Glen Carlson is a entrepreneurial enthusiast, fun hunter and world traveller. He writes, speaks about and promotes entrepreneurship worldwide.
In the past 15 years Glen has developed, sold and consulted on numerous start-ups in Australia, the UK, Indonesia and Singapore.
As co-founder of the 40 week ‘Key Person of influence’ growth accelerator in Australia, Glen has developed an international reputation for helping entrepreneurs build a brand, develop a profile and position themselves as key players in their industries.
Glen recognises that now more than ever, technology has leveled the playing field for small ventures, enabling them to build a business and a brand around the things they love. just like he has.
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Christo: Welcome back to the Basic Bananas small business marketing show. Today we have a very special guest once again. We‘re going to play you a recording of a cool interview which we did with Glen Carlson from the Key Person of Influence. Now to learn a little bit about Glen before we dive in. Glen is an entrepreneurial enthusiast, a fun hunter and a world traveler. He writes, he speaks and he promotes entrepreneurship worldwide as a vehicle for personal empowerment. In the last 15 years, Glen has developed, sold and consulted on numerous start-ups in Australia, the UK, Indonesia and Singapore. At the ripe old age of 21, Glen co-owned an Australian marketing company. It‘s developed under his stewardship as CEO into a successful international organization saw Glen move with the company to London. And for his next venture, he pioneered a bespoke online retail model inside of Facebook for a fashion label which quickly grew their fan base to 1.6 million in less than 12 months while doubling the profits at the same time. Not a bad effort. As co-founder of the 40 week “Key Person of Influence” growth accelerator in Australia, Glen has developed an international reputation for helping entrepreneurs build a brand, develop a profile and position themselves as key players in their industries. Glen recognizes now more than ever, technology has leveled the playing field for small ventures, enabling them to build a business and a brand around the things that they love to do. Just like he himself has managed to do, so welcome Glen. Thanks for joining us.
Glen: Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.
Christo: It‘s awesome to have you here. We‘re really looking forward to this and of course our listeners will be as well.
Glen: It looks like it‘s going to be a bit of fun.
Christo: Yeah. So, how we usually kick off, we like to learn a little bit about you so if you could tell us a bit about your story and how you got to where you are for our listeners.
Franziska: And all the dirty secrets along the way.
Glen: Dirty secrets along the way. What happens in Vegas stays on Facebook.
Franziska: Yeah, exactly.
Glen: I‘ll see what I can reveal without getting myself in too much hot water.
Christo: Could make it interesting.
Glen: I guess I‘ve always been a bit of a fan of business more because it allows me to kind of go my way and do my thing. My first job was at McDonald‘s and I was politely asked to leave about six months in because I just couldn‘t follow the scripts. I just couldn‘t like… I had friends that would come in and I‘d be like, “Hey, what do you want?” “That‘s not what you say.” And I‘m just like, “I can‘t deal with this, I‘m out of here.” And so it was interesting because my dad was a bit of a clever chap and he built boats and did a lot of sailing and was just kind of one of these practical kind of guys. And he said, “The only reason will ever flow in your bank account is because you‘re solving a problem for someone.”
Franziska: I love that.
Christo: Nice.
Glen: Yeah. Yeah. And so I actually had spent a lot of time on boats and on yachts throughout my younger days. I was 15.
Franziska: Oh, that sucks. Doesn‘t it?
Glen: It‘s really hard life. Yeah. Really tough life. So I thought, okay, well what problems do boat people have? So, I went around the marina and I literally just asked all these questions about what problems have you got. And, the one question that kept coming back, because there was a big race coming up that weekend, was that they had growth on the bottom of all their boats. Right? You had to jump over and snorkel and do it. And I said, “Well, I‘ll do it.” I had a scuba tank and some gear and all that kind of stuff, so that was my very first little business and I made about three and a half grand in the first month.
Franziska: Oh, wow.
Glen: So when everyone else…
Franziska: How old were you?
