Brett Campbell, Co-Founder at Claxon | The Five Lenses Of Marketing

The only podcast you need for your business, let's do this. Welcome to the sales versus marketing podcast, I'm your host, Scott. Join me as we explore and demystify the latest trends, technologies and strategies used to achieve massive growth in 10X businesses. I'll be sitting down with sales, marketing and business leaders, dissect what's worked for them, dispel myths and deliver actionable insights that you can use to ensure repeatable, sustainable and predictable revenue in your business. Welcome to the sales versus marketing podcast where we speak with sales, marketing and business leaders. I'm your host, Scott. And today I'm going to be speaking with Brett Campbell, who is a co-founder and chief evangelist for Clarkson. Now, Clarkson is a strong marketing agency out of Australia. They are the winner of the 2018 Best Social Media Agency of the Year, as well as the 2019 marketing agency of the year, keeping in mind they've only been around for three years. So Brett has a really strong past and obviously he's bringing that experience to Clarkson. He is a serial entrepreneur. He has scaled businesses to multi-million dollar figures in the past. He is an extremely proficient marketer and strategist. What he's brought through Clarkson is the ability to innovate, deliver holistic end-to-end strategy for companies that really just cuts through the noise and delivers repeatable, sustainable growth and return on investment for marketing dollars and add dollars spent. So I'm very, very excited to sit down with Brett. I'm going to let him introduce. He is also a public and keynote speaker. So he's probably going to introduce Clarkson way better than I can. So let's just kick it off then. So talk about who you are and we'll go a little bit more into your background, but just who you are, what you're doing now and what Clarkson is. Well, that's a huge question. Who am I? It took me 36 years to uncover who the actual answer to that. But I would class myself as a serial entrepreneur, an individual who has either an on switch or an off switch. There's really no media, because there's no metal line. I'm the kid that grew up thinking differently to a lot of my friends. I grew up a very trapped, as I call it, entrepreneur. I didn't even know what entrepreneur was. I didn't come from a town of entrepreneurship at all. Like for me, I grew up in a very low socioeconomic area to put context around that was across the road from where I lived, was the mongrel mob, I guess, let's call it pad, that's where they all caught up. It's a big gang. They caught up on their motorbikes, come around. Behind us two streets back was the black power gang, so they were rivals. We directly behind my house was the weirdest thing I've ever seen when I think about this. Imagine living in a housing commission sort of area, so it was housing, public housing. We had a section which had a little bit of land, let's call it 900,000 square meter sections. There's a bit of grass there, but not enough to house horses on. Neighbors directly behind us had two horses in their backyard, unbelievable, like they'd be putting their head. I literally say that I lived on a farm, but I didn't know I was in an actual public area and these guys had horses in their backyard. Come from very humble beginnings, I kicked out a high school at 16 because I talk too much, which is funny. I get paid now to speak and speaking actually is what I do as well, so it's quite ironic when you look back at it, but it was just misguided for me. I got kicked out because I was not focused on school. I was good at three subjects, woodwork, physical education and lunch. I realized I wasn't going to get paid to eat, physical education back then, it wasn't really an industry, so the only thing left for me to try out was woodwork. I always knew that I was destined for something different, right? This is, I think when I talk about this, a lot of entrepreneurs, it sort of vibrates with inside of them because they're like, yeah, yeah, I feel very similar, and I've had the luxury of talking to thousands of entrepreneurs and whether it's in live events or talking on podcasts and so forth, but there's this difference, we're bred differently and we think differently. You can hear all these big speeches around where the misfits, where the ones that are helping move this world forward and I truly do believe that, but at the time I had no idea, I just thought I was, you know, a distracted young man, which is exactly what I was. So long story short, fell into an apprenticeship, became a cabinet maker, I knew from day one it wasn't what I was destined to do, got out of there five years later, right? So I stuck it out. I had that mentality, though, you know, if I start something, I've got to finish it off. I've got to see it through and my mindset's very different on that now and we can talk about that, but, you know, fast forward to what 12 years ago I was so fed up in life that I had, I felt like I was just not living a life like I was just conforming to society and I jumped on an aeroplane, moved from New Zealand where I grew up to Australia, became a fitness professional, funnily enough, still wasn't going to get paid to eat, so the fitness was still there, right? I wasn't too bad. You tried the next thing on the list? Yeah, I tried the next thing on the list and became a personal trainer, became really good at it, uncovered online marketing, became really good at it, built the fastest growing fitness franchise in Australia, the fastest growing fitness college here in Australia, sold tens of thousands of online products and programs and generated hundreds of thousands of people on our databases and fast forward to a couple of years ago started Clexon, which is a digital growth agency where we specialize in paid advertising, growing and scaling companies. And, you know, recent we just took up the 2018 Best Social Media Agency, the Year Award and we just won the 2019 Marketing Excellence Award, which is extremely exciting. So we just also launched in, very close to you. We launched our first office in America four days ago, actually in California, so lots happening. It's exciting, that's an incredible journey. How did you, how did you stumble into marketing and be so successful at it? Because you just started being a personal trainer and how many personal trainers don't delve into marketing. Very, very, very, very good point there because you were right, I actually had the luxury of working in a big box gym, so I went to a big gym chain, so I was a fitness first over here in Australia. And I naturally, for what got me kicked out of school, right, which was speaking, I naturally had what my mother always called the gift of the gab, right? I was always able to have a conversation with anyone like a stranger. I was never afraid to go up to someone and just spark up a conversation. And that comes back to my curiosity as well, which I think is a, is a one of the key pillars and probably the most effective thing I've ever been able to, to utilize, to generate any success and any error of life. I think you've got to remain super curious, right? So I was curious and I'd, I'd walk up the people on the gym floor and go, hey, how, how you doing? What are you training? How's it all going? Oh, hey, would you like to, yes, see a variation of what you're doing there and done it and then I'd go through it. And I didn't know what I was doing at the time. I was just doing what I thought I had to do, go up and talk, right? But what I was doing was I was going up, I was building rapport. I, um, you know, was educating them, right? Which is what he needs to do to move someone along the, the buy readiness scale, which again, didn't even know that was a thing. But I was just naturally doing it, became really good at it, filled up clients really quickly. And then I realized once again, probably for the third time in my life that, hmm, this isn't really the thing that I really want to be doing, right? I knew that I was, I was