Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Listeners of the Tron podcast, this is your host, Rashad Woods. I want to thank you very much for your time. As always, we've been fortunate enough to tell the story of lots of interesting entrepreneurs and this gentleman epitomizes it. He's from Australia.
But that doesn't mean your story doesn't resonate here at home. This man is a very successful entrepreneur, building websites, SEO for the construction and trades industry as well as bootstrapping the organization all by himself. He didn't learn in the classroom, he learned it from real life application. West Towers, ladies and gentlemen.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Thanks Rashad. It's fantastic to be here today. It's nice and early for me at 4am but I'm all coffee it up, fueled up, ready, ready to talk to you.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: You know, it's always funny when I, you know, like there's no excuses, you know, because you know, you built your career on that. You're up at 4:00am you know, I would have never known had you hadn't said that. So it's an honor and a pleasure. You built a very successful company. Uplift360. But before we get into that, can you give us a little insight into your background, please?
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Sure. Uplift360 is a, we do websites and SEO effectively, we're a digital agency. But to get to this point in my life and business feels like a lot of ups and downs and side adventures along the journeys even to start in the career path that I took. I mean I was studying in high school in the, in the 90s and websites weren't really a thing. So the career path I ended up taking was something that wasn't in my site line of sight at all. The careers counselor. None of us sort of were thinking about websites back then, but it sort of, it felt like the industry found me rather than the opposite way around. So I just started on the adventure. I got into graphic design multimedia at uni and ended up studying there, finishing, got a job in a marketing company in Sydney. Award winning marketing company by the way. So I found them actually in a, in a book, they were in the awards book and I just cold called them and said hey, love the work you're doing. Can I come and show you what I've been up to at uni and whether there's a job opening and there was and I got that job. But they only had one computer connected to the Internet on a dial up modem and we all shared the email address. So if you needed to send an email, you'd all go over to the one computer or if there was an email received and hey Jimmy, there's an email here for you. You know, that sort of thing. So the world has changed so much. I feel like such an old person now when I say these sorts of things that it feels as though business has changed so much and how we market ourselves, particularly in the last few years as things have ramped up tremendously, obviously with AI and everyone's talking about that, but it feels like it's always been evolving and changing super fast in my world.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: You know, I always take the equation of, you know, the companies that survived and evolved. You know, I'll make an analogy to martial arts, right? And I don't know if you watch ufc, but like, you know, in the beginning all the jiu jitsu practitioners were winning, you know, in the early stages of ufc because all these guys that were boxers and karate practitioners were like, wtf? What the heck is this? Right? And so as guys had to evolve then next, you know, you see early on you had to be kind of a jack of all trades to be successful when it came to mixed martial arts, right? You couldn't just be a ground specialist, you couldn't just be a stand up guy. So the stand up guys started to learn how to be on the ground and then the ground guys were kind of the fish out of water standing up and they're like, man, I got to get them take a movie. Thai coach, kickboxing coach. So to your point, how you came from the modems, you know, to the one computers to the cold calling out of a, out of a yellow page type book, you have to keep evolving and that's where you helped businesses along the way and grow. And you've been at the forefront of that. Yeah, yeah.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: It certainly feels, it certainly feels as you show. I love the name of the show Tron. The randomness of nothing. So it feels in the instance that, that everything's just chaos and random and there's no order in the world, but then everything snaps into alignment perfectly and it feels as though you're on the perfect path for you. And that's what I found with websites. I mean, I'm a creative person, so the graphic design element is, is there, but also the technical aspect I love and enjoy as well. So it's this merging of the two things that I really enjoy. So, so just getting started on the path and finding the business. So that first job I was working in, in the marketing company, they won a website design project and they'd never, never done that before. But I don't, I don't know how they won the project. And they said, right, you're the young guy, you better figure out how to build these sites on the path. I went and they gave it to me, they gave me heaps of time to figure it out and we built that site. And from there I was their web guy. And by the time I started my own business, that's the trajectory I was on.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: You know what makes it so amazing is, is that I obviously the specific industries that you are assisting in helping on the trades, the construction industry, you know, manufacturing and things of that nature. And I always found it fascinating because some particular industries are behind digitally when it came to the digital transformation. And you know, like for instance, it's no secret that sometimes businesses that are typically dealt with fax machines and paperwork and manual things and you know, the guy or the woman that handled everything exclusively by themselves, it has a really hard time, even though they provide a great service to be in this digital era. So what was it like when you had to kind of, you know, push clients forward either in your old marketing plans, but particularly in this digital era?
