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E27 Find Early Leads Fast with Al Keck · Stronger Business Together

• Granger Forson: So is the Stronger Business Together podcast where business owners learn from other business owners. No theory, no gurus, just real journeys and overcoming real hurdles. Today I'm joined by Al Keck who runs Claviga Consultancy who like any business owner he's at beginning of building things, fixing things, growing something that really matters to him. So Al, welcome. Al Keck: Brainger, thank you very much for having me. Granger Forson: Fantastic. So let's do act one now. The business. So in plain English, what does your business do? Al Keck: Claviger Consulting is a consulting and advisory business helping boards and founders navigate the complex world of digital marketing and e-commerce. Trying to save them from the analysis paralysis, the plethora of data that we're drowning in these days and just trying to really help them focus on core KPIs. Granger Forson: Brilliant. Well, I often think though, even some of my clients, it's not the drowning in data, they just don't have the right data to make really good decisions. So yeah. Al Keck: Well, yeah, I think there's that, I think there's, just, the word dashboard sends shivers down my spine these days because we have so many of them, or I see so many businesses have so many of them. And while they're, you know, they're vital, we all drive vehicles and that has our dashboard and it has a couple of core KPIs that we have to utilize to, to ensure we navigate around the roads wisely. So yeah, I'm just trying to help them. all of the data from, you know, maps up into that. yeah, having those, that real core understanding. Granger Forson: minutes. Right, okay. So, Al, who do you love helping and what are they typically dealing with then? Al Keck: So love helping businesses that are probably three quarters of a million, one million pound turnover plus, that really want to kick on and scale. I suppose know that they, well they know what they know, but they're open to having support and advice and wanting to mitigate pitfalls and utilize people who have been on the journey. to help them achieve their growth in a more timely manner or a more efficient manner. Granger Forson: So how did the business start? What was that original spark? Al Keck: So the business is relatively new. It only started this year. Prior to that, I had run my own digital marketing and e-commerce growth agency. I'd been doing that for 21 years and successfully exited that business in January of this year. So, thank you. So now, yeah, now I'm putting my time into, say, really helping boards, private equity companies and founders help them. Granger Forson: Brilliant, well done. Al Keck: achieve their growth aspirations. Granger Forson: Awesome. Well, I think that's one of the biggest things that business owners need to learn is that marketing and development of that skill set around that to be able to sell a product and then grow the business. So, yeah, you're totally in the right ballpark for everybody needs. So take us back then, you know, what was the original business and what did you achieve with it before you exited? Al Keck: Yes. Yes, I mean, I'll probably go back 26 years, if that's right, Granger. And I sort of fresh out of school. I went to work at a business called Cotswood Outdoor late 99 and went to work in their IT department to help them in the process of migrating from what was an in-house ERP system that ran buying. stock control, all the tills, which was a great system, but it had been developed by their IT manager and the business wanted to be more resilient and robust and less reliant on an individual. So they were looking to bring in a third party piece of software, help them with that process. And as part of being in the IT department, I was asked to be responsible for the website, which back in 1996 had been e-commerce. orientated, but it was always an afterthought for the business. So it got turned off and it was just an information site. I worked with the then marketing director to persuade the board that maybe in the year 2000 in the dot com boom that this e-commerce thing has legs. We had a 200 page catalog. We had a mail order department, pickpocket dispatch already. So it was relatively easy to bolt into the business. So yeah, that's where I started and cut my teeth building that. arm of the business from from scratch Built it a team around me and grew it into a multi-million pound revenue stream for that business over a three-year period Before being headhunted to go to work for another mail order business who had thought yeah, who thought the mail or that the internet was a fad and Late 2003 realized that they had made a mistake and again, so went there Granger Forson: Well done. Al Keck: set a team up from scratch, helped them build four websites. We acquired another business that took on responsibility for another two websites and generated a fantastic year one revenue. think the challenge with that business was 80 % of their stock was drop shipped and the stock management and the third party suppliers couldn't keep up with the demand. And for me, even in 2005, that lack of customer service or letting people down wasn't something I wanted to put my name to. So I on principle quit without a job to go to. And at that point I had five years experience of running and managing e-commerce businesses and back in 2005 not many people had that. So set up as an advisor and consultant at that point working with people in of