put on this planet to do something better and bigger. And I wanted to have a bigger impact. And, you know, I was, I was working for the hours as a personal trainer, being part time psychologist, counselor, you know, you name it best friend to like 30 different types of people, different personalities. And it was an interesting ride, learned a lot more about myself. But I was walking out one afternoon to go and train clients. And I walked past my roommate's computer and I seen a PDF document and had a guy standing in an image next to it, he was squatting, I was like, oh, it looks like he's doing a squat. And I said to my, to my roommate, I said, oh, what's, what's that? And she goes, I just bought a workout program, $37. I'm like, what? You bought, my first thought was white and you paying me to train you, right? That was my first thought. I was like, oh, yeah, you got me. Yeah, simultaneously. Simultaneously, though, I was like, hmm, he just, that dude literally made money while he slept. He's in America. He made money while he slept. That's night time. I was like, there's that thing where people can say you make money while you sleep. It was the first ever time it really landed on me. I was like, wow, that's, that's impactful. So I just became obsessed with online marketing and and psychology and influence and persuasion and what it took for people to to purchase and, and you know, just sent me on this journey. And the online marketing was just a byproduct of me having to learn a skill in order for me to fulfill what my greater vision was, which at this time was just to impact more people, right? Is, is, and, and it was that it's important to frame it like this that the internet marketing, the, the me sitting up at, you know, from nine p.m. when I'd get home from training clients to 3 a.m. in the morning learning how to html code because there was no drag and drop builders back then. You know, I was learning at html code, testing different shopping carts, all of this stuff like that was just a necessary evil towards me achieving my go. I never wanted to become an internet marketer. I never want to become a marketer. You know, I'm sort of no one as this sort of social media marketing sort of business guy. But that's just the skills that I've learned to be able to do what I do really well as grow and scale companies, right? Marketing is just one channel of that. So might pick a pot whatever you want there. No, that's, no, that's, that's, that's a lot. So I like the progression and I like your story a lot and that's really what I wanted to get out because I think the story is, is, to lead you to where you are today it makes a lot more sense now because you're very entrepreneurial by nature and I think that that curiosity like you mentioned is something that I love to do too and I really do want to make this all about you and Clarkson. But it struck a chord with me when you're speaking about just learning all these ridiculous things that you never wanted to have to learn just just because you have to learn them and and how that turns you into such a strong for yourself an internet marketer growth agency you've built an entire brand around it. But the the takeaway for that is really for people that are earlier on in their career or if they're looking to start their own thing or if they want to do a side hustle it's like just that that constant stage state of learning and just and just trying new things and breaking stuff and and and just pushing yourself to know all these things that now look at what you've done with it and now that's your livelihood. So you're something there that I'll speak to which I think is really important especially for anyone who's looking to endeavour on a entrepreneurial journey or they're like how do I start a company you know how do I go from just me sitting in my sitting my underwear and my bedroom on a you know sick-in-hand table and that's where it started for me right um going how do I actually build something that's bigger than me because if you ever want to have an impact and every person I talk to that it even has a slight entrepreneurial or entrepreneurial or one entrepreneurial trait they all want to affect and have an impact bigger than themselves and I'm here to tell you this right now that the only way you're ever going to be able to do that is to build a team of people an amazing team of people lead a team of people because you cannot do everything I thought I was the guy who could do everything I could build the funnels I could write the sales copy I'll shoot the video I'll set up the audio I'll do all of this and that and you know I'll even be the customer service person because I'm the best at replying to those customer service you know complaints or whatever it is and it's exhausting right it gets exhausting you know and the quest of building an amazing team of people to that buy also into your vision because what we also need to understand is you know and I'm talking the entrepreneur who just can't sit still the person who and to give you context is when I build our fitness franchise in the first six months when we launched well from day one when we launched we had over 170 fitness professionals express interest in becoming an owner business owner I was like oh my gosh right we had 35 locations up and running in the first six months full steam ahead and then I realized something happened in my lap but I was like oh my god what have I just done like why'd you build a franchise are you didn't even sit down bread and think about this you didn't really you did a bit of a future plan ago yeah let's have a thousand locations and let's do this and let's do that but I it was that I I shot first I shot again I shot again and I kept shooting and then I decided to aim and then I decided to think about it right I did it like in reverse it was and and this is where it lies back to just because you could it doesn't mean you should right I this is an ethos that I live by now because um I no longer have the franchise right so that's the end that's the that story in the sense that and I knew that I never was going to continue it to to speak because I knew deep deep deep deep deep down that it that wasn't the path right I mean there's a there's a whole bigger conversation around that but I share this because what happens is when people are in jobs or people are looking for a transition into I want to go and do this now it's like get super clear like get super clear on what it is you want to do why you want to do that what's the impact if you do do it what's the impact if you don't do it who's this going to affect other than yourself in your life if you say yes or you say no right you need to really intentionally think about what you're about to embark on right is that is that what you did with Clarkson yes yeah very methodical very different way of approaching and and building the business um which was quite interesting because that that you know and I still have my company fit international which is uh you know as a global fitness company but um very very different approaches um but it comes back to this concept of just because you could it doesn't mean you should you know like for people looking to make the transition there's so many opportunities right now like there's so many low hanging pieces of low hanging fruit that people can go you know what it's got to be better than my job so I'm just going to do it it's like no like you know trust me I'll become a affiliate marketer um I was you know I did the SEO thing I did like everything I was like yeah I'll do it I'll do it I'll do it it just became a yes man right which back in the day it was it was I feel it was probably a little bit easier to do that because now to get penetration in certain industries and marketplace and so well this is that's a little bit harder you've got a little bit be a little bit more intelligent around it um so just really thinking through what it was and what it is that someone wants to do is a massive starting point I don't even know um what your original question