a script that we also provide them. But in addition to that we said well once we've got people motivated is there anything we can do to help sustain the motivation. And so we created what we call UGRs reenergised which is a three to five minute video which we release every two weeks forth for a full year that they can show at staff meetings where they don't have to do anything other than press a button and it's me speaking on video for three to five minutes which is a discussion prompter and some action steps people can take in the two weeks following the video before the next video arrives for them to see. So this is the I think this is the essence of what Ellen Weiss was talking about in value based fees. If we can put together bundle of value where we're trying it. And that's not primarily for the purpose of making money but primarily for the purposes of maximising the potential benefits that decline gets. What would it look like. And that's the bundle that we put together and we've subsequently done this with many many organisations where an unintended consequence of this by the way Paul is when you put a bundle of resources together like that there is absolutely no point of comparison price wise that the potential client has. So when I do a keynote presentation if I say my fee is X that there's a fair chance the client will have booked other speakers for a keynote presentation in years gone by and there's a massive risk that that client will have an expectation. Price tolerance band that is you know not associated with what what I charge does and that they're gonna say Hang on. We've had five speakers before. None of them charge what you're trying to charge. So that's way too expensive and you'll lose based on price alone. But when you got a bundle of resources that you put together there is no way that potential client has ever seen anything like this. So price can persons evaporate because there is no such thing. They then will merely look at the package as is this worth the value that they are charging for it. So that's an unintended consequence. But nonetheless I think significant. 

00:24:14:26 - 00:25:24:27

Paul: These such great valuable learning points that they will get to really be paying attention to. I mean I think Alan why this stuff is fantastic and I certainly it's something we teach all of our clients is is very much you know that we cannot live in a world where we trade time for money. We have to move to a value based strategy and figure out how we bundle things together in those ways to create as you say those that that point of difference which makes it impossible to measure it directly against something else so we really muddy that water and and create a point of difference rather than commodities ourselves. So I'm interested in. I mean the leverage and this is you know really that I guess a focus point for us in our conversation with you is that the leverage that you have created for yourself so as a business model then the speaking is one of your primary feeders of people getting to get a little taste test of what your strategy is or about what your thoughts are about is that the primary way that people come into your world or do you have other sort of faders that that help bring people through as well?

00:25:25:19 - 00:28:45:02

Steve: So this is evidence that I am a slow learner Paul because it took me a long time to get to this point. And and I have conversations every couple of days literally every couple of days and one time we're having a conversation and we ponder the question how do we get our work. How do we get our work. And we realised that the answer is very simple. Our best way of getting work is being in front of people. I mean there are other there are other ways that we get our work and I can talk to that in a minute. But we realised that the most powerful way mechanism for us to get work is to be in front of an audience and it can be a leadership team or a conference or something in between. So that realisation. And it took a long time for me to understand this. That realisation then fed into my marketing strategy. If we get our work through being in front of people then the marketing strategy then becomes well. What's the best mechanism to get in front of people? And so I revamped my website and it's a careful balance that you had to strike because my website is primarily here Steve Simpson the speaker because it's it's that that's the mechanism in. But I didn't want to undervalue at my website. I didn't want to under emphasise the capacity to work in-house with organisations over extended periods of time. So that's the balance I've had to strike and at the website. But there are also other avenues to get in front of people. And for me and I've been fortunate in this respect there's a thing called speakers bureaus out there and speaker bureaus represent just about every walking speak on the planet. Good bad or indifferent. And the idea behind a bureau is that a client will ring the bureau and say we've got a budget of this we want to speak on customer service or corporate culture. Who do you recommend in this. That the bureau is the knowledge broker of who's good for that amount of money and who's available and so on and they'll recommend three speakers normally. So I've got a lot of conferences through speakers bureaus like that. And again that's another marketing strategy for me. So I then need to say well how do I retain the relationship with the bureau. So if for me I mean this site sound so fundamental as I think about it now with you Paul but for me the key was what's the best mechanism for us to get new clients. And that was a revelation. I mean it seems so bloody obvious this mechanism to get work is to speak. So that's my marketing strategy. I'll never sell from the stage I want to provide as much value as possible. So I will never sell from the stage but once I get in front of an audience hopefully the if it's the right audience I'll get people coming up to me and saying can we speak. We want to bring you in-house. So that's what people listening to this. I don't know. I'm hope that message resonates because the key question would be what are the primary mechanisms by which we currently get our clients and can we. Can we get better at those primary mechanisms?