e-commerce director roles and so work with Reader's Digest was our first customer, trying to help them sell more of their books online. Then went on to help people like the great little trading company, Barora. And then my next big project, if people are into cycling, they may know of a brand called Rafa. And so I was part of Rafa in the early sort of, early years before it really, really kicked on a groove. So I helped Rafa for, yeah, seven years, of in those formulative years. Granger Forson: Yeah. Al Keck: leading up to winning a gold medal at Tour de France, a winner's medal in 2012 with Bradley Wiggins as Rafa took on Team Sky sponsorship. And at that point, it made sense for them to in-house more of their e-comm support. So at that point, I'd already built and the agency at that point in the background, having more discipline. So yeah, that's when I really kicked on. Granger Forson: Yeah. Al Keck: having worked at Rafa knowing how much time and effort was involved in sitting clients, managing third party agencies, all were doing great jobs. But it was for me, it was more about rather than being focused on what channel are we delivering and what performance we're delivering is reversing that and going, what is the growth aspiration of the business from a channel agnostic point of view, and then understanding. Granger Forson: Right. Yeah. Al Keck: What channels should we go and deploy or where is there the most headroom for growth to go and achieve that in a more efficient and sustainable way. Granger Forson: Excellent. So you then put that together and started building your own team around you your own agency. So what happened next then? Al Keck: Yeah. So I mean, just continue to, to always say we talked about it a minute ago into the dashboard. always believed in sort of four or five key levers. Um, and so built a growth model around those key levers, uh, and helping and supportive businesses achieving their growth. Um, so it was, it was always about understanding their growth aspirations. Was there the headroom and demand for growth in the marketing channels? I was there that much demand out there. And, and this one of the key metrics still today seems to be a tricky for people to understand or measure is what we would call CAC or cost of acquiring a customer. So what can the business afford to spend to acquire a new customer? And then how, how are they going to convert that initial investment into what we'd call customer lifetime balance? How can they recruit a customer for 10 pounds per se? Granger Forson: Yes. Al Keck: and that customer drive be worth £500 in three years time. Granger Forson: Yes, LTV to CAC ratio is one of the fundamental drivers of any business. So many business owners have never heard of it, never really measured it or understood it. So yeah, I totally agree. Fantastic. Al Keck: No. Yeah. And a lot of businesses will still tell me that they're getting measuring ROAS and I'm going to be out a out on a limb and say, I think it's a dead metric. Because, you know, ROAS doesn't you, you could be hitting a five times ROAS, but the margin is poor. So the contribution to the business could still be negative, but you've you've hit your ROAS target. So people are still spending your money and marketing because they believe they're doing it successfully. So, Granger Forson: Yes. And as LTV to CAAC as a ratio, what sort of number is a good number to be heading for? I've got my thoughts and opinions. Al Keck: Yeah, I think it really depends on a number of things like how repeatable is the product, average order value, sector, you know, pool tables, for example, is not a lot of LTV after the CAC. You're not going to buy a pool table every year, but you could have it serviced and you you can have new balls, new cues with that, so there are ways around it, but it's never going to be a higher increase. So I'd say that was a lower ratio where something like Rafa, you know, we would be looking at three to four purchases a year from a customer. yeah, yeah. All right, six times ratio. Granger Forson: Right. Yeah. Absolutely and it's easier to focus on the top part of it and make a change rather than the bottom part because you're then going to be squeezing your activity spend rather than actually maximising your LTV. yeah, fantastic, totally agree. Al Keck: Well, think that's the interesting point. There's a lot of what I would call short-termism going at the moment where they are looking at what's my raw ass. So what money did I spend? What revenue did I get back rather than going, okay, my ratio might not be as strong now, but if I'm recruiting the right customers, I'm actually buying more resilient and repeatable revenue rather than just buying turnover. Again, it might be a bit controversial saying that, but. Granger Forson: Yeah, brilliant. No, I totally agree. Totally agree. So, I'm conscious we need to sort of keep our journey going on this conversation. So let's move into act two now, which is sort of, you you as a business owner and your experience. So, you know, over the years of building your business, what were some of the highs and lows for you? Al Keck: Great question. think highs definitely have to be winning great customers and achieving the goals that they wanted to achieve. I think there's examples where you set out to achieve a growth target and did so. I think being recognized for that by winning industry awards. and or having great case studies and testimonials there for customer prepared to do a video testimonial for you I think you know speaks pretty good