was just to let you know I think it was no no no you you went on a really good uh a really good rant and uh and you're like a walking motivational quote with some of the stuff that you're dropping right now so I appreciate it but um I was I was speaking about how you were more methodical in building a Clarkson and more more importantly how did you build it out the second time the lessons learned that you incorporated so it wasn't such a shit show right yeah yeah um so the the biggest thing from day one was what is the actual end outcome right Stephen Covey seven habits high-effective people one of the habits begin with the end of mind such an important principle in everything in life um I was that gun hoe when I was in this like it was almost like imagine letting yeah so we got I got two pugs right yeah two little pug dogs and every morning when we let them out of of the laundry um to go outside we have this thing called pugtona right and basically as they run out of the laundry there's a swooping bend that goes into the lounge and living area and it's almost like they've got to come out of their door and they just do this consistent arc like they're drifting like they're drift cars right and their legs are moving five times faster than they need to be because they're getting on the timber floors right and they're like out of the gates a hundred million miles an hour right they're out the door and then all of a sudden it's like they're just chilled right and pugs are generally chilled in nature but I was when I got released to this world that Brett you can do it over the hell you want me you're not governed now by someone telling you what to do you don't have a boss anymore your own boss made I was like pugtona all day every day right I just couldn't be stopped like when I was building our fitness franchise from I was like you know what let's build another online product right because back then and I was driven by a number of different things as well um but we could do a product launch and do six figures in a couple of days quite comfortably right because we had the database we had the audience and so forth right so there was this big attract in that cheese if we build another product that's amazing again it always has to be a back great product yeah we can we can have a nice and lots of cash it's like well would you not especially when I was going 20 dollars an hour as a cabinet maker I was earning 800 bucks a week working my ass off harder than I've ever worked in my entire life right so this this big thing the opportunity to be able to serve your audience but then also make you know good money from it as well was very very attracting so I was like cool middle of this launched a franchise I'm like okay how do I build another info product well you're going to have to get up at 3am so I work from 3am till 9am building info product 9am till 5pm when the team come in was franchise mode and everything else mode around the company and then from 5pm till like 7 8 9pm I'd be working on the info product again and this was a month this was a month out from Christmas too mind you like there was like there was so many things telling me not to do this or maybe slow it down a bit but that was just the you know again that reference of pugtonos moving a million miles an hour right so the difference back to your question around what have I done differently now is from day one going where do we want to take this business how do we want to build this what does this company actually going to represent you know from day one we want to there's a massive opportunity in this industry right now in this space like the digital growth the social media space and we we call ourselves a digital growth agency for a number of reasons one is we're not just a social media agency we grow businesses using digital right we're not interested in just running campaigns right even though we cover social we cover all the social channels you know Facebook Instagram Pinterest Snapchat LinkedIn cover all the search right Google the Google suite YouTube yeah programmatic we cover all the online space TV on demand advertising and then of course deep data so we've got the four horsemen right and that's because that's the key like we don't do any organic social posting none of that because none of that really matters if you're what it does in in a silo but people can do that themselves or hire Janet you know straight out a high school to do that stuff right some coffee for the website you're you're optimizing your you're dealing with big ad budgets and yeah we're we're getting results that's yeah that's what we're here for we're all about return on investment our conversations are very different than a lot of the you know accidental agencies right now the people who you know got asked by their friend hey do you know to run Facebook ads oh yeah I ran too and then then all of a sudden they picked up a client they got another client so there's a lot of that happening right now right that's just like any new industry that happens that just happens so we're in this weird space right now in this industry where we're like two and a half years into this now I know agencies have been around for a long time you know more the SEO the different side of things but from a pay to play perspective we're really at the forefront of well we're pioneering we're helping pioneer this space right so it gives us a very unique opportunity to look at going well what opportunities are there in the industry there's a massive dire need right now for businesses to be able to partner with you know and work with agencies who know what they're doing yeah and that are revenue generated and not just you know that we effectively on our clients consistently about scaling scaling scaling their own business right I mean it's almost like an inbuilt buddy sort of mentoring advisory type scenario as well right but there's a reason for that because to substantiate you know the done for you services you need to be getting results and and growing it month on month on month right ideally so I want to actually ask you something quick because you you so you just to just to sort of wrap up we're talking about before so you've built this business out very purposefully with this idea in mind this is the be angle that you want to be for your clients but your playing in space is also very noisy so that's just to bring that to a close yep but how do you so now different different line of questioning just in terms of what you're doing now how do you differentiate yourself in such a such a competitive industry where you're dealing with the kid that ran Facebook ads twice and the person buying is not is they're not so educated right so the people that are dealing or purchase I don't have this the resources in house and I'd actually love to know who your target customer is and who you try to go after and and who works best with you but how do you differentiate and sort of make noise yes so there's a book called Play Bigger and it's in that book there's a concept called Category Kings and I read this couple years ago you've read it yeah so you get the concept of you know trying to pioneer a space digital growth for us digital growth agency is we're pioneering that space because there's not a lot of people out there talking the language they're not representing themselves in a way as we do right like we we do not have conversations about us running ads for you that's a very very different scenario we partner with businesses we're essentially your bolt-on marketing division that's going to grow and scale your company where what CMOs need right we are exactly what CMOs need because we are an entire team of experts within side our organization and because I say and and I'll preface that because everyone will say that everyone's an expert in their own thing I get it but there's a real key makeup of skill sets that you need to really win in this space we now live in an omnichannel world okay to grow and scale businesses no longer Facebook ads is the only thing that's really going to