Glen: Fifteen. So when everyone else was making…
Christo: Oh, that‘s big bucks, yeah.
Glen: I was the Mark Zuckerberg of my time in my own little lunch box.
Christo: Boat cleaning.
Glen: Boat cleaning. Everyone else was making about 300 bucks a month at McDonald‘s and I land this three and a half grand a month. I guess that flicked my switch going, hey, there‘s actually merit in going out and finding what problems people have got and trying to solve it. And I guess my business career has unfolded since then. That was my first business. I expanded into internal marine detailing, external polishing, all that kind of stuff and marine search and rescue so when people would drop their sunglasses or their winches over the side of the boat, I‘d go and collect it for them. Went from there, my current business partner now, Daniel Priestley, we‘d been best mates in high school and we started our first company. I call it proper company. The boat cleaning stuff was just something that I was doing, but the first proper company Dan and I started was marketing and events promotion. We were 21, and just had a love for business. I‘ve been called a business geek. I‘ve started and grown and sold companies now in Australia, in London, in Indonesia, specifically in Bali, and in Singapore.
Franziska: In the events and marketing industry?
Glen: No. Well I guess sort of actually, yeah. One of the ones in Bali was a third party plug and play affiliate ticketing model for large scale festivals, so basically it was another sales channel for big festivals where we would go and… It was interesting. The original idea as it was meant that every single owner or taxi driver or beach boy or whatever could help promote these large scale festivals that were happening on their island and get an affiliate commission for it. Just like it, was how we used to grow outside of that as well. So just thought we could apply it there. That absolutely did not work. But what did work is, it provided the technology for us to get out and convert every single internet cafe into a box office. Which is what we did and added about 20% sales to some of the festivals that we worked with. So that was a big deal.
Christo: Nice.
Glen: That ended up getting bought. My biggest client made me an offer and I was more interested in sitting on the beach in Bali than running around working so… While everybody else… So I took the offer I couldn‘t refuse and… Yeah, I guess bringing it up to now. Now I‘m based in Melbourne, I‘m the co-founder along with Daniel Priestley and Managing Director here in Australia of the Key Person of Influence series of programs and events which is a 40-week growth accelerator for small service-based businesses. Where they‘re looking to build their brand, raise their profile and essentially punch above their competitors, I guess in their industry. So we work with a lot of doctors, lawyers, physiotherapists, massage therapists, horse trainers, anyone that‘s got a skill, a talent, some kind of expertise that they‘re really good at. They want to be known for and they want more people to know about what they‘re doing.
Franziska: It‘s a great program because we came to one of your events and it was fantastic and also the feedback that we‘re getting from people that we have sent your way. They love it. It‘s sustainable…
Glen: It‘s good to hear.
Franziska: And that‘s why we also wanted to have you on the show because we want to share what you guys do. Well so, When did you kick off KPI? Because it also started in Europe first.
Glen: Yeah. It started in London and Dan actually kicked it off in London while I was working on my second tech project in Bali. It was a digital retail platform inside Facebook, so people could actually have an entire shop inside Facebook that people could go through and buy and purchase without having to leave their home. So I was working on that. That was a pretty major project and Dan launched the first Growth Accelerator, the KPI Growth Accelerator in London as a test. It was a beta project, because the Key Person of Influence methodology, which is what Dan‘s book which has now gone bestseller over in the UK is based around. It is these kind of five steps to becoming the driving force in your business and in your industry. The premise is that every great business needs a driving force like Sir Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey have. Someone that kind of drives it from the front and takes responsibility for big wins and the big successes. We found that there were these five soft skills, which you‘ve just got to have and every single driving force in their business is now about these five things done really well, and you guys have it really well, which is pitching. You‘ve got to have a great pitch. You got to have published great content on a range of different channels, offline and online. You‘ve got to have a great product ecosystem. You‘ve got to have a great online profile. And you‘ve got to do great joint ventures. So, the whole idea is thought well, if we create an architecture over 30 weeks or so, 30 or 40 weeks, where people could work with industry leading experts and mentors on each of these key areas and then had the time to actually implement the hypothesis. That‘s what would create a major shift in their business. Instead of the two-day boot camps or the five-day boot camps on “how to become a billionaire” or whatever, which is all kind of lighter fluid burns bright, but doesn‘t carry much heat. We thought, that if we worked with people over 40 weeks, it‘d be more of a hot coals type of experience.