volumes because so I think those are always good lows I mean I think there's there's always challenges along the way without a doubt I don't know if I'd call Covid a low or not it was a busy time we helped a lot of people Granger Forson: Visit yes. Yeah. Al Keck: We helped a lot of people survive in a new world when the world we understood where, so there's a lot of them had stores but didn't so I think some there were some false promises made in COVID in terms of if we help you out right now you'll move on but I think you always have to put that down to learning. I never see lows per se as a real negative but more as a learning opportunity of what could we have, should we have done differently? What would we do differently next time? So, yeah. Granger Forson: Yeah, brilliant. No, I totally agree. Yeah, interesting. My co-founder and I were talking only this morning. We're talking about the number of failures. that we've had in our marketing and sales activity and what we learned from those to actually improve it and make it better. And we were talking about actually that cliche of fail fast is actually, well, that's actually quite true when you really think about it. mean, are hard in any business. Sometimes building business, gets really hard. What did you learn about yourself and your business when times are tough and hard? Al Keck: Yeah. Yeah, I think that you have to a lot of resilience. You have to be a very resilient person, especially as a sole founder. So didn't have a business partner. So, you know, all the weight was solely on my shoulders, decisions, things were challenging, you know, that I think that's a tougher route personally. don't know. I see both sides of the table. I see people where maybe there's three or four that share the burden, but then maybe one person wants to do something, three others want to do something else, and then there's more negotiation to be had there. I think building a good network around you is important, or having an outlet to speak to your peers. just often you sit there and often think, oh, why is this happening to me? You you feel in a very lonely and a very isolated place and then, yeah. having those forums to go, actually this isn't just me, it's just not me, everyone's being exposed to this. So I think, but I think that's an, for me that's an opportunity I'm looking at right now, because I think there is a lack of those in my experience, I rarely found those sorts of outlets. So I think that's a tough point. Granger Forson: Yeah. no, I would agree. you know, our business, the Stronger Business together, we've built around four principles. And one of those is better decisions by talking to peers. So we have peer groups who do exactly that because, you know, while you're not going to get maybe the answer you want, you're actually going to have that ability to talk it out loud and really help you think and be challenged by other people. yeah, fantastic. mean, you know, we often have to make decisions in our business that changed the trajectory of it. What's something that changed for you that was like a whoosh moment? Al Keck: I and I don't mean this to sound controversial, think making sure that you kill any cancer in your business is a whoosh moment for me and I think if you've got... You've got your set of values, you've got your why, you've got your mission and your vision. If you, as soon as there isn't, I don't know if you've heard, but I sort of believe a rule of the 20, 60, 20 rule. And, you know, the 60 % of the team will be swayed either way. And typically if there's a negative connotation in the business, the 60 will come down, laws of human nature, et cetera. So in wanting to build more of a high performance team. I suppose I learned the hard ways. There was a time where there was someone that one or two people, maybe a little bit negative or weren't playing by our rules of the game. and, you know, I'm put my hands up and you, you only learn by your mistakes. I probably didn't act on that quick enough. and, and until, you know, and then when I took action upon it, whilst that sort of was a bit painful in terms of that resource leaving. you could just feel that whoosh come through the team. You know, that suddenly that person wasn't there, know, typically then they can be sometimes more senior people. so, yeah, I think that was a learning that I made many years ago, but it was something that stuck with me afterwards. It saying, you know, that isn't acceptable. These are our rules of the game. This is the bus. You're either on it or you're not. And if you choose not to be, that's fine. but we're not prepared for you to drag the team down, the morale of the team down, the standards of team. And that isn't just internal. There are clients that we let go because the way they spoke to teams or where they acted or how they paid their bills, it didn't meet our values. And actually, those are whoosh moments where you think, crikey, we're gonna lose revenue here, but actually, Granger Forson: Yeah. Al Keck: We were over, you typically end up over servicing the client. You're not billing for all the time you're using on it. And actually by letting them go, everyone's in a happier place. The team produces better work and actually you're billing for more of the time that was actually being spent. Hopefully that answers your question. Granger Forson: Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. My background in operations really is around those, it's more about those people that will bring down the culture rather than pick it up. yeah, get rid