be the best for you you know and anyone who says nah Facebook is the best the site have you thought about utilizing Snapchat whether do you thought about utilizing LinkedIn how about Pinterest how about any of the Google search and Google sweet and YouTube etc etc right because we live in this omnichannel approach people are multiple different channels now so we don't just run ads we create world-class strategies that build and scale businesses and there's five lenses that I'll share with you that like if you want to have effective campaigns and you want to grow and scale any business from a marketing perspective at a paid level these these are the skills that we need okay and these are departments within side our business okay and this will quickly debunk and demith why Robert is not the best solution for you if and when I say Robert I'm saying Robert who's a solopreneur who's an ad expert he's not the best solution for your business if you want to grow and scale it now could he do good of course Robert's out there making wins and and doing good but if you've always got to think about can you do better are you in business just to do good or do you want to do the best that your business possibly can like I want it I want to squeeze as much juice out of the orange as we possibly can vary business and that comes back long term that's exactly right it's not we don't do short-term let's do a let's do a campaign and see how it goes so that's not how you build a business so why would you adopt a marketing strategy like that it's actually ridiculous right and for a lot of businesses especially solopreneurs and businesses doing you know maybe they've just hit their first six figures and you know even businesses doing seven figures I you know under 10 mill still sort of have this sort of mindset of marketing and you said this at the very start you know you're the sales VP and you got thrown marketing or something like that it's like that's ridiculous that anyone's throwing marketing to someone like marketing is a specialised and in my view the most important role in any organisation because without leads and customers you ain't got nothing I would actually I was going to agree with you I was going to say in startup land I think it's more important to hire VP marketing over VP sales as your first hire because as a CEO founder you can sell the product and if you have a VP marketing that can do lead gen and generate interest then once you have too much interest for yourself to sell through to then you can worry about scaling a sales team but that's that's just my personal opinion but I agree with you that marketing isn't incredibly important I look at a lot of this if if your marketing is good enough your sale will be easy right the shittier your marketing the shittier your brand the shittier your first experience was someone the harder your sales team has to work right so it just makes sense that marketing would be the first because marketing the sales you know sort of have this weird relationship where they can almost be part of each other right where they essentially are but again marketing to me is absolutely vital it's the bloodline to any business right so the five lenses that I'll share with you is the first and if we're thinking of this in terms of you know the the person out there who thinks okay Robert can do my Facebook ads just use that in this example so the first lens that you need to look at and the reason why I call these lenses is it's it's part of another framework that I teach in another company I have good unleashed greatness which is all about you know becoming the best version yourself and and achieving what you want in life and so on and so on and so forth more the personal development self-help type stuff right um the and what you need to do is you need to wear a different set of lenses when you're looking at something right if something's not working for you take off the lenses that you're looking at and put on some new ones but each lens has to have a set of rules a set of guidelines a set of viewpoints and ways that you'd look at life and look at things right so if we put the first little lenses on and that's the technician right the ad technician so technician is the analytical minded person right they're the data driven the number driven right number driven type person they're the person that is sitting in the ad account let's call it and setting up the ads and targeting the ads and looking at the insights and looking at all the analytics and making pivots and changes where necessary okay that's a technician those lenses are very very different compared to the next lens that you need to create a fantastic campaigns and winning campaigns is that of the creative total opposite right pole opposite an analytical person and a creative person two different people mentally right so poor old Robert has to be an analytical person now Robert has to flip and be creative now I know there's people sitting there going I can be analytical and creative because I was one of those arrogant people and I said yeah yeah I can but can you do it to its most effectiveness I am far more creative than I am analytical I had to teach myself to become analytical but does that mean just because I I know basically I know maths and I can look at data and stuff that I should be the person doing it to get optimum results right important distinction there the creative two lenses with inside that one of them is the creative thinker the person coming up with the concept right so for example if we're running ads for a bread company right let's call it and the creative thinker is like yeah we need to we need to put arms and legs on this piece of bread and it's going to it's going to jump out of the toaster and run around the street and blah blah blah it's going to meet Mr. Evercar and he's going to jump on his back and whatever the case right so that's the creative thinker then there's the creative designer the person who knows how to actually bring that Mr. Toast and Evercar together and make it look like something right because ideas are a dime a dozen it's the execution on the idea yeah so there's two different lenses within a creative person the third lens is that of the copyrighter right you need words that compel you need to be the wordsmith the person that ushers someone along the red velvet carpet that ushers them along the buyer I call it the buyer readiness scale right you know when your buyer is ready to be asked for the sale on a scale of one to ten you might say at a seven we're ready to ask for the sale what do we need to do to get someone to a number seven right so the copyrighter will ushers them along with their words and and you know take them through this trance of you're lying in bed you're on your phone you're scrolling all of a sudden you're checking out you've just checked out and you bought something like how did that happen well the technician had to do his job or her job the creative had to do their job and the copyrighter used words but this is where it becomes really important because a lot of people do possess you know some some creative opportunity they can use Canva that was me right I was the Canva guide I couldn't use Photoshop to save myself but it didn't stop me from creating images right it didn't stop me from creating and you can you can you can you can create some damn good looking images of Canva too and I'm telling you my most effective ad that I've ever ran and and before opening collections is important to say I've spent over two million dollars personally on ads before now managing millions and millions but that was of my own money right and the only reason I could spend that was because it was working and converting but my point there is my most effective ad I ever used was just a simple Google image and it was a the first and like literally this is how my mind works I'm like I was creating an ad back then we don't do this now because we have a you know totally different structure because now I want to be in the side of my inside my mind I'm like