Latest / Stronger Business Together / E14 Differentiate to Win with Charlie Cadbury

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E14 Differentiate to Win with Charlie Cadbury · Stronger Business Together

• Granger Forson: this is the Stronger Business Together podcast where business owners learn from other business owners. ⁓ theory, no gurus, just real journeys and overcoming real hurdles. ⁓ ⁓ joined by Charlie Cadbury who runs Say It Now. Like business owner he's part of that team that's building something, fixing things and trying to make something that really matters. ⁓ So welcome. Thanks for spending your time with us today. on a mission to make business owners stronger together. If this conversation helped you, please like, comment and follow on whatever platform you're using. About % of our audience haven't done that yet and these small actions will help us reach more owners just like you. If you want join the conversation as a guest or if you have hurdle question for us to tackle, ⁓ reach out to us info at strongerbusinesstogether.com Charlie // Say It Now: Great to be here. Granger Forson: Fantastic. So, let's do our first act. Act one. Your business. So, in plain English, what does your business do? ⁓ make it really successful week and ⁓ see you next time. Cheers! Charlie // Say It Now: So we work with anyone who advertises on the television and the radio and we make it possible for their audience to engage with those advertising messages using your voice. imagine you're sat at home. listening to the radio. Unlike 25 % of the population, you're listening on a smart speaker. One of the ads might come on when working today with a Cardo and Tesco's and a Tesco's ad comes on and says, hey, we've got some special offers this week. To find out more, say Alexa Open Tesco's. You are interested in those offers and you say Alexa Open Tesco's and you're greeted with the same voice that you heard in the ad. would say, hi, welcome to Tesco's. This week we've got offers on. Picnic stuff is sunny outside today so we've got offers on cheese and hams and baguettes. Can I send you a link so you can put them in your basket? You say yep, that link gets sent to your phone and you carry on with your day. Now, the benefit that we get for ⁓ our advertisers, so like Tesco, is the challenge they have with audio advertising is they don't know which ads they're buying are actually landing with their consumers. So you'd probably fire a load of ads out there. You hope you're buying for the right audience segments and those ads are going out at the right time of day, but you've got no real feedback or real-time data to tell you what's working. And so we... ⁓ We put a tracking pixel on those ads. We know exactly what time they're served and what publisher they're served on. So we know whether they're going out on Heart FM or Spotify or Kiss FM or Music or what have you. We know what time of day they're going out and to which audience segment. And then we know when people say Alexa open Tesco. So we bring that all together in a real time data studio. And so the advertisers can then use that information to optimize those ad campaigns in real time and see whether people are engaging more on a Monday morning. Is that when people are planning their shopping for the week or on a Thursday afternoon? And so if they're spending say 50 grand a week buying those ad spots that you can use that data to shift that advertising around. and get a better return on every pound they're spending on those outlets. So that's what we do. It's a platform to build, manage, measure, and optimize audio and TV advertising campaigns. Granger Forson: Wow, a real technological innovation and drive. that's fascinating that ⁓ you're able to give that real time data structure to your clients, that understanding what is and isn't working, how people are interacting with it and how brought multiple different technologies together under roof to that happen. Fantastic. Well, I think we know what your clients are dealing with. They don't have that level of information and control and understanding. So, you know, what was the original spark? Where did the business start? Charlie // Say It Now: So we started a little bit early actually. So first of October 2018, I started this business. I just switched over from a business making websites, Facebook applications, mobile phone apps, and then moved to working exclusively with voice assistants for the last 11 years since 2016. And we started off in our first one with Diageo. And the vision at that point was to help brands control the experiences that consumers could engage. within these rising voice assistants. Not many people had smart speakers in 2018, but we could see the trend was moving up with them. So the first thing we built was Talisker Whiskey, and it was a whiskey tasting experience. So they to differentiate themselves at point of sale. So when you go into a supermarket and you see a hundred whiskeys in front of you, which one should you buy as a ⁓ gift dad? And so ⁓ their was that if you put a shiny sticker ⁓ on ⁓ whiskey, you might choose that one over another. You might have chosen... bottle of wine because it's got a metal on it. And so we put a stick on these boxes and say, if you buy this Talsca Storm, it comes with a free tasting experience powered by Alexa. Just say, Alexa Open Talsca Tasting. And so you would choose that whiskey above the others, take it home. when