190 – A live Q&A full of small business marketing gold, from the Westpac Small Business Innovation Forum.

G’Day listeners and welcome back to another episode of Australia’s #1 marketing show. I’m your host Timbo Reid but you so much more importantly are a motivated business small business owner ready to crank out some great marketing and that is exactly why we are here. Now today’s episode is a little bit different. Just this week I spoke at a Small Business Innovation Forum for the Westpac banking corporation. It was a forum where they had some exhibitors like Facebook and LinkedIn and Google were there and [1:05] and they had 3 speakers, 3 keynote speakers – myself, Miss Chu and Brad Smith, both past guests of this show. By way of reminder, Miss Chu owns a wonderful network of Vietnamese Tuck Shops in Melbourne, Sydney and London; one of the fastest growing takeaways in Australia and just a great business story in itself. Brad Smith owns Braaap Motorcycles and is also just an incredible business story. Brad’s motorcycles are sold throughout the world. He’s also Young Entrepreneur of the Year and Retailer of the Year; very, very clever people both of them. After we gave our individual keynotes at this Westpac function, we then did a Q and A session which I recorded on the night. We’re in front of about 200 – 250 small business owners, all clients of the Westpac Banking Corporation and just threw questions at us, marketing questions, business questions, questions around personal development and inspiration. The way we treated it from the stage, I actually made it out to be the recording of a podcast so I played the intro music and did a bit of an intro myself and then opened it up to the floor to ask questions. We’ll take it from the start and you can hear the event in its entirety and I think you’ll find it really interesting. It’s always good to hear what other small business owners are asking because they’re probably the same questions that are on your mind. I hope you enjoyed listening to it as much as I enjoyed putting it together. If you go to smallbusinessbigmarketing.com and search for episode 190, you will actually also be able to watch the video of this session as well. Enough from me, here we go – Brad Smith, Miss Chu, myself on stage at the Westpac Small Business Innovation Forum.

Welcome back listeners to another episode of Australia’s #1 marketing show. I’m your host, Timbo Reid but you, so much more importantly are a motivated small business owner ready to crank out some great marketing. Normally, at this time I would get up on the soapbox and share a marketing thought or grape that’s on my mind. I then go in to having a fireside chat with a successful small business owner who’s using marketing to their advantage. However, today’s episode is just that little bit different. Today, I’m sitting here on stage at the Westpac Business Innovation Forum in Sydney. For overseas listeners, Westpac is one of Australia’s largest banks and I am in front of a live studio audience. Hello, hello there we are and I am joined by small business royalty and 2 past guests of my show – Brad Smith from Braaap (there’s every opportunity to do that.)

Brad:           

I was just making sure you get the A’s right.

Tim:          

Right, okay, Braaap. And Miss Chu from Misschu. How are you guys?

Brad:         

Good, thank you. Thanks for having us here.

Tim:      

Absolute pleasure.

Miss Chu:     

Very nervous, very nervous. Look at this massive crowd. Oh my God, it’s a sea; it’s an ocean of Australians.

Tim:          

And Vietnamese. I saw some Vietnamese.

Miss Chu:    

There are quite a few Vietnamese people in here, there we go.

Tim:      

Good on you. Go Vietnam! Before we get stuck into a Q and A guys, can I ask what part of marketing your business are you most excited about? Let’s start with Miss Chu.

Miss Chu:  

My face. I made my face into the logo of my brand. It’s my refugee visa. It allowed me to come into this country as a refugee and I see it “yup, actually you know what I saw Vietnamese food, put your face on the brand.”

Tim:         

It’s a great brand.

Miss Chu:     

These days people go “refugees are good for this country, let them in.”

Tim:   

It’s a great way to build a business and a personal brand.

Miss Chu:     

It’s instant.

Tim:   

It is absolutely instant and it gives people someone to refer to.

Miss Chu:  

People say be yourself and I kind of like just went and excelled at it. I’m Misschu, that’s my surname, that’s my face. You can’t get more of yourself than that.

Tim:     

Smithy, what are you excited about with your marketing?

Brad:    

Most importantly I love attaching experience to our products so I learned to ride programs, I race event basing where people get to ride a motorcycle but probably more importantly how to get people there so I use story, social media, those kind of things to generate leads to get people to those events and what’s excited me most is how it automate the follow up to make sure those leads get converted to sales.