creating the animal I can't need an image bang straight to Google okay search this keyword bang okay that one will do right click save add it boom upload it and it was a picture of so one of our companies in the health space is around food and recipes and so forth and I had this picture of an overnight oats which was just like just and it had a spoon on the on the pages like this bowl or like a jar sitting on a table that's good enough put it in and I didn't even crop the image properly and I actually like I was in that much of a rush that I didn't even crop the image properly but funnily enough I split tested it off where I went back and crop the image to make it look better versus the uncrop look like I just thrown it in there that ad ran for like oh geez it would be over nine months without even touching it like it was just killing it thousands of thousands of leads come through this ad right now the the point there is was you need to have a creative process that sort of goes back against everything I said that's an anomaly right that's an anomaly doesn't work like that you can't replicate it so who cares if it works you're not going to be able to replicate it so that very true yeah correct so but the point I'm making there back to the fourth lenses that of the strategy right a campaign can work but what's the what's the point of the campaign how's a campaign connected to building and growing and scaling your company right what are your KPIs you need ahead each month right what what are your targets how many sales do you need and don't just arbitrary throw out this number going I'd be nice to have a hundred sales of my course doing this is like yeah but how does that actually fit into the overall strategy what are we doing today that's going to have impact in six months what are we building now this is going to build brand value and reputation right now this can have impact in six 12 18 months because it's not just about the right now it's about the soon to be right because that's how marketing works that's how database building works like literally we had no I was going to say that you're speaking long term I think it's a CEO of BMW who said this and he said if I had shown you an ad for BMW expecting you to buy the cart tomorrow you would have never bought it but if I've shown you that out since you were three years old by the time you're ready to buy a car you think BMW so long yes yeah what do you think Apple gives away computers just kids at school and they've got you know kid disc you know student discounts and because they want them they want to get them as soon as they can like you look at how many kids right now honestly are on iPhones and iPods playing games you think they're going to just jump on to a different device like they are programmed right that's super smart but um the point there's the strategy lens so the strategic person the strategic thinker the person that can see the dots that aren't there and that's what we do really really well right where we have even a further advantage is the fifth lens and this is really our point of difference as well one of our points of differences yeah we do um and you sort of need them in this day and age is that the lens of the business builder okay so the business builder is the person that can sit there and go this is how you grow and scale companies what more outside of the marketing is required what's going to happen in fulfillment what's going to happen at the sales like what if you get a hundred leads a day how are you going to how are you going to actually do that how are you going to build your sales division how are you going to do XYZ right so knowing how to build a company can then get passed down into the strategic person that can can start building that map right and then the the other lenses of the creative the copyright of the technician all come together and build something amazing that is why Robert who charges $2,000 a month right and Vanessa who charges $1,500 a month because she's trying to undercut Robert to get some clients that's why the industry right now is ripe with people having a crack and look I'm all for people having a crack don't get me wrong I've had so many cracks before but what's happening in for us and like we can sit near a complain about it but the best thing to do is what are we going to do about it so we're we're out there starting to educate people on this like this when you hear this you can't unhear it right right now I would almost guarantee and you tell me after hearing those five lenses tell me that you don't have a different perspective on what it takes to actually build it and add now 100% you know 100% and I think that I think you take a lot of this stuff for granted until you hear it broken down so so simply which is yeah because that you know you can't argue it's it's not a there's it's logic it's like you hit all those points and you're like yeah I can't build an ad without that and if I am you know I'm not doing a good job you know why there's not people out there on Facebook or any social platform asking you what number should I put in the w2 field for wages and salaries and my zero I'm accounting software this I don't see any of those questions you know why because you go straight to an accountant yeah your accountant does that stuff right now there's people asking how do I do that should I do campaign budget optimization should I be using carousels dynamic creative dah dah dah dah dah dah it's like why are you even asking that like and trust me I get it because I was the guy that I did all my own marketing and I learned it and all that stuff right but that was because that's how we're programmed to really take this on Facebook has this Facebook has this little blue button this is why Facebook have a little blue button this is boost post the amount of people who go oh this is this post is performing 80% better than every other post you have would you like to boost it so I can get seen by 6700 more people you're like fuck yeah sorry I don't know it's okay but you know and then you're like cool boost would you like to put $10 in a short bang you go $10 and then it goes hey would you like to put another $10 more like double will triple the the amount of people that see like of course I will bang right now you're in this loop of you're starting to advertise you're now Facebook advertiser because you know to boost the post your Facebook advertiser congratulations but is it effective and is it building your business or is it just giving you some ego strokes to say that 84 hundred people viewed this and you got 12 likes you know we need to we need to step out and take digital marketing and and pay to play marketing seriously for what it really is and you either need to become the expert yourself and you need to be obsessed about every aspect of it and learn all of these variables but if you really want it to work successfully in my view is you need to cover all those five lenses and I'm yet to meet one person who is absolutely expert level status and all of them you know I put my hand up and go I'm a good all-rounder in them right I'm very strategic I'm very business minded I'm very good at copywriting I don't I'm good at creating ideas I'm not good at building them I've got no idea I the amount of ideas I go and throw out to the team and they're like that's great and I'm like how do we even build that out that's going to be very hard that'll probably cost us fifty thousand dollars duh duh duh you know like I got the ideas but there's severe lacking in and at least a couple of them you know I learned to be the technical guy but I couldn't think of anything worse for me than to sit down and create a Facebook ad inside ads manager do you see you you do a lot of businesses when do you think or do you see any businesses that can actually take on these five different lenses are we talking like Fortune 500 fortune or 100 companies that do this effectively or not even because here's the reality a lot of our clients come to us because it's such a new industry right this is important