Franziska: I agree with the approach because we‘ve obviously researched the whole approach ourselves. The three-day boot camps versus 10 months for example. You can see really substantially difference, how people achieve more if you get them to come back. So let‘s talk a little bit about pitching the first…
Glen: Sure! Yeah, the first step, The Reason in terms of our methodology. The Reason it is the first step, because it‘s not much you can achieve if you can‘t communicate what it is you‘re talking about or what it is that you do. And…
Franziska: Reach a lot of businesses..
Glen: And it doesn‘t matter what country you‘re in. I‘ve done lectures on business and entrepreneurship in about 13 countries now and spoken to small business owners from Thailand to India, to the UK to the US, to Canada to here. It‘s constantly the same as most people just don‘t have a clear or compelling or a remarkable answer to the most simple of questions which is, “What do you do?” And yet…
Christo: So many times you meet somebody… and you walk away wondering what did they just say? What was that?
Glen: Or it was so beige and uninteresting that you can‘t help but looking around the room to see if there‘s a box of cardboard that maybe you could go and talk to.
Christo: corner..
Glen: So pitching is pretty killer, and the Key Person of Influence methodology has been fine-tuned by myself and by Dan, but also by the industry leaders and mentors that work with our delegates and our clients. So, in London, Mike Harris is our pitching mentor. He‘s build three multi-billion pound businesses from scratch, and all from pitching in Australia. We work with Ian Elliott who‘s the past chairman and CEO of George Patterson, which is one of the largest ad agencies in Australia. We‘ve worked with them and we‘ve worked with our clients using this architecture through some of the… Let‘s be honest, some of the toughest times in economic history, so in the last three years or so and especially in the UK. It works really well! The reason it comes first is, because if you‘re not clear on the pitch, then you‘re not going to be able to publish great content. You‘re not going to understand what types of products you need to create. There‘s no point building a social or an online profile without pitching, so what do you think your listeners would most like to know about pitching?
Franziska: I think, it would probably be just useful where to start. I think all of our listeners always need to have a great pitch. Where do I start? Where do I start creating my pitch?
Glen: Great, Okay. I mean the first place to start I guess, is to work out who you‘re pitching to and what you‘re pitching for. That‘s step 1. I mean we always advocate the idea of folks in a micro niche and working out exactly who would be your perfect customer and what are the problems they‘re experiencing and that kind of stuff. So, once you‘ve got that kind of general gist, there‘s five levels of pitching. The first and the easiest level is pitching for advocates, so if you‘re just out at a networking event or a function, you‘re not trying to get money out of people. You‘re not trying to do deals with everyone. You just want to pitch in such a way that people are interested and they‘re like, “That‘s interesting. I want to support that. I want to introduce you to some people that might be interested.” Just the advocates on your behalf. Nothing formal.
The next layer up is clients you‘re actually pitching for business. You‘re actually pitching for someone that hey, they‘ve got a set of problems that you have a particular expertise or produce that can sell and so you‘re pitching at a client level.
Next level up is pitching at a partnership level, where you‘re not looking at solving their problems on a retail level, but you‘re looking at working with them on a wholesale level. So, partnerships and joint ventures.
Christo: Yeah, joint ventures with other businesses.
Glen: Yeah. To be able to essentially leverage their value, your value, to create a bigger pie for both of you.
Franziska: We love joint ventures.
Christo: Yeah.