Tim:     

You’re a machine.

Brad:      

Thank you.

Tim:         

An absolute machine. I’ve travelled up from Melbourne with Brad and honestly he is just a machine. Thank God you can’t talk on your phone on the plane. What we’ve got here though, I wasn’t joking when I said small business royalty and we’ve got 2 business owners here that nailed experience. Another definition of brand is it’s an emotional attachment and these 2 guys, you create such a strong emotional attachment between you and your customers and would it be fair to say price becomes less important? I know you’re cheap already Miss Chu, I mean that lovingly.

Miss Chu:     

It’s value for money. It’s honesty and value for money and then you get brand royalty, not royalty…

Tim:      

Loyalty.

Miss Chu:     

Loyalty, yes. It’s my Vietnamese coming out. I’m the queen of rice paper rolls, so I’ve self anointed myself before I became famous so there’s something in that, in branding.

Tim:      

Self anointing alone is a good strategy.

Miss Chu:     

Self anointing alone is very important. Having a vision before you even get there is really important. You can’t get there unless you have a vision. Get on your bike and you don’t know where to go, you can have an accident. It’s kind of like what happened with me. I knew I was going to be successful. I knew I was going to be the queen of rice paper rolls and I had a vision and lo and behold 7 years later I’m turning over more than $25 million a year and I haven’t borrowed a cent.

Tim:       

You said you borrowed $50,000.

Miss Chu:     

I did but that’s like the overdraft, it’s not really a loan. It’s the overdraft I always give you. I don’t need to tell jokes just yet.

Tim:   

I’ll buy it. I’ll take it. Enough about us, we are here for you the motivated business owner and I really hope there is lots of questions that you have. No question too dumb, marketing questions, business questions, motivational questions, whatever. Whatever blockage you’ve got, put your hand up and ask one of us and let’s have the conversation. Who would like to start? Remember in the land of podcast, in the land of radio, silence is a nightmare. Here’s one right at the front. Here we go. What’s your name?

Audience:   

Hi! I’m Jessie.

Tim:       

Hi Jess, what’s your business?

Audience:  

I work for Westpac Bank.

Tim:          

You own a bank. Ladies, a banker.

Audience:     

Yes I’m a banker. What I’ve heard from a common theme from all the success stories tonight is that failure is sometimes part of a business. What I’d really love to know is how you’ve actually beaten the negative emotion that comes with failure, how you pick yourself, how you dust yourself off, how you keep going and build on that.

Tim:         

Nahji do you want to start?

Miss Chu:   

I branded. I brand failure. I branded refugee. I branded being Vietnamese; 2 massive failures in Australia. Can you imagine being a Vietnamese in Australia? Did I say Vietnamese or refugee?

Tim:         

Both.

Miss Chu:   

I branded both things that really go against me in Australia. I’m about to brand being short because there’s no such thing as a tall puppy syndrome for me. I’m way too short to be cut down. That’s what I say to people these days. “You’re too big for your shoes.” It’s like no, I work really f*cking hard. There no such thing as luck. Lucky people work hard. That’s all there is to it and I see opportunities where people shy away from it. Most people say “you work too hard.” Work is a 4-letter word that I love. It’s a very sexy work and more people should work and enjoy work. I love my work, I get out of bed and I’m me and I love being me. Work is sexy. You just need to make it enjoyable and sexy and part of your life. “I hate going to work” you’ve got the wrong attitude.

Tim:        

Or the wrong job.

Miss Chu:     

Or the wrong job, like “hey I don’t have an arm. I don’t need to go.” Sell arms, go and sell arms. Brand anything. You don’t have an arm; you should go and sell arms, whatever it is. There is opportunity in everything; it’s just the way you think.

Tim:        

Smithy?

Brad:           

Failure, that’s a big part of growth and it’s going to happen so #1 you got to have a vision and you got to make sure that vision’s got purpose and I think the person who’s got determination and mixes that with desperation is someone who’s going to get over that. When I say desperation, determination says that I will, desperation says that I must. For me that’s been my position. There’s been so many times when it would be easy to give up but I was in a corner. I got 30 staff here, staff overseas; people I got to pay back, people who rely on me. Whether I like it or not, I got to get up and make sure I can kick some butt today. I think determination mixed with desperation is the difference.