[00:05:10] Speaker B: Well, it is, it is interesting. So working with the trades and construction industry, they practical, hands on, pragmatic people, great on the tools. Typically they're founder led businesses, although sometimes it's bigger entities we're dealing with and you never get to speak to the founder or the, the CEO or. Right, those things you do with the marketing companies. But it's always kind of the same that the other thing. So they're naturally not computer tech kind of people, they're on the tools.
So there is that lag to pick up technology. But also there was that massive boom time recently which has changed significantly in recent times. But here in Australia, in lots of parts of the world, there was just so much boom in everything related to construction. So everyone was having an abundance of work and able to turn work away so they could be really selective and effectively they could get a little bit sloppy in their marketing because they didn't need to fight hard to find clients. Clients were beating down their doors, but when that flipped and there's always cyclical nature of businesses so those boom times ever last. And so the smart, the smart companies would be the ones who build for the future knowing things will have a downturn because they always do. But our human nature is to let things lag a little bit so all these companies could survive without much effort in the marketing. And then all of a sudden, hey, there's not so much work and we need to fight harder and we need to market. And so the technology needed to be introduced from a marketing standpoint as a tool to attract new clients in. So that's been the fun times in the last for sure, a few years and certainly throw AI into the mix and that's, you know, amplifying and accelerating everything that we do. It's a whole, it's, it's an exciting and terrifying time we're living in right now. I think some people are going to be left behind, some companies are going to be left behind, industries are going to change.
And so it's our job, yeah, to stay on, on top of this stuff for our clients and guide them on the journey and the path in the world in which we play. And so the websites, the SEO, we're calling it search everywhere optimization. So effectively, to get your site viewed and get found and noticed and chosen.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Well, I have to imagine that, you know, typically, you know, if you're dealing with the trades and construction industry, you know, they're thinking that, you know, when they think of social media, they're thinking of either some sort of actress, actor, you know, a Nike shoe to sell, you know, here you are, your product speaks for itself. This wonderful building one of a trade that you're doing.
That person's not really thinking that they need to have a TikTok or a Instagram page, you know, and then here they are, somebody coming up to them and saying, no, listen, you have to have a digital strategy to be, you know, at the forefront of your innovation. So they had to really change a lot of business habits and practices that were ingrained for some of them, centuries. Right. Because they always operated by word of mouth, they always dealt with their quality and their team. And now they have to bring in outside people such as yourself to say no. In order to be in a digital era, this is what you need to do. How difficult are those conversations?
[00:08:19] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and it depends on who we're working with. Sometimes as a, the bigger companies we work with, they'll have a marketing person within the entity and they're often fairly young and savvy and obviously really progressive in their thoughts. So in those instance instances, it's a matter of coming alongside that person and supporting them as best we can so they can, so they can then go to their boss and communicate the value of what it is that we're trying to achieve. So. But there's such, it's such a goldmine oftentimes. You mentioned that the work speaks for them, for itself. Well, it does, but you've got to have it in front of people to see it. So, I mean, depends on the nature of the business. But the before and after, if there's some massive renovation of a. Of a home or a commercial property or whatever it is, it's a visible. There's something visual and tangible in a way that you can communicate. So social media does really well for that kind of stuff and just set up little systems to do that, to draw people into your world, just even to remember you exist. Because it's just so busy, everyone's distracted and. Yeah, so if they see your little projects show up or you talking about what you're up to, from time to time, they go, oh, there's that guy. And when I need him, I'll reach out, you know?