person opened it, they could say, Alexa Open Talsca Tasting. And then we actually have the wife of the chief distiller. She would then guide you through that whiskey tasting experience. And ⁓ we did of tests between kind of 50 different as the superstores from the year on year, kind of sales data see that actually just the addition of that sticker changed the amount of whiskey bottles that were sold. And also we're able to live a little insight back to Diageo about the habits of people at home, about what people were interested in, whether it's making cocktails or finding the provenance of the brand or how to taste the whiskey and also what time of day and historically has been very hard for them to get access to what's going on at home. So that's where we began. And we then... Moved along to see the biggest problems that we could solve within the world of smart speakers. We using them to stream audio and ask questions. And the biggest problems with audio advertising is lack of ambient ways to engage with audio advertising and real-time data. And we saw the ability to bring this all together as an obvious solve. So that was the beginnings in 2018. And so in 2019, we entered a global competition for for the Alexa Cup, was Amazon looking for teams that could solve big challenges and kind of put big ideas forward for the platform. And we won that Cup and have been working very, very closely with the product team at the Seattle ever since. Granger Forson: Wow, congratulations! An award-winning business as well! Charlie // Say It Now: And more came. Granger Forson: So what does the business look like today in terms of size and shape? Charlie // Say It Now: So we're working with an Excel development partner to build these Alexa skills in the early days, because it was just me and a fantastic product guy. In my previous business, we'd build an agency with lots and of people, building And I that that wasn't scalable. So was very, keen this time to find a way to build a product, to capture a lot of value, build some IP ⁓ with this ⁓ in the of voice. ⁓ So partnered with fantastic man called Sander Season. ⁓ and then we had an outsourced development team. we won the Exocup, we raised a little bit of external finance and then we had a global media first, the first ever radio ad that you could buy a physical product from using your voice. so that made some waves in 2021 showed our direction of travel. ⁓ And then ⁓ wanted build a platform. So very much like you use WordPress to build a website, ⁓ we to build a to build and manage and measure these voice experiences. ⁓ And fortuitously, I was introduced to a man through contact of mine in New York called Norbert Hulvarth and he had gone through same kind of journey. ⁓ he'd been working in Canada for 25 years, built couple of addtech business and he had actually built the platform that we were just about And we met and we got on very well from the first call. And he said, like, what are you doing? Like, we're just about to build this platform. I like, don't do that. I've built it. But I can't license it. I'm looking for a to market. You've got a route to market. No tech. I've got a tech and no route to market. How about you just buy our business, And I said, not with that sounds like a great idea. I've not done that before. It's a bit daunting. How would this all work? And he said, look, you've just raised some money at this valuation. How about we agree a valuation for my business? You've got shares which hold a value, which has just been ⁓ validated by the recent investment round. So we come to an agreement. We do a share swap. You can buy our business, our technology. We've got a team of all the wholly owned subsidiary in India, some DevOps in Canada, whole lot of few kind of burgeoning clients across the US. ⁓ Norbert could come along as our CTO. anyway, we some third party due diligence. I got to know Norbert. It invited him to my house to meet my wife and family and my neighbors to make sure that the social glue all works. And anyway, 100 days later, we'd acquired that business. And so then we had a platform to grow from. a load of deals, putting ⁓ ourselves as... the voice provider to top tier advertising and marketing businesses. We work with people like Bauer and Global who own most of the radio stations that you'll listen to in Europe. They have a voice enabled advertising solution. that's we use their sales team to kind of sell us through. And then in 2023, we started running TV ads, ads that you see on the TV, which again, say if you'd like to know more about this, then just say, Alex, we're currently running with Role Caribbean across the US. Audi and Ford across Brazil, Benetton in Mexico, and we've got the government account in the UK, it's kind of voice enabled TV for, ⁓ you could find out more about the HMRC app and download that. So we've waiting a long time for ⁓ the to upgrade, but Alexa Plus is. last week or the before being announced in the UK. So that means that 50 % of homes that have Alexis will be spending more time talking to them as they're spending more time talking to them. Their propensity to engage using their voice to TV and ⁓ as they hear goes up. The performance of the ad campaigns that we manage increases. And so that's been ⁓ self-fulfilling cycle. And we've got a pivot coming through the summer, which is slightly under wraps, but it should accelerate our I'll reach the market, I'll build a bit more team