distinction to make it's a new industry there's no like there's no one coming out of a university course that is that knows how to do anymore knows how to do Facebook advertising better than anyone in our team you learn on the on the job it changes it's like really you can do courses and you can learn some stuff but you're only going to learn so much right what people really like big businesses think that they can hire a CMO and here in Australia the average lifespan of a CMO so chief chief marketing officer is 18 months do you know why because we've moved from this world of branding first right to now actual ROI driven results and now CMOs are responsible for the lead flow and and sales and so it's you can't the CMO just can't go out but our billboard got seen by 84,000 impressions you know like you guys should be making the sales on the back end it's like CMOs have a big roller plan of business and you can't like and we know this firsthand again because we've interviewed hundreds of people to become a strategist in our team like you can't just go it's not like you're packing boxes you know if we wanted to scale a company and we're packing boxes I could get a thousand people working tomorrow and have them trained in a couple hours on how to pack a box but when you're looking at a brand new skill like Facebook advertising Google advertising Pinterest advertising LinkedIn advertising these are all really new TikTok advertising coming very soon like there's a number of fundamentals that you need to know beyond that right because it's not just can you run an artist like what's your marketing understanding what's your psychology level what your influence understanding you know what do you know about humans and why we do what we do it's such a deep thing and for an organization to go and hire a technician and then hire a creative and then hire a strategist let's call it they're the CMO but I'm yet to really see too many CMOs who are amazing from a strategy level you know they're basically from what I see is is they pull the puppet strings which is cool because that's the sort of level that they're out but they need some really good puppets to pull and the marketplace out there is really low when it comes to highly skilled people in those roles so you what happens is a CMO is faced with the opportunity to go well we need to either build an internal team because these are your only options right this is it black and white you either build an internal team and you need to you can probably make do with you know two to three people you're looking at you know $253,000 salaries to start with that's a massive overhead right or you can partner with an organization that has all of those skill sets right and at a fraction of that what it would cost to even have one team member on your team you could you could again partner with someone or you can learn it yourself you know you can spend your 7 pm to 2 am going through every bit of resource and course and everything that you can but then you have to remain on the forefront of that you need to continually upskill your team everything like we internally and while we know it's very very hard for anyone to be ahead of us is every week we have there's at least two scheduled team training sessions where we're always up skilling we're always on the forefront we've got direct relationships with Facebook and and LinkedIn and all of these platforms even Pinterest where we get the inside scoop what's happening because you have to you have to stay on the front edge you know and it's hard for businesses and solo pronounced even try and do that you know and I again I don't want this to come across like I'm trying to pitch our services at all no there's a point so if the reality is is that it takes more than an individual to try and build a business yeah and and I wanted to ask one more thing because you mentioned the importance of of having these strategists where do you find these strategists or how do you find these people what's the best type of person that fills this role hmm yeah so people firstly the first port of reference is always someone who has pre-existing experience I mean that's always going to trump right for sure um especially in that the executive senior level roles that we hire for you know it's like what what companies if you work for what strategies if you created we'll even at times great mock straight like mock examples hey here's a result that we're looking for how would you go about creating a strategy around this so really do do diligence right um you know I mean strategy for me is I think a it can be a learned skill but it it's quite innate right like I am at the heart of it a problem solver so I'm very very strategic I see dots that others don't even see right and that just happens from a child from my childhood you know um back at school in our primary school and I was about 10 our principal started a class just for me and a friend to to do problem solving because I just I just had this um ability to be out doing I loved it I just love solving problems that's why I tracked a lot right now that I understand the universe thank you universe for sending them but but it's really doing you do diligence right and and a strategic person is a problem solver essentially someone who's always solving problems you know so we always look for that type of quality you know where do you solve problems not even just in a business sense I tell us we did something in life and it was this happened and how did you go about solving it what's your thinking process of how you solve certain things you know like for me I I have a default way of solving problems especially in this industry it's do not come to me with your opinions that are not backed with any facts IE data right because at the end of the day it's all data driven right now of course opinions are fantastic in feelings you know we need to nurture those but you cannot build a company and you cannot make decisions based off feelings right I love I would venture peer I'd say this once and I love this one's like facts don't care about your feelings right yeah and it's true we work your profit and loss sheet does not care about how you feel right so being able to we look for people who love to solve problems people who have to solve problems people who have you know it's a different personality someone who's very strategic is is a different personality than a technician and so on and so forth so there's a number of variables that we look for yeah and do you do find they come from like executive roles or maybe not even maybe it's I was curious about that in particular like yeah so leadership people with inside other teams we've actually found we've got a couple of people inside our team that actually own their own agency and they realized how actual hard it is to build a business and that they actually don't want to build a business you know because there's one thing yeah that's the entrepreneur right there's there's one thing falling in love with marketing and thinking marketing is amazing but then you have to do everything else required to build a business and this is what I was saying earlier like there's a lot of um accident wrong entrepreneurs right Robert and Mary who were doing this they they you know all jokes aside as their one of their friends said hey do you reckon you could run some ads for this person they're like yep cool and then all of a sudden they got like four and a half clients and they're sort of doing something but they're really not they're they're not making any money because you know they're they realize now to run a business cost money and you've got to do all these things and they're they're getting paid less than they would if they're actually working inside an organisation that helped nurture them and and their skill set you know so yeah we've we've we've got people majority of our team actually have have experience in the space um yeah there's a handful that we've actually you know we put through a very vigorous um training and consistent um education pathway