[00:09:37] Speaker A: You know, I thought it was funny. I was going through some of your Instagram, some of your social media, and one of the things I love that you said was stories sell, facts justify. Right. And you actually pulled yourself back when you say that. You know, what you're like. That makes a lot of sense, you know, because at the end of the day, like, everybody loves a great story, but the facts actually matter. So how do you intertwine the both, you know? Can you expand on that a little bit? I thought that was fascinating.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, stories, they're so powerful. They're kind of how we're wired as humans. Every culture, every doesn't matter where it is in the world. You know, historically there's been an aspect of storytelling to communicate ideas. So I think it's just embedded in how we are and how we understand things. Even analogies and real stories or analogies, these sorts of things really resonate with people. So there's that aspect of just how we learn stuff, but also the facts. Once you've got attention and people are looking to purchase something, they're looking to solve a problem, and you might be the solution, bring it of that. They really do want to know what's in it for them and what's the outcome they're trying to achieve. Sometimes we get locked in on the process too much because we're in our businesses and we're technicians and we know how to do the work and get it all done. And there's a process and there's some. Lots of things that are really important. There's only going to be a few things that are really important to the end customer because they don't care necessarily of every step, but they want to know the final outcome. And it's a quality outcome and it fits exactly what their need is and it's going to be a long term solution to their problem, ideally, if that's, if that's possible. Yeah. So the story, so the different ways in communicating to get the same thing. So a story can be a really great hook, particularly in noisy spaces like social media. I mean, everyone's there killing time. They're not there for any specific purpose. They're not there trying to buy your thing, they're there wasting time and scrolling. And that's just the nature of these tools. And I mean, I don't love the way in which we're going with all of that, but it's where people are. So you've got to be where your customers are at and to engage them in some way and that's an effective way of doing it.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Well, I thought it was fascinating when you talked about, you know, you always have to evolve. You know, I just watched a documentary on Puma versus Adidas and for people who are a little unfamiliar, those were brothers, you know, the Dazzler brothers. Right. And the corporate. Both headquarters are literally in the same small town in Germany. But I thought it was fascinating when they were talking about how the, you know, they started, you know, athletic wear. They were the pioneers and they're still multi billion dollar successful companies. But when you talk about failure to innovate, they're even interviewing, you know, some of, you know, they showed archive footage of the brothers and Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, wanted to get them in the running shoes with Adidas and Adidas turned it down because they said, no, you don't run, you know, on concrete. You don't, you run in the, you know, they, they still had only one focus and then lo and behold, because they, they missed that mark. So even successful companies can have a hole in their game that a new, you know, a new entry is like, this is where it's going to be at. Right. And so when you said that people kind of got happy servicing their customers and the customers will always be buying. Well, they have a purchasing department that's always looking at pricing and different strategies and they're not always going to come in the door if you fail to innovate and you don't notice. Certain.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. That's the job of the entrepreneur, isn't it? To see the future somewhat or perceive where it might be going and to have a dream of what life might look like with a different sort of solution. And, and part of that is, particularly in the early days if something's genuinely unique, is to communicate that value to, to others so they can either get on board with it because oftentimes that's what we need to do or to buy in, be an early adopter and, and get involved. So these things can be difficult and they need leadership to, to, to make those brave decisions sometimes. I mean just with the opportunities that AI bring obviously there's just going to be so many of these opportunities popping up and it's just abundance of ideas and things able to be done faster and cost effectively. So it's going to be really interesting to see who the big winners are in the next few years and even couple of years and see what happens.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Well, I think it's also fascinating too and kind of in your same field of work is that companies that typically didn't have competition are now having competition from different sectors of business that typically they wouldn't. Right. So you know even you know in, in the construction industry right now. Right. So you know you have to, you have to deal with AI, right. When it comes to being able to write certain graphic designs of how things looking as opposed to having that person that would manually draw things out and they have to utilize those tools. Right. Or even if you know, just to segue a little bit in the business. If you're in the self defense systems, right. You know you're Lockheed Martin's Boeings then you have to compete with high tech companies that have people who can create drones. Right. Before that was just your little space you bid. People bought it at the price you agreed to and now you never had to think twice about it. But now like you said, with the advent of AI technology has allowed multiple competitors and ultimately the quality is going to rise to the top. My question is, is though, how do you put a cap on what's valid information to give to a customer? Because you made a point of having, you know, SEO optimization but now people have to SEO optimize chat GTP as well.