of those. But one of things we focus on is growing people because if you grow people, they'll grow your business. Al Keck: It's. Granger Forson: What's something else maybe you learnt about growing your people over time? Al Keck: Yeah, interesting. Well, mean, I think finishing that last point, I we call it drains. I called it drains and radiators. So you either wanted to radiate the culture or they were going to suck from it. So growing people. Yeah, I think it's paramount, know, especially in our world, the speed at which technology devices, channels, their algorithms are moving at is exponential. So we had to be learning. So we were very focused on having individuals had what we call personal development plans PDPs. So each of those were set in alignment with business strategy. So they would typically be run over six months, but reviewed monthly and then quarterly. So that was really key. I think there was a lot we did around understanding disc and vac, which is like the disc profile and then their learning style. So not assuming that everyone was a visual audio person, how do we allow for kinesthetics? Again, I think just again, that was about team performance, understanding that I was a high D, so don't send me chapter and verse, but in essence, C who wanted more detail would need that. So just how we communicated internally as a team, but also understanding those styles. from our customers allowed us to communicate more effectively. So put quite a bit of time into helping people understand that. Because many a time I heard the conversation of, I've told the client. And my view on that is, well, you may have told them how you want to be told, but did they hear you? Have they understood that? they? So yeah, we spent quite a bit of time on that. But yeah, always developing interpersonal skills and then technical skills. Granger Forson: Yes brilliant no I love that that's really important really important so AI is moving lot into marketing and even business development and what we're doing you know where would you let AI do work and where would you say no we have to have human judgment here. Al Keck: Well, I think human judgment is still needed at the present time. I've spent the last five months post selling, spending a lot of time in AI and analyzing it. So look, I think it can do a lot of the mundane well. My example is I liken it to, it's the petrol, but it's not the spark. So it can help accelerate mundane processes. can help do tasks. that are time intensive but low value. And so if it empowers my, if it had empowered the team to spend more face time with clients and allowed them to have more time building rapport relationships, that's how I would want to have used it. Can it help writer's block? Absolutely, but you know, I've done many a test on it and you ask it the same question. Sometimes it gives you two different answers, even the same prompt. I think it still needs to be sense checked. And my concern today, you know, having younger children is they take it as verbatim. I think we're in a privileged age group where we've got learned experience. We know what's accurate, what's not. So we can challenge it better. I'm sure it will get better. But look, I think, yes, it can help businesses increase its output, be more efficient. But I think ultimately that's empowering it. empowering you as a business to spend more time face to face time building relationships and rapport with your customers. Granger Forson: Yeah, no, totally agree. Totally agree. Yeah, I love that analogy. Yeah, it's petrol but it still needs the spark. Yeah, absolutely. It's an accelerator in your business but you still have to know the judgment and you also have to give it the direction and the thoughts of where to go. So, totally agree. So, final question in this section. What did you do in the business to keep it really focused on doing the right things when it got really busy? How did you keep the business healthy? Al Keck: Yeah, again, I'm sure we make, you know, with being honest, we'll have made mistakes and we'll have learned from them. top line, we were always looking at customer satisfaction. So repeatability, we were servicing clients every month. So how happy were they? How were we doing against their target? So we would get a flavor there. And if we were off. then we'd be on the phone saying, right, behind this is why we think it's wrong or this is out of stock, that's causing impact. But also looking at pipeline, how are we out finding new opportunities? We weren't going for great guns growth. We were looking for a sustainable, long term relationship with our clients. So it was about bringing in some new blood because naturally we then think there is a churn. But we weren't going great guns on doing that. it was As you say, it's about that lifeblood, what new blood is coming in, how well are we doing it looking after the current clients. That was a lot of our focus. Team consistency was important as well, so making sure the team were happy and they were staying and there wasn't lots of churn on that side. So yeah, we had various marketing metrics. We would be looking at events that we needed to put on, speaking, thought leadership pieces we were doing, networking. Granger Forson: so let's move on to Act 3 now, our hurdle round. So what's the hurdle you brought with you today for us to discuss? Al Keck: The hurdle I brought today, obviously starting again from scratch, is just trying to find ways to find the right audience that I can use my skills and knowledge to help them achieve their growth