Glen: Yeah. It‘s really easy anyway to take your business beyond just being a small sole operation and I guess most people do. They just try and do it all themselves and they don‘t try and connect with their industry in the right way.
The next level up is investors, so pitching for investment. And the next level beyond that is pitching at the level that guys like Richard Branson pitch at or guys like Steve Jobs used to pitch at. Pitching at an evangelist level. They are not just pitching as evangelist, but they‘re also creating kind of evangelists for their brand and for their mission and for what is they do. So I guess the first step is working out which level we‘re pitching at and what you‘re pitching for.
Christo: Who you‘re pitching to, yeah.
Glen: And then the first step is absolutely about clarity! Most people when they‘re pitching, they make the mistake of trying to be too fancy too soon. They‘re trying to differentiate themselves too soon. They‘re trying to sound too exotic or too special.
Christo: Yeah. I was going to ask about that. Because you tend to… Well, I guess people want to stand out like you‘re saying, because otherwise it‘s just saying the same thing and everybody knows a plumber, every knows an electrician, everybody knows a web developer. So they go at it trying to be too technical or over the top, extreme…
Glen: And just too extreme by stand out too much, people just.. Get really confused. They use jargon or they try and explain themselves as they‘re a garbologist for example. Right? What do you do? I‘m a garbologist.
Franziska: Have you met a garbologist? I haven‘t met one.
Glen: What you‘re saying to me is you collect garbage. It‘s like I used to call myself a marine detailer. Really just clean boats.
Christo: Do you study garbage?
Franziska: We saw the turd burglar.
Christo: The turd burglar, that‘s it.
Franziska: That is a great…
Glen: What is that?
Franziska: Turd burglar. a Plumber
Glen: Oh, okay.
Christo: He‘s the turd burglar. Good branding.
Glen: That‘s brilliant. And I find that when people try and come up with those fancy, like a turd burglar, kind of high impact things. When that‘s their first step, it often leads them off track, so what we do is we work with people to make it really simple first. Start with clarity.
Christo: Nice.
Glen: More than being fancy, you just want people to have a very, very clear understanding of what you do, and who you do it for. So, the first step of our pitching architecture is around clarity. And what we get people to do is just be really clear on what industry you‘re in. Because often people are a bit confused in terms of what industry they‘re actually in.
Christo: Comes across that way, too, doesn‘t it?
Glen: It does across and yet it‘s the… The way I explain it to people is that when you‘re talking to someone for the first time, they have to file you into a pigeon hole. Into a filing cabinet in their mind. And so I imagine… I close my eyes and I imagine this big, giant filing cabinet that goes off in all directions inside someone else‘s mind and I‘ve got to choose which of those drawers I want to open. Then I want to choose which one of those binders I want to kind of put myself into. So the broadest is industry. So for me, I‘d say I‘m in a training industry, because that‘s what we do. We work in training, and yet in my mind, there‘s so much more than training and it‘s so much cooler than training and yet I bite my lip because I‘ve just got to open that drawer first. Oh, okay, you‘re in training. So first we‘d start just with an industry. We then break it down and go, what do you do practically in that industry? So in that situation I‘d say, well I‘m in the training industry, but what we do is we run 40-week growth accelerators where we help small business owners develop an architecture around pitching, publishing, creating great products, as well as, raising their profile and doing joint ventures and partnerships.