which is what's needed because there's not thousands of people out there you know no no we have people turn up for a job and and we grill them or we ask some questions around even let's call Facebook advertising and you know this is going absolutely no idea like I've had someone go yeah I will ask what do you rate yourself out of 10 on on a scale of you know Facebook advertising like your ability to get results are probably about eight eight or nine a month okay cool have you used like dynamic rate of before have you used while what's that like have like geez okay so people's perceptions on what like where they're at in in the industry is exponentially higher than where they actually are at which is which is rather than why there's this whole incorrect um incorrect assumptions about what digital marketing is if very true yeah um okay I want to I want to I want to wrap this up because we've been talking for a bit but that was that was killer like you that was really really good I really enjoyed listening and I just kind of let you go so I appreciate it I'm a lot of really good insight um quick questions for people that are up and coming one one thing you could tell your 20 year old self just one thing what would it be about business about entrepreneur entrepreneurship jokingly I'd say buy stocks in amazon and apple and facebook um but I think on a on a deeper level it would be um understand who you are very very quickly like be obsessed about creating this this thing of awareness and knowing who you truly are and why you're doing what you're doing because one it puts me in a state of absolute peace nine times out of 10 now doesn't mean I don't have days that are terrible and I just like you know I put down the tools type thing I'm done right we all go through that but knowing what I know now on a personal journey on a self-development journey like it for me and we didn't get to talk about this but when I was 25 what shifted me from this crazy entrepreneur pugtona type mentality right to slowing down and being a little more methodical was you know to dear friend of mine she passed away in front of me and it was it just shook me right and it was uh it was this defining moment that it I needed something like that to stop me and slow me down and then to to recalibrate so myself awareness back then just wasn't really I wasn't aware I was just living life every single day doing the same thing you know persevering being relentless and everything that I did but I never really stopped to check in with myself so having the awareness to be able to check in with yourself and and realize that um once you can understand who you truly are you know everything else starts to make sense because I'm guided by a you know a set of internal laws let's call it you know my own rules for life and and um yeah there's there's a framework to living now we don't get taught how to live right we don't get taught how to um you know sit down and and crack goals and and be true to yourself and be true to others and like none of that gets taught you know emotional intelligence is not taught at school when I I would long answer wrapping it up would be to be aware and generate an an amount an enormous amount of emotional intelligence and just live every day as it comes you know so yeah no that's good man that's uh that's that's a good good insight um I've never heard that one before but it everything you're saying is making a ton of sense um I think being self-aware is probably the the one of the only with truly be successful as well and be happy with yourself for that success and let me close this loop because I opened it at the start and I'm glad we got here actually is the number one way for me to create that level of self-awareness was to be able to tap into my curiosity right we had the start I was talking about curious and just being super curious um once I understood what curiosity was and how an impactic has like because I'd be the guy that would always want to find something out like if I see a computer I'm like how does that work like how's that even coming through that screen you know I hear something on TV and I'm like geez my mom used to get annoyed when I was a kid because we'd be watching TV and I'd be asking her hey how does that work or why is that happening she's like looking at the encyclopedia right back then before computer looking at the encyclopedia and I'd be sitting in the encyclopedia trying to figure this out okay that's why that's why the line eats the gazelle right or what happens and so curiosity being able to tap into the curiosity creates this level of self-awareness for me because I'm always I'm checking in and I'm being aware of what I'm thinking about and why I'm thinking about it and you know I think if the world could be far more curious we'd start opening more conversations we'd really get to know people on a better level on a deeper level why do you think that why is that your stance in life you know whether it be political religious or and not about answers and just be open to communicating exactly because you can always you know Jordan Peterson talks about this one of his rules in his book is and the 12 rules for life is assume that the person speaking to you knows something that you do not know that's right yeah and I mean like a mic drop of going it's not a battle of you have to be heard and I learn all this because I was I was a very talkative person right and I if I look back at myself when I was a kid I probably cut off my friends a lot and jump then on conversation not because I was trying to be rude but because I felt like I had something to say right and it was done in a non-malice way but once I understood that geez I can actually learn more from other people because they got different perspectives and I love having conversations with people where they say something and it challenges my perspective because I'm not ingrained into one thing like it has to be like that do you know what I mean it's it's I love talking to people I'm not a religious person but I love talking to people about religion because I'm still trying to find that still trying to find that thing that you can sort of help me get over a line of understanding but it's it happens in dialogue and it happens by being curious and being okay with that so that's that's good yeah no I agree um last thing I wanted to ask uh insight for people listening as well where do you go to get uh information could be podcasts could be articles it could be mentors books what's your go to I've been smashing YouTube the last probably 12 months to be honest um I mentioned someone their Jordan Peterson I jumped on the bandwagon two years ago with him I think I've consumed I've consumed a couple hundred hours of his content just a super insightful man of just so much intelligence um and knowledge and he articulates things in a way that when I hear it so like sort of when when I was telling about the five lenses you know when you hear something in your already like yeah I felt like I already knew that but yeah having heard it that way just totally challenged my mind so um there's a number of things that I really um love learning and like I said it's it's about ourselves and human beings and while we do and think and act the way that we act so I love that deep knowledge and understanding and um yeah definitely consuming YouTube is a big one podcast audio books etc but um I like to pick sort of a topic or a pick a person I was going super deep on it you know um really try and understand their way of thinking and why that they're thinking that way and and you can learn so much from just you know there's not even what's being said or what you're hearing it's the way in which it's being said it's the way in which people react and act to it and like I've been literally following the um the truth out well since 2016 right the US elections I've been following pretty heavily I know way more about American politics in Australia that's for sure right um but I'm following it in such a way that I'm seeing how things are happening and why