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And we're living in an abundance of information. It can be overwhelming. So there's just so much out there and we can't, it's so hard to discriminate between quality and what's not so much got anything behind it because we can produce content at scale rapidly now obviously everyone knows and everyone's doing it. Just jump on ChatGPT and ask for an article about anything and you can publish that in your website and it will read pretty well and it'll have a lot of good points and so it's so appealing to just jump on the tools and do that. And even video we're seeing amazing videos produced now, amazing now. But imagine what it's going to be in a year or two's time. It's just really the early days of all this stuff. So the content production is easy and getting easier and easier but the message in which that to create a message which will stand out, that has some substance behind it and it's bringing something new to the world is going to be what wins because as you can imagine so we work with search engine optimization so does show up as highly as it could can in Google but also to show up in all the large language models and they're all trying to achieve the same thing. A lot of people get stuck on the geeky kind of words and how it all works in the tech but they're all trying to surface the most important, most relevant information for the person. I'm looking for an answer to something so right you've got to be the one, you've got to be the business who's publishing something that's genuinely adding value to the world. That's difficult and in such a noisy space. But the way to get to that point is to really think about what sets you apart, what makes you unique, what's your unique point of view. And those things are the key things that you really need to focus in on. Dial in on exactly who you are as a business and a brand, personal brand, a company brand and get this dialed in so you can communicate that effectively because it's genuinely unique. It's got the potential to show up in, in the search engines in large language models. They're all trying to bring the best to the top.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: Wonderful. Well, you know I have two kind of questions that kind of lead into each other. Number one is, is your business focused exclusively in just Australia in that area like for the most of your clientele base in the digital era. And then number two, what is your onboarding process like when it comes to okay, you small medium sized business and what's the ideal customer client base of where they're at, you know size employee wise?
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's not just Australia, although probably the majority is here just out of simplicity because I'm known here and one thing leads to the next lots of referrals obviously as most small businesses do but also just the targeting of the, the reach I get online seems to be mostly Australia but obviously we can service anybody and we, and we do. We've got clients everywhere, all around the world.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: Wonderful.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: But yeah, so that's that aspect. The second aspect was. Oh. So onboarding companies and how that goes, goes around. So, yeah, so it all starts with a meeting, a strategy call with me. So we've got a small team, we're a small business, but it's the strategy call with me and just to figure out how we partner with the company. Because as I said, sometimes we're working. The ideal clients will have a marketing person, or at least someone responsible for marketing in the company, not necessarily the founder. The founder will typically make decisions, but there's somewhere in the middle, someone in the middle getting the grunt work done. So it's a matter of figuring out their skill set and how we come alongside. So oftentimes with these companies, they'll be able to do the social media posting, for example, or they might be able to do some of the blog writing, for example, or updating the website to a degree. So it's a matter of figuring out exactly what their skill set is, but what strategy we're going to apply for them. So it's. In those instance instances, it's about coming alongside that person to make them look great to their boss effectively.
So their boss can. Yeah, the boss can see, see the outcome and make the decision. Yes, that's correct. That's great. Let's. Let's go live with it. Or that's published that. So they're, they're the ideas. Sometimes it's slightly smaller and you're dealing with a founder, which is, which is a different kettle of fish, but it's still exciting. It's just that in those instances we're probably taking on more of the project.
So both have benefits. But yeah, it's great working with founders because you can really draw out a business will be typically a reflection of the. The founder themselves as well their values and what matters to them. It's a reflection of how they are. So it's really good in those instances we can really draw out from the founder what's important to them and really get those unique points of view across.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: Well, I think it's fascinating too. You know, you mentioned that it's very important to sometimes outsource to experts. Right. Because too often, you know, people gravitate towards what they're good at and they ignore what they're bad at.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: I mean, it's just like that. Whether you do, whether you work out, whether you eat, whether it's sports, in life, we tend to really avoid the things that we're not really good at. And so when you're the founder and when you have had successful, you know, a service that you provide but you're not necessarily a great marketer but you provide a great product, you have to be willing to be acknowledgement of that quote unquote hole in your game and say, listen, I need to reach out to Russ Towers and Uplift360 to be able to grow my business in the way that I'm incapable of because I don't have the marketing digital digitization strategy that I should.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: Yeah, well that's it. I mean I think every business should be doing the same for areas that they're not experts in. I mean a lawyer for, I mean I pay my lawyer more than I pay myself, that's for sure. From time to time when we need stuff done or I mean they're counting and you got to get this stuff exactly right. And it's true with marketing as well because a cheap but non effective website is costly because all those opportunities you're missing out on each and every week, it's such a, it's a no brainer. Once you do the math and figure out okay, what's it going to mean if we just get a, you know, edge out 20, 20% more business through the website because we got it done right and we're going to keep that website for the long term.