Tim:      

Cool that it rhymes.

Miss Chu:     

It’s actually what makes you get out of bed.

Tim:            

For me, I just go back why I do what I do and I’m really strong on why I’m now doing this kind of stuff. Miss Chu and I were talking before this event started this afternoon. She said “are you nervous? How do you get over the nerves?” and all that type of stuff and I go back to my intent. I get nervous and the minute before I go on is when I, as Miss Chu said ship brick, was it cheap bricks? Ship bricks?

Miss Chu:   

No I said sh*t in my pants.

Tim:               

Right that’s it.

Miss Chu:    

I said *bleep* in my pants.

Tim:         

Sorry iTunes, explicit rating but come back to the intent, my intent of getting up here and sharing and being helpful is to help small business owners because I am one myself and I feel the pain and enough. I feel the pain. It’s about coming from the right place, so if there is failure I kind of go “was I coming at it from the right place?” Yeah I was.

Miss Chu:     

I brand. Failure is a great tool for success and it’s not about what you do, it’s your personal journey. Everything’s relative. It’s not about the turnover on how much money you make. It is what is special to you. If you suffer depression or if you don’t have a leg or if you’re short, you’re refugee, you’re Vietnamese, whatever it is, everything’s individual to you so you should actually use that failure or that shortcoming and go “this is the best I can do” and therefore measure it up against yourself and that I think is possibly the most wonderful thing about being a human being. It’s not about being a Google or a Facebook, as wonderful as they are, amazing tools for us to be who we are these days. I think they’re the benchmarks of success and changes in society but for me, I find failure really sexy. It gives you the reason to bounce.

Tim:         

Thank you very much Jess for what is an excellent question. We’ve got a question right there.

Audience:     

Thanks Tim. My name Ritch Harvey. I just want to say thank you to all the speakers for some great inspiration, particularly persistence, just having a go, coming from all of you. Thank you very much for tonight. My question is, I run a buyers agency, we help people to find their homes or investment properties, which is a professional service, a bit like what you’re selling Tim. My question is what is some of the best marketing methods that work for professional services firms versus a product?

Tim:         

Being helpful. Professional services firms, people buy from people so there won’t be any shortage of buyers agencies out there so why they’re going to choose you above the others and not compete on price and want you because they’re going to buy into your personality, I think being strong on brand, being absolutely crystal clear on what you stand for on the personality. How do you want people to describe you when they do talk about you? I even go as far as having a public figure who best represents the brand that I’m trying to create, which happens to be Jamie Oliver. I love what Jamie does and get’s a bit woo-woo but I’ll channel Jamie. What would Jamie do in this situation? How would Jamie do a panel like this? That type of stuff. That’s one part of it, get clear on your brand and own it, absolutely own it. The other part is just be helpful. What’s the most frequently asked question you get asked every day?

Audience:    

We get asked questions where should I buy, how much should I pay, how do I find off market properties.

Tim:         

And could I go to your website or somewhere and find the answers to that?

Audience:   

And you’ll find 24 of them on the website.

Tim:     

In depth answers to those?

Audience:  

And you’ll find 5 free reports you can download as well.

Tim:          

Yeah, okay. And they’re absolutely coming at it from purely a helpful place and not a push place?

Audience:  

There’s still a plug there of course, yeah.

Tim:  

Just a call to action?

Audience:   

Yeah

Tim:       

Yeah that’s cool. We’re not creating art.

Audience:     

I like your idea of the videos because I think that’s much more engaging.

Tim:        

Videos are amazing.

Audience:     

I think the younger generation tend to what watch websites rather than read websites. I think that one minute video is a great idea. That’s a real take away for me.

Tim:           

I’ll give you the thing about video, video is the richest form of content. If you do create video, you can pull the audio. You can rip the audio. There are free programs that allow you to just drop the video file in and it punches out an mp3. Then you’ve got an audio file for those that like to listen. You might turn that into a podcast. You can send that mp3 to a transcriber who can turn that into a word document, which Google can then index because they can see the words and all of a sudden you’ve got a blog post or a series of blog post. From the piece of video, you’ve got 3 pieces of very rich content. You might lean into that. The other thing I do, sorry you guys probably got answers too. I’ll just give before…you are a machine.