out behind that. Granger Forson: ⁓ exciting, exciting. So what's your marketplace like? Are you the only competitor in the field? ⁓ your customers then pick you? How do you delight them? Charlie // Say It Now: This is the challenge. My biggest challenge is that we are by far and away the market leaders and the only provider of this service. It's very, very niche. In 2017, 2018, there was a whole lot of venture capital that went into the voice as a concept, looking for these kind multi-billion dollar opportunities. Everyone thought that. way that Alexa and Google Assistant had come to market were very similar to the way that ⁓ the iPhone and Android had come to market. They'd come to market and they both created an app store. And behind those two technology innovations, ⁓ of people had developed apps and kind of multi-billion dollar businesses, know, like Uber, Justy, Delivery. These all came because of ⁓ phone, mobile phone application technology. ⁓ so the thesis was that that was going to happen with voice. And so a load of venture went into voice in 2017, 18, 19. And actually that didn't happen. So the platforms weren't quite as good as the promise that they were selling. And so, you know, we didn't die. Many of the, of the companies around us came and fell away. and it's only now that we're moving into kind of voice 2.0 where large language modules are going to start powering the voice assistants you talk to at home. You know, if you talk to ⁓ Siri Gemini or chat GBT and now talk to Alexa, you're going to get far better experience. ⁓ Now is time to, for brands to kind of invest. And I think now we're going to see the, the growth of a few. we're into kind of voice 2.0 where large language modules going to start powering the voice assistants you talk to at home. if you talk to ⁓ Siri or, Gemini or chat GBT and now talk to Alexa, you're going to get far better experience. ⁓ Now is the time for brands to kind of invest. I think now we're going to see the, the growth of a few. billion dollar voice first businesses and you know we're hoping to be the vanguard there as the consumer behavior really kind of catches up with our dream. billion dollar voice first businesses and you know we're hoping to be the vanguard there as the consumer behavior really kind of catches up with our dream. Granger Forson: we're to see what happens The launch of iPhone took a few years before that even became a platform that people like Uber started using. It wasn't in the first few years. So, ⁓ absolutely. ⁓ Charlie // Say It Now: People didn't trust it at that time, so... 2007, iPhone launched, 2008 the app store launched. At that time, had a web business. were making websites then Facebook apps. And 2008, as soon as we could, we started offering the build of mobile phone apps. And it took a year for us to sell our first one. And people were like, yeah, why? Why would I want a mobile phone app? 2009, 2010, were like, but why would I ever use this thing? I use it for texts and making phone calls. Why would I use it for anything else? I certainly wouldn't ever use it for banking. Granger Forson: Yep. Charlie // Say It Now: . Interestingly, Sander, my business partner here, his job during that time, was the head of mobile for the Royal Bank of Scotland. His KPI was how many physical bank branches could be shut because he was moving people over to using mobile banking. It was all about focusing on making that user experience, their trust in mobile banking to get those consumers to move across. Yes, consumer behaviour shift is hard and it takes longer than one might think, it's my biggest learning here. Granger Forson: Yes, and you're interacting with a phone you can actually see the interaction, you can see what's going on. When you're interacting in voice, it's a very different medium to ⁓ of build that trust over time I guess. Charlie // Say It Now: It is, and it's one of the biggest learnings that Amazon and Google have had. I think, okay, I've said that one of the first physical products will be an in-home smart speaker with a display. ⁓ we've now, you know, now I think. ⁓ 20 or 30 % of all Alexas also have a display. So I don't think it's kind of voice only. You can have voice first. Everything we build is with a voice only experience. where we can, we ⁓ add to that using imagery if there's a screen available as well. And so from ⁓ the perspective, if you're listening to the radio and you start to ⁓ talk the Mercedes ad and you suddenly get pictures of the cars and a button that says book a test drive here, then all visual cues adds to that branding moment within the kitchen. Granger Forson: Yeah. Brilliant. So, okay, business is growing, things are happening. What are you aiming for in the next 12 months and why? Charlie // Say It Now: So, ⁓ What's been very clear talking to a whole load of investors and future gazers over the last 18 months is a shift in the way that software businesses are valued and specifically kind of software as a service business. They're no longer, do you believe you've got a moat in amazing software that you've built and even kind of customers might be fickle, might swap in and swap out. But what is incredibly exciting is unique data sets. And so, you know, the... We've got several investors here, a couple more just about to join. And the story and the business plan is to move towards some kind of trade sale within the next three to five years. What will we be valued on