00:28:45:21 - 00:29:35:28

Paul: And this is the thing is we need to pay attention to where the opportunities and like you so much of my work has flowed from speaking and being invited to speak in so many places and to engage with an audience and for them to connect with me and come into my world and then to travel through to the different levels of my business. But I think the thing is for people to also pay attention to areas that your business is not purely being a speaker being a speaker is your most powerful marketing tool to create the leveraged ongoing deep relationship clients who are far more valuable to you once they're in the UGR training program than they are.

00:29:36:01 - 00:31:04:08

Steve: Whereas a balm on a seat in a conference 100 percent 100 percent. And as evidence of that I will speak without fee at the right audience. I've got a gig at the North American Conference on customer management in the US and there were people in the audience from the U.K. and I got contacted by them to say would you speak at the European conference on customer management. And they said we'll cover the airfare but no fee sorry and we'll cover airfare and accommodation but no fee. So I did that presentation because I figured it was it was my the right potential clients in the audience went over like a hit. I got a bunch of business cards given to me by people saying can we stay in contact. I got an email from somebody at the Wales quality centre saying how much do you charge to speak. And I realised at that point that the airfare was getting in the road becoming too much of an obstacle. So I emailed people whose cards I collected at one conference and I said I'm going to be in the U.K. for a two week period. I funded my own way there and within those two weeks I earned more in the U.K. Than I'd ever earn in a month in Australia. So that was well and truly paid for the airfares. So yeah yeah it's. What's the mechanism. What's in it for me. What's it's got to be the right audience but work and flow from that.

00:31:05:03 - 00:32:07:19

Paul: And I think that I mean that's a fundamental for all of us when we're marketing and however marketing is we have to be marketing to the right audience so if you if your marketing is being a speaker then you're gonna be speaking to the right audience and if that's another mechanism you got to make sure that your audience is there in whatever environment that you're communicating to that they exist there. Otherwise you're wasting your time anyway. But it's also understanding the business you're in and you're really clear about that business and where the dollars ultimately get made so you can be flexible with the right opportunity to put yourself in front of an audience and then to do a stellar job as you always do and and then create that interest to connect and go deeper with you. What is the lifespan of a customer for the year as we talked about earlier that came out was you know an eight year journey which is a phenomenal length of time to be connected and working with the clients. What sort of lifespan do people if once they step into the UGRs tend to have?

00:32:08:00 - 00:33:34:05

Steve: It varies so much Paul. I've worked with McLaren Automotive in the UK over four years and worked with another couple of financial institutes in Queensland right now which are into their second year and it can go right back to just a workshop. So you know I will sometimes be invited to present at a conference and people walk away with that and I know I'm happy if that happens for them to access what is publicly available to UGRs website. I try to provide. I have two websites I have one which is steve-simpson.com That's me the speaker website but we also have the UGRs website ugrs.net. We provide quite a lot of information publicly available at the UGRs website so you know I recognise that not everyone is going to take me on for a longer project and I'm quite comfortable for them to access the material at the website. And use that internal In fact sometimes here almost incidentally are you. We've been using you guys in our business for the last couple of years and not not having involved me at all. And that's fine by me. That's that's that's fine. It's publicly accessible and available there is that there is another avenue to mark which is the book. So we've written a couple of books but that's not a major major source at all. So that's a long way of saying it varies from one off to eight years Kmart's been the longest three to eight years so it really varies.

00:33:34:20 - 00:34:23:24

Paul: But it's again having a model of Ascension and having structures to keep people we obviously everybody is different and different clients will stay with you for different periods of time and but it's creating an opportunity for people to do that to be able to continue to add that value. We're getting close to Times I just want to wrap up on it on a couple of things and you they've one. I mean you've developed this proprietary process and system so what fears did you have when you were doing it in terms of people ripping you off of copying it. I know a lot of entrepreneurs sweat on the idea of yeah but you know I want to I've got this great idea but I'm nervous about letting the world know about it in case somebody swipes at. So what's been your process or experience of protecting your proprietary program.

00:34:24:29 - 00:35:58:16

Steve: Well we've we've trademarked it so that's number one. But we also have come to accept the fact that it is going to get ripped off in different parts of the world views of our copyright. And I think it's fair to say that a number of Asian countries are less sensitive to copyright issues. So what. You know what we've just said look get over it going to happen. Having said that I do regular Google searches and I have discovered outright plagiarism on more than one occasion. One guy one time a guy in the U.K. word for word pinched our material to include in a couple of chapters in his book word for word with one exception he instead of having UGRs he had the unwritten words unwritten ground rules. The guy was so dumb because then at Australian sporting examples in it my original book written in the UK. So I contacted a lawyer Major I have in the UK and his first question was Is it a publisher or self publish. And it was self published and he said well you can get nothing because if it was published they've you know they've got responsibilities and bank accounts but so we you know we scare people off. We talk you know we tell people we're aware of what you've done and you know to cease and desist essentially. But I think if you fear your IP being stolen then you'll be paralysed and get nowhere. I think you have to accept the fact that it will be stolen and just do as much as you can to prevent that. You know you keep on top of it.