aspirations. As we've talked about earlier in the podcast, we've got 26 years experience and there's so many networking events out there now and there's so many different forums. My hurdle was just trying to understand from your experience and your knowledge or others that you spoke to with you, ways to find, not shortcut, but be in the right tribes, if that makes sense. Granger Forson: Mmm. Yes, yes. Okay, so is there some covenant within your sale that stops you approaching key people or individuals or businesses? Al Keck: I obviously can't approach historic clients, but apart from that I'm allowed to work with people on a strategic and advisory point of view. Granger Forson: Yeah okay so let's talk about first of all then where you are today and what you're doing. So that's what we call the starting condition. So take me through you you've got a number of clients already. Where did they come from? How did you find them? Al Keck: Yeah, so a couple of clients at the moment, they came from my network. So yeah, mean, that's always your own black book is always the first thing, isn't it? But it's supposed to. Yeah, and I've been. Granger Forson: Yes. Yes. Al Keck: I've more active on LinkedIn, trying to show the sorts of conversations I'm having. I've done some speaking events. I spoke at King's Home on AI and how that's the new wave or the fourth generation wave of being discovered as a business online and how people need to consider that. I don't know touched on it just now, but... is Harvard put out last week, 97 % of AI budgets companies are spending is on adding technology into the business and only 3 % is being spent on training people how to use it. And they wonder why they're not getting the operational gains at the moment. so yeah, I think it's that piece. I've been talking to my private equity contacts where we've done work for them historically, doing due diligence. Yeah, I've tried to put out that way. Granger Forson: Okay, and to date that in the last few months hasn't returned any leads or has it returned leads but no clients yet? Al Keck: got leads, I think, and maybe it's just the state of the play right now. I talking to, I've talked to a couple of businesses today, of agency owners, and yeah, there's a lot of discussions happening right now. But given what's going on in the context of the wider world, it feels like there is limited... Granger Forson: Yeah. Al Keck: sort of convictional converting into yes let's go ahead that seems lighter and that's understandable. Granger Forson: Yeah. Yeah. Yes, under the current economic situation here people are nervous but there's also those are opportunities as well I remember in a large Al Keck: Absolutely. Yeah. Granger Forson: a large corporate that I was working in, you when 2007 and 2008 hit, know, where the CEO actually stood up and said, right, this is our opportunity to shine and outdo all of our competitors. And we put in a lot of effort and we did, we came out much better off. had huge, huge new orders and clients over and above because we were taking over from other people that had retracted and disappeared and tried to, you know, batten down the hatches. So there are always two approaches to those situations. Al Keck: Absolutely. And we saw the same in them. We saw the same in COVID. Those that were on their data and knew their CAC, customer lifetime value ratios, when people pulled out because they didn't think they could post things or didn't know how they were going to do it, cost of clicks halved and people could double their spend. Granger Forson: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, where did you go when you were a business owner? Where were the places that, you we say you hang out, but, what were the conferences or the things that you went to? Al Keck: Yeah, I think a lot of it is word of mouth and I'm just caught. Again, it's probably me being an impatient entrepreneur, wanting everything to get going ASAP, know, into a new world and people have got to understand that. yeah, I mean, there were industry events that I would go to. There's local Cotswold networking events that I went to as well. Again, I think. Granger Forson: Yes. And I'm. Al Keck: There's so many of those things, it's just trying to better understand. Granger Forson: Yes, absolutely. But it's those key ones that you went to maybe, or the types of ones that you went to, that are going to be more likely than your target market clients are probably going to, rather than general networking events. Al Keck: Yeah. Yes. Granger Forson: that are out there. While in general networking, the key to networking is the one-to-one afterwards. So it's finding one or two people that are likely in that room that might know your type of clients rather than you find them in that room. And then it's having a one-to-one and a follow-up with them and seeing how you can help each other to expand across both your networks. That's the key to networking. People think it's about selling in the room. It's not. It's about the one-to-one relationship that you build up. afterwards. Al Keck: Yes, yeah I think even in our industry now there's such a plethora of you could be out every day. Granger Forson: Yeah, yes, absolutely. I did an analysis of all my networking and boiled it down to. two networks that I go to. So I personally do B &I, whether you like it or not, but that really works for me, for my target audience and my target clients. And the other one I go to is just a beer and a pizza night. And it's just having a conversation with other business owners. It's