Miss Chu:    

I was going to say share a secret. No really, there is a secret every day that you now that you won’t share with your market but share the secret and everyone goes “I love that”; the honesty and the danger of doing that to the detriment of your company but that’s going to speak volumes and people are going to speak about it. Let’s say for example I say to my clientele “this is how you beat Misschu at her game” and I’ll share it with my audience and they go “that is so honest and it’s so generous.” That’s going to give you more marketing than whatever you’re about to spend on some traditional form. That is actually really being to the core.

Tim:

We get scared about sharing those secrets. We think it will *bleep* us off.

Miss Chu:     

We’re greedy, we’re greedy.

Tim:    

Okay we’re scared and greedy.

Miss Chu:     

It’s just honest. I’m successful because I’m honest. I’m not afraid to share what I know to the detriment of my company. That’s the absolute true product you can share with people. Have a product, sell it and share it. Don’t be greedy. Don’t charge them too much. Give them value for money. It’s *bleep* simple guys.

Tim:         

Have you got anything to say or shall we go on to the next questions?

Brad:       

Timbo, last time I come to a show…

Miss Chu:    

But it is just too simple.

Tim:        

Enough, enough.

Brad:             

I was going to say last time I come on a show, I got emails from my potty mouth and I’m really glad it’s not going to be me today.

Tim:        

It’s about being honest, I supposed. Living the brand. Living the brand! Question, hands up so I can see your hands raised. What are we seeing? Who knows Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi while we have our hand up for the next question. We got one at the back and then there’s one here. Hello. Hang on, what’s your name and where are you from?

Audience:     

I’m Bridgette. I work for Westpac but my dad owns a small but successful law firm on the Sunshine Coast.

Tim:         

Doing law firm?

Audience:     

Yep. He’s mostly a lawyer at the law firm. Obviously being a lawyer it’s quite an old stuffy industry that really depend on their own integrity and stuff. If I go home and tell my dad we’re going to do podcast, you’re going to swear at people just like Miss Chu does. He’s going to think I’m an idiot and probably call me a *bleep*head but how do I introduce this to him and show that he’s not going to lose his integrity as a lawyer, as a high standing lawyer and being quite professional but also be fun and approachable and give out information in an industry that really isn’t known for giving out information for free.

Tim:           

Really tough, isn’t it? One of the great things about helpful marketing, it does play to the ego. We’ve all got one. It says, like that slide with the guy standing on the mountain, we are, every single one of us in this room knows so much about the industry in which we operate and I do think it is a disservice not to share it. Share just a little bit of it and see what it feels like. See what it feels like to get an email from someone. I don’t know about you guys but just putting out helpful marketing over the years, the emails that I get on a daily basis are heartwarming and they start off, from a commercial point of view, they start off with “Timbo, you don’t mind if I call you Timbo do you? Timbo, I feel like I know you” and then it’s either a request to speak or it’s something or a question. You got to feel that.

Miss Chu:     

I think your dad needs to meet a woman called Su and then brand her.

Tim:         

And then Su her.

Miss Chu:   

No, just Su me. Have fun with that. I’m going out with Su tonight. I’m a lawyer.

Tim:         

Goodness me. She’s going down. Wrong.

Miss Chu:  

No, not wrong. Laughter is at the heart of branding.

Tim:     

Of life.

Miss Chu:   

Of life. Why did you say wrong? It’s not wrong.

Tim:          

No, no, no, my joke about Su going down. I thought that was a bit…

Miss Chu:     

That’s below the belt.

Tim:    

I’m getting trouble on stage. Smithy, are you getting on that one or we move on? You better knew this speech up in Noosa?

Brad:  

I haven’t.

Tim:           

You haven’t. You? Miss Chu?

Miss Chu:    

Oh no, here comes the fart joke.

Brad:     

With the marketing with the lawyer, I think the biggest thing is we’ve spoke about it earlier today Tim, like lawyer sell fear, really. I know my lawyer, every time I call him I’m so nervous I can hear the cash register in the background. I wanted an educational-based product to make sure I understand what I’m going through. It’s like the guy who just invented the wet suit that’s got stripes on it, because like Timbo said today while we’ve been wearing wet suits that make us look like seals which sharks love…

Tim:     

Isn’t that one of the great questions, like black wetsuit, you look like a shark lolli.