primarily? will be a unique data set, which is an understanding about how you can serve TV and audio inventory in a way to get people to engage via their voice. So if we've got a client just eats, we will look into our data lake and say, actually, look, what's the best time of day and the best publishers to put what kind of ads on to make that campaign perform the best, get the best ROAS, the best return on advertising spend. ⁓ And because this is all kind of these are next new data points, this information doesn't exist in the world at the moment. So we are racing as hard and fast to fill that data lake as full as we possibly can, ⁓ that's a direct valuation driver for us. So the quicker we can get to that ⁓ then prove that every pound spent within our optimization system is better than any. Granger Forson: Yeah. Charlie // Say It Now: can spend anywhere else in audio, that then proves the value of that data and makes it, that's then our defensible made really. Granger Forson: Yes, and data sets of... have always actually been one of the most important things, not necessarily the software aspect to do, because can build software quicker now, but even in the past, you could still build software ⁓ a number of months and catch people up. But if you have that data set that nobody else has, that was that unique thing. and it's just become more important today with the ability of building software fast. But what's it connect to? How does it learn? How does it use that information? So, yeah, ⁓ Yeah, really exciting to see what happens next. So let's move on to act too now, journey of the business and yourself. ⁓ as grow and develop a business, you've done that a number of times, there are ups downs, there's those highs and lows. ⁓ What have some big highs? What have been some big lows for you? Charlie // Say It Now: I can talk a little bit, I've worked for myself since was 22. And so I'm ⁓ quite well in how things can go well and not so well. the business that of taught me a little bit about software development, I started with a friend of mine ⁓ in 2005. And kind of grew that organically to a 50 person business, building ⁓ hundreds and hundreds websites, Facebook applications, mobile phone apps. And that was great. We had an office in Soho, we had a quarterly party on our roof terrace. I was in my late 20s, I was having the time of my life. it became harder and harder for us to win work. And the work we did win over time became less and less. profitable and this is because our route to market at that point we had established ourselves as the premium white label partner for marketing and creative agencies which meant that early days they didn't have a digital team or a mobile team ⁓ or a social team, they would come to us and we'd get all the work and we could charge them with what we wanted. Over time, they developed that competency in-house and we didn't own the customer. And so, know, our margins got squeezed, we were always going for growth, we ran out of cash and I had to close that business down. That was a very, very unhappy day, having to take all the team up to the roof terrace, know, oh, we've got the roof terrace, where's there gonna be the party this summer, Charlie? Actually, guys, we're out of cash is a terrible, terrible day but you get a chance to of take stock and one of the things that I then did for the three years after that is to run a consultancy serve to help other technology businesses on that high growth phase and during that time looking around for other opportunities to myself and it was during that time actually advising other businesses allowed me to see what the opportunities were how the business model and architecture could be different in any venture I did in the future. And I read a book by a guy called Daniel Priestley during that time called The Key Person of Influence. it just says that, you know, you don't have to be good at everything, just try and be good at something. And I had seen that I... seen the rise of web, seen the rise of social, I'd seen the rise of mobile and Alexa had just launched and as a child who had grown up watching Kit and Knight Rider I knew that the future was people talking to their technology and there some people when I give that reference don't get it but you know Iron Man and Tony Stark. Tony Stark when he's in the suit he doesn't get out an app. Granger Forson: Yeah. Charlie // Say It Now: to control the suit, right? He talks to Jarvis, you know, the most efficient way to communicate with technology is always going to be using a voice. So like, this was okay, very, very clear to me. So I said, actually, how about just be the voice guy? And so from 2015, focused on just being just being the voice guy, which allowed me to kind of get some early experience building Alexa experiences for brands like Marriott and Allegiant Airlines in 2016, 17, 18, meeting Sander and then forming the basis of this business. But even there's, you we were way, way, way too early. You know, was very hard. didn't only have one client the first year, one client in the Alexa Cup. Great directionally, but we still needed to get the bills paid. I'd never had to raise any money to grow a business, but. I was advised to raise some cash and build a platform and so followed that advice and with the story of the ⁓ Cup, very got our ICS and we had kind of 300k. committed to a zero revenue business with a great story. And that money was just about to