that's happening and then because sometimes you're sending out but how do they get away with that or how's this even happening and it's like you can get upset about or you can try and think around it and figure figure things out so I don't really have a um a set routine around do I consume a pot an hour a day of a podcast I used to I used to have some rituals like that but I only did it because I thought that'd be the cool thing to do because that's what you read in some books and I was like that doesn't work for me so um you know whenever I'm in my car and I'm always listening to either YouTube videos or content or so yeah mate I am awesome man thank you wide variety that's good so if people want to get in touch with Clarkson or yourself where where bus can they go just go to Brett Campbell be our ETT Campbell campbell.com.au I will show you a different name I hate having to go Brit with two T's camp with a bell like especially for my American friends they they think they hear Brad oh no yeah the R.A.D. or B.R.I.T. Brit turn on my okay B.R.E.TT you know um you just go over there you can check it out. No I was gonna say Gary Gary Vaynerchuk has that similar issue because he he tagged himself I think on Twitter is Gary V and then he realized he had to start spelling it out because it was Gary V.E.E so whenever he did conferences he'd follow me at Gary V so V.E.E same uh yeah same issue but anyways that's all I got man um I appreciate the talk that was crazy well you heard it from the man himself if you want to connect with Brett Campbell you can hit him up on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com slash inslashbrett oh Campbell or you can go to his website Brett Campbell.com.au uh Brett is an incredibly strong strategist an incredibly strong marketer an entrepreneur he was an amazing guy to chat with um I'm really really happy we had him on uh the sales versus marketing podcast uh as always if you like this podcast please leave some feedback below uh please like please comment please subscribe please share it with your friends family co-workers and if you leave us a rating any ratings okay as long as it's five stars uh if you want uh if you know somebody who should be on the sales versus marketing podcast please reach out to me directly s Douglas clary at gmail.com or you can hit me up on LinkedIn LinkedIn.com slash in slash s Douglas clary uh shoot me some shoot me some names and I would love to chat with them love to speak with them that's another sales versus marketing I hope everybody has a great week has a productive week and we'll talk again soon bye now welcome to Scott's thoughts where we break down the podcast that we just had the last sales versus marketing podcast where we spoke with Brett Campbell who is the co-founder of claxon uh multi award-winning digital marketing agency um if you were listening you obviously got a ton of insight into Brett's story and the what claxon's doing for the clients but not just uh not just Brett's story and claxon's story we got tons of great digital marketing insight and information one of the the main things that I that I that really really stuck with me and I wrote it down here you spoke about the five lenses in which you have to implement a digital marketing strategy so the first lens and I really want to double down on this because he spoke about another thing that sort of uh dovetailed into this which was the state of digital marketing and how digital marketing uh anybody with a computer and an internet connection can claim themselves to be a digital marketer and the the I guess the standard of excellence and the benchmark for true digital marketing excellence is extremely low and there's very few specialists that can deliver a proper solution to four clients and deliver true ROI and we're seeing this mentality permeate companies as we see see a most having a very short lifespan as they're no longer just responsible for branding and messaging but now they're responsible for delivering on ROI uh so dollar they want a return on dollar spent whether or not it uh mqls or converted leads or revenue uh marketing leaders are being held to a higher standard now as is a marketing agency so uh Brett makes us all aware of of these types of agencies that these are truly solopreneurs or small agencies that specialize in one but really can't deliver the depth of what a marketing strategy should be which should be more than just marketing but it should be a partner in business growth uh and and and just basically uh long term business growth and not just short term campaigns like we would see with a uh a solopreneur or a small marketing agency that sort of pigeonhole into one avenue of digital marketing um so the five step process that uh that Brett has built out through claxon his marketing agency as well as the process that he walks all of his clients through is as follows so the first step is the technical so you have to have a technical individual that can analyze data sets and can understand those data sets and use them to build out a smart campaign you have to have creative so you have to have somebody that can think through a creative strategy as well as somebody who can actually build it out so so the the the collateral the marketing collateral the graphics the design uh so there's the creative part the third part is the ability to write copy so the verbiage the words that drive the people that are consuming your content to trust you to want to engage with you and to want to buy your products uh the fourth is strategy so tying all of these components together and managing them in a way that you can congruence with your business goals and then last but certainly not least is uh being a business builder being a business advisor and understanding the long-term objectives of the business and then tying those back into the marketing campaign that they're putting together the omnichannel marketing campaign um so it's this this five step strategy is what he takes to companies with and what rightfully so once you he mentioned this in the podcast once you've heard these five steps you can't you can't disagree with them this is this these steps are the way you have to deliver marketing and if you aren't doing it through combining all of these five steps uh you won't be effective or it won't be scalable or it won't be aligned with business goals and if that's the case why are you bothering to do it um another point that he really that he really spoke about how he allows companies to understand that this type of strategy this five step strategy is the future of what digital marketing so this is the gold standard of digital marketing and this is what all digital marketers teams internal or external the companies are going to be held to is through education we've spoken about this repeatedly on on the sales versus marketing podcast the best way to to get your target audience to trust you is by being that subject matter expert by educating them on what your company does on your brand on what you deliver on and and by putting out this content by creating messaging around your all your content that is educational that converts and that educates and that positions yourself as a subject matter expert which allows Brett to deliver his five step process uh because he delivers it through education uh so that's another sales versus marketing podcast i hope you got something into that i thought that was a really really strong uh discussion a really strong interview uh i'll leave some i'll leave some of the points that we discussed in the show notes below uh and if you want to if you want to reach out to to Brett hit him up on LinkedIn or on his website uh that was another Scott's thoughts uh if you have any comments feedback please leave them in the comments below and as always have a great week have a productive week and we'll talk again soon bye now thanks for listening to the sales versus marketing podcast brought to you by roi overflow delivering strategy technology and insights to both sales and marketing leaders and teams globally