Christo: So you‘re getting into the file. Within the file cabinet…
Glen: File within the file, right? So now someone‘s listening and they go, okay, they do training. Oh, okay. They have this 40-week process that helps small businesses engineer themselves around these kind of five key points. Now of course, there‘s a lot more to it than that. There‘s a lot I haven‘t spoken about, but when I say that people are clear about what I‘m talking about, and more often than not, again I‘m talking to the right people, I have interest at this point. That sounds interesting, it‘s interesting.. I had been sitting at dinner parties and tables and things, where often I find employees to have a very, very different mindset. People that have just gone through school and not really thought about what they want to do. They just… They‘re clerical. They‘re receptionists. They‘ve never really thought beyond that, right? They‘re not my market. They‘re not even the kind of people that I tend to resonate with as an individual. I like hanging out with entrepreneurs and small business owners that are kind of up to something and hustling and doing some cool stuff. And so when I say what I do to those people, it goes down like a lead balloon. And so this is again the key things is that your pitch isn‘t meant to light everyone up. The first person that‘s got to light up is you. You‘ve got to be excited by what it is you‘re talking about. Because if you‘re excited, it‘s going to light up the right people.
The third level of clarity is specifically who you do it for. So we specifically work with, as I said, small service-based business owners. Typically they‘re doing somewhere between 50 and a quarter of million a year in revenue. Sometimes up well over a million, but usually the sweet spot is kind of in that less than quarter of a million, but more than sort of 50 to 75 grand. So they‘ve got proof of concept. And professional service advisors, consultants, trainers, freelancers, corporate escapees, the ones that have got sick of the corporate world and they want to take their skills, talents and…
Christo: Bailed out.
Glen: Turn it into something.
Christo: Do their own thing, yeah.
Glen: And so I find that when I sum it up like that, and I found when we work with our clients to help boil down what they do into really simplistic terms, really practically terms in terms of what they do and it‘s short and it‘s punchy and it can roll off the tongue. They get a whole different level of engagement. And it‘s so curious because you think that to get engagement, you need to be razzle-dazzle, you need to be the turd burglar or something like that. My experience has been clarity often creates more engagement than trying to be fancy or trying to be too different. Now, obviously this is the first step of a multi-step architecture and there is provision inside a good pitch to be different and to really stand out and to really be unique and to drive that home. But it doesn‘t come at the start.
Franziska: Okay. I‘m going to quickly summarise that and then I do want to just quickly chat about how to add the uniqueness to the pitch.
Glen: Okay.
Franziska: So, what you say is the first thing you do is obviously check which level you‘re pitching at. That‘s the first thing and then you get clarity so you‘re not… Keep it simple. I love that. Keep it simple and really think about what do you do and who do you do it for. So what you do and then who you do it for…
Glen: Your niche.
Franziska: Industry are you in, the niche and then practically, how do you do that? So it‘s pretty much, the how and be really specific about who you pitch to.
Christo: I like the clarity too, you‘re actually categorizing it, how you said first the industry, then breaking it down into steps. Because even for us, listening then I kind of… I know exactly what you do, but all this filing, just.. I was visualising.. It‘s great and as you continued and when on saying that it was service providers and then breaking it down, getting more and more specific.
Glen: Builds a picture.
Christo: Yeah. Build a picture.
Glen: Now here‘s what‘s interesting about that. Right? Is because the art of a perfect pitch is there‘s a few great outcomes. The first great outcome is obviously someone wants to get involved and work with you either… They either want to be an advocate for you, they want to be a client, they want to be partner, they want to be an investor. Right? So that‘s a great outcome. The other great outcome is that they can be very clear that they don‘t want to do anything with you. They know what you do. There‘s no ambiguity around that, but they can clearly go, “That‘s not for me.” However, for the people that say that, a great pitch will by its nature, inspire them to want to introduce you to someone that it could be useful for. And that‘s why it‘s so important to be super, super clear on a niche in terms of who you do it for. So for us, it‘s small service-based business owners in that kind of income bracket. So if I‘m talking to someone that‘s doing $50 million in revenue and now what we do is inappropriate for them because they‘ve already got a major brand and they‘ve done all that kind of stuff. But they know some people that are in the small business space great stuff that they do, but they‘re unknown, they‘re under-valued, they‘re under-paid. Ah, perfect! You‘ve got to meet this person and that happens to me all the time and I guess that‘s a key thing. Whereas trying to be too broad in terms of we can work with anyone, suddenly, people stop referring you and stop introducing you because there isn‘t a clear enough…
Franziska: We got one guy that has been in our program, Mr. Hot Water Heater. You talk about it because you know him better than I do.