close in February, March 2020. And then all of our investors started to come out like, no, quick. So we raised half the amount that we wanted at the beginning of 2020, and then the world shut down. And it was a very, very exciting time. Suddenly, I'm stuck home with the kids and this great new exciting venture seems very, very foolish. all these moments of... and the necessity is the mother of invention. There was some great kind of, of UK grants going around at that point. And we applied for one, think there's kind of 40,000 people apply for it and then they awarded 800 grants. We've got one of those and that was to test to see whether we were able to run audio campaigns to get people to donate to charity. Cause the UK charity market collects about 10 billion pounds a year. And it was due to be hit by about 4 billion. because of COVID, because there's no marathon, no events. And so we would go to text. So that, in effect, came away, allowed us to kind of push forward a bit faster the proof of concept to run radio campaigns for the crisis, for NSPCC, McMillan, WWF, and Comic Relief. And those ads were out on the radio. So if you'd like to know more about this charity and donate, just say, I'd like to open Comic Relief. You'd say, I'd like to open Comic Relief. Can I donate a tenner? Yes. Can I take that from your Amazon Pay account? Yes. That went through. then that... Granger Forson: Mm. Charlie // Say It Now: ⁓ our concept. So that was all great. As mentioned, we bought the Canadian business, raised a more cash and ⁓ that was very and then burned through that ⁓ relatively quickly in couple of years. Everyone said, right, this is the time, go and make your market. You're the first ones out there. This is working. the didn't quite come as quickly as we like. Granger Forson: Hmm. Charlie // Say It Now: ⁓ So we lost half the team again. you know, it's it's it's stop start fits and starts but it's eventually now looking like the the timing's caught up. So it's been seven long years here. Granger Forson: And what you've described a few times now of where the business gets really hard, you've had to make some very tough decisions survive ⁓ to grow. What have you learned about yourself ⁓ during times? Charlie // Say It Now: that you continue to have to be the cheerleader. you don't believe it's not gonna happen, ⁓ almost certainly will not. And think that ⁓ you do have to take stock and I'm lucky enough to have a very supportive and good board is something that... ⁓ had external advisors ⁓ a kind monthly cadence. find it's a very useful way to hold myself to account. Because, ⁓ the I build momentum into my own life is I make crazy promises all over the place. And then if I see these people again, I just have to have done the thing that I was going to say otherwise I look foolish and that drives my own momentum. ⁓ that needs be kept into check and people needs to deliver different perspectives because I'm quite quite It's quite positively minded and that can sometimes be to be to my detriment. So so the resilience to keep positive and keep the teams around me ⁓ has me ⁓ an amount of elasticity in the terms in which people show up. I've been late, you know, to get to that awful point when you're late in paying staff, which doesn't happen very often, but when it does happen, it has to be done very, very carefully. But then I've never not paid anyone that needs to be paid. that's, you get through that and it builds a... It's just a bit more resilience in what you're doing. You articulate a very clear and exciting vision and as long as you can show that you're front and centre going against that purpose then you won't. Granger Forson: Yeah, can see that and understand ⁓ what happened and what you've done. ⁓ So business, need, I them habits, repeating activities that we do. ⁓ What's one thing that put in place that keeps your team strong together? Charlie // Say It Now: Yeah, so have a ⁓ board meeting that trickles down to the team to produce different ⁓ for. So bits need to be created. We tend to have and events where we get different members of the team to talk in front of our clients and peers and ⁓ the clients, kind of get out and we throw ⁓ a social. ⁓ I up as Father Christmas and give gifts away at Christmas. That does help. And think ⁓ whenever we're for a new raise or doing any kind of... shift in strategy and direction. I'm open and transparent in sharing the investor deck. This is where we are with cash. This is why we're raising. This is the which ⁓ kind of strong and pure most of time in our ⁓ vision to make it possible to engage with every advertising message using your voice. No matter how we get into there, that stayed consistent the whole time. think ⁓ that ⁓ delivers a of faith in the team that's behind you. because you're not chopping change at the same time. You're clearly a big problem to go after, and we're going after with today's best information. Granger Forson: Hmm. And is a real talk about, you've mentioned LMMs and how you're those, but ⁓ yourself, ⁓ AI saved you time and where's it a distraction? Charlie // Say It Now: So, know, we work in world of audio. So ⁓ many customers come to us and say, we built this audio ad. Can you add a bit on the end, which says, which makes it voice enabled? So we can do that. We can create audio ads. We don't, when we're building into Alexa, we don't have to use Alexa's voice. ⁓ can either clone your voice and create your Alexa