Brad:         

Can you imagine the guys in the big wetsuit manufacturing plants and they’re sitting around their boardroom table like “us idiots, we’ve been selling comfort all this time. All of a sudden some guys come out and wrote that we could sell fear in our wetsuit and everyone’s going to buy that wetsuit.”

Miss Chu:    

You can sell ugliness in a firm like you can say “I’m a gross domestic product. I’m a GDP but I can save you a lot of money.” Branding is so fun. You can make anything look sexy, as long as you just think about fun, honesty, making people laugh. Honesty is actually at the core of branding and business.

Tim:     

One last thing, he might not want to share his legal knowledge but what we could do is educate people on how to get the most of out of working with a lawyer. That level, because we’ve all got his so much fear, like is the cash register going to ring the minute you answer the phone? How much do you charge? Why do you charge that? Do I know the lawyer is a solicitor, a barrister, a junior, a senior, all these questions, if someone’s going to be the most helpful it might as well be him. We have got a question right there. Hello.

Audience:     

Hi, I’m Alana Den from CC Conferences and Corporate Events.

Tim:        

Hello.

Audience:    

Hi.

Tim:       

You book speakers?

Audience:    

Sorry?

Tim:       

You book speakers?

Audience:     

Absolutely, 3. I just wanted to ask what inspires you to create that next great thing in your business? How do you keep innovating? What keeps you motivated and going?

Brad:    

A sports team never wants to win 1 race, they never want to win 1 game and it’s the same in business for me. I get the same kicks from my business as I do my racing motocross. There’s nothing better than having a vision and seeing it play out and have your team believe in it. I think as entrepreneurs, I’m sure everyone up here and every small business owners agree that we’ve got to be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time. There’s nothing better than having a vision and having people misunderstand that then one day see it start playing out. For me that’s an adrenalin rush. On the other side of that, there’s the product as well. I don’t know right now, there could be some kid and his dad riding a motorcycle, high-fiving, having an experience together. I don’t know that. For me that’s meaning and I know how much I learned through my product, through motorcycle and growing up and the bond that I created with my dad and the teacher that motocross was for me. It feels pretty cool to be able to see that play out through our business. For me, firstly I love the adrenalin of making it happen, I love seeing vision playing out and I love the impact that product can hopefully have.

Miss Chu:     

You nailed, what he said.

Brad:    

Just with no swear words.

Miss Chu:    

Vision is really important. If you can’t visualize your end goal, then you’re going to find it really difficult to get there. For me, ideas are really easy. Ideas is the easiest bit and it’s the execution and the logistics that makes that idea come to life is the genius. When you have a great idea that’s going to change someone’s life and it’s something that everyone needs in their life and you make it practical and then viable and it becomes a business venture and it’s scalable and it lives on forever, you can’t get more adrenalin than that. It gives you the biggest high.

Tim:       

What she said. Questions, questions, questions because I’m going to have to re-launch into Living on a Prayer. Oh great, fantastic! We’ll grab a microphone to the lady in the back there so we’re ready to go for the next one and what’s your name?

Audience:     

Hi I’m Amanda and I have a business called The Raw Food Kitchen.

Tim:        

The?

Audience:    

The Raw Food Kitchen.

Tim:               

Ah, it’s beautiful.

Audience:     

It’s kind of grown organically from an illness I had and healed myself with raw foods. I’m not really a marketing expert so I guess my question to you guys is do you have strategies in place or do you come up with ideas organically and to put things out there and test it and see what happens or is it really structured.

Tim:      

Oh Miss Chu.

Miss Chu:     

We cook without gas! It’s raw food right? There we go, we cook without gas. It’s very scalable. It’s raw food, just put it in the box and boom there you go.

Tim:     

Beautiful.

Audience:     

I have no problem with my resolve now.

Tim:            

To add to that, you obviously experienced some difficulties and healed yourself with raw food. I imagine you have a really powerful story to tell and if you’re not already sharing that one on one with your customers, there’s a wonderful great place in Mosman. I don’t know, I’m from Melbourne. What is it?

Audience:     

Mosman.

Tim:       

Mosman darling, called The 4 Frog.

Miss Chu:    

If you’re Vietnamese it’s Motman.