Christo: Yeah, yeah. He was in a similar situation. Tried to do everything for everyone and we all know a plumber, right? It‘s a really good example. Everybody knows a plumber out there and so for him, looking for his point of difference, obviously he‘s looking at his tie to market and we thought well, it‘s first option is in real estate and all that because he thought well that‘s where the business is. But, then we actually looked at what‘s most profitable for him and it turned out what do you like doing because he‘s kind of getting on and he‘s not getting any younger. He doesn‘t want to be under houses anymore, so he said, hot water. So, of course, a bit of a jig around with his branding, he became Mr. Water Heater.
Franziska: And his pitch became really succinct.
Christo: So easy. Yeah. And really easy to refer and I love how you just said… Because he kind of… It‘s almost like he owns the hot water space in my mind now… He‘s so easy to refer.
Glen: Absolutely.
Christo: My brother‘s a plumber, but if there‘s a problem with a hot water heater, I think of Mr. Water Heater.
Glen: Specific, because he hasn‘t just gone plumbing. He‘s gone to a niche.
Franziska: Absolutely. So now let‘s quickly look at how… Now you‘ve got the clarity. You‘ve got a very simple pitch. How can you make it a bit more zing?
Glen: Okay, a bit of zing. Now again, I‘m going to be boring around this. Right? Because what I find is what creates the zing is… This is coming back to what my dad taught me, which is the only reason people buy is to solve a problem. Or the only reason money will flow to you is because you‘re solving problems. Right?
Franziska: I agree.
Glen: So, people are walking around with problems and they don‘t want to have those because problems are uncomfortable. They‘re not particularly things that we want to have.
Christo: We all got problems.
Glen: Don‘t get me started. All right. So a big part of the pitching architecture… The step after clarity is about credibility. Right? So credibility is really just about you demonstrating why you‘re qualified to understand the problems that your ideal market is experiencing. So I can say something really simple like, well for the last 10 years in countries all around the world, I‘ve been working with small business owners. We‘ve been working with… Because of our events business, we‘ve promoted some of the most successful entrepreneurs and industry leaders. And we‘ve worked with some of the smallest business owners that are experiencing the problems of start-up and fast growth and all this kind of stuff. Being the meat in the middle. Kind of seeing both sides of the spectrum. And as a result, I‘ve been able to identify a series of problems that these small service-based business owners face. So, hopefully, after me explaining 10 years, working in business, being on both sides, or seeing both sides of the equation, anyone listening when I say I spotted three major problems, would sit there and go, “Yeah, that makes sense and I‘m still listening to you.” I‘ve got them listening when I‘m explaining the problem. So this is what I think is zing. All right? And it‘s often it‘s not what a lot of people want to hear. They want to hear that there‘s some fancy string of words that you can say that‘s just going to make you go, wow. For me, it‘s when someone‘s able to articulate a series of problems that I‘m experiencing on a day-to-day basis with more clarity than anyone else ever has. Bang! They‘ve got me.
Christo: They hear the problems. Solve the problem.
Glen: I‘m really, really there. I‘m listening. I‘m engaged. Because it‘s personal now. It‘s personal to me. So, for example, one of the problems that we find most people have is they don‘t know how to answer the simple question, “What do you do?” They‘re not clear on their core value, and they‘re not clear on how to communicate it. And as a result, they feel they‘re going around and they‘re trying to do all these pitches but they‘re getting a lot of rejections, they‘re getting a lot of people that aren‘t really all that interested. They‘re not getting all these types of referrals and so they‘re burning out. Like they‘re… And it‘s frustrating. And it can also be a little bit disheartening when you know you‘re doing something really, really, good, but it‘s not landing in the market.