The math just makes sense once you, once you sort of think about it in those ways.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: Right. And you know, and to your point, because the customer or the client or potential client, bad mouth travels very, very, very fast in the social media era and it, and it doesn't take long before so all those five star reviews, if you look at your aggregate average, if you just have five, five star reviews and you have one four, well then you're already down to my math is terrible, but ain't five anymore. Right. So all it takes is one mediocre semi okay experience in this era to suddenly drag that number down. Even though you know your product is well serviced, it doesn't get to quote unquote, hide like it used to. Not yours in particular, but a company's as well. Bad practices that were allowed or slid aren't allowed in this era right now. Right. It just isn't. And that's just the facts. Yeah.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: And we're all looking for those clues behind on the scenes because we know that people can say anything they want about their businesses and they can produce really polished material but there might not be genuine authority or substance behind it. So we do tend to look closer at things like Google Reviews because we know it can't be manipulated in the same way. Now people do try to, and that's super risky because you can get and all sorts of stuff, those that try and cheat their way through those systems. But that's what we're looking. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's surprising what people will try. I get in my email inbox from time to time, companies trying to write fake reviews and stuff.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Unbelievable.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: Would never, never advise going down that path. But we know that there's some sort of level of believability behind those things. So getting those sorts of signals is really powerful. I've, I've found probably the last. I don't know how many, but a good portion of the more recent business being done. They've all, all mentioned the Google reviews.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Beautiful.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: So it just shows to me anecdotally that, that people are probably reading a bunch of stuff online, bumping into all sorts of things, but I've not known it to be of this weight until recently. It just seems as though people are trying to look behind the veil and see the substance and trying to figure out is this legit? Because so much out there isn't.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: And I think that's important too because, you know, at the end of the day is that as fast as information is, you still have to be an informed consumer. You still have to be an informed listener. You can't take everything at face value. And the other important part about it is too is that even though you have a splashy website, there's, there's actual substance behind the product that you, that you've created and substance behind what you've done. And you have testimonials and all the list of the companies that work with and people, because they absorb information in very short amount of time, if they see that, then they automatically know that they want to be on board because they're like, okay, he's worked with all these companies and sometimes they just need to see that to make an informed decision. And then a lot of times people who will just say, great, I want, I've been wanted this thing off my plate. Thank God for Wes and his team. You know what I mean? I wouldn't want nothing to do with digitization and SEO and strategy. They don't want to talk about it.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Right, right, yeah, yeah. They just want to know that they can trust someone to, to do it for them and, and to be as hands off as they, as they can in a lot of circumstances, just to handball it and to focus on, on what they're really great at and, you know, sure. Grow the business in their area of expertise.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: It's like you're like the personal trainer, right? Like, you're the client. Is the client that shows up for the workout. Like, they can. Yeah, I can eat and I can work, but I, you know, your job is to have the workout for me, so to speak. I'm supposed to adhere to it. You tell me what I need to do outside of the training sessions that we're having to maintain this particular physique, but I don't want to be researching it myself all day. Right. That's not, you know, that's the job of the personal trainer, so to speak, you know.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. We want the results and to find the best way and most efficient and effective way to get to those results.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I always ask this of every guest, and this has been an absolute pleasure. How can people find uplift360 West Towers in Australia all the way across the world?
[00:25:05] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks so much. It's uplift360.com an Aussie website. And as we said before, we deal with international clients, of course, as well. And so from there, you can book that strategy call that I mentioned. So there's a big button right on the homepage there, so if anyone's super keen, they can book with me. But also there's all the social media you'll find there as well.
[00:25:26] Speaker A: And, you know, you have wonderful things about key performance metrics and all the other tools for successful businesses as well, too. So there's lots of different pieces of information that people can navigate as well, too. Wes Towers, it has been an absolute honor and a pleasure, and I really appreciate you coming on the Randomness of Nothing podcast. For everybody listening, please hit the subscribe button. Thank you, Wes.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: Thank you. It's been a real privilege.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: Thank you, sir. Appreciate you.