Tim:               

I love it. They have got their story on their back wall, on their menu, on their website and it’s articulated in about 100 words but essentially it’s about 4 Frenchman, who they call themselves the 4 frogs, who came to Australia and loved our women, our beaches, our wine but couldn’t find the perfect crape, and they go on to talk about how they’ve gone and that’s why they do what they do. It’s really compelling. You’re sitting there and go “that’s cool!” You buy into it. Your story, I would share that far and wide because it resonates with people. It builds emotion. If there’s one thing, one powerful, powerful marketing strategy, it’s about emotion. It’s all to rational.

Miss Chu:   

It’s endless with your name, raw – raw everything, raw emotions, raw healing.

Brad:            

I love the raw thing. I think you got a few angles. Firstly, you definitely have health but also really you sell energy. I eat as raw as I can, I’m vegan at home, raw at home as we can be but not only do you sell energy and health but you also seen trendy at the moment.

Miss Chu:     

Good point. These days you’re actually not selling a product to such. You don’t need to sell a product these days. It’s about selling the energy and the belief system and the idea. Like Misschu for example, more people love Misschu for my ideas and my intellectually than they do so by my food but it’s enough for me. It’s enough leverage for my brand. I have 37,000 followers on Facebook, which is quite small for my brand and it’s international and a lot of international people know me but they can’t access my food and it frustrates them. Then you just go “okay how do I sell this energy, this belief system.”

Tim:    

You’re going to have Spring Rolls Royce when you go to London.

Miss Chu:     

No I believe for me. I still drive the bicycle.

Brad:   

One thing I love is the reason why I turned as raw as I could be because I was using so much energy in digestion, so now I sleep like 5 hours a night, so I save 3 hours a day, that’s 21 hours a week on sleeping thank to my diet and if I could get paid for that 21 hours, I’d love to put a dollar figure on it. Maybe you sell time and energy.

Tim:       

The young people of today, I don’t know. Do you have a question? Over there.

Audience:    

Hi! My name is Connie and I just started a new business.

Tim:    

What is it?

Audience:

Sorry I can’t…

Miss Chu:

It’s so new.

Audience:     

I’m Vietnamese.

Miss Chu:     

It’s fast. She’s going to make that right now. What is it?

Audience:     

It’s undergarments, men’s and women’s.

Tim:          

Undergarments, undies.

Audience:     

Yeah undies. My question to you all is you all been like rejected in some way, approaching investors and things like that, if there are potential people like me approach you asking to invest in my great ideas, what would you do? After hearing the story, how would you respond to that if you want to…

Miss Chu:   

Starting out.

Audience:     

Yes.

Miss Chu:     

There is a few things that most people don’t realize about magazines and getting media. The media need fodder and they need material every single day of the week. Did you know that? It’s virtually 100%, 99% possible to get media coverage. All you’ve got to do is get a high res photo of your underwear, right a spiel about who you are, what you do and then send it to them, 98% chance you will be published and the more and more you write to them and the better and sexier your photos are and the more personality you give your brand, the more you’re going to become a celebrity. It’s very easy to become famous. It’s very easy to become a brand. It literally is. It’s about getting off your ass and writing it. The magazines won’t contact you. Most people think it’s the other way around. “When is Vogue going to contact me?” No, you contact Vogue and they’ll publish you. I swear you contact any magazine and give them the content because this is what they’ll do – copy, paste, photo, go. They’re busy, so busy. “I’ve got to get lunch, I’ve got to get this. What about tomorrow? Tonight, date, tomorrows publication.” Give them something that’s really easy. “That’s great. This girl’s good. Publish that next.” Keep it going every single day. Before you know it, you’ll become a brand and before you know it you’ll become a celebrity. Build it up, yeah absolutely.

Tim:     

You’re looking at an angle.

Miss Chu:     

You got to market. That is what marketing is, telling everyone who you are. Don’t be shy about it. There is no shame in marketing yourself. When people say to you “you’re so egotistic. You love yourself. That’s all you do.” It’s like I have a business, it’s like my child. I’ll do anything it takes for my brand and my child to go. When someone says to you “you’re so into yourself and you’re so egotistic.” You say “I have a business to run. It’s like bringing up a child. If you don’t mind, would you mind just stepping aside because I plan to make a lot of money and I plan to plow a lot of people.”