not, there's no real networking. I've had a few one-to-ones with people, but it's really about just, you know, chewing the fat and letting the stress out of everything that's going on. So different type of networks depending on what you need and do for them. Another approach which I personally haven't done directly but a number of my clients have used very successfully is what we call the Dream 100. Now it can be used in two ways and the first one is literally just Al Keck: Okay, interesting. Granger Forson: researching, that's the power of AI, your target market, specifically who they are, where their email address, if you can find them and their contact details, and it's getting in front of them by doing something. Now lot of people use email for that, but actually sent the power of, know, drop through mail. You know, there's a great guy on LinkedIn, apologies, I can't remember his name, but you know, he talks about the power of mail and when he wants to get in front of someone, somebody he sends them a small prosthetic arm in the post and says I'll my right arm to have a meeting with you. It's that type of how do you bring your voice above everybody else in the marketplace. Al Keck: Yeah, yeah, we've done that. We did that at the agency before we would send a KitKat in the post and then follow up with a phone call. You know, so we send them a white paper where we've done a lot of analysis about Black Friday. Granger Forson: Yeah, yeah, one of my clients. Yeah, yeah, mean one of my clients uses after the first initial lead Jen once he's done his validation of them he'll send them a tea and biscuits in the post and say let's have a conversation. It's that different way of triggering people to get to that first conversation with you rather than that just. Al Keck: Yeah, we're good. Granger Forson: you know, assuming they will just because they've made that initial contact or that structure of it. so that's that's the dream. Did you actually map out a hundred? type businesses that you would want to do and you build a campaign of getting in front of them and asking and asking you know the classic you know ask 50 times for the first person to say yes once you get those yeses you can then build more back into that original 50 because you've learned now what actually works. The other part of the dream 100 is actually thinking about influencers and thinking about who would your target audience be listening to in terms of influencers and thinking about how you could build a relationship with some influencers that have your target market listening to them or viewing them or reading from them and how could you build that relationship and that ability for them to make money from you but the ability for you to then sell through them. modern way and interesting a number of marketing people I follow online use the influence approach more than anything these days to get their big launches and their big ideas out there. Al Keck: Yeah, absolutely. Granger Forson: And the key with all of those, as you know, is data, being able to track that and understand that data. Because once you can build the volume, then you can just do more of what's right. So your first two clients today have come through your black book, as you called it. Are there more that you could do that based on your sort of dream 100 list? Al Keck: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I've got, I've started those conversations to say, I think it's just the current climate. It's everything is a little slow. Granger Forson: Yes, absolutely. you know through the marketing thinking it's around understanding their pain, isn't it? So are you talking in their language or are you talking in your language? Are you helping them understand where they could be if they were working in a different way and the structures of that? And anybody that... resonates with you because it's only going to be, as they say, about 20 % of the marketplace are actually looking for a solution to a problem they have today. So you're not going to resonate with everybody. But if you're resonating with them because they're going, you know what, my marketing isn't working. We're not got the growth that we want out of our e-commerce activity. We're not delivering enough through our online sales activity. They're the people that have already got that issue and they're looking for those type of problems. today, what's your sort of message, how are you going to market? Al Keck: Yeah, think by vertical, by sector, it's different or by the different person I'm talking to. Yeah, I think absolutely. It's all about pain. know, what is it that's stopping you achieving your growth aspirations is probably my number one pain point that I'm trying to understand. I do find at the moment there's a lot of people that know there's things that need fixing and that are wrong. But with everything else that's going on, and again, I understand everything else that's going on in the world. They're like, I just can't be thinking about having to change that as well as all these other things at the moment. I've got to deal with like tariffs, what's going on in the world, like getting stuff out of China. yeah, I'm sure there's an element of patience as well. if entrepreneurs aren't always patient. Granger Forson: No, Al Keck: So yeah, I think so the message is just really about, know, would an extra pair of eyes or ears or a sounding board, you know, that has been there and done that be useful for you? You know, I think as we spoke before we came on this, you there's a lot of people that seems to