00:35:58:22 - 00:36:22:13

Paul: So as we come to a close if you were sitting down with someone who was relatively new in their business and looking at and trying to scale a business create something that they can leverage take their their knowledge and package out what what advice would you have with somebody in terms of the things that you wish somebody had said to you at the beginning of your journey?

00:36:22:13 - 00:37:32:22

Steve: In one sense I'm happy with the pace at which I proceed because in a sense the world is saying you're now ready you know. And when you didn't get those jobs probably the world was saying you're not ready yet. Having said that the catalyst for us was the senior executive team saying Can you roll this out to 40,000 people. So you know that that's an interesting question to ponder for anyone who's trying to leverage their business. If an organisation if a large organisation said We want you to roll this out what would their options be. Because if you haven't considered those options maybe there's an opportunity that's there in front of you to think through the leveraging of options that are open to you and you shape those leveraging up options I think not with a view to how much money can we make out of this but if we are to be as successful as we possibly could in achieving our mutual outcomes in working with this organisation what's the best possible ways we could do that. That was enormously that was an enormous help for us. That absolute necessity to think through how do we roll this out across 40,000 people

00:37:34:07 - 00:38:14:02

Paul: Yeah but also important I think that you you sold it first and you built it. Secondly you knew you could deliver the information you knew the value of what you had and obviously the the senior executives were were sold on that. But the question of building the collateral the materials and things to roll it out came afterwards so you'd had somebody is saying can you'd make this happen then we've gone yet I can you know as my father in law would say not bite off more than you can UGRs. Also there is an element of that there as well that you you didn't go and build everything and then try and sell that to somebody 100 percent 100 percent.

00:38:14:04 - 00:38:55:15

Steve: And look I think I think clients appreciate the option for flexibility anyway. The UGRs reenergised which goes at every two weeks for a year. That initial client helped shape that because we ran the idea past him and he said Well so long as it's not longer than five minutes I think it's a good idea. Now he's thinking was we don't want this to impose too much on people's workloads. You know we've got others we've got a normal work to do. So don't make it more than five minutes and I go Well how good is that. So that now becomes a selling point. It's only of three to five minutes duration. So I think the joint building and the flexibility associated with that is a selling point. You know with those potential clients. 

00:38:55:18 - 00:39:42:10

Paul: And I think that some of the other lessons I mean you talked about when you find those internal champs and then produce the resources to make their life easier but you also then thought about you know how to keep it alive and energised and you know my language around that is really the idea of consumption you know when we when we think about our materials and marketing materials and sales materials if people aren't consuming them then their value will dissipate very quickly so we need to be mindful of as you were so wisely about how we're going to keep it in there in their Zeit Geist am I going to keep it alive keep them energised by it and we all need to think about how we're keeping our materials relevant and insight for our for our customers.

00:39:42:22 - 00:39:51:20

Steve: 100 percent and the added bonus of that is that you're staying top of mind so you know not only are you delivering value but you're staying top of mind.

00:39:51:25 - 00:40:22:25

Paul: Absolutely. Steve been a fascinating conversation. No doubt that the listeners will have taken a lot of. Valuable ideas out of a discussion we've just had. If people wanted to learn more about you. Touch base with you find your books be able to learn more about your jars and they may have the desire to implement some of these brilliant strategies into their own businesses with their own teams as they get their cultures firing at another level what's the best place for them to go

00:40:23:14 - 00:40:36:21

Steve: And happy to connect with anyone who's listening Paul. So my email is [email protected] two websites. steve-simpson.com and ugrs.net Happy to chat with anyone. 

00:41:11:24 - 00:41:56:03

Paul: So that was a tremendous reminder for all of us from Steve that it is possible to truly scale up what you do. So I want to say thank you so much for joining me for another episode of the marketers club podcast. It's a great thrill for me to put these together and I trust that you're getting value from them and I want to say thank you I really appreciate all the feedback that I've received and to all those people that have already subscribed to the program of course if you haven't subscribed I would love for you to do that really take ownership of the show and be the first to know when a new episode is released. So until next week I wish you nothing but the best of luck with your business. But much more importantly with your lives. Until then take care. Bye for now.