Tim:         

Yeah! You will, good. Tell with smallbusinessbigmarketing.com, 2 websites and on Facebook. Enough. What we’ve got is this Haro.com, help a reporter and sourcebottle.com.au, these are places where reporters go who have an article or something to create for TV, press, radio, blog, podcast, whatever it is and they’re looking for content. Just go to those sites and they’re free. The other thing is that whole helpful marketing thing and that whole idea of creating fame and your own brand, essentially with helpful marketing what you are doing is you’re creating media, so instead of leasing the media, going and buying an ad in the local paper for example, you are the media. I have a podcast I create in my MacBook, cost me $100 a week. I’m creating the media now to then promote. I do it to be helpful but at the end of the day there is a website to go to and for my business you can book to speak, so there is a commercial outcome, a commercial intention there but create media.

Miss Chu:     

Here’s another secret – a lot of people think I have a marketing company behind me. It’s me. It’s just me. It’s me in the office and my graphic designer and he’s in Melbourne. When you walk in my office, all you see is me and my dog. That is my marketing company. This is what I’m saying – social media is powerful if you make it succinct and if you know how to use it. Don’t bullshit. That’s the underlying game and know how to use the media and play with them. They need you as much as you need them. It’s about supply and demand. It’s so basic. It’s marketing, supply and demand, honesty and product and price point. Everything else, if you can’t sell your product, you don’t have a product.

Tim:         

Lovely question, good luck with the new business and we have a question at the front. Hello.

Audience:     

Hi there. My name is Gina. I just started a small business, helping and mentoring people buying property and doing the investment search. My question is do you have any advice, in the real estate industry you’re faced with a lot of properties, brokers, there’s load of stress and fear and it’s just this culture in the industry because most of the players in the industry only get rewarded they actually make a sale of some kind, the convincer, the accountant, the seller. There’s a lot of distrust, a lot of fear, a lot of greed. How do you market to that kind of market?

Brad:          

I’m a big line on taking people’s risk away. For example a dealer comes aboard with us, I give them a cash flow positive guarantee, so I guarantee if you put $30,000 worth of motorcycles in it, it’s going to cost about $150 a week in interest. If you don’t sell enough Braaap product by the end of the year to cover your interest, I’ll pay it for you, something like that. Obviously you can’t do a cash flow positive guarantee but I love building some kind of offer that takes all their risk away. My other challenge would be I’d be talking about and educating people through how people are rewarded and incentivize maybe to sell their own product. My challenge if I heard that would be you’re not incentivize to make sure I make money. Come from both angles, talk about how the other person incentivize to make sure there’s a sale, maybe a wrong sale. How do you take their risk away to make sure they’re getting the right advice and they make money and you make money.

Tim:    

The whole thing Brad’s talking about is removing fear. It’s a great strategy which a lot of businesses don’t do. What fears do people have from giving you their money? What’s stopping them? What are the blockages, which are the fears? And then address them on your website, in your brochure copy, on your talks from stage at networking events. Know what those fears are and answer them, whether it be an article or a little stamp on your website, whatever it might be. It’s just a really powerful strategy. It takes the fight up to them, as opposed to waiting for that fear to show itself, which it might never because they’ll go “I’m too scared. I won’t call you.”

Brad:    

I want a report on how much extra money I’m going to make by making sure you’re part of my property investment.

Tim:   

And we’ve got 1 last question then we are going to wrap things up. Hello.

Audience:     

Hi! How are you? My name is Paul Stout from Frank Property, the only Frank real estate agent around.

Tim:          

Are you alright brother?

Miss Chu:    

Frankly yes.

Audience:     

Long story, I won’t go down there. My question and Miss Chu might have already answered it to a degree, was on the marketing side, I can go to a marketing fellow and say “I want you to put together a marketing campaign for me with the advertising and the words and the pictures and etc.” For 3 of you, I guess, do you come up with those ideas because that’s more about you rather than getting someone else to paint the picture.

Tim:            

We know what Nahji thinks.