skill. We can talk to ⁓ your ⁓ And instead of getting you back into the studio, we can use that clone of the AI voice. So really, really useful and kind of... audio editing and production. I write a monthly newsletter. I've got a kind of a Set Now GPT which helps me kind of pull out questions. I've got my whole data room from an investor perspective. I've got on Notebook LM all of the different assets within our data room that sits within a Notebook LM. So when that's out with investors, very often they're pinging you questions all the time. I just copy and those questions into Notebook LM and then... audit, edit, then respond the output. I give the investors access to that and encourage them to do the same thing, but that saves me a huge amount of time. The distraction piece is, know, because these tools are changing on a daily, weekly basis, doesn't necessarily mean that I need to change my working habits on a daily, weekly basis. I'm in too many WhatsApp AI groups to mention. And, you know, trying to... distinguish the signal from the noise the challenge. But ⁓ lot of that, I think, comes from a decent peer network. ⁓ was out at a CEO, CTO dinner last night, know, 12 people around the table ⁓ talking exactly this. Where are you building AI into the ⁓ front of your ⁓ product your business? And where are you? expressly not building AI and just hearing other people's perspective is sometimes the best way to distill that noise from signal ratio. Granger Forson: fantastic. we're really really thoughtful there and It's definitely a tool that can accelerate things and make more happen But it's also a tool that you can constantly chase all the changes that are taking place and then my clients we have that conversation quite regularly So brilliant, so let's move on to act three now our hurdle that we're to discuss so we've we've picked a listener's question. So what are we going to discuss today? What's the hurdle? Charlie // Say It Now: ⁓ So in a crowded market, we struggle to differentiate ourselves. ⁓ I like this question. ⁓ I've in a number of businesses and worked alongside a kind of advising number businesses that work in ⁓ a world sameness. Granger Forson: Well, I that's a really great question and I think we have a great discussion about this. So let's think about a business, maybe a manufacturing or engineering business this one came from. So what do you think is going on then? Why are they feeling they're stuck? They can't get their voice out there in a crowded market. Charlie // Say It Now: So ⁓ think ⁓ about identity and thinking too much about the business and not enough about the people. I fundamentally believe ⁓ that best businesses ⁓ have figurehead. And if you're able to ⁓ rise figurehead up, that figurehead plays a great part in being that point difference. If you look at ⁓ any of greatest companies that you respect the most, you probably can associate a figurehead individual with that company. ⁓ And I think the point of difference, if you're able to build a personality alongside the value proposition of the business, then you're able to create a massive point of difference because people will associate the energy, enthusiasm, charisma, or other personality traits of that individual alongside that business. And that can be massively differentiated if you're standing in front of 100 factories. And if one has a person next to it who's smiling, I'll buy from the man who's smiling. if you're able to build a personality alongside the value proposition of the business, then you're able to create a massive point of difference because people will associate the energy, enthusiasm, charisma, or other personality traits of that individual alongside that business. And that can be massively differentiated if you're standing in front of 100 factories. And if one has a person next to it who's smiling, I'll buy from the man who's smiling. Granger Forson: Right, so that key person of influence that you talked about from Daniel Priestley isn't it? ⁓ Charlie // Say It Now: And it's very, very much in my mind, yeah. Granger Forson: Yeah, so how would they start thinking about this? Because that's quite a significant change because they probably thought their product sells or their delivery performance sells. Now you're adding an extra layer of that. Where would they start thinking about this? Charlie // Say It Now: So I think it's, know, where is the marketing budget? Is the marketing budget producing fact sheets on pages and ⁓ ⁓ placement, or is it building the personal brand of that individual? Can that person get to speak at relevant industry conferences? Can that person, I've enormous success with PR, can they become a commentator within the industry? and create press about interesting things that are happening and are you able build a ⁓ decent CRM so can communicate from the voice of ambassador ⁓ on a regular basis keep your ⁓ leads warm. Granger Forson: Yeah, so they need to sort of sit down and start to understand who's going to be the voice, which is normally the business owner and the key person of influence. We need to understand, who they are, what they do, how they stand out and start to craft and build a structure around that type of thinking. So what do you think are some of the hurdles from your experience that business owner would sort of worry about and over think about when they're trying to build this. ⁓ Charlie // Say It Now: So with this going like great is the enemy