Christo: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Glen: So when I communicate that, that resonates with a lot of people and they go, “That‘s how I feel. I do feel disheartened. I do feel I‘m not clear on my core value. I do feel I don‘t know how to communicate really well. Of course, I need to work on my pitch.” It kind of make sense. And so not only do most people not have a clear answer to the question what they do, but they also aren‘t clear on the key problems that they solve for their market. And one of the things that I pride myself on is constantly working to get clearer and clearer and clearer on the problems that I solve. So when I‘m communicating, I‘m relevant.
Christo: Yeah, yeah. I like this one.
Glen: And really from my perspective, it‘s relevance that creates buzz. It‘s relevance that creates engagement. It‘s relevance that creates cut through. If you‘ve got a fancy tagline, right, that might get people chuckling but you‘re not clear on the problems that you solve, it won‘t have the same impact.
Christo: At least it‘s clear that, definitely have a little of homework. Based on that and write a list of the problems you solve. You know them. You know them! But just to clarify those things that you solve… The problems that you solve and working on, gives a picture of what you are marketing.
Glen: And I find three‘s a magic number. Right? If you can be really clear on your top three problems yourself… For example, top three problems that we solve through the KPI program is people doing things that they don‘t love for the money. Because they think they‘ve got to sacrifice doing what they love and go and do something they don‘t love to make money.
Christo: Just to get money, yeah.
Glen: Problem number one. Problem number two. Is that they‘re not getting recognized for the value that they add to the world. They‘re not getting that kind of recognition or that movement in the market. And the third one is that they‘re just under-paid. They‘re not making the amount of money out of what they‘re doing. Those are three really simple problems.
Franziska: Yeah. That‘s a really practical example. So for the listeners, go ahead and just take some paper and pen and write down your three problems that you solve. I love actions. Something else just real quickly that I want to add before we wrap it up is, I totally love what you shared and I‘m glad that we could share it to our listeners. I also believe that once you‘ve sorted this stuff out and some of it takes a while to do it. I actually do like to add one extra thing, if it fits and sometimes it comes and sometimes it doesn‘t come. But there‘s another guy that we have in our program and he is a fitness trainer and he actually, when he pitches, it depends on what level you pitch, but just pitching to advocates or some people that don‘t know him, he says, “Hi, I‘m Joe. I‘m a beauty surgeon.”
Christo: Yeah, right.
Franziska: And then he stops. People are like, “Okay.”
Glen: What does that mean?
Franziska: Yeah, what does it mean? He says, “Well I‘ve got the poor man‘s…”
Christo: Poor man‘s plastic surgery.
Glen: Okay.
Franziska: Because he trains them, but it only works for him because he‘s a funny character. He‘s a super funny character. So that, you know, it is a bit fancy and stuff but if he then gets really clear about the stuff that he spoke about, I think it adds an extra dimension to it.
Glen: Absolutely.
Franziska: Because people who talk about him say he‘s a beauty surgeon.
Glen: Absolutely. Absolutely. All that‘s… And I believe all that stuff comes out of understanding what you do and how to do it really well.
Franziska: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Glen: And most people want to go straight to the fancy and I think you‘ve got to get down to the basic bananas of it all.
Christo: Yeah, that‘s right.
Glen: And once you‘ve got those in place, then you can get the sizzle.
Christo: And the credibility was one thing you mentioned, too. So to make that practical for listeners as well I guess they could more or less you suggested to think about their own credibility if even obviously years of experience, education, background and work…
Glen: Do we have time?
Franziska: How long… Let‘s go for two and a half minutes.
Glen: Okay. Two and a half minutes. There‘s a few things you can do. The first thing is you can demonstrate credibility based on some kind of technology. So potentially you have a unique technology. An app. A website or some kind of bio-tech that you‘ve come across and that gives you technology in your industry. Another one can be industry experience. So maybe you‘ve spent 10 years, 20 years, 30 years in a particular industry. Right? So as a result, you understand the problems in that industry better than most.