be that seem to be pouring money into an acquisition engine, I meta or Google. without truly understanding how that's yielding them and that's almost just buying turnover rather than really understanding who's their ICPs, their ideal client profile, why it's worth investing in buying those or investing in acquiring those people and how you then need to keep talking to them and grow them as that piece of this, this short-termism, which it's great for today and tomorrow, but it's not the thing that's really going to get you on that growth trajectory in two or three years time in my experience is, sometimes we've almost got to take, which is very hard in the current climate, take a bit of pain today, allowing the right foundations for next year and the year after. Granger Forson: Yeah, yeah, and it's that while you can help them, as you say, they're busy in everything else at this moment in time and they don't see that benefit and that structure. that's where. Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, yeah. So the first point of view is, you know, Al Keck: and studying how AI is going to help them and how that can be used. Granger Forson: as you say, doing talks, doing podcasts, getting your words out there so people start to see that ability when they go looking for you that they can understand that. But it's still that once you've had the initial conversation, it's thinking about then that the sales process because I personally think in the early days of businesses, so I work typically with sort of people that have got about three to four staff maybe turning over. 200,000 then up to about the million. It looks like the million is where you then take over, which is great. But it's in the early days is what you have to learn is how to sell a business before you can market the business in my opinion. Because when you learn how to sell and you're sitting in front of a business owner and you've got that to and fro and you're perfecting your art, what you're actually perfecting is the structure of the words, the structure of what their pain points are, the structure of what's delivering it. And once you know and you've done that number of times that can then feed into your marketing to help it grow. Otherwise what you're doing with your marketing in my opinion is you're just guessing what you think works. I call it the blunder buster approach to marketing rather than the focused approach which is if you know what works selling you can then turn that into what works in marketing. Al Keck: Yeah, more efficiently and more time effectively. Yeah. Granger Forson: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, so yeah, those are some thoughts for you based on some things that I do and have done. What resonates with you? What would be your next experiment? Al Keck: Yeah, I think the power 100 list I'd already worked on. I think just stay, stay true to my convictions and be more patient. It's probably my learnings from there. Just continue to show people how I can add value in you. I'm always open to a conversation or a 30 minute chat, gratis, you know, people just need, I've got this problem, any view on it. I'm always happy to help in that way. It's for me, it's Granger Forson: Yeah. Al Keck: not about a quick win, it's about finding a partnership and helping those people achieve their growth aspirations. And those things aren't forged overnight. And there aren't magic wands despite some influences, belief that you just do click your fingers and this will happen. Whether that's in business, in getting a better body, the amount of different Granger Forson: No. Yeah. Yeah, take. Al Keck: adverts you see these days or do this or take that or this or 28 days and you'll be beach ready and it's like yeah there's always yeah I think there's a lot to be done where it's about consistency and patience. Granger Forson: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you've got that, you know that, you've got that skill set. It's just, yeah, it's just you now. And it's how do you spend and focus your time. So, brilliant. Al, thank you so much. So let's do our wrap up and close now. What did you hear yourself say today that maybe surprised you? Al Keck: I don't know if anything surprised me per se, but it was good to recount the learnings of from failures or mistakes. just, you know, there is so much you learn and evolve as over 21 years of running a business. Just having that in the locker is good to know. it becomes easy to you, like, don't let that happen, don't let negative people be in the team or clients or whatever. It's just, again, I suppose it's just remembering you've got all that learnt experience. Granger Forson: Brilliant. Thank you for that honesty. So, finally, Al, where can people find you and follow more of your journey? Al Keck: Yeah, sure, LinkedIn is probably the easiest one. So just let me up online. It's Al Keck. And if people would message me or do a connection request, more than happy to have a chat with people if they've got any questions in and around marketing and digital marketing. Granger Forson: Super. Al, thank you so much for being open and honest. I know our listeners will have a lot from this conversation. It really has been fantastic. Thank you. Al Keck: Granger, thank you so much for having me. It's been great to meet you and thanks for your challenging questions, but it was all good. Granger Forson: Thanks for spending your time with us today. We're on a mission to make business owners stronger together. 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