of good. So the fact that, you know, they might not be a natural speaker, but that can be solved with, know, I've had a decent amount of media training, presentation training, public speaking training. That's really helped me along the way, kind of build my confidence and the ability to do that. Then, you know, that first hurdle of kind of doing something somewhere once and realizing that it's 10, 20 minutes in time that comes and goes, no one's really going to remember and judging it at that right level, know, it's not, although it can feel like the biggest thing on earth to you, it's definitely not the most important part of anyone else's day in the room. And so, know, so it's kind of getting at, and then like the more that you do, the easier it comes and you know, it's like anything, you know, if I want a strong album, I'm going to do lots of reps and kind of lift a heavy weight if I want to become good at. Granger Forson: Yeah. Yeah. Charlie // Say It Now: speaking publicly. I'm just going to seize every opportunity to do that and stand up and be the person to give a speech to my seven year old's birthday party. Just keep practicing wherever you get the chance. Granger Forson: And that's the key thing is that repetition over time. They've got to stand up and realize that it's not going to be an overnight success. It's going to be something that builds. But we're trying to build that differentiator, as you say. need to be something different from everybody else in the marketplace. So what can that be? Well that's that standout individual that's making those videos, that's being part of the videos, that smiling face on the billboard next to the factory isn't it as you said. But it's building that over time. It's like the first time you do a video, you know the first time you do a podcast, you have to do that first step and then you just have to build it and then take that forward over time. they're starting on the journey of doing that. would they need to be showing up first, do you think? Are there any sort of hints and tips of what would be good ⁓ them to think about? Charlie // Say It Now: So let's some quick wins. So something I've done for the last 15 years is I write a monthly newsletter and it's a staggered way for me to kind of constantly put content out. on a monthly basis, I'll kick out this newsletter and it will start, it's from me and it goes, hi, it's sunny on this Thursday morning, the daffs are up. This is what's been going on. And then I'll link to two or three things that have happened over the last month. This is a social we have, this is an event we have, this is a project that we're really proud of. And it's really informal and chatty and it's definitely from me and consistently over the last 15 years. People who never reply to it, you know, I forgot I'm on the email list, will come up to me and go, oh, I've read the newsletter, keep up the good work, it looks like you're doing great, you know? And it's just that, and the way I've built that up is I write. one blog every week or so. And it means that when it comes to writing a newsletter, you've got those kind of those pillars of ⁓ that, so it's not hard to do. And then whenever you write a blog, you've got a couple of ⁓ bits to do. So it means that all that content during the month is kind of, that's hygiene piece which is looked after by itself. And I find that a really useful way, because all marketing really is, is to try and make sure that you are bringing people on the journey with you, because your journey will change. And if you're able to communicate that in a way that people think that they're on that with you, that they respect that. then your front of mind as and when they want to reach out and buy your product or service. We always get ⁓ few leads in after that email goes out every month. Granger Forson: Mmm, fantastic. I never thought about a monthly newsletter. at that moment in time, you're only being yourself with You're not being yourself having to put yourself on a stage or put yourself in front a video camera. You're starting to build that strength of your skill set of ⁓ being you being ⁓ open and... being honest and being able to help people understand your journey. So yeah, that's a great, example. ⁓ And they wanted more ⁓ over where they go next? What would be your next thought? ⁓ Charlie // Say It Now: So as I said, we have a retained PR agency right now, but ⁓ we've had great success. think ⁓ the best money spent is employing retained ⁓ consultant who you meet with on a ⁓ basis and just have a conversation. What's happened over the last week? ⁓ happening in the industry? Ask them to do some research and give you talking points about, know, is this interesting? Do you want to write a thought piece on this? Do you have anything to say about that? It means over time that PR that comes professional gets to know you, gets to understand what's happening in your business. You can work towards if you've got a big project which is going to go live, they can then help drum up some interest so that they can write press release about that, get the relevant kind of g'd up so that on launch day you make a bit of a fanfare. If you want to put an event around that, it just ⁓ ⁓ communication which... all of your SEO, if anyone's doing any research on you, if they type in your name and you're cited in you know industry journals and third-party publications, ⁓ gives people a far higher impression of you and rises your positioning ⁓ that positioning can be a massive accelerant to what you're doing. Granger Forson: So we need them to stand up and be different in the marketplace. We need them to stand out over time. But as a business owner, I need quick results. This doesn't sound like a quick results type activity to help us stand out. What would you say to them based on, well, I need a faster return on investment than that? Charlie // Say It Now: There are ways that you can hack this. So in fact, we've worked in the last week, we've done a joint venture with ⁓ a And the pretext was this can be a ⁓ good ⁓ press piece both of us. ⁓ So if looking for results now, ⁓ find a that you think you might be able to do. non-competitive with the thing you might be able to drum up some interest for both of your businesses, know, one plus one equals three, they'll be partners out there. And so let's do something together. We've got another one of these actually coming through. We were discussing yesterday where they've got a new bit of tech. We've got some data and creative assets. going give them what we know. They're going to prove to us that their tech works. and together we're going to create a research paper which we're going to use to then go and make some noise in market together, drum up some interesting business for us and you know, I expect that to be delivering returns for us within the next eight weeks. So that's a quicker way to use these kind of comms first or kind of ⁓ release type moments to generate some quick results. Granger Forson: And ⁓ Daniel's book as well. can see and understand that. As we're standing here today talking to this business owner that's struggling to be different in the marketplace, to build that differentiation, ⁓ the sort of the one key sort of realization we can give to them and say, look, this really does work? ⁓ Give examples. ⁓ Charlie // Say It Now: But I think the more more they are out there, the more you are asked to these classes together. It's just like sharpening the pencil. The more you put this together, the better you get at pitching. I find if we're if we're kind of moving towards another product line, the best thing I can do is go to a network event and you go and speak to 30 people, 30 different people ask you what you do by the end of it. You know, if you if you if you because, you know, it's that whole kind of like, I don't know how to communicate this well, but it's all just practice. And you can either pick up the phone, a day's worth of call calling 200 people. It's hard to get people to answer the phone these days. It's far easier to walk into a room and network that room and by the end you've got your... your comms trust you a little bit easier, a little bit more differentiated. There are a number of positioning statements. fact, there's, yeah, basically, go online and find standardized positioning statement exercises you can do. I've run through a load of those in the past and that helps you. I can do this better than other people because that kind of structure, I find. useful when I'm workshopping new ideas and I've used canvases and business model canvases are also, you know, ⁓ a number of tools and resources that if you really want to sit down with a bit of paper and work out how you create your points of difference, I find nothing ⁓ quicker than where the rubber hits the road and that's being ⁓ by humans in front of you to explain to you what they would do, then what you do. Granger Forson: Yes, there's lots of those out there. So let's close our conversation around this. What one thing do you think they should start tomorrow with their first experiment? Charlie // Say It Now: Speaking more, first experiment can be writing a public newsletter or blog about they do, why they're different, and make a promise to the world that they'll do this on a regular basis. ⁓ Granger Forson: Fantastic, yes you mentioned it earlier on and I think that's probably one of the best ones to do because you're not in the the gaze at that moment in time but eventually you will need to start bringing yourself out into the world as well. Charlie, fantastic conversation there so let's do our wrap up and close now. What did you hear yourself say today that maybe surprised you? Charlie // Say It Now: that I should ⁓ my PR. That's kind interesting. It's interesting to look back on the journeys, ups and downs, the resilience. think ⁓ people sometimes there are shortcuts that aren't. I do firmly believe in compound interest. If you go out and you chat every single day, then ⁓ over time it will start to pay off. I'm definitely seeing that. Granger Forson: Yeah, we believe at Stronger Business together that growth is through challenge. don't get growth from somebody gives you an answer. Actually, you need to go and find and discover and build it and make it your own and understand all the nuances that make it work in your environment, in your business. So yeah, I totally agree that that brings that experience and knowledge. So finally, Charlie, how can people follow you more if they want to understand your journey in your business? Charlie // Say It Now: I try to make myself incredibly approachable search for Charlie Cadbury on LinkedIn, Charles Cadbury online, follow talk to me, call me. Granger Forson: Well, Charlie, thank you for an amazing conversation today. I know our listeners will get an awful lot from this conversation. Thank you very much.