Christo: Better than others.
Glen: And the third key one is Richard Branson‘s favorite. Which is the customer shoes. Right? So I don‘t have… I might not have industry expertise, I might not have any particular unique technology, but as a customer, I‘ve been on the trains and the trains are terrible. I‘ve been in the planes and the planes are terrible. I‘ve used other telecommunications and they‘re terrible. So what I‘m going to do is I‘m going to get in there and I‘m going to shake up the industry and I‘m going to create a solution that I will create experience. So three really simple ways to go and develop your credibility. You don‘t have to hit on all of them. You just need to hit one really well. If you cannot hit on all three, well that‘s going help, too.
Christo: Awesome.
Franziska: I love how practical you keep it. So thank you so much. Now one of my favorite questions to wrap it up is, what‘s one of the funniest or weirdest things that you have ever experienced in your…
Glen: Seriously?
Franziska: Let‘s keep it in terms of business..
Glen: We‘ll save that for the video later. All right. Okay. Put me on the spot. All right. So maybe about seven years ago, again, my business partner Daniel Priestley. We‘ve been in various… We‘ve started various businesses over the past sort of decade. It was a latex mattress company. We were 20…
Christo: Latex mattress, interesting.
Glen: Twenty-four, 25, right. Now I‘m not biased, but they were amazing products. I still sleep on latex mattresses. They‘re brilliant. But we were 24, 25, something like that. And we thought it was an opportunistic business that we got into. Right? We saw that, hey, we can make some money out of this. It‘s a baby booming market. Pig in the python type thing. They‘re all cashed up. And they‘ve all got all those kind of ailments that great night‘s sleep could help them with. So, we‘re like, we‘re going to be rich. This is awesome. So we started the business. We poured quite a deal of money into it. And after at our… I‘ll always remember. We were at our third retirement expo. Dan and I manning a stall. Selling latex mattresses and pillows and all this kind of… We‘re just hustling. Young guys hustling.
Christo: At a retirement expo.
Glen: At a retirement expo.
Christo: This is awesome.
Glen: And so here we are, these young 20-year old guys standing around in the grey army of senior citizens. God bless them. And I remember quite clearly just turning to my mate Dan and saying, “There‘s just no way we‘re going to get laid doing this.” We wanted to be rock stars and here we were surrounded by a gray army of senior citizens. And I guess the lesson we got from that is you just got to be really careful because if you build a business around a client base that you don‘t want to spend time with, you‘re going to find yourself out in a world that you don‘t want to be in. Life is too short. So the business that we run now I decided that I wanted to be surrounded by entrepreneurs that were up to something, but it had to be something special and we wanted to be hitting their personal bests. So, literally six weeks after that retirement expo, we‘d sold the rest of our stock and we closed down the business and moved on to better and brighter things because we could see that it just wasn‘t our passion. It wasn‘t lighting us up.
Christo: No opportunity for romance.
Glen: That was a bit…
Franziska: It‘s a great story and great lesson. You got to work with what you really love. So, let‘s hear a little bit about where can people find out more about you? We‘ll also put a link in the…
Glen: Best thing you could do is to… Yeah, definitely click on the link if it‘s in your vicinity. But, you can go to keypersonofinfluence.com.au. We usually have various different events coming up or resources. You can go and check out Dan‘s book there, Become a Key Person of Influence. You can get that and because if you‘re listening to this through obviously the Banana clan, we‘ll give you some great discounts as well.
Christo: So awesome. We‘ll put a link directly under the show. If you‘re listening on iTunes or through your iPhone you can jump on…
Franziska: It will be on the website.
Christo: On the podcast, will be on the podcast page on basicbananas.com with a link.
Glen: Groovy.
Christo: Directly.
Glen: Great show.
Franziska: Thank you Glen. Thank you for joining us.
Christo: All right. Thank you.
Glen: All right.