Miss Chu:     

Marketing is marketing. Once an idea is out, it’s out. You can’t buy it, you can’t study it. That’s why an original idea is worth more than anything. If you’re not creative and you find it hard to come up with an idea, yes sure you’re going to need a creative strategist or a marketing company to help you but they’re going to charge you a great deal of money to brand yourself. I would suggest align yourself with like-minded people because that’s what strategist do and that’s what these creative do anyway. I reckon every single person has an idea in their head, they’re just too afraid to express it and they’re too afraid to express it because they don’t have the experience and they’re not confident; gregarious people because they haven’t really been on the field, meeting lots of people. I spent a lot of my time trying to fit in to Australia, so therefore I became this person because I met so many people whilst I try to fit into society and then what I realized was you’re just like me. Actually, I’m more creative than you and the more and more people that I meet through I industry, the more successful I got, the more creative I met and the more marketing agencies I meet who’d come to me and say “we can do this for you.” It’s like there’s just me and my dog in the office, and I’ve already done all of that and plus I can come up with better ideas than you because what you’ve just said was going to make me so commercial, you could just ruin me in 1 minute. If I executed that idea that you just gave me, I would just become this stupid little company that is now so commercial that all of my customers would go “you see, she went to a marketing company, sold herself to the salt. She sold her soul away.” Trust your instincts, frankly mate.

Brad:      

My opinion is that every marketing activity that we do has to be think tank, so we go to the think tank, we get our team together, I’ve got some ideas, they got some ideas and we build some test case that we can go through and all our marketing has to be test and measured because it’s all well and good for me to think that a photo is going to work or a photo is going to sell or create leads but we got to make sure there’s an outcome. We attach measurement to every marketing activity – how many leads does it need to generate? What’s the conversion rate? How much we’re going to sell from it. If we have to have a marketing agency or someone involved in actually developing that strategy, even though there’s people who are committed to the outcome. Most of our marketing, we have lead generators that are paid on commission based on how many leads their marketing generates.

Tim:      

I was going to say think tank it. Paul, great question. The only thing I’d add to that is if you’ve got the courage and your convictions, you have a big idea, you’ve got the resources to roll it out, do it. It is why big brands pay big agencies big budgets to get stuff done. I understand none of us in this room have that but at the same time the world of outsourcing is amazing for small business owners. I said in my keynote there’s never been a better time to market a small business. We can surround ourselves with a virtual marketing team. A copywriter, a designer, they don’t have to be in the same suburb. They could be somewhere in the world. Don’t be scared to create that team and help bring your ideas to life.

Miss Chu:    

I was trying to say cross-collaborate with other people in your industry.

Audience:   

People I’m trying to stay away from.

Tim:        

That brings us to the end of the Q and A session on the Small Business Big Marketing show for the Westpac Small Business Innovation Forum. Great questions guys. This is going to be available on iTunes and at smallbusinessbigmarketing.com in the coming days. There are some great guests coming up on my show, including believe it or not AFL footballing legend Warret Caper. We are still chasing down Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street and I have the creator of Gandhi’s thongs; not those type of intimate thongs that the lady is selling in her business but actual sandals. They have an amazing story; some incredible guests coming up. Thank you to the sponsors of this event, Westpac and to my show sponsors in Netregistry who’d get your online marketing sorted and Swiftly who do small design fixes fast for $19. That is Miss Chu, that is Brad Smith from Braaap and I’ve been Timbo Reid and may your marketing be the best marketing. See you later.

Well listeners, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did putting it together. As I said if you go to smallbusinessbigmarketing.com and search for episode 190, you’ll be able to see the video of that as well, if that is of interest to you. All 3 of us have got great heads for podcasting. As a reminder, I mentioned in the last episode that I’m putting together, possibly putting together a live event to celebrate the 200^th episode of this show. In fact at the event we will record the 200^th episode and still doing a little bit of work on locking down a venue but it’s looking very, very positive. It will be mid-August 2014. If you want to be the first to know about it, then do head over to smallbusinessbigmarketing.com and sign up. Basically what you get by signing and giving me your email address is a 20-minute video that I’ve created on some little marketing tips but it also means you go on to my list and you’re the first to know when I announce anything and in this case it will be able the recording, the live recording of the 200^th episode. I’m working on some really exciting things that will make that up. I hope to see you there. In the next episode I will announce the details of where it is, when it is, maybe even a couple of secrets as to what we’re going to do on the night. Anyway enough from me, thoroughly enjoyed bringing you that little live event from the Westpac Innovation Forum. Until next time, it’s been Timbo Reid here for Australia’s #1 